The DMZ Page 38

  Someone over by the campfire was lighting the Coleman lamp. There was a strong smell of lantern fuel, then a yellow gleam lit up the growing twilight. In its dim glimmer, Tim’s eyes on Julie’s were bright and still.

  “Then you are a U.S. government agent,” he said slowly.

  “What?” Julie turned her exclamation into a cough as all three guards swiveled their heads around. Moderating her voice, she said indignantly, “Please, not that again! Of course I’m not—”

  “No, wait! Hear me out!” Tim’s large hand rose to cut her off. “Look, I’m sorry to bring it up again. It’s just … well, I did overhear one thing when Comandante Aguilera was organizing this sudden expedition. You’re right—they do have someone on the inside. A report came in for Aguilera that there’s an American operative out here in the DMZ. Someone who was in that airport with the UN mission and who is presently out somewhere with the guerrillas. And that someone,” he added deliberately, “has been missing for the last two weeks or more.”

  “But—” Julie broke off as the significance of his last statement sank in, staring at Tim with disbelief. “And they think it’s me!” she said when she could speak. “You think it’s me! Well, I don’t know what to say except that it isn’t! Maybe their source just plain got it wrong. But even if they didn’t, I’m not the only possibility out here. How do they know it was one of our UN mission at all? How do they know it isn’t one of their own guerrillas? There were plenty of them at the airport—including Aguilera and Manuel Flores and Enrique and Carlos and that whole bunch. Or it could be you!” she challenged. “I still say you’re as good a candidate as I am.”

  Julie broke off again as she felt the sudden rigidity of his body. “What did I say?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking.” Tim cleared his throat. “Look, Julie, I don’t care who you are or what you’re doing here. All I’m saying is, if you have information you feel is so urgent to get out, or if you have a link to someone out there who could help us, I’d appreciate it if you’d share it with me. Maybe two heads aren’t always better than one. But at least if I know what you do, it doubles our chances of one of us getting the news out … especially if they split us up again.”

  His voice grew suddenly stern. “More urgently, if you’re even thinking of pulling some risky escape attempt, don’t! I’ve been watching these people too. They know what they’re doing. You wouldn’t have a chance of getting away with it. No, I hate just sitting here as much as you do, but we’ve got to be patient, to wait for a realistic opportunity. However urgent you may feel this warning of yours is, it isn’t worth sacrificing your safety—”

  “Sacrificing!” Julie turned a choke into another cough. “Tim, if you only know what a joke that is. No,” she said ruefully, “you don’t have to worry I’m going to do anything stupid and risk my life. I’m afraid I’m not the stuff of which martyrs are made.”

  She pressed the back of her hands to her eyes in sudden weariness. “And if I do think of something, I promise I’ll tell you. I wouldn’t leave you here to take the fall. Besides, it’s all speculation anyway. It isn’t as though I have anything really concrete. Just those fuzzy references to musulmanes I mentioned. I’m not really sure how much of that was the drug. It’s just … maybe it’s silly and I’m overreacting, but I wish I could at least tell Colonel Thornton to keep an extra-careful eye out.”

  Julie’s eyes went to the cambuche where Comandante Aguilera’s meeting seemed to be breaking up. Marcela and Linda were dishing up supper, carrying the enamel bowls into the radio shelter. Her own meal would be coming soon, but Julie felt no appetite for it. She let out a small sigh.

  “You know, it’s funny you should mention sacrifice. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the subject these last couple weeks—maybe because it’s something I know so little about. Watching these guerrillas—the way they’ve given up their whole lives to fight for their cause. I mean, it’s sheer foolishness. They can’t win. They’ve been fighting for decades without getting anywhere. And yet they’ll give up everything—families, homes, a normal life—to a fight for a hopeless cause. Talk about sacrifice! However much you might hate what these people are doing, you’ve got to admire them for that.”

