As soon as Hayes opened the door to leave the tower a forty-knot wind grabbed his clothes and the roar of jet engines nearly deafened him. He quickly trotted down the grey metal steps to the decks below. Grimes was waiting when he arrived back at his office.
“Heard you had a flight in the Gadfly with President Frei,” said Hayes, closing the door.
“Word gets around, I guess.”
“What’s up, Commander?”
“Suarez has been reported somewhere around La Paz, and a mountain guide is missing.” Grimes pointed to the southwest corner of Bolivia on a wall map.
Hayes thought briefly. “Doesn’t the man have a home up that way?”
“That’s right,” said Grimes. “In Arica, on the coast near the Peruvian border. Actually, the villa is in his half- brother’s name, but Suarez runs the show.”
“But we haven’t positively located him anywhere yet. Am I right?”
“Word is Suarez and his men dropped off his brother a couple of days ago,” said Grimes, “but that hasn’t been verified.”
“Can we pick up the brother? Shake him down?”
“Half-brother, sir,” said Grimes, pursing his lips. “Not yet. That could backfire on us. Suarez still doesn’t know we’re on his ass. If we make a move like that, he will. And we still need Gibbs to finger him.”
“Even so, it’d help a lot if we located Suarez, wouldn’t it?”
“That it would,” said Grimes. “We’re working on it. We’re trying to get something going with Chilean Intel, and the police, but they don’t seem to trust us.”
“Not surprising. Remember the CIA and the Allende coup.” Hayes slumped into his chair and took a cigar out of the humidor on his desk. He clipped off the tip. “So we do nothing,” he said in a tone of disgust. “I can’t wait to tell the President that.”
Sarah gazed out the hotel window at the blue peaks east of the city.
“There’s a great view of the mountains from here, Henry. How tall do you think they are?”
“Twenty thousand feet plus, if I remember right,”
Henry called from the bathroom. He was wiping the last streaks of shaving cream from his face. “Santiago is a popular spot for skiers, mountaineers, all kinds of winter sports. Do you ski?”
She studied the snow cover that topped the mountains. It reminded her of her parents’ place in Colorado. “When I was a kid I did. My parents had a mountain retreat that had been in the family since my grandparents died. I remember my grandparents a little, but we didn’t go there much — so far away. Do you ski?”
Henry, emerging into the bedroom, looked at her blankly. “Me? What do I know about snow?”
She burst out laughing.
“Well,” he continued, “I have to admit I’ve probably spent more time in snowshoes than on skis.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked, coming away from the window.
“The snow? No. At least not at the moment.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. “Not even a little bit.”
She looked into his eyes, then started buttoning the new shirt he’d started to put on. “This is nice, isn’t it? I hope it lasts.”
“Yeah, but for now I’m just enjoying the moment.”
Sarah rested her cheek against his chest and again stared out the window. “I mean, I hope this is something we can tell our grandkids about some day.”
He held her a bit tighter. “Funny. A month ago I was a different person, in a different life. If someone had told me we’d be here together like this, at a plush hotel in Santiago, saying these words…”
“What?” said Sarah softly. “What would you have done?”
“I wouldn’t have believed it. No way.”
“And what would you say now?” she said demurely, straightening his shirt collar.
“I still don’t believe it.”
“Is this just…?”
“Just what?” He looked into her blue eyes and saw tears beginning.
“You know, just an affair?”
“I’ve never had ‘just’ an affair, Sarah. I don’t think I could pul it off.”
She was surprised. “Really? Come on…”
He felt suddenly nervous. He realized he was saying things he might regret later. “No, Sarah. It’s true.”
He eyed Shep, asleep at the foot of the bed. He’d had years of isolation on the Ross Ice Shelf and before that at Point Barrow, Alaska, and life had been so peaceful. He recal ed sitting alone in tents and igloos with only his dogs or a few Inuit Indians for company and thinking he’d gladly play the icebound hermit for the rest of his life. His mind drifted back to a conversation he’d had with the son of an Inuit medicine man. The shaman had explained in detail the ways of power, and the strength that comes from solitude. That winter had changed him, made him question his sense of reality. He’d been haunted ever since by the words the Inuit said so many times, seemingly as a kind of universal explanation: “Your will is more powerful than your reason.”
“I still say we should take things one day at a time.” He kissed her cheek.
“I guess so. I just feel… vulnerable, I guess.”
“So do I. Everything has changed.”
The telephone rang.
Sarah picked it up, listened for a moment and said, “Just a second, General.”
She handed the phone to Henry.
The conversation was short. Henry said very little beyond an occasional “yes” or “no”.
“The general sounds upset,” said Henry after he’d hung up. “He’s still on the Enterprise. He says they’ll be picking us up in a few days unless the situation changes.
Any further contact will be through Enrique.”
“Weird.”
“I think he’s worried about us — about me.”
“What’s to worry about?” she asked. Then her eyes widened. “Has something bad happened?”
Henry shook his head. “No — at least, he didn’t say so. He just said he wanted to hear my voice for himself and that we should keep our heads down.”
“Hmm,” said Sarah. “I was wondering just a few minutes ago when we’d hear from them.”
“Well, it’s about time something happened.” Henry walked to the window and parted the curtain to look at the street.
He quickly closed it again and stepped to the side.
“Shit.”
“What, Henry? What did you see?”
“A guy. He was looking up at me.”
Cautiously Sarah opened the curtain a fraction of an inch and peered at the street below. “A man in fatigues?”
“Shit,” said Henry again. “I wonder if…?”
“Tell me!”
“He’s one of the guys I noticed in the lobby watching us when we arrived. I wish I could be sure he’s not one of those bastards I met out on the ice.”
“You said you’d know them if you ever saw them again.”
“Easy for me to say. Now I’m not so sure. That call from Hayes sounded really ominous. Wish I had a cigarette.”
Sarah sat down on a stuffed chair next to the curtain and stared at the window. “You don’t want a cigarette, Henry — you just think you do.” It was obviously the least of her concerns.
He didn’t respond, just kept pacing back and forth, thinking hard. Shep lifted his head and watched his master worriedly.
“If it was the terrorists who were watching us,” said Sarah, “we’d be dead by now.”
“Then who the hell is it?” Henry threw himself down in a gold-cushioned antique across from her.
“My guess is it’s Navy Intelligence.” Sarah smiled.
“They must surely be watching us, and now we’ve spotted one of the watchers.”
He nodded. “But how do we find out for sure? We can’t just go up to them and ask.”