Chapter 5. Memories of South America
The black expanse of the Great Lake was spread out at their feet beyond the precipice as Sovant and Pamela took stock of their surroundings. With hand guns and plenty of ammo, and with an AK-47 in the cache, they ought to be able to defend themselves. As for protection from the arctic air - and it was another chilly night - the usual expedients were at hand: sweaters and coats and thick wool blankets, a few bottles of bourbon and brandy, rum and vodka. Von Hellemann was easy going in some respects; he didn't mind them having a few drinks as long as they didn't get drunk on surveillance duty. They could always light a small fire to help them stay warm and cozy provided they were careful in concealing the flames. The scent of wood-smoke was common enough in the North Woods, and it was absurd to think an extortionist might follow the omnipresent scent of wood-smoke in order to ambush somebody. For provisions they had Brie and Gouda and crackers, smoked trout, smoked salmon, smoked white fish etc. They had a cache full of French bread and cakes and currants and chocolate bars, and cream and sugar for their coffee.
Pamela was drinking brandy to take the edge off of the cold wind. And Sovant, now that he was officially off-duty, and now that Pamela was in charge of the post, could be more liberal with the bourbon. In fact, they were both getting rather drunk. And they were both cozy under their blankets. Haakon was thinking that matters had certainly been a little confusing over the last several months. He and Maria had been somewhat estranged during these months - she was so distant - whereas he always found Pamela easy to talk to. But everything was better now between himself and Maria after she had taken such good care of him after he had been shot. Sovant soon succumbed to sleep.
Pamela, like Maria, Sergio and Sovant, was ex-CIA, and like them she had been seduced away from the Agency by the higher wages Von Hellemann was paying. She sat with her back against a boulder as she sipped her brandy. She felt the glow of the alcohol slowly gaining in radiance. Brandy not only helped her to fight off the chill of the night air, and fight off the cold penetrating gusts which surged off Superior's waves, but she became a more serene philosopher whenever she felt the glow of alcohol surging inside of her. Pamela felt cozy in her blankets as she sipped more and more brandy. The stars and the planets looked beautiful to her as they burned in the empyrean. The vast expanse of Superior reminded her of the ocean. Soon Pamela was reliving her covert days in South America. She thought of the windward palms curving over the promenade and toward the azure of the Atlantic. She had spent so many hours staring at the portals of so many consulates and embassies. The tedium was interminable, save for the time when she had to take to her heels when bullets were being sprayed all round her. She remembered the day she had been strolling along in her dark sunglasses and her lime-green dress, walking under acacias and nipa palms, past colossal bronze equestrian statues, walking down a tropical sort of Champs Elysees where one was forever finding streets with names such as the Calle Antigua and the Boulevard San Martin and the Avenue of the Emperor Don Pedro II. In every direction one cared to look one saw beautiful fountains and baroque public buildings, gardens and porticos and chic boutiques. In the parks of that city one could loiter on benches under willow wands which swayed in warm equatorial winds. She recalled rising before dawn: feeling the cool shade on her bare shoulders as she sipped her coffee on her balcony. She liked to look at the vast metropolis spread out beneath her. Like a giant slowly stirring to life, the city stirred as it prepared itself for another day of industry and commerce. An hour later she was on her way to work, leaving behind her neighborhood with its towering condos and ivy-clad mansions; she was soon slipping in with the flow of the people on the sidewalks who were going to their own jobs. One would think a few of these people next to her on the sidewalk must have suspected that she was a spy! She could hardly hide the fact that she was a foreigner. Pamela was a natural blonde but she would color her hair to the palest shade of platinum, thinking that by calling attention to herself she would also be proclaiming that she was harmless, certainly not a professional agent. She would walk with the flow of the businessmen in their white guayabera shirts, with a few senoras wearing mantillas, with the great masses of the working classes dressed plainly or exquisitely for their vainglorious or essential labors. She would watch the nuns lead their charges of school girls. The latter were dressed usually in drab grey or navy-blue dress. But occasionally the little girls wore flamingo-pink or canary-yellow dresses, such as on those days which commemorated revolutionary heroes who battled 19th century European royalty and their mercenary assassins. Pamela arrived at the central plaza. There the mists carried by the wind in the lee of the water fountain would fling little rainbows over the paving stones. The cathedral, which dated from the time of the Spanish Conquest, reared up before one on the plaza. It reminded Pamela of Campostela rearing up before masses of medieval pilgrims. Pamela always seemed to meet there the same senora. She would invariably turn her penetrating gaze upon Pamela, a look which seemed to say that this woman knew exactly what Pamela was doing in South America. `She's just a nice old lady who doesn't know anything!' Pamela had to remind herself. They would exchange a few pleasantries, and invariably, upon departure, Senora Alvarez would offer a vaya senorita con Dios to Pamela.
