Code 6, p.13
Code 6, page 13
He felt chills, realizing that this was not seasonal housing for farm workers. The chains were shackles, and the quick history lesson that Olga, the trainee, had given him about the FARC came back to him. The place may have been abandoned, but enough evidence of human suffering remained to mark it as one of the many remote locations where the FARC kidnappers had kept their hostages, this godforsaken mountain outpost in the middle of nowhere, next to the fields of poppy. It pained Patrick to consider how many months or even years of a person’s life had been wasted in this hut, chained to a post. Who could do that to another human being?
Who could push someone off a mountain?
On his knees, staring into the empty hut, that crucial moment on the cliff came flooding back to him. Once again, he could see the coldness in Javier’s eyes. He could see Javier’s lips moving, and he struggled to recall what was said. As the image came clearer in his mind’s eye, the words, or at least Patrick’s understanding of the words, remained a fog.
Boss’s orders.
The sound of Javier’s voice was in his head, but Patrick wasn’t sure if he was remembering or imagining it. Had he actually uttered those words before pushing Patrick away? He could have. But did Javier mean he was the boss? Was it Javier’s boss who had given the order?
Or was it Patrick’s boss?
Patrick suddenly sensed the presence of someone or something directly behind him, but before he could turn around, he felt the pressure of a gun barrel on the back of his neck.
“Manos arribas!” the gunman said.
Patrick obeyed, raising his hands slowly, not sure what to make of this abandoned guerrilla stronghold that wasn’t exactly abandoned.
Chapter 22
Kate went for a run on Tuesday morning and stopped long before she was tired. It was 8:00 a.m., and she was just a few steps from the start of Lover’s Lane, the pathway to Dumbarton Oaks Park, exactly where she’d connected with Noah the previous weekend. She’d arrived by way of the tree-shaded ropewalk, a stretch of redbrick walkway in Montrose Park that was once used for laying out hemp to be turned into long ropes for the shipping trade. It brought to mind the old saying about “giving a fool enough rope,” and she wondered if it was indeed professional suicide to be secretly meeting with Noah about Project Naïveté.
Or maybe it was a strategic act of self-sabotage, calculated to propel her in the direction she really wanted to go—out of the law, away from Buck Technologies, and into a career in arts management, where her dream of being a playwright had some chance of survival.
“Wasn’t sure you’d show up,” said Noah, as he approached.
Kate silenced the music from her smartwatch and removed her earbuds. “Me neither,” she said.
Noah, too, was wearing running clothes. The fanny pack around his waist was a new addition. He kept walking, and Kate went with him.
“Does your father know you’re here?” he asked.
“Does your mother know you’re here?” she asked.
“Not exactly the same thing,” he said.
“I came to listen, Noah. Not to answer any questions.”
“Fair enough. Let me tell you what I know. If you want to fill in any blanks, feel free.”
Kate kept walking, no reply.
Noah continued. “Patrick Battle’s name was near the top of my list of Buck employees I wanted to interview. Buck immediately sent him on a corporate adventure. No one could tell me where he was, but just yesterday I heard from the State Department that he is missing somewhere in Colombia.”
“Which has me very worried,” said Kate.
“With good reason,” said Noah. “It took over fifty years of fighting to get the FARC to lay down its arms, but there are still pockets of dissidents in the mountains. For them, the Marxist-Leninist war against imperialism goes on.”
“I know. I read just enough online last night to scare the crap out of myself. So let me just say this much. If this meeting is about helping Patrick, I’m all in. But if this is about me becoming a spy on my father’s own company to help you find out about Project Naïveté, you’ve got the wrong girl. I don’t know anything about it.”
“Then why did Patrick come to your office on your first day of work? And why did you go to his office in Building C the following Monday?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m doing a cybersecurity audit. Entry logs for all Buck’s buildings are clearly within my domain.”
“Those were personal visits,” said Kate.
“You two had no discussions whatsoever about Project Naïveté? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Patrick was already gone by the time I went to see him.”
“What about your first day? Did you and Patrick talk about Project Naïveté?”
Patrick had mentioned the project in his visit, and technically she’d gone to tell Patrick that her father had blown the cover on his ruse. She wasn’t so sure it was a ruse anymore.
Noah seemed to sense her hesitation.
“Kate, as of right now, my job is to conduct a cybersecurity audit. If necessary, I will recommend to my supervisor that we should convert the audit to an investigation, which means that I would have the power to subpoena witnesses. Based on what I know so far, I’d have to subpoena you. You would have to answer, and I know you wouldn’t lie under oath. So you might as well tell me now.”
Kate stopped. She knew Noah was just doing his job, but she still didn’t like it. “You and my father are even more alike than I thought.”
“How do you mean?”
“He asked me to try to get you to tell me what your audit is really about—what’s really driving it. Now, you’re asking me to spy on my father’s own company. Does anyone give a damn how I feel about all of this?”
“I’m sorry,” said Noah. “I understand this is awkward in a lot of ways.”
“Let me ask you a question,” said Kate. “What do you think Project Naïveté is about?”
Noah unzipped the jogger’s hip pack that was fastened around his waist. Inside was a thick roll of manuscript pages. Kate recalled the comparison Patrick had drawn between her play and Project Naïveté.
