Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1) (17 page)

* * *

“Just a moment,” I said to Saskia, as we passed the front desk, Adidas bags over our shoulders. “I want to write them a note.”
   I felt a little uneasy about our furtive escape from the Radisson. I had not knocked on Sinisa’s door to announce what we were doing; instead, Saskia and I had scurried into the elevator like we feared discovery. I wanted to distance myself from Sinisa’s influence, not anger him by fleeing like a thief. I had seen what he did to his enemies. Besides, down the road, he might be a very useful friend to have.
   “I’d like to leave a message for Mr. Obradovic,” I said to the receptionist.
   “Certainly,” she said brightly.

She turned to the cubbyholes behind her and passed me a slip of paper. On it, neatly printed in pencil, was the message: MR. CHANG AND MR. LEE WISH TO INFORM YOU THEY HAVE BEEN DELAYED IN TAIWAN AND WILL NOT ARRIVE IN BELIZE UNTIL 8 MAY.

“No, I’d like to
leave
a message,” I said, making a scribbling motion.

“Oh, I am sorry,” she said, and gave me a blank piece of paper. I wrote: SASKIA AND I DECIDED TO MOVE TO HOTEL MOPAN JUST ACROSS THE RIVER. MORE MY STYLE. WE’LL BE THERE IF YOU WANT TO FIND US. MEET YOU BACK HERE FOR BEERS AT 7:00? LET ME KNOW IF THAT’S NOT OK. PAUL.
   May 8 was the day after tomorrow. I wondered, as we walked out of the Radisson and into the thick tropical heat, why Sinisa was entertaining visitors from Taiwan in Belize City. He appeared to move in ways more mysterious than God.
* * *
   “I do not understand,” Sinisa said. “It is not a problem, I just do not understand. Why would you leave this hotel? It is the finest hotel in Belize! Do you think I will not pay for your room?”
   “It’s not that,” I said. ” It’s just, the backpacker place we moved to, it’s just more my style. There’s American backpackers there, and a common room, and…this place is all formal and, I don’t know, like a morgue.”
   “Morgue?” Zoltan asked. “What is morgue?”
   I wished I had chosen a different word. “A place for dead people.”
   All three of them frowned at me sternly. I pretended I wasn’t nervous. I felt a bit like a teenager who wanted his own place but whose parents who weren’t ready for him to leave the nest. The thought of Sinisa, Zoltan, and Zorana as anyone’s joint parents would have sent me into slightly panicky hysterics if I hadn’t squelched the urge.
   “Dead people,” Zoltan rumbled. “Yes. Exactly. That is why best you come back here. You no understand. This is very dangerous city.”
   I blinked. This was not the conversational tack I had expected. “It’s not that bad.”
   “Paul, this entire country is highly insecure,” Sinisa said. “Violent crime, drug abuse, robbery, all of them are rampant, and the police are not to be trusted. I think it best that we all stay here in safety. This hotel has private security. You are a valuable asset and I do not want to lose you to some addict with a gun.”
   “Come on, guys, it’s not like we’re in Baghdad,” I said, perplexed by their excessive caution. “I’ve stayed in worse places than the Hotel Mopan, in worse cities than this.”
   “Don’t be so
stupid
, Paul,” Zorana said, as if I wanted to run with scissors through a crystal meth lab. “There are guns everywhere here, like Bosnia, but here we hardly know anyone, and you must have seen all the blacks on drugs here. There is no organization. These blacks cannot be trusted. They might smoke crack and go crazy and shoot anyone right in the middle of the street. They might break into your hotel and shoot you in your bed. Don’t pretend you are so brave and tough. This city is far more dangerous than Sarajevo. Come back here and be safe.”
   The other two Bosnians nodded sympathetically. I stared at the three of them for a moment, bewildered, and then understanding dawned and I chuckled.
   “Why do you laugh?” Zoltan asked, annoyed.

