The DMZ Page 10

  Her employer was still shaking his head implacably. “No, I’m sorry, Julie. You’re a good writer, and I really would like to give you a break. Maybe next time. But for now, you’re just going to have to face the reality that some jobs just aren’t appropriate for a young girl.”

  The horror of her gasp might have been more convincing were it not for the gleam of triumph in Julie’s eyes. “Norm Hutchens, I can’t believe I just heard you say that! You are actually admitting that you’re denying me an assignment for which I am the most eminently qualified on the basis that I’m a woman? What century are you in? Do you know what your lawyer would be advising you right now if he could hear this conversation?”

  “Well, he can’t hear it,” Hutchens retorted. Picking up the green memo slip, he smoothed its crumpled folds and handed it back to her. “Now that we’ve got that settled, you’d better get home and packing, young lady. The team for British Columbia is scheduled to be at the airport in two hours. If you value your position around here, you’d better be there.”

  There was an elongated moment of silence. Then Julie placed her hands flat down on the desk and leaned over until less than twelve inches separated her own slim features from her employer’s multiple chins. “No!”

  “No?” Eyebrows rose incredulously above the heavy jowls. “Are you defying me, young lady?”

  “And don’t call me young lady! You wouldn’t dare call another member of this staff ‘young lady’! I am not going to British Columbia. This story is rightfully mine, and you know it! If you won’t let me go, so help me, I’ll sue you for sexual discrimination, just see if I don’t! And I’ll win, too!”

  The two glares clashed, and there was something surprisingly similar in the two expressions. Then, abruptly, the one-time terror of the Washington newspaper world threw his hands in the air, sending another shower of cigar ash across the papers on his desk.

  “Okay, Julie, you want Colombia that bad, you’ve got it. But it’s on your head. Get down to T & E and pick up your tickets and travel vouchers. Pick up a camera too. You’ll have to take your own pictures—we’ve only got one seat on the plane. You’ll meet up with the rest of the team in Bogotá. I’ll let Bob know he’s going to BC.”

  The defiance eased from her taut muscles. Rounding the desk, Julie leaned down to kiss her employer on one sagging cheek. “Thanks, Uncle Norm. You’re a sweetie. I won’t let you down, I promise.”

  “Some sweetie!” he grumbled. “A chip off the old block you are. Get your own way, and butter won’t melt in your mouth.”

  “Yeah, well, I had a good teacher.” Julie tossed the words over her shoulder, already heading for the door.

  “You just come back in one piece,” the old newspaperman called after her. He watched his goddaughter’s long legs lengthen almost to a run. As the door slammed behind her, he muttered to himself, “Because if I have to sit through your memorial service too, it’s going to break my heart.”

  THREE

  JULIE BAKER WAS SMILING as she bounced—there was no better word to describe that exuberant spring in her step—down a flight of stairs to the lower level of the World Conservation Institute’s publishing division. Getting your own way wasn’t so difficult! It just took determination, plenty of hard work, and an absolute conviction that you were in the right.

  Julie would have been astonished had she seen either the worry or the pride that followed her out of the old newspaperman’s office. She’d been managing her own affairs—and quite competently, thank you—since her teen years, and neither asked nor needed others to concern themselves with her activities.

  As for the gruff old newspaperman who had signed her boarding school bills since her parents’ death seven years earlier and who had—with all apparent reluctance—permitted her an entry-level position with Our Earth once she’d waved her magna cum laude journalism degree in his face, it had never entered her head that she was more than a pain in his side, an unwelcome responsibility thrust upon him because of a casual commitment made twenty-three years earlier. Certainly, her godfather had given Julie no breaks on the job because of their ambiguous relationship.

  I’ve worked my tail off to please the old coot! Julie defended her recent unladylike behavior as she threaded her way through the maze of cubicles where the lower ranks of the magazine worked, remembering her godfather’s constant admonitions: “Rewrite, Julie! You can do better, Julie! Maybe next time!” Meanwhile, incompetents like Bob Ryder got by with butchering every journalism rule in the book—just because he’d been working for the magazine since Noah’s Ark outsailed the world’s first ecological disaster. For just an instant, Julie entertained a possible correlation between her godfather’s unrelenting demands and the very competent journalist she’d become, but that outrageous suggestion was immediately dismissed. Julie, my girl, it’s time to shed the cocoon and spread those wings!