“Is that my play?” she asked.
“It’s an opinion from the United States Supreme Court, written by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2019. It’s almost two hundred pages long.”
“You didn’t have to kill so many trees. You could have emailed me a link.”
“Going forward, I don’t want any electronic messages between us. No email, no texts, no voicemail. Phone calls should be brief and nothing of substance.”
He handed her the printed opinion, and Kate skipped to the last page. He wasn’t kidding: one hundred ninety-two pages.
“Be sure to read every single word,” he said.
“Then what?” she asked.
“Meet me again tomorrow, eight a.m. Right here.”
“What if I can’t?”
“You’ll come. If you read every word.”
His continued emphasis on every single word was curious.
“Oh, one other thing,” he said. “Take shorter strides when you run downhill. Your back will thank you.” He turned and continued his run through the woods.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said.
Kate found a picnic table just around the bend, took a seat in the shade, and laid the printed court opinion on the tabletop before her. The case caption was on page one: department of commerce v. new york.
Noah had piqued her interest, and it was her intention to sit down and read as much of an overstuffed Supreme Court opinion as she could stomach in one sitting. Almost two hundred pages of legalese was no jog in the park, so to speak. She’d read hundreds of cases in law school, but the only one of this length was the Dred Scott decision, required reading for first-year law students, in which the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a former slave owner, and his associate justices had taken over two hundred pages to decide that people of African descent, whether enslaved or free, were not citizens of the United States under the Constitution. She hoped for better from Chief Justice Roberts.
From the first sentence, she was gripped, the chief justice’s words unleashing a cascade of possible parallels to the play she was writing: “The Secretary of Commerce decided to reinstate a question about citizenship on the 2020 census questionnaire.”
Kate raced through the first paragraph, and she was still on page one when a call came up on her smartwatch. It was Sean’s number, but it was Irving Bass on the line.
“Did you steal Sean’s phone?” she asked, kidding.
“He’s driving. I want you to meet us at the theater.”
“When?”
“As soon as you can get there.”
“I’m all sweaty and in my running clothes.”
“I don’t care if you’re covered in baby oil and wrapped in a bedsheet. Get down to the theater before I change my mind. I’m going to produce your play sooner than I thought.”
The pages in Kate’s hands fluttered in the breeze. “I’ll be there by nine,” she said, walking fast, talking even faster, and reading faster still as she started on her way.
Chapter 23
Patrick’s eyes were finally adjusting to the darkness. He was staring at the thatched roof overhead, grateful for the pinhole of daylight that connected him to the outside world.
His hunch about the huts had proved correct. It had been years since the FARC’s surrender, but their former camps and strongholds stood like ghost towns in Colombia’s mountains. Patrick had stumbled on an eerie reminder of a kidnap-and-ransom industry that had funded decades of war and terrorism. Like so many others held captive before him, a tiny hut with a dirt floor was his cell, and he was at the mercy of a band of well-armed guerrillas. He could hear them talking right outside his hut.
“El Rubio es muy peligroso,” said one of them, which made the others laugh. Translated: “The Blond is very dangerous.”
The name fit Patrick, but he also got the joke. Patrick was a gamer, so he knew that “El Rubio” was also the world’s most notorious narco trafficker in a popular Grand Theft Auto video game called the Cayo Perico Heist. If only he could have gotten his hands on the Perico Pistol, El Rubio’s weapon of choice, a distinctive handgun that was a cross between a real-life P08 Luger and James Bond’s golden gun.
Patrick’s leg was cramping. He tried to stretch it out, but the hut was too small for him to stand up straight or lie flat. He sat with his back against the door, extended his legs, and leaned forward to touch his toes. The chain that tethered him to the post wasn’t long enough to allow him to reach forward and touch his toes. He wondered how long he could stand this. He wondered how many days, weeks, or months the hostages before him had been forced to live this way.
He wondered what those two yellow dots in the darkness were.
They seemed to be staring at him from the corner of the tiny hut, a pair of fixed, beady eyes. It was too dark to see any facial features, the shape of the head, or the body. But if the frozen eyes were any indication, the entire creature was locked in an unshakable pose. Stiffened with fright, maybe. Or poised for an attack. The piercing eyes glowed brighter, and finally they blinked. A chill ran down Patrick’s spine, and one question came to mind:
Do snakes have eyelids?
He was pretty sure they did not. But the jungle was filled with strange predators, all of them hungry. This one seemed to sense Patrick’s fear. Slowly, the eyes were creeping closer, and Patrick had to make a decision. Calling out for help was not an option. That would only startle the creature, and he could end up dead from a venomous bite. If he broke down the door, he could be shot by his captors. He feared the bite more than the bullet. On the mental count of three, he drew his knees up to his chest, braced his feet against the center post, and pushed with every ounce of his leg strength.
The door flew open, and Patrick burst from darkness into the daylight. A screeching noise followed him out, which only propelled him faster. His wrists were still shackled, and as the chain pulled taut, all but his hands had made it outside the hut.
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted.