I didn’t dare tell him, but it was pretty funny. Sure, Sinisa and Zoltan and Zorana were tough and dangerous people, no strangers to violence – but they weren’t travellers. They weren’t used to dealing with new places. They were accustomed to controlling every aspect of their environment, and now, like any novice travellers in an edgy Third World country, they were assuming the worst, reacting like Belize City was a den of rattlesnakes rather than a normal city like many others. It was funny how the tables had turned. The dangerous criminals stayed in their four-star hotel, cautiously avoiding the gun-wielding crackheads they were sure roamed the streets like rabid dogs, while I the mild-mannered computer programmer was ready to casually saunter through those same streets to and from my cheap guesthouse, unprotected by security guards or razor wire. This was my element. Belize City was no worse than Port Moresby or Treichville or Calcutta or any of a dozen other edgy-but-fun Third World cities I had visited in my years of backpacking.
   “I appreciate your concern,” I said casually, revelling for a moment in the new power dynamic, enjoying my moment as the tough-talking daredevil. “But really. Believe me. I’ll be fine. This is my kind of town.”
   The three of them looked at one another and conferred in Serbian for at least a minute. Zoltan seemed angry. I sipped my beer and pretended not to care about their conversation.
   “Fine,” Sinisa said in the end, after overruling Zoltan. “If you wish to take this risk, Paul, then stay wherever it makes you happiest. I sincerely hope you and Saskia do not suffer from this decision. Let us move on.” They were obviously unhappy with our sudden exodus from their embrace, but not quite unhappy enough to order me back to the Radisson. Though judging from Zoltan’s expression I had come pretty close.
   “Great. Thanks.”
   “Saskia is not joining us?” Zorana asked.
   “No, she’s still tired,” I lied. Actually I had known this meeting might verge on confrontation, and I didn’t want to expose her to that.

“I imagine you are eager to return to America as quickly as possible,” Sinisa said.
   “As safely as possible,” I corrected.
   “Of course. To that end I have made some arrangements. My connections in this area are presently somewhat tenuous, but I have great confidence in them. They come with glowing recommendations. The rest of us will be remaining in Belize for some time, but I have made arrangements for you and Saskia to be transported into Mexico and then to California in the very near future.”
   I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that. “Just the two of us?”
   “Yes.”
   “What arrangements?”
   “It is extremely simple. From Belize to Mexico, you will go by boat. There is no risk, if you are found you will claim that you were out fishing at night, many Americans come to Belize to fish, and you will claim that your foolish Belizean crew ran out of fuel and you drifted in towards Mexico. Once in Mexico you will be taken to the town of Chetumal. I will give you a name and a phone number in Mexico. That number will connect you to an organization in Tijuana which conveys thousands of people across the American border every year.”
   “And this is a safe route? Tried and tested?”
   “I assure you it is safe,” Sinisa said. “I would not send you on this route if I was not sure it was safe. Because I would like you to carry something into America for me, and once you are in America, to deliver it to a friend of mine.”
   I looked at him.

“Furthermore,” he said, “I want you to understand that this is not the last favour I will ask of you. I do understand that once you reach America, our agreement is complete. In fact the rest of your fifteen thousand dollars has already been paid. Your work for me is done. But someone like you, a man with a Canadian passport, living legally in California, you are not just my friend, Paul, you are an important asset. Not just for your brilliant computer programming. To have someone like you there, someone I can trust, someone with a good heart, I will find that reassuring. From time to time I will ask you for favours. And I want you to know that I consider you my friend, and if ever you need my assistance, I will feel obligated to give it.”

I didn’t know what to say.
   “Us also,” Zorana said, leaning forward and taking my hand. “Zoltan and I, we are your friends too, Paul. I want you to remember that.”
   Zoltan nodded, somewhat reluctantly.
   “Huh,” I said, fumbling for words that wouldn’t commit me to anything. “I, thanks, yes, we’re all friends here, but, but I wasn’t expecting this.”
   “It is nothing to worry about,” Sinisa said. “A small package for you to carry, that is all.”
   “It’s just I didn’t think this was our agreement.”
   Wrong thing to say. “Are you suggesting I am violating the terms of our agreement?” Sinisa demanded, his voice low and dangerous, as if the never-codified ‘terms of our agreement’ were as sacrosanct as the Ten Commandments. I realized I was insulting his personal honour; he saw himself as a man who never reneged on a deal.
   “No,” I said. “It’s just I don’t remember anything about carrying a package for you.”
   “Ah,” Sinisa said. “You understand, this is not part of our agreement. This is merely a favour I am asking you. You are absolutely free to say no, and this will not affect our agreement in the slightest.”
   Zoltan and Zorana nodded eagerly, as if on cue. I opened my mouth to politely decline his request. Then I coughed and shut my mouth again, realizing that I really needed to think about this, needed about six hours to think through all the ramifications. Just because Sinisa said I could say no without repercussion didn’t make it necessarily so. I thought of the bodies I had found in the Albanian forest. Maybe they too had been asked for favours and said no. Saskia and I were still in a Third World country where we knew no one and where Sinisa had powerful friends. He could probably disappear us without breaking a sweat, and there was no doubt he would, if he thought he had reason enough.
   “What’s in the package?” I asked, stalling for time.
   “I am afraid I cannot answer that question,” he said blandly. “A briefcase, I can tell you that much. But I have promised the intended recipient that no one will know its contents.”

