“Very true,” the deputy minister agreed.
“Including scientific expeditions?”
“Especially.”
“These records are open to the public?”
“Of course. We are a democracy, yes?”
“A fine democracy,” the Englishman agreed. “Then I need to examine all the permits granted twelve and thirteen years ago. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“It is no trouble at all,” the deputy minister said cooperatively and smiled