The guards were laughing hysterically. Patrick counted five of them, each dressed in combat fatigues and toting a semiautomatic rifle. They’d obviously put the creature in the hut, another good joke at El Rubio’s expense. Patrick watched the animal scamper into the forest. It was a strangle jungle species unknown to him, perhaps harmless. Perhaps not. Either way, Patrick was relieved to be rid of his yellow-eyed cellmate.
“Bien hecho, Carlos!” one of the men said. Patrick assumed it meant something along the lines of “that was a real knee slapper, Carlos.”
Carlos unchained the prisoner, still laughing. Then his smile faded, and he directed Patrick with the point of his rifle.
“Walk,” he said in English. “That way.”
As Patrick recalled, “that way” was out of the thick forest and toward the river. He rose and started walking. Carlos was right behind him, and four other guerrillas were behind Carlos, still sharing a laugh over El Rubio and his four-legged cellmate. Patrick guessed it was the oldest trick in the FARC joke book, locking the hostage in a hut with some nocturnal creature, and these goons never got tired of it.
The vegetation thinned as the walk continued, and Patrick caught sight of the river across the savanna. The flowering poppy field that Patrick had crossed on his way to the camp was farther downriver, and the guerrillas had him marching along a path that took them in the opposite direction. The cramp in Patrick’s leg worked itself out, and he was walking without a limp as they reached the dirt road near the river.
“Hacer alto,” said Carlos, and Patrick stopped on his command.
One of the guerrillas came up behind him and blindfolded him with a scratchy black rag. The first thought that came to Patrick’s mind was that this place, in the middle of nowhere, was the one his captors had chosen for his execution. He expected that, any moment, one of the men would press a lit cigarette between his lips, followed by Carlos yelling, “Fire!” He waited, but no cigarette came. Then a gun went off, and Patrick dropped to the ground.
The guerrillas burst into laughter once again. Patrick couldn’t see them, but it was an even bigger belly laugh than the one triggered by the yellow-eyed creature in the hut. Carlos had fired his weapon into the sky and made the hostage shit his pants. What a riot.
In the distance, as the guerrillas’ laughter subsided, Patrick heard the distinctive sound of tires on a dirt road, a vehicle approaching. Carlos ordered him to stand up, and he did. Patrick could hear the engine running, the brakes squeak as the vehicle came to a stop, and then silence.
“Vaya,” said Carlos, and he nudged Patrick forward with the barrel of his gun.
Patrick took small steps, the blindfold making it impossible to see where he was going, but he assumed they were heading to the vehicle, which was better than the firing squad. Carlos ordered him to stop and grabbed him by the shoulder to make sure he did. Patrick heard a car door open. Someone shoved him inside—the backseat, he presumed. Patrick hadn’t realized how foul-smelling these guerrillas were until one of them slid into the backseat to his right, and another to his left, sandwiching him between his captors. The engine started, but then suddenly Carlos was shouting in Spanish at the driver. He was speaking too fast and with too much urgency for Patrick to translate, but something was afoot. The guerrilla to Patrick’s right flung open his door, grabbed Patrick, and dragged him out of the vehicle. Patrick heard the trunk pop open, and two men picked him up like a duffel bag and threw him inside. He landed with a thud up against the spare tire, and the lid slammed shut.
Patrick heard the car doors opening and closing as the guerrillas piled into the vehicle. The driver found first gear, and they pulled away slowly. Patrick was on his left side, his back to the spare tire. He shifted his weight to get more comfortable. His head was near the wheel well, and he could hear the tires kicking up dirt and loose stones as they continued down the road. They’d gone less than a mile, he estimated, when the vehicle stopped.
It was dark, hot, and hard to breathe in the trunk, but Patrick was focused on only one thing: listening. He heard another vehicle approaching. It stopped right alongside them. Then he heard Carlos from inside the car, telling the others to let him do the talking. This was no ordinary campesino they were encountering along the road. Patrick suddenly realized why the hostage had been moved from the backseat to the trunk.
He pressed his ear to the quarter panel so that he could hear the conversation.
“Buenos días,” the man said, and Patrick knew the voice immediately. Carlos engaged him in idle chitchat, and the more they talked, the more certain Patrick became: it was Javier.
Patrick listened as carefully as he could, translating the conversation as best he could.
“Have any of your men seen a blond young man?” asked Javier. “An American?”
“No. No Americans out here,” said Carlos.
“Well, if you do happen to see him, do me a favor, will you?”
“Of course. What?”
“Kill him,” said Javier. “I’ll make it well worth your while.”
“Con mucho gusto,” said Carlos. With much pleasure.
Javier’s Jeep pulled away.
The vehicle jerked forward, causing Patrick to roll to the back of the trunk and slam his head on a metal box. A tool box, Patrick guessed. Filled with tools, some of which might make excellent weapons.
Gotta get out, he told himself. Gotta save yourself.
Chapter 24
Kate stopped at her apartment for a quick shower and change of clothes. She made it to the theater before nine. Sean told her to take a seat in the main auditorium and that Irving would be ready for her “in a minute.” Thirty minutes later, she was still alone in the auditorium. But it wasn’t a waste of time. She had Justice Roberts with her, or at least his opinion.