My stomach clenched. Drugs. Almost certainly. Sinisa wanted me to be a drug mule, to commit the classic and classically stupid traveller’s crime, reach for a pot of gold and find yourself in handcuffs instead, staring at fifteen years in a Third World jail. And there wasn’t even a pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow. He had already paid me the rest of my money. His offer was all stick and no carrot.

“Just as a favour,” I said.

“Just as a favour.”

Sinisa wanted me to smuggle drugs into America and he wasn’t even offering to pay me for it. I was almost insulted. What kind of offer was that? A Don Corleone offer, an offer that can’t be refused? If I said no, would he really have me killed? The notion sounded so ridiculous I could barely even articulate it to myself. I had just spent a month living and working with Sinisa. We were friends, he had just said so himself. He was certainly capable of murder, but of me? He liked me. He had approvingly said that I was one of the rare people who understood him. Surely the smiling Gucci-clad man sitting across from me wouldn’t really have me killed for refusing to carry a briefcase.

But why he was offering me no reward for this so-called favour? He seemed to actually be going out of his way to motivate me to say no. The only reasons to say yes were self-preservation and loyalty. And he didn’t know that I knew that self-preservation was an issue. He thought I still thought he was Robin Hood.

I understood. This was no favour. This was his acid loyalty test. If I passed, it meant I was a valuable asset. But if I failed, I was disloyal, and disloyal, that’s not so different from being a traitor, right? And Sinisa was good to his friends, but if he considered me a traitor, he would quite calmly kill me. Probably not personally, not with his own hands, that was beneath his station. No, he would murmur a few words to Zoltan and Zorana, and within the hour Saskia and I would be dead.

Maybe I was wrong. But that did not feel like a chance I could take. I was talking to three ruthless killers. Turning down their request was not a good way to extend my lifespan. Neither was smuggling drugs across Mexico and into America, but my life had somehow gotten to the point where that terrifying prospect seemed the lesser of two evils.

“All right,” I said. “That’s fair. You saved my life, you saved Saskia’s life. I owe you. Carrying a briefcase for you is the least I can do.”

I immediately wished I hadn’t phrased it in that way. Not that it really mattered. It was already clear that there would be more favours asked of me. So much for painlessly extricating myself from Sinisa’s web. I understood then that this smuggler’s-aide experience, which I had thought of as an isolated and self-contained period, might infect the rest of my life.
   “I am very glad to hear you say that,” Sinisa said sincerely. “Very glad. I will have details of the arrangements for you tomorrow.”
   I nodded. We sipped our drinks, smiled genially at one another, and pretended that we were one big happy family.

Out of Albania, into Belize
, I thought.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire
.

Two mornings later, Saskia and I sat, ate banana pancakes, and drank coffee in the Hotel Mopan’s flagstoned courtyard, walled by bushes and shaded by two tall trees. Three German-speaking girls in their twenties sat at another table, quietly hung over. I suspected they were the ones who had barged loudly into the Hotel Mopan at 2AM. I thought wistfully of the thick walls and 300-thread-count sheets of the Radisson.
   I was torn from my reverie by an unexpected and very familiar voice.
   “Paul!” Talena cried. “Saskia!” She bounded out of the cab outside the gate, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and a huge relieved smile. I was so surprised I started out of my seat and gaped. She ran to me, wrapped her arms around me, and gave me a long kiss hello. I hugged her back so hard that her feet left the ground.