  Julie slid a sideways glance at Tim. The rigidity had gone out of him, and if he still had the ridiculous idea that she was a government agent, at least he was no longer pursuing the subject. “I know it sounds like a crazy comparison—guerrillas and missionaries—but they remind me a little of my parents. They gave up their careers, families, culture—everything—without batting an eye. Well, maybe not without batting an eye. I wasn’t born then, so I wouldn’t know. It wasn’t easy, that I’m sure of. And yet they did it, spent an entire life out here for—what? A handful of churches—now mostly burned to the ground. A few villages with longer life expectancies. A few congregations scattered over half of Colombia by the guerrillas. Oh, maybe their cause wasn’t quite as hopeless as the guerrillas’—though I’ve sure thought so all these years since they died. But these last couple of weeks—seeing San Ignacio again, those women …”

  Julie cleared the roughness from her throat. “Either way, they sacrificed their whole lives out here without ever asking for anything in return. At least not for themselves. And me?”

  Her gaze went blindly to the darkness of the jungle beyond the pale bubble of light cast by the Coleman lantern. “You know, I always thought I was the smart one. I was going to avoid my parents’ errors, build something really constructive with my life instead of throwing it down the drain, wasting it on people who don’t really want to change, anyway. But now I can’t help wondering. At least they cared about something beyond themselves. And so do these guerrillas. I just wish—”

  Julie broke off, flushing suddenly. Tim was listening courteously, she found as she glanced up, his head bent slightly down toward her. Whether he was genuinely interested or just being polite, she couldn’t tell.

  “I’m rambling, aren’t I?” she said apologetically. “Too much time, I guess, with no one to talk to. And way too much time to think. I’m afraid it’s caught up with me.”

  Tim shook his head, his eyes not leaving her face. “No, please go on. I want you to, really. I’m … interested in how you think.”

  Julie’s mouth curved wryly. “Actually, it’s your thinking I’m interested in. You’re a missionary like my parents were. Maybe a little different. You aren’t permanently stuck out in the middle of the jungle, though I’m sure you’ve probably made your own sacrifices. So tell me, do you think God gives people lives and homes and family and careers—and then just asks them to throw them all away? My parents really believed God called them to go to San Ignacio. And I have to say there’s been a lot of times these last years when I’ve wondered if maybe they just heard Him wrong. And yet …”

  Julie paused, giving Tim an opportunity for input, but he said nothing. After a moment she went on pensively, “Maybe they weren’t completely off—I just don’t know. I guess, after all, when you think about it, God did something like that Himself. Leaving all the glory of heaven to come down here to the jungle we’ve made of our world. And giving His life for a whole world of people who didn’t appreciate Him. And not because we did anything to deserve Him, but just because He loved us. John 3:16 says it pretty plain.”

  “John 3:16?” The question was asked lightly. Julie glanced up, thinking she’d misheard. “You know, ‘God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’”

  “Oh yes, of course.” Tim’s response was smooth, deepening to that velvet, melodious tone Julie had come to associate with his “preacher’s” voice. “The gospel of John, chapter three, verse sixteen. God sending His Son to earth to die for man’s sins. A favorite passage of sacrifice and belief in God. And of course, you’re right that God Himself is the supreme example of sacrifice. The giving up of His Son to die on the cross.”

  Julie didn�
�t move as Tim ran down to a stop. He had recovered well, his blue eyes holding hers bright and guileless in the pale glimmer of the Coleman lantern, the curve of his mouth tilted upward in a smile that was at once sympathetic and companionable. He was an extraordinarily handsome man and even more charming in personality, and Julie, who would never deny she was as susceptible to an attractive member of the opposite sex as any single adult, had wondered at times why, for all her worry and concern for his safety, his blue eyes smiling down into hers had tugged so little at her heartstrings.

  But now it was as though those handsome features were suddenly no more than the rubber mask with which a stunt double duplicates a real-life counterpart, with a stranger who could be anyone peering out at her from behind it, and the words falling from those smiling lips were just as meaningless. Even Enrique’s statement of faith had sounded more sincere. Pulling her eyes away from his, Julie let out a small sigh.