  Speaking of which …

  Thrusting her head around a divider whose tacked-up lettering announced simply “Travel & Equipment,” she said sweetly, “Hey, Kenny. Got a ticket to Bogotá for me?”

  A lanky young man with a shock of fire-engine-red hair glanced up from the file drawer through which he was rooting. “Oh, hi, Julie!”

  He broke off as the import of her question sank in. Slamming the metal drawer shut, he let out a low whistle. “You didn’t! And I had a bet with accounting you’d never pull it off.”

  Perching herself on the edge of his desk, Julie hunched her shoulders in a no-big-deal shrug. “Oh, he screamed and filmed and breathed fire—and a whole lot of cigar smoke. But he finally saw reason. Now where’s that ticket?”

  Unearthing a folder from the chaos on his desk, Kenny handed it over with new respect in his tone. “You’ve got it. Round-trip ticket. Hotel reservation. Both in the name of the institute, since I wasn’t sure who was going. Just flash your WCI badge. You’ll need that to get on the UN flight too. The rest of what’s in there is background data—not that you’ll need it. But what about Bob?”

  “Going to BC,” Julie informed him carelessly, picking up the packet. “Where maybe he’ll take a few lessons from the purple-striped Pacific rainforest beetle—or whatever it is—on the survival of the fittest.”

  Kenny shook his head in mock amazement. “Hey, keep it up and you’ll be as hard-boiled as the old man.”

  Julie assumed a wounded expression. “That’s not fair! I don’t kick dogs. I pat little kids on the head. And I help old ladies across the street. Besides, a journalist is supposed to be hard-boiled. You know what the boss always says.” Her voice dropped an octave in a wickedly accurate imitation of her guardian’s gruff tones. “A journalist is an invisible bystander on life’s stage. He doesn’t get personally involved. He doesn’t influence events. He simply—”

  “Records them,” Kenny chimed in. “Yeah, we’ve heard it before. So tell me, my hard-boiled friend who doesn’t get personally involved, what’s this about you organizing a neighborhood clothing drive for those earthquake victims in El Salvador?”

  Julie went pink under her tan. “How did you hear about that?”

  “This is a news office,” Kenny reminded her dryly. “Anyway, just so you know, we’re all rooting for you. You think everyone doesn’t know who’s been pulling most of the weight around here these last few months? Or who rewrote those last three articles of Ryder’s? But better you than me! Colombia isn’t exactly on the State Department’s recommended vacation list right now.”

  Julie sobered instantly. “No, it isn’t, is it?”

  Rushing through an assortment of good wishes and congratulations from other cubicles, Julie quickened her long-legged stride as she crossed the parking lot to her elderly Plymouth Neon. The flight to Bogotá didn’t leave till late afternoon, but check-in was in an hour, and she still had to stop by her apartment to pack.

  Sprinting up the five flights of stairs that were her chief source of physical conditioning, she threw a few changes of clothes into a knapsack. Two pairs
of khaki pants. Four accompanying shirts. Four sets of underclothing. Toiletries. A single long skirt and blouse of some uncrushable synthetic material in case a formal engagement presented itself. Sandals to match. And mosquito repellent—two bottles. Travel papers. Oh, and better throw in a jacket. Bogotá would be cool, however tropical the jungle might be.

  She added the pocket-sized digital camera that had been a Christmas present from her godfather—unused till now. Photography was not one of her strong points. It distracted her from the research angle of the assignment. She found herself either too busy taking pictures to track down the people involved, or so caught up in the story that she simply forgot the pictures. On other assignments she’d traveled with a staff photographer; this time she’d just have to do her best or barter with one of the other news teams for pictures.

