The Infinity Tattoo (10 page)

Augusto took a sip from his brandy snifter and stared out over the city. From his house, located on one of the many hills of Tegucigalpa, sweeping views of the capital stretched out before him. Lounging in a comfortable chair he viewed the presidential palace. Quiet now. But not so long ago, violent, noisy demonstrations had seethed in front of it. Angry mobs poured into the city, and filled the streets with their misguided protests demanding that the ruling party return the deposed president to office.

Of course, most of them really didn’t care who was president. They were just poor ignorant
campasinos
, country people, who understood nothing about governing a country. The whole thing, this so-called resistance, was a farce. Most of the protesters were paid to be there on the streets anyway. Paid by Chavez and Castro and Morales.

When the demonstrations had started, he’d returned to public life, taking up a position as a consultant to help his compatriots keep the peace. Not everyone was happy to see him. Some congressmen had shunned him, even. But a few kept their heads about them. They needed someone like him to help them, to help the country keep law and order during this troubling time.

And he had done his job well. He’d taken care of the most troublesome leaders of the resistance front, the smartest and most astute, who knew where to strike to hurt the country. His country. Well, he had made sure that they would no longer be a nuisance.

And then there were the reporters. A pesky lot, every last one of them. If he had his way the government would exercise a whole lot more control over the press. But that was a political powder keg. Honduras needed its allies who were strong proponents of press freedom. Augusto was, too, under normal circumstances. After all, that was what democracy was all about.

It was the Chavezs and the Castros of this world that threw their weight around, suppressing any real news so that they could feed their people’s heads full of propaganda. They were the ones who ruled their countries with iron fists and tolerated no dissent. Before you knew it, they established themselves as so-called life presidents.

Dictators is what they were. Augusto despised them. And he despised the deposed president. The incompetent, loud-mouthed boor that called himself a president thought he would follow in their footsteps and set himself up as a president for life. The idiot would have brought communism right to their doorstep.

That was why the Honduran people had had to get rid of him. The world could call it a coup if they wanted. It didn’t matter. There was only so much a country could take before it had to remove a menace like him. Which is what congress and the military had done. And that’s why Augusto stepped up to the plate. The ruling junta needed him. He knew from his years in the battalion how to keep communist sympathizers under control. And that included members of the press.

As he sipped his brandy, he lit a cigar. He thought about the news Richard had relayed to him. It was not good. Not good at all. First that foreign correspondent, that Alex Larson, had gotten his hands on those communiqués. He remembered the night that had happened as clearly as if it were yesterday. Larson had had words with some of the local reporters at a protest march. Augusto’s men had seen the interplay and decided to keep an eye on him. When Larson left his hotel that afternoon, Augusto and his men followed him.

Larson met the two journalists at a small restaurant not far from the American Embassy. Augusto waited outside until Larson came back out. He was alone. Curfew was coming up soon, so Larson had to get back to his hotel. He flagged down a cab. Larson was lucky to have found one this close to curfew. Everyone was scrambling to get home. It was not a good idea to be caught out after that.

But of course, it was not really luck that Larson found a cab. Victor, one of Augusto’s men, was driving. Marcio was lying in wait in the back seat. As the cab passed by with Larson in the back, Augusto saw a brief shadowy struggle. His men knew what to do. Augusto had taught them well. Satisfied, he returned home where a number of his colleagues would be waiting to report or take on another assignment.

The next morning, Victor came to the house to report on the night’s activities. They had taken care of the man, Larson. But they had a problem. There were no documents on him. They had questioned him extensively. Larson admitted that he had been given a package and that it contained politically sensitive information. After much “coaxing” he revealed that it concerned meetings between Augusto and certain members of congress.

But Larson refused to tell them what he had done with the documents. The only thing they had managed to extract from him was that he had mailed a package to the United States. He never revealed the name of the person he’d posted it to.

Augusto was furious. How could they have done that? He needed to know to whom the package had been sent. How could Victor have failed to get this information? But Victor just shook his head. Alex Larson was a courageous man who, despite their very effective interrogation techniques, resisted them to the bitter end.

Augusto had had to let it go. There was no way to track that package down. He just had to hope that its contents never saw the light of day.

Six months later, he received a message from the American Embassy. By now, Honduras had held an election for a new president. Normal relationships were resuming between Honduras and the international community. The time was coming when his special brand of service would no longer be needed. And he was ready to retire. His children were giving him grandchildren, and he wanted to spend time with them.

So this news made him unhappy. Someone had told an American soldier where to find Larson’s body. This soldier, according to the source, was a close friend of Larson. Augusto had begun to suspect that this man was in possession of the package. And Augusto wanted that package back.

The two fugitives were on the road at sunrise. Dinner had been tense. Jack was acutely aware of his attraction to his dinner partner: the sparkle in her eyes as she gazed at the menu hungrily, the soft curve of her breasts under the loose-fitting T-shirt she had donned from her emergency kit, the capable hands that had caressed him as she pulled him onto the bed.

And he felt like a fool. It was time for him to get past Alex. He knew his friend was dead. He knew it. He may not have seen the body, but he believed what Andres had told him. And Jack himself was still alive.