  “You aren’t really a missionary, are you?” she said quietly.

  This time she wasn’t imagining his sudden rigidity. For one full measure of the pop song Alberto was whistling beyond the campfire, Tim didn’t answer, and when Julie looked up, she saw that while his smile was still fixed on his lips, it had faded from his eyes. As Alberto switched abruptly to another tune, Tim relaxed, one eyebrow going up and a corner of his mouth tilting in a rueful grin. “Well, thanks a lot! What did I do to bring that on?”

  You smile too much, Julie thought. The missionaries I’ve known aren’t always smiling and cheerful. And they don’t have the perfect little religious speeches to offer at a moment’s notice. They stammer and stumble and wonder if they’re saying the right thing. They aren’t impeccably groomed even in the middle of the jungle or perfectly calm and fearless in a crisis situation. Missionaries get worried and tired and afraid just like other people, and even cranky and out of sorts sometimes when they’ve had a rough day. They’re human, not Superman. They … they just have a lot bigger hand to hold when they’re scared—and only that keeps them going.

  Aloud, Julie said, “John 3:16. There isn’t a missionary alive who doesn’t know that verse. Or a Sunday school student either. It’s just about the first thing out of the Bible you ever memorize when you’re a kid. But you didn’t recognize what I was talking about, did you?”

  There wasn’t the smallest shift in Tim’s smile or the eyes twinkling down into hers. “You’re mistaken, Julie. I’m sorry to spoil your mystery scenario here, but I do know the verse. ‘For God so loved the world …’”

  He repeated it flawlessly to the end, his eyebrow raised humorously high. “See? Just a slip of the tongue—or brain, you might say.”

  “Or a photographic memory,” Julie said quietly. “Look, you don’t need to worry. You’re good. Anyone who doesn’t know missionaries as I do—well, to be honest, you fooled me too. If it hadn’t been for that slip—” She hurried on before he could make the denial she could see trembling on his lips. “So—who are you, really? CIA?” Her breath caught in her throat, and her eyes widened. “You’re the American they’re looking for, aren’t you? You’re the spy they think I am!”

  Julie glanced quickly at the three guards, making sure they’d returned to their dice before going on, “You are good! You had me convinced you really thought I was the spy. If that was to keep me from suspecting you, it worked!” Tim was looking at the guards as well, and when he didn’t answer, she went on, her voice dropping instinctively, “What I told you—is that why you’re here? To investigate what Comandante Aguilera’s doing out here? Is that why you left the airport … to let yourself get caught—to get into the guerrilla camp? And then I …” Her breath caught again. “I wasn’t supposed to be out there, was I? I … I messed everything up, didn’t I?”

  “Shh!” The quiet scrape of a footstep jerked Julie’s head around even before Tim put out his warning hand. Her stomach tightened with dismay. The roller coaster that had been her emotions these last hours was sinking this time all the way down into her toes. Comandante Aguilera and Enrique had come up around the back of the caleta from the direction of the water drum, and they stood only a few feet away. The FARC commander’s dark features were unreadable, but Enrique’s narrowed gaze was bright and watchful in the light of the Coleman lamp as it rested on the prisoners. How much of her careless English had he overheard?

  Then Julie saw it wasn’t she who had drawn Enrique’s attention, but Tim.

  Tim turned his head to meet that watchful gaze from Enrique, and as the two men stared at each other, Julie suddenly saw something very similar in the cool, wary intentness of their silent scrutiny. At the same instant, the two men turned to look at Julie, and somewhere in that three-way glance, Julie felt a chill go through her that was as cold and deadly as the passing of a sentence of execution.

  SEVENTEEN

  LIGHT INTRUDED ON HER DREAM.