Pamela was, soon enough, contemplating a rendezvous with a book in a South American library. This library, an impressive edifice which was formerly an Imperial Palace, having been constructed by the generation directly after the generation of Balboa and Pizarro, was her favorite haunt in the city. She would also be leaving a message in this library for Haakon Sovant to retrieve. In one of the more esoteric tomes on one of the more lonely shelves, she would leave a sales receipt in a book which Sovant would retrieve later in the day. One of the microdots on this slip of paper contained all the information she had to offer. She'd then browse through the shelves, and glance over a few books on art and photography, literature and cooking, and then she would resume her stroll through the city.
Leaving the library, Pamela pursued a path round the magnificent façade of the Palacio Nationale, a path which ran parallel to a river which wound its way through the lower sections of the city. She was also entering the tougher sections of the city. Here she always felt the terrifying presence of the secret police. The scorpions lurked everywhere! She might have entertained some blithe ideas about espionage in former years, but in South America she could suddenly find herself terror-stricken and barely able to move. Pamela risked a clandestine glance to the right and then to the left. She resisted the temptation to try to execute, in the most nonchalant of manners, a 360 degree turn to see if anyone, such as a policeman, might be lurking in her vicinity. Instead, she swung her portfolio higher on to her shoulder and put a business-like gait back into her steps. Her portfolio contained an easel and some canvas, some oils, some watercolors and some brushes - things which a foreigner trying to pass herself off as a feminine sort of Gauguin living amid exotic haunts might want to carry. She would have to keep up the façade of being someone who was attempting to capture on canvas both the beautiful and the disturbing elements of this South American city. She was an artist and certainly not a yanqui secret agent. Pamela walked past a shack where a toothless man sold propane bottles to make agua caliente. She walked past a dingy cantina where men were said to murder and whore and extort and blaspheme at all hours of the morning. She was no longer strolling past chic boutiques! And as for all of the oleanders and poincianas, the convolvulus and the camellias in the National Gardens - that was a mile back! Pamela saw a familiar face at one point and she stopped to talk to a little girl who was holding a leash tethered to an iguana. All three of them, the lizard included, had to dash for cover in a cantina as a pack of pariah dogs came running over the cobblestones looking to devour the lizard. With the danger gone Pamela gave the little girl some change and they said their goodbyes. Pamela continued on past placards telling of terrible bulls an
d brave matadors, past a man carrying two chickens, past a dying dog kicking his last desperate kicks in a paroxysm of supreme pathos in the middle of this South American street. She walked by a shop window with a parrot having luminous green plumage. The parrot liked, or so it was reputed, to ferociously flap his wings and scream: Death to the Gringos. Pamela found the store selling the imitation shrunken heads. A stampede of little piglets was herded past it by two boys clad in rags. Further up the street, two swarthy men in dark sunglasses - perhaps emissaries from the Ministry of Supreme Justice - were loitering near another cantina.
The local legend said that this section of the city was haunted by the ghosts of Balboa and Pizarro, or at least by some of their soldiers, and you only had to walk the streets at night to see their disembodied ghosts. Pamela hurried on and reached a more prosperous neighborhood, one filled with shrines devoted to the Virgin. These sorts of shrines proliferated over much of the Republic, and the propaganda of the Communists against such practices often seemed to only fuel such practices. Pamela encountered two dirty gringos who were staring at her. They looked desperate, having a wild-eyed look about them. They looked as if they were debating whether to ask her if she wanted to join them in robbing a bank. Then, passing on, she rounded a corner and was afforded a view of the blue Atlantic. There might have been a hurricane far out to sea, because a thunderous surf was breaking over the beach. The water was deep-blue with the tints of turquoise and aquamarine predominating closer to shore. Pamela thought she might stop hereabouts and set up her easel. She reconsidered and decided she wanted to swim first and paint later. The road to the beach afforded her a better view of the mountains and she marveled at all the terraces and all the bougainvillea and orange groves spread over the lower slopes. She liked the way the beach curved one way while the city behind the beach curved upwards as it rose from the sea to the sierras. The orange blossoms and all the other delicate children of the tropics survived a little ways up the cordillera, but the citrus tress ended abruptly, and then everything was precipices and deserts and barren tablelands leading off to faraway volcanoes which rose above the rain forests.
When she got to the beach she would check to see if the two swarthy men had followed her, but she dared not turn round now to check. In another minute she arrived at the promenade which ran along the shoreline. Little kids were forever cadging for cash from people on the beach. Old women peddled Chiclets and Coca-Cola. Men sold pinwheels and straw hats, glass beads and mirrors, watches and bracelets etc.