The taxi driver interrupted us with a slight cough. I forked over the twenty US dollars it cost to ride in from the airport, sheer extortion but this time cheap at the price, as Talena and Saskia hugged and laughed.
   “I can’t believe you did it!” Talena said, her voice giddily childlike. “I can’t believe you’re here! I can’t believe you’re both here! I can’t believe I’m here! This is wonderful! This is so fucking great!”
   I found my voice. “What are you – how did you – I mean, whoa! Wow! Welcome to Belize! What the hell are you doing here?” Talena’s giddiness was infectious. Seeing her in the flesh again, unexpectedly, was pure joy. It had not occurred to me that mentioning our location in a recent email would prompt her to join us for a surprise weekend visit.
   “How could I stay away when you were just around the corner? You’re almost home! I can’t believe you’re almost home!”
   “We’re not out of the jungle yet,” I said cautiously.
   “But like you say, the hard part, we have done that,” Saskia suggested.
   “Saskia! You can speak English! Paul, you taught her English!”
   “She taught herself,” I said, laughing. “Come on. Sit. Have a coffee. The coffee here’s pretty good. How did you get here? How’d you get off work?”
   “I didn’t. I’m going to IM in sick today and tomorrow. I probably have to go back Monday. Didn’t you get my email? I guess I just sent it, what, ten hours ago? Oh my God this is so great! What are you laughing at?”
   “I’ve never heard you sound so sorority Valley Girl before,” I said, smiling.
   “And you never will again so enjoy it while it lasts. Now tell me everything! And Saskia, how are you? You cut your hair! Is everything okay? Tell me everything!”
   Saskia and I took turns talking. I left out only my discovery of the body field and my recent agreement to play mule for Sinisa. I didn’t want to talk about either of those things in front of Saskia and worry her unduly.
Saskia switched to Croatian sometimes when her English failed her. She was far more animated in her native tongue. In English she was always a little hesitant, but in Croatian she was passionate, gesticulating with her hands, laughing and cracking jokes, almost as if she had a split personality, as if when she switched languages she was possessed by a different soul. I guess this was true for a lot of people, that the struggle of speaking in a second language hid their real selves, made them seem dull and reserved.
   “I guess I should check in,” Talena said, after we finished her coffee.
   “Oh, yeah,” I said.
   Both of us went silent. Now that the first flush of our reunion had worn off, we looked at each other and remembered that things between us were still uncertain and confusing. I didn’t know what our sleeping arrangements would be. Neither did Talena, judging from the expression on her face.
   “I will get a room for myself,” Saskia said, apparently insensate to the sudden tension. “Talking to the hotel woman will be good English practice. Then you and Talena take the room we have now.” She nodded, satisfied with her plan, and walked into the Hotel Mopan.
   Talena and I looked at one another.
   “Hi,” I said.
   “Hi.”
   “It’s good to see you.”
   “Good to see you too.”
   For a moment it seemed that neither of us had anything else to say.
   “Come here,” she said, standing up, her voice soft, and I came to her and we held each other tightly enough to crack ribs, her head against my chest, her hair soft on my chin, both of us breathing hard.
   “Good to see you,” she whispered. “Understatement of the century.”
   “Oh,” Saskia said, behinid me. “Excuse me, I am sorry –”
   “It’s okay,” Talena and I said in unison, releasing each other and turning to her. Saskia stood holding her new room key, embarrassed that she had intruded.
   “Don’t worry about it,” Talena said. “We’re all here and it’s so great. Now what’s on the schedule for today? What are the plans?”

“You’re just in time. We’ve got a meeting with the guys who are supposed to take us into Mexico this afternoon,” I said.

“How exciting.”

“Yeah. Smuggler tourism. You should have brought a camera.”
   “They’d probably get all Sean Penn on my ass,” she said. “I’m hungry. For food, not breakfast. What do they serve around here?”
   “Oh, they serve both kinds. Rice and beans or beans and rice. You’ll love it.”

“I can’t wait. Maybe after I eat we can all go walk around town. You can show me the sights before we meet the smugglers.”