  It was a bizarre jumble of Julie and Victor and Enrique and a vague blur of other guerrillas riding horseback through the jungle. Julie was arguing hotly with Enrique about the best kind of camera to pack on a jungle trip, when the horsemen drew up in a circle around her. Julie’s horse had vanished, and she suddenly found herself on the ground under their accusing eyes.

  They were unslinging their weapons when the light began to nibble at the edges of the dream. Julie had learned to sleep through the guards’ flashlight probes, or at least force them to the edge of her consciousness. But this time the light wouldn’t go away. It grew into a dazzling ball that swallowed up the guard and the camp and the guns. To get away from it, Julie opened her eyes.

  “Shh!” The sound was a bare whistle through teeth and caught Julie’s annoyed stirring before it began. As the flashlight beam dropped away from Julie’s eyes, Julie could see above it the dark outline of Carlos’s face. His expression would have bound her to silence even without the finger at his lips.

  The light blinked out as Julie eased noiselessly to a sitting position. The night was very dark with no glimmer of moon or stars filtering through the jungle canopy. But it wasn’t the absolute blackness of an underground cavern. Julie could see the movement of her hand in front of her face and a dark shape that was Carlos hunkered down outside her caleta, the outline of his head raised high and alert like a deer listening for the footstep of a hunter. Julie found herself holding her breath as she listened for any sign that someone else was awake. She heard only Alberto’s soft snoring in a hammock under one of the trees, and at last Carlos turned his head to whisper in the barest breath of sound, “Señorita Julia, you must leave here! They are going to kill you!”

  The words drove the air from her lungs. Yet Julie found herself accepting them immediately as truth. They were, after all, the summation of everything she had been bracing herself for—far more than the actual pacific occasion the evening had turned out to be.

  * * *

  Julie wasn’t sure what she’d expected after the episode with Enrique and Comandante Aguilera. The two men strode on without missing a pace, but Julie had seen them in close conversation afterward, a sight that destroyed her appetite for the meat stew Linda and Marcela had made in honor of Aguilera’s visit. Had her careless conversation put Tim in danger? And when was the comandante going to get around to the purpose of his visit here? Surely he hadn’t come just to talk to the camp leaders—something he could have done by radio.

  Her stomach tightened further when Aguilera called for Tim’s guards to escort him to the radio hut. To Julie, this was an ominous sign. The FARC commander could so easily have interrogated Tim at their own camp. Were they even now grilling Tim as to who he really was?

  Admittedly the interrogation looked peaceable enough from what Julie could see through the open end of the cambuche. It was being carried out by Comandante Aguilera and his PR man, Manuel Flores, his guards withdrawing to a less menacing stance at the edge of the radio hut, and they had even rolled in for Tim one of the logs her keepers had sawed off to use as seats. Maybe Enrique had overheard fewer o
f her low words than she’d feared. Certainly Tim himself evidenced no concern—not that he ever did.

  Tim’s interrogation hadn’t lasted long. As he was led away, Aguilera had called for the senior members of the camp—Victor, Jaime, and Enrique. The open end of the cambuche had been closed off during their meeting, and Julie had watched Tim instead. She’d wanted to ask him what had happened, but his guards had taken him back to the horses, and while she might have asked Carlos if she could join him, Rafael was now on guard, and his dark glance as he took up position outside the caleta had only increased her unease.

  Still, when Julie was summoned to join him, Comandante Aguilera greeted her arrival with an almost benign nod, waving her to the same log where Tim had sat.

  “Señorita Julia,” the commander announced affably, “you will be pleased to know that we are now convinced you are indeed who you say you are. We regret that it has been necessary to hold you in this fashion, and we would beg your understanding of the urgencies of our struggle that have compelled our actions. We are honorable men and do not hold prisoners when it is possible to release them. And so tomorrow you will be returned to your people. Victor, Enrique …” The rest of the camp contingent had filed in as well to hear the commander’s announcement, and he nodded to the two men mentioned. “You two, and Jaime as well, will accompany the woman to San Ignacio, where her people will be contacted to retrieve her.”