Inhaling the perfume of the coconut palms, Pamela tossed a coin to a kid and asked him what was new. The young revolutionary was much more a charity case than a source of military information! But if poverty gnawed at him long enough he might betray some Communists sometime, even for the miniscule sums she was throwing his way. One never could tell with Communists. They could rebel and turn Capitalist and sell out their comrades at the most unexpected of moments. Pamela wondered if he fancied her. He had to be somewhat bedazzled by her, as he certainly couldn't know too many blonde foreign beauties who threw money at him on a regular basis! Pamela and her controllers were gambling that sooner or later some starving, love-sick male would try to act like a big shot around her, try to impress her with his knowledge of something valuable, and then she would throw him a bone and buy the information he was selling, and then she could pass the information on to her controllers.
The air had become oppressively hot and humid as it was wont to do in these latitudes and at this time of the day - mid-day. Pamela was wearing a bikini under her dress. She knew she would want to go for a swim. She dropped her portfolio, kicked off her shoes, stripped off her dress in one fluid motion so as to keep her Smith & Wesson concealed in that dress, and then she made her way toward the water, running over the burning sand. As she strode through the sea-foam a sea-gull suspended itself momentarily on the wind, and then wheeled by her heading down wind. Pamela swam out to the thundering surf. She was thrown down to the sandy bottom by the breakers. She had to struggle and fight to regain the surface. The breakers were tearing at her bikini and she was soon panting like an abused thoroughbred. The waves were intent on drowning her today and a new set of breakers threw her down to the bottom yet again. But Pamela was a powerful swimmer, and there was never the slightest danger of her drowning, even though her chest was heaving and her pulse was racing.
Pamela dried in the sun as she walked in the shallows. She was cool and refreshed, but by the time her skin was dry she was sweltering again under the tropical sun.
Putting her lime-green dress and her white shoes back on, taking up her portfolio, Pamela found some shade under some palms. She combed her hair and fixed her make-up. In half an hour she would meet her husband, Sergio, for lunch. He would talk about all the stolen gold he knew to exist in various bank vaults throughout the city, and she would listen to his plans for recovering some of this gold. Pamela suspected he would get himself killed, but it was futile to attempt to dissuade him, and it didn't do her any good to spend her days and nights worrying about Sergio. On certain subjects he was stubborn beyond belief, and Coronado and Cortez, Columbus and Sergio came to mind whenever Pamela thought about men who were fond of gold. This was unfair because Sergio understood there were things far more important than fabulous riches and inexhaustible hordes of gold; he certainly never aspired to be the richest man in the cemetery; he simply didn't think he was in danger. The concert of Pamela's thoughts, when she resumed her journey through the city, remained focused on Sergio's delirium in thinking he could take gold away from gangsters without any risks. Lost in her thoughts as she was, she was startled when a swarthy man suddenly brushed against her on the Calle Grenadiers. She saw a flash of brilliant white teeth in the midst of the swarthy face. There was a quick exchange of gallantries - con permiso, senorita es muy linda, muy bonita. Pamela smiled at the man but scolded herself for her inattention as she walked quickly away. She knew he must have felt the hard steel of her Smith & Wesson when he brushed against her. No doubt a policeman would ask: and what is the young artist doing with an illegal weapon? But she wasn't arrested. At first she attempted to console herself by thinking that a man could hardly make the rational deduction that something hard as steel beneath a woman's dress must be a sophisticated piece of weaponry. But on second thought she had to admit the swarthy man now knew she was carrying a gun, which might not be a bad thing.
After she had lunch with Sergio at a dive they drove back to their apartment and napped for a few hours, then listened to music, then drank beer and dined on limes and salsa, on steak tacos and grilled onions, then napped some more as they waited for night to fall, and then they got back into Sergio's Ford. They swung by an alley to get Haakon, making sure they were not seen by the authorities. And then they took a road leading up into the mountains south of the city. Sergio was driving cautiously, taking pains to not be pulled over by the police. The road curved higher and higher until it crossed a pass and then descended into a desert. The miles flew by before they found a road which led back to the ocean. After a few more minutes they parked atop a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, well to the south of the city, many miles to the south. The only lights to be seen were from some distant shacks on the beach and from several large seafaring vessels. They got out of the Ford, and, taking a route down the cliff which wasn't too steep, they reached the bottom. The moonlight helped to illuminate their path as they navigated their way through the shadows under the palms and the plantains. They crossed a short section of tall grass and then they were on the beach. Sergio shined a flashlight straight out over the ocean. They could hear nothing and could see little, but if all went according to standard procedure, a motor was now being started two miles away from the shoreline.