  The last item to go in was her laptop computer. Packing fast and light was one carryover from Julie’s childhood that had come in handy in her present occupation. It was so much easier to clear customs or walk away from a broken-down bus if you were carrying all your belongings over your shoulder.

  The flight was issuing its final boarding call by the time Julie cleared security and found the right gate. The door clanged shut behind her as she entered the cabin. “Just take a seat anywhere,” a flight attendant told her hurriedly over the rising pitch of the jet engines.

  The aircraft was a Boeing 727, with rows three seats across on each side of the aisle, and reasonably filled. Julie passed up with a shudder an empty seat next to a whining toddler and his harried-looking young mother. Not on a working flight. Halfway down the aisle, she stopped. Row 24 on her left had only one occupant, a woman seated next to the aisle, though her belongings spilled out across the other two seats. She was tall, brunette, and elegant, carefully made up, with huge, dark eyes and perfect, sculpted features. She looked vaguely familiar.

  Julie gave an introductory cough. “Excuse me …?”

  The woman raised a disinterested gaze. Crossing nyloned legs so that her tailored business suit slid dangerously high, she conducted a leisurely survey of Julie’s own khaki slacks and knit top that left Julie feeling underdressed as she hadn’t since she’d inadvertently worn jeans to a Capitol Hill fund-raiser designated “casual.”

  “The flight attendant informed me these seats were unassigned,” the passenger said coldly.

  “Yes, well, I got here late.”

  With an audible sigh, the woman shifted her high heels so Julie could squeeze past, but made no attempt to remove her belongings from the other seats. After moving a makeup bag and two books into the middle seat, Julie dropped down next to the window and tucked her own knapsack beside her feet.

  Unbuckling her seatbelt, the woman beside the aisle stood with a graceful motion and opened the overhead bin. Lifting down a laptop computer, she powered it up and busily began typing. From the corner of her eye, Julie caught a few words of the e-mail she was writing. Dear James: Concerning the Frankfurt convention this weekend, the NBC executives were happy to agree to your TV contract terms….

  So much for polite conversation! The woman was the stereotype of the YFP—young female professional—who seemed to equate her generation’s career success with the right to feel superior to the rest of mankind. Or rather, womankind.

  Okay, two can play at that game. Extracting her knapsack, Julie opened up the data packet Kenny had included with her ticket. She smothered a smile when the flight attendant told her neighbor to shut down her computer for takeoff, but as Julie scanned through the computer printouts a staffer had included to mitigate Bob Ryder’s abysmal ignorance, her pretended concentration on her work became real.

  Colombia.

  The northernmost country in South America, this republic covered three times the area of Montana. Forty million inhabitants, the majority living in the cool plateaus and valleys alongside the Andes Mountains. The land was 4 percent farmable, 48 percent forest and woodlands—interpret that “jungle.” Capital: Bogotá. Elevation: 8,500 feet.

  Julie flicked through the pages impatiently. There was nothing here she didn’t already know. It was a beautiful country. Majestic mountains whose slopes produced the best coffee in the world. Sandy beaches washed by surf warm enough for a bathtub. Jungles, lush and mysterious. A land rich in petroleum, gold, emeralds, and the exotic flowers that had become one of the country’s major exports. Soil that produced so lavishly, a peasant farmer could practically feed his family from the fruit trees growing in his backyard: papaya, avocado, banana, mango, citrus, and the less-known guanábana, lulo, curuba, maracuya.

  And the cities. Crowded, busy, with an increasingly sophisticated industrial infrastructure. A country famed for its cultural wealth. Literature. Art. Music. Dance. Theaters. Bookstores. Museums.

  A people with a reputation for warmth and generosity. Hardworking. Passionate.

  Her birthplace.

  And a country at war.

  Abandoning the country profile, Julie pulled out the latest State Department human rights report and began thumbing through its pages. The question wasn’t who are the combatants; it was who isn’t fighting. There were dozens of guerrilla groups alone.