He was sitting across from a woman who had more passion in her little finger than most women had in their whole bodies. He wanted to explore that passion, to dive in headfirst. But he had blown it. And now he wasn’t sure how to approach her.

While they waited for their food, Meg tried to make casual conversation, but he found it hard to reciprocate. Finally their dinners came, and they both plowed into it like they hadn’t eaten for a week. Afterwards, they returned to the hotel room.

Meg made no overtures towards him. She went immediately to the bathroom. She emerged a few minutes later in just her T-shirt and underwear and made a beeline for the bed opposite Jack. She pulled the covers back, crawled in, turned her body towards the wall and mumbled a soft, “Goodnight, Jack.” Soon he could hear her slow rhythmic breathing as she sunk into sleep.

He had no idea how long he laid in bed listening to her soft breathing before falling asleep, but he suspected it hadn’t been too long. He was completely exhausted.

* * *

When he woke up, the door to the room was open and Meg was silhouetted against the bright morning sunshine.

“Hi, Jack,” she said cheerfully, carrying a Styrofoam cup in each hand. She pushed the door closed with her hip. “There’s no coffee maker in the room so I went to the office to get some.”

He sat up and swung his legs to the side of the bed. He was only wearing his boxers, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. She put his coffee on the nightstand between the two beds and flipped on the lamp.

“So, what do you think we should do?” she said, sitting opposite him. He watched her take careful sips from her cup of steaming liquid. Her face was animated and she perched on the edge of the bed like she was ready to spring into action.

“You look like a woman with a purpose,” he said.

“I am. I want to get to the bottom of this story.”

“Is this how you are when you are on the hunt for a story?”

“In part. But of course, this isn’t just a story. It’s a quest. To see justice for Alex. And more importantly, to get you out of your current situation.”

“In that case, I think we should go to Phoenix,” Jack said. “I want to take a look at the package that Alex sent me.”

“Tell me again where you said you put it?” Meg said.

“In my army backpack. It’s in a cupboard in my office.”

“Your office is on base, right?”

“Yes. So I need to think about how to get in there.”

* * *

They took back roads to Phoenix. Although they were fairly certain that they had lost their pursuers, their vehicle was rather distinctive, being a good twenty years old. Jack was just thankful that he had tuned the thing up. It might look like junk, but it was running like a top.

When they reached the outskirts of Phoenix, they found another cheap motel. They checked in and tossed their meager belongings on the beds.

“So,” Meg said, “how are you going to get that backpack?”

“I don’t know. See, you have to get past the gate. The only way to do that is if you have military ID. Since I don’t know who to trust, I don’t want to chance it.”

“Can’t civilians go onto the base?”

“Sure, but you have to have an appointment with someone on the base.

“Well, I’m a civilian. I could go in. Can’t you get me an appointment?” Meg said.

“How am I going to do that?”

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe you can pretend to be someone else.”

“That might work. I could call from a cell phone. I could say I was a junior officer, making an appointment for my commanding officer.”

“There you go then.”

“But I’m not so sure that it’s a good idea.”

“Why not? I just go in, go to your office, get it out of your backpack, and leave. Is your office locked? How do you get in and out of the building?”

“We use electronic passes.”

“All right then. You give me your pass and I go in and get the package.”

“But how are you going to get into the building and to my office? They’ll be suspicious.”

“Don’t you ever have civilian visitors?”

“Yes, and we escort them from the front desk.”

“Oh. Hm . . .” She thought for a moment. “Come on, Jack. There has to be a way. Are you telling me that there aren’t any other doors to that building?”

“Of course there are. But you need a pass.”

“So I’ll use yours.”

“Look, Meg, why are we even talking about this? It’s too risky.”

“And having some members of some drug cartel chasing us and keeping surveillance on my house isn’t? Look, we can do this if we have a good plan.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said.

“Okay, let me ask you this. Would you have a problem if I were a guy, say Alex, going in?”

“But that’s different.”

“No. It’s not.” Meg stared at Jack stubbornly.

“Okay, okay. Let’s talk about it.”

They spent the rest of the day doing just that—talking about it. Jack drew a map of the area of the base where he had his office. He marked the visitors’ entrance and mapped out the streets leading from there to his office. Then he drew a detailed plan of the building that housed his office. He thought about all the entrances into the office building. They decided on one entrance that hardly anyone ever used. It was service entrance in the back of the building.

Meg would have to have an appointment to get onto the base so Jack would call the guards pretending to be the staffer to his commanding officer and get Meg’s name on the list. If they timed it for when there was a lot of traffic in and out of the base, the guards wouldn’t give her a second look. He hoped.

Meg would need to look the part. She would need to rent a car and find something suitable to wear, some kind of business attire. Late that afternoon, they hit the shops.

* * *

The next day at one p.m., Meg sat in a grey Chevy Impala in the queue to enter the base. There were four cars in front of her and some more behind her. She wore a simple dark blue business suit with a white blouse and low-heeled pumps.

When her turn came, she waited patiently while a military guard ran a mirror under the car and opened the hood for inspection. She was waved through, and she pulled into the parking lot.