In a few minutes the sound of an engine could be detected. Pamela ran down the beach and waded into the water as Sergio and Sovant waited behind her, watching for any cops moving in on
them. The procedure, which they had executed several times before, called for Sergio and Haakon to pin down any pursuit - if there was no pursuit Pamela could guide the person or take the contraband coming ashore, or she could escape via the motor launch if the cops came rushing in. Sergio and Haakon knew how to swim and they had a chance of escaping out to sea and of being picked up once they were out of the rifle range. But concentrated police firepower on a motorboat close to shore would leave all of them dead. The next few minutes would let them know if they would be arrested or killed that night.
Pamela watched as Maria jumped from the motor boat. The boat sped away with an agent named LOTHAR at the wheel as soon as Maria hit the water.
Maria, it seems, had made herself persona non grata in yet another South American Republic. She would probably not be arrested and jailed if she was recognized in this Republic, but there was a growing list of nations which would arrest her. Their superiors couldn't be pleased with Maria, but, as she explained on the drive back to town, she had jobs for all of them lined up with a rich and generous employer, provided they were looking to make a change, and Maria was looking to make a change.
The bewitching sparks of romance were soon flying between Haakon and Maria. They had been married the previous year but they had to endure several long separations. Haakon could keep secrets, but he couldn't always keep secret the fact that he was worried about his wildly careless wife. Sergio was taciturn on the drive back to town: he was less than enchanted with current events, and Pamela hadn't even told him about the man who brushed into her, and who no doubt learned she was armed. If Maria persuaded Haakon to take a new job, then Sergio knew Pamela would want to bolt as well, as she and Haakon had worked together for several years, and Pamela was in no mood to trust some stranger - Haakon's replacement - in their dangerous line of work. If Pamela decided to pack it in then that meant Sergio would have to pack it in as well: he certainly wasn't going to divorce his beloved wife. And then he would be saying goodbye to all his hopes of recovering stolen gold. And Sergio hated to see his dreams of attaining vast sums of gold evaporate in a single moment.
Sergio dropped off Haakon and Maria in an alley - it was always thought best that neither Sergio nor Pamela ever knew where Haakon lived, and of course never be seen in his company.
Sergio and Pamela had their minds made up for them on the question of whether they should retire. Two policemen were waiting for them when they got back to their apartment. One of these policemen had discovered that Pamela carried a gun. The cops were curious about this violation of the law. Sergio told them he gave it to her because he was afraid she might need it to fight off some banditos. That was the story he and Pamela had agreed they would tell. It only cost them $5,000 to prevent the both of them from languishing for a few months in a South American jail. An excellent bargain! Sergio and Pamela were like gold mines to those cops that day. The cops knew nothing about their real business, but Pamela and Sergio suspected the surveillance would be ramped up on them, and the cops would certainly be looking to mine more gold from the mine they just discovered. It was too dangerous now for Pamela to carry stolen secrets on her person in this Republic. They might move to a different country in South America, but Maria had found higher paying and less dangerous jobs for them, jobs which were available to them now: and therefore their retirement from the CIA was inevitable. In a few days LOTHAR got them out of the country.
Her reverie was sweet while it lasted but South America was now banished from Pamela's thoughts. Her undivided attention was again directed on the world near a precipice above Lake Superior. Sovant was still sleeping and Pamela poured herself a shot of brandy. Then she poured herself another one. It felt good to have the alcohol wash away the tedium of her job. She listened to the wind in the trees, to the gusts shaking the boughs and the smaller branches.
Pamela glanced at Sovant's written report. She found his entry regarding the gunshot that he heard. He neglected to report in which direction the shot came from. Pamela wondered if he was asleep when the gun was fired. Pamela was a little worried. She wished Haakon had seen Sergio. Still, she and Sovant couldn't investigate every square mile of Von Hellemann's estate every time some kid shot off his .22. At any rate, being only 50 feet yards from a highway, she and Sovant were stationed at an excellent place to catch people entering or departing this end of Von Hellemann's property.
Suddenly, despite being drunk, Pamela was gripped with fear. She could hear the sounds of footsteps coming straight towards her. Pamela drew her Glock 9mm and prepared to shoot. It was not perfectly pitch black darkness, as the glow of the city lights gave a little glow to the world. Suddenly Amanda appeared out of the murk and became visible in the glow. And she was carrying Al. Why, asked Pamela of herself, as she roused Sovant from sleep, would her daughter be carrying her infant son down here, and at this time of night? As the girl got closer, advancing straight down the path, heading directly toward Pamela, Pamela could see she was carrying Al in her left arm, and she was holding a gun in her right hand.
Part 2: The Tyranny of Uncertainty