Luke could feel the frustration bleeding away his energy. He rubbed a bead of sweat off his forehead and turned his neck to loosen a muscle.
“They lying,” Frankie added.
“What?”
“They lying, boss. They scared.”
“How do you know?”
Frankie shrugged. “I just know.”
The screen door swung open and a portly man emerged. He was light-skinned, and sweating profusely.
The men sitting on the porch nodded deferentially and Luke heard the word “padre” in their mumbled greetings.
After a short exchange with the group, the heavyset man looked at Luke and said, “I’m Father Tom. I understand you’re asking about our pastor, Father Joe.”
“Yes. I’m looking for the woman who was with him when they were kidnapped.”
“You better come in.”
Once inside, the priest said, “Tell me about this woman.”
“Her name is Megan Callahan. She’s a doctor.”
“That much I know. What I want to know is, what did she do to get herself in trouble?”
“I’m not following.”
“Joe — Father Joe — found her on a riverbank. She was hiding.”
“From whom?”
Father Tom lifted an eyebrow. “My guess would be, the same people that abducted her.”
“What do you know about their abduction?”
The priest studied Luke for several seconds. “Perhaps we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. I’d like to know a little more about you. How do you know this woman?”
“We work together.” Luke tried to hide his annoyance at the priest’s interrogative attitude.
“That shouldn’t be too hard to verify.”
Luke pulled his passport from a pants pocket and handed it to the priest. “Here. Call University Children’s Hospital. It’s in Los Angeles. I’ll give you the number. Tell ’em you’re standing here talking to Ed Schweers. See what they have to say.”
If he couldn’t bluff his way past someone who was probably inclined to trust people, neither he nor Megan had any chance.
The priest handed back the passport. “No need. I’m…this whole thing has me on edge. Sorry. “
“We’re on the same side here,” Luke said. “I was asking about their kidnapping?”
“A friend of mine saw it happen.”
“Who?”
The hesitation showed on the priest’s face.
“Look. I don’t have time to dance around—”
The priest’s hand came up. “Let me explain. Father Joe travels to the outlying villages with an Indian who’s been with him for years. The man’s devoted to Joe, and right now I suspect he’s in as much pain as any of us. He’s also scared out of his wits. He saw Joe and your friend taken away by five men dressed in camouflage uniforms—”
“Military?”
“He thinks so, but I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“He said two of them were gringos. That’s why I came on a little strong with you.” Father Tom rubbed his balding pate. “I don’t know how much you know, but it wasn’t all that long ago that the Guatemalan army slaughtered villagers for the simple reason that they were Mayan. By most counts, at least two hundred thousand of them. Hundreds of villages were just wiped off the map. The killing went on for over thirty years — that’s how long the civil war lasted. The memories stay with you, if you know what I mean.”
Luke nodded.
“When Paco — that’s Father Joe’s assistant — when he saw those men taking Joe and your friend away, I suspect the first thing he thought was, ‘It’s starting again.’ He’s frightened.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“He won’t talk to you. In fact, he made me promise — I can’t even tell the authorities about him.”
“You haven’t told the police about this?”
“Oh, I told them. I just didn’t give them Paco’s name. But you have to understand — the local police aren’t likely to be much help in this situation.”
“Why?”
“They don’t have the manpower or training to deal with things like this. The central government has some resources they could use, but so far they’re not doing much since they think both of them are dead.”
“Dead?” A pain shot through Luke’s head.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Why do they think they’re dead?”
“The newspaper account describes an armed militia group that called a TV station in the U.S., claiming they’d kidnapped Joe and your friend. The police believe that story, and they think that the men I described for them, the men that Paco saw, are leftovers from the civil war. During that period, there were several resistance groups in this area, so it’s not much of a stretch for the police to believe that one of those militia groups has resurrected itself. Since the kidnappers haven’t made any further statements or demands, the thinking is that they may well have killed their hostages.”
“Megan, Father Joe, where were they abducted?”
“It’s not there anymore. The village where they were kidnapped was destroyed when a dam broke. None of the villagers survived and—”
“What was the name of that village?”
“Mayakital.”
Luke reached into his pack and pulled out the picture from Kate’s e-mail. He handed it to the priest. “Does that look familiar?”
Father Tom looked at the picture and nodded. “That’s Mayakital. Where did you get this?”
“From a friend. It’s a long story.”
The priest flicked the picture with his finger. “Well, this is where Joe and your friend were kidnapped. That, I’m sure of. According to Paco, it happened right after the flood.” Father Tom handed back the picture. “But like I said, the police seem to think they’re already dead.”
“So everyone’s going to sit on their hands?”
“Remember, you’re not in the U.S. anymore. I’m working on it, but things move slowly here.”
“I need you to take me to this man Paco.”
“I don’t think he’ll talk to you.”
Frankie suddenly came back to life and said, “He talk to me. I get him to talk.”
Both men turned.
Frankie made an air pocket in his cheek and showed them a bland expression.
41
“Let me see if I understand this.” Detective O’Reilly tapped his notepad with a pencil. “Last week, this Guatemalan boy dies in your E.R. Then yesterday, you get back the results of a test showing that he had little pieces of a virus — alphavirus — in his blood.”
Ben studied O’Reilly as the man read from his notes. The detective’s eyes were close set, as though they enjoyed each other’s company. Ben didn’t trust him.
O’Reilly took a sip from his mug while eyeing Elmer, then continued, “And this particular alphavirus has been modified to use as a vaccine. You can put a special protein into it—”
“It’s called an antigen,” Ben clarified while looking across Kolter’s dining room and making a pouring gesture with his hand, signaling Antonio for more coffee. The Italian nodded at Ben through the glass facing of a chest-high pastry case into which he was placing a large sheet of cinnamon rolls.
“Okay,” O’Reilly said, “so you put an antigen inside this virus and then inject it into people to protect them against infections like flu and malaria. In that sense, it works like any other vaccine, right?”
“Right,” Ben said impatiently. He was becoming annoyed with the detective’s habit of repeating everything they told him.
“And according to you,” O’Reilly said to Elmer, “those little pieces of alphavirus in that boy’s blood are the same as the alphavirus Zenavax uses in their vaccines. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“They’re an exact match to the Zenavax alphavirus,” Elmer said. “And there’s only one way those fragments of alphavirus could have gotten into the boy’s blood. That boy was given the Zenavax malaria vaccine.”