“All the fabulous sights of Belize City,” I said. “Don’t blink.”
* * *
   We met the Belizean smugglers at the tomb of Baron Bliss, an eccentric and wonderfully named nineteenth-century Englishman who, despite never having actually set foot on Belize’s mainland, had willed most of his considerable fortune to its people. His tomb was a slab of black basalt beneath the lighthouse that marked the easternmost point of Belize City. The view east was stunning, across the luminescent ocean to long bands of mangrove cayes, intensely green and blue beneath the blazing tropical sun that hyperintensified every colour. The view west was of a ratty, weed-choked park, infested by plastic bags and bottles and a few rusting benches, surrounded by cheap dull-gray buildings.
   The smugglers were fifteen minutes late. Two black men in their mid-twenties, one short-haired, clean-cut, and relatively conservatively dressed in jeans and a wife-beater, the other dreadlocked with a rasta hat and a flashy rainbow coat he must have stolen from the biblical Joseph.
   “You Paul?” the big clean-cut one asked, his voice low and gravelly. “You here to meet some people?”
   “That’s me.”
   “Yo, howyadoin?” the little rasta one said. “Good to meet you. You can call me Abel. This is my brother Cain.”
   “Um…okay. Hi. This is Talena and Saskia.”
   We all shook hands.
   “Now, you don’t have to worry none about money, your man Sinisa, he already taking care of that,” Abel said. Despite his dreads and Jah-Love look, Abel sounded a lot more American and less Caribbean than clean-cut Cain. “We just here to set up a time and a place.”
   I shrugged. “You’re the experts. Soon is good, but, you know, whenever you’re sure we’ll be safe.”
   “No such thing as sure of safe,” Cain said. “Not in Belize. Not in my work.”
   “Don’t you worry about him none,” Abel quickly intervened. “He just a hardass. You safe as houses with us. Me and Cain, money in the bank, promise you that. Easiest thing since sliced bread. We just gonna take you for a thirty-minute boat ride, that’s all. I thinking day after tomorrow, Saturday night.”
   The more I heard the more I suspected that Abel was from somewhere in the Midwest, his lilting singsong voice and reggae talk just an act. I wondered what had brought him here. Took a holiday and fell in love with the place? Unlikely. Skipped bail in America and ran for Central America’s only English-speaking country? That sounded a lot more convincing.
   “Saturday night from where?” Talena asked.
   “Caye Caulker,” Abel said. ‘Caye’ sounded like ‘key’. “You want to go there tomorrow. You like it there. Just take a water taxi from by the Swing Bridge, just down this road. You want to stay at a place called Popeye’s. It got a big sign, it say ‘De Place To Be On De Caye’. Saturday night, eight o’clock, we put you on a boat, we say we going nightfishing, we take a little ride to Mexico, and our friends there, they pick you up. Easiest thing there ever did be.”
   “A boat across the ocean in the middle of the night?” I asked, skeptically.
   “Not a problem. Not a problem. Cain here, he knows the cayes like no one else, his momma gave him birth in the ocean there, no lie.”
   “I can get you to Mexico,” Cain said. “For sure.”
   We looked at each other silently, as if we had all run out of words.
   “OK,” I said. I wasn’t sure I trusted these guys, but I also wasn’t sure I didn’t. I was beginning to realize that when you deal with criminals on a regular basis, “trust” becomes a highly fungible concept. “Caye Caulker, Popeye’s, Saturday night at eight.”
   “That right,” Abel said. “No problem.”
* * *
   We went back to the Hotel Mopan and informed them we would be checking out tomorrow. Saskia, saying she was tired, quickly retired to her room. I suspected she was just trying to give Talena and I some privacy. I almost wished she hadn’t. Talena and I were skittishly awkward around one another and Saskia’s chaperoning presence had made the day easier for both of us.
   “Let’s get a drink,” Talena said.
   “Good idea,” I agreed.
   We went into the bar, ordered two bottles of Belikin beer, and sat as far away from the noisy German girls as we could. We clinked our dark bottles together and smiled and drank. I searched for something to say. Nothing came to mind.
   “What did you leave out?” Talena asked.
   “Leave out?” Then I understood. I thought of the briefcase that lay hidden beneath my bed. Sinisa’s briefcase. I was almost grateful that we had a crisis to discuss, to distract ourselves from the subject of ourselves. “Right. Well. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Saskia. We’ve got a problem. Actually a couple of problems. Not small ones, either.”
   “Tell me.”
   “First of all,” I said, “Sinisa gave me something he wants me to carry into America.”
   Her eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
   “A briefcase. It’s locked. Weighs about ten pounds. He won’t tell me what’s in it.”
   “He won’t…Why didn’t you just say no?”
   “That’s not as easy as Nancy Reagan claims,” I said. “Let me tell you about Sinisa’s version of peer pressure.” I briefly recounted my discovery of human remains near his mansion, and his casual murder of the Afghani man on the boat. She listened intently.
   “Great,” she said. “Well, that’s just fucking great.”
   “Isn’t it though?”
   “We could leave tonight,” she said. “Right now. Get a taxi to the border and try to walk across or bribe the guards there or…shit. I don’t know.”
   “We could,” I said. “But if we don’t make it, then we’re really fucked. Sinisa has big friends here, and we don’t know anyone.”
   “We could go to the American embassy and…” Her voice trailed off.
   “Yeah. Tell them we have this illegal Bosnian refugee who needs their help. They’d be all over that.”
   “Shit.”
   “Exactly,” I agreed.
   “What are we going to do?”
   I shrugged. “I’m going to let Sinisa’s smuggler buddies carry me and Saskia and this briefcase into Mexico. If we get caught, we’re in trouble anyways, briefcase or no briefcase. This just means I’ll be in a little more trouble if it goes wrong.”
   “A little more trouble. If my guess is even in shouting distance of correct, you’ll be in a Mexican jail for twenty years. Where I come from we call that a huge life-wrecking disaster, not a little more trouble.”
   “Whatever. We rolls the dice and we takes our chances.”
   “Jesus Christ, Paul, how can you act so fucking casual about this?” she asked. “You do understand that this is an immensely dangerous situation that could destroy the entire rest of your life, right?”
   I snorted. “So what else is new? Welcome to the last six weeks of my life.”