  Julie skimmed through the background data on the guerrillas. The largest number of pages dealt with the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. It was by far the largest guerrilla faction, with more than fifteen thousand armed fighters. Established in the 1960s as the fighting arm of Colombia’s communist party, the FARC had been hard-hit in the seventies by the government’s counter-insurgency operations. Somehow they had survived, and by the late 1980s, they had made a remarkable comeback under the leadership of their redoubtable commander, Manuel Marulanda, known as “Tiro Fijo” (“Sure Shot”). Though the demilitarized zone was their official base, their tentacles of power now extended to every region of the country.

  The FARC’s chief rivals among the guerrillas was the Ejercito de Liberación National, or National Liberation Army, boasting some five thousand combatants. Furious at the preoccupation by both the Colombian and American governments with the larger FARC, they had resorted to bank robbery, sabotaging the country’s energy infrastructure—especially the oil pipelines—along with the usual civilian massacres and kidnappings.

  There was also the Maoist Popular Liberation Army, and the M19, notorious for taking hostage the entire Palace of Justice in November 1985. The resulting shoot-out with the military had ended in the deaths of eleven justices, countless civilians, and all the hostage-takers themselves.

  Nice people, Julie thought sardonically, shuffling quickly through the remaining printouts. Each of the guerrilla factions offered a different political perspective and plan for bringing peace and prosperity to the country should the Colombian people have the wisdom and foresight to turn the reins of government over to them. Fortunately, the conviction that their way and only theirs was right kept the factions at each other’s throats as much as at everyone else’s. But Julie could see no significant distinction between them. Each group claimed to be fighting for justice and equality on behalf of the hapless campesinos—peasants—who had assuredly received the short end of the economic stick in Colombia. Perhaps initially each group’s motives had been as pure as they claimed, but they all resorted equally to robbery, kidnapping, intimidation, and murder to achieve their ends. And their victims were often the very poor for whom they had pledged to fight.

  Then there was the drug dealing. It had long been common knowledge that the guerrillas levied a “war tax” on cocaleros and narco-traffickers in their zones in return for protection against government interference. Now rumor had it that they were moving into a more active role in the narcotics trade, relocating landless campesinos into their jungle strongholds and setting them to work to clear the land and plant coca. It was also rumored that peasants who refused to cooperate found themselves staring down the barrel of an AK-47.

  Which might be one reason why the campesinos for whom the guerrillas claimed to be
fighting showed so little enthusiasm for them. For all their boasting of popular support, it wasn’t devotion that bred loyalty to whatever faction claimed local jurisdiction of a zone. Or kept lips tight-sealed when government forces made their rare incursions into the countryside.

  No, it was fear.

  Julie’s hands stilled on the file in her lap. Funny how after all these years she could still remember the very scent of that fear. A scent that was dust and heat and the sour body odor that came from tension and too much adrenaline rather than honest perspiration.

  “A Bloody Mary. And go easy on that Worcestershire sauce.”

  Her neighbor’s curt order was followed by a tinkle of ice as the flight attendant placed the drink on her tray, but Julie didn’t notice. She was sixteen again, just back from boarding school, back to the riverbank town in the Colombian lowlands that was the only home she’d ever known.

  Spending much of the year away from home did not make for close relationships, but there were a few childhood playmates who still bothered to drop by when word got out of Julie’s infrequent visits. Evenings in a jungle town were for outdoors, there being little room or fresh air inside the small cinder-block houses for entertaining, and Julie had taken refuge with a handful of other teens in a small plaza across the cobblestone street from her home, not doing anything constructive, just enjoying the cooler breeze that came with twilight, the young men strumming guitars idly to a Ricky Martin hit playing on a transistor radio they’d propped up against a potted palm.

  It was the silence that first alerted Julie to the horsemen, the sudden stilling of guitar strings, the hushing of music and laughter and chattering voices along the length of the street. The tinny sentimentality of the transistor radio crooned on alone as the riders made their way toward the plaza, hoofs echoing against the cobblestones and splashing through mud puddles. Behind them, children were snatched into doorways, and verandahs emptied of inhabitants.