She had all the necessary documents with her: papers for her rental car and insurance, and two forms of identification. As she stood in line to get her day pass, she tried not to fidget. Jack had called earlier in the morning pretending to be Colonel Parker’s junior officer. He told the guards to go ahead and give her a day pass and direct her to the commissary where Colonel Parker would meet her. Jack knew his boss well. He had no patience with over-formality. Telling the guards to go ahead with a pass was typical of him.

Finally, she reached the front of the line. “Hello, my name is Megan Goodwin, here to see Colonel Parker,” she said with what she hoped sounded like bored authoritativeness. She had practiced with Jack how to affect the voice, the facial expression. She passed the guard the required paperwork.

He took her driver’s license, examined it and looked at her, then perused the list of civilian visitors expected that day. When he found her name, he handed her a day pass.

Meg smiled stiffly, then returned to her car and entered the base proper. Jack had provided her with so much detail that she had no trouble navigating from the gate. She turned right at Lightening then left on Bong. Then she reached Mitchell Street she needed to take a right. The building was three blocks down on the right-hand side.

Meg drove around the block as Jack had suggested, just to reconnoiter a bit. Under the bright Arizona sun, the occasional car passed her on the street. There were very few pedestrians. No doubt they spent most of their time out of the heat in their air-conditioned offices. She drove back around to the street nearest the service door and parked.

She took a deep breath as she got out of the car. Seeing no one, she walked smartly over to the door with Jack’s pass in her hand. She swiped it across the sensor and heard a click. She pushed the door open and slipped inside. As Jack had described, she found herself in a small foyer painted institutional gray. A short hallway directly in front of her led to the main corridor. To her right was a stairwell leading to the second and third floors. There was no one in sight.

She quickly climbed the stairs to the second floor, praying that no one saw her. She was in luck: the stairwell was deserted. At the landing was a door secured with a card reader. Meg touched Jack’s smart card to the controller and, again, heard the click granting her access to this floor.

A short corridor led her to the bullpen with cubicles lined up in rows and rows that resembled a maze. Offices lined the outer walls, giving higher-ranking personnel access to the windows and views of the outdoors. Meg walked briskly between a row of cubicles.

She reached the corridor for the offices that lined one side of the building. Jack’s office was the third one on the right. Taking a calming breath, she headed towards it.

She passed an officer, nodding her head and walking like she knew exactly where she was going. When he passed by and the coast was clear, she slid the card through the slot on the electronic reader and heard the now familiar click granting her entry. She pushed the door open, entered, and closed it quickly behind her.

She looked around. It matched Jack’s description. His desk stood in the center facing the door. It was almost completely bare except for black plastic desk organizers containing stationary supplies. To her right were several filing cabinets with lock bars running down the length of the drawers and padlocked. Behind the desk was a window facing the street and beneath the window was a cabinet. This was her goal, where Jack told her he had stashed his army pack. She went around the desk to the cabinet and tried sliding the door open.

As expected it was locked. She pulled a key out of her jacket pocket which Jack had given to her. She slid the key in, but it didn’t want to turn. She jiggled it but it stubbornly refused to budge. She felt the heat rising straight up to her face as panic started to take hold.

Then she heard voices just outside Jack’s door and froze.

* * *

Jack watched Meg drive onto the base with his heart in his throat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this nervous. It was a whole lot easier to do something covert than to watch someone else doing it, especially a woman. He knew that that kind of attitude would brand him a sexist, but he couldn’t help it.

The previous day, he and Meg had walked through the plan enough times. They even tried to anticipate any snafus, creating backup plans. But you never knew. Something could go wrong. So many things could go wrong. Then he pulled himself up short. Nothing would go wrong. And if she did hit a snag, she would handle it.

He watched her car drive up to the gate, enter, and disappear. He realized that he couldn’t deny his feelings any longer. He was losing his heart to her. He sent a mental message to his friend Alex, asking for his blessing. Then he smiled to himself. Maybe Sedona was rubbing off on him after all. Whatever the case, as he sat there waiting for Meg to come back out, he could swear that Alex sent an encouraging message straight to his heart, that Alex was okay with the two of them being together.

Meg and Jack had estimated that the entire operation would take about forty-five minutes, so when the time on the clock in the car moved excruciatingly slowly to the forty-five minute mark, he felt his anxiety start to rise.

* * *

Meg ducked down and crawled under the desk. She heard a soft click as the card reader released the lock on the door.

“I tell you, I have searched and double-searched this office. I didn’t find anything.” It was a man’s voice, high and somewhat whiny.

“You searched the filing cabinet?” said another man. He spoke with authority.

“Top to bottom.”

“What about the desk drawers?”

“What do you take me for, an idiot? Of course I searched the drawers.”

“What about this cabinet over here?”

Meg could see two pairs of shiny patent leather shoes make their way around the desk, right to where she was crouched beneath the desk.

She held her breath, racking her brain for a reasonable explanation as to why she was hidden there. Soon, they were standing so close that she could have spit-polished their shoes.

“It’s locked,” said the man with the high-pitched voice. He turned towards the desk. “I have a key,” he said and unlocked the cabinet.

“See? Just some books and this backpack.”