Talena looked at me like she didn’t quite recognize me. I remembered that, unlike me, she had come to Belize from a month at a peaceful office job in America, where smugglers and guns and volatile negotations and the ongoing threat of violent death were appalling horrors rather than the stuff of everyday life. I was terribly frightened, but I had been frightened for so long I had learned to wall it off a little with sarcastic fatalism. She couldn’t share that, at least not yet.

“There has to be some other way,” she said.

“The sad thing I have discovered is, there doesn’t,” I said. “Just because all the choices are really bad doesn’t mean there’s a good one hidden somewhere.”

“Don’t give me a philosophy lecture, okay? Jesus. You really think that if you said no they’d come here and kill us all? That sounds so…I don’t know. Melodramatic.”

“Sinisa and friends are a seriously melodramatic crew. Ask all those dead people I found in the forest. I’m sure they’ll back me up.”

“What if you do get it into Mexico? Are you actually going to bring it into America?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll worry about that in Mexico.”

“I’ll take it,” she said.

I sat quietly for a moment. Then I said, “What?”

“This is all for Saskia. If it wasn’t for Saskia you could fly home tonight. You already went through Albania for her. She’s my sister. You’ve done enough. It’s my turn. You fly home. I’ll take things from here.”

“No,” I said.

“What? Why not?”

“Well…for one thing, you know, she feels like my sister too,” I said. “We just spent a month living together. She’s…I want to see her safe as much as you do. And Sinisa would see it as some kind of bait and switch. I will not get an A grade on this loyalty test if I subcontract it out.” I paused. “And because I’m just not going to let you endanger yourself like that. End of story.”

“But I’m supposed to sit idly by while you endanger your self, is that it? Fuck you.”

She glared at me. I stared calmly back into her electric blue eyes. I was a little surprised at myself, at the detached cool I was maintaining. Being alone with her made me feel a little bit like I had on the pier when the sniper was shooting at me, hyperaware and adrenalinized and afraid. Afraid that something I might do or say, a single wrong word or action, would lose her. But at least I could speak to her without the guilt at being her contemptible loser boyfriend that had tinged my every word to her in the year before Bosnia. For a whole year I had not dared to meet her gaze when she looked at me angrily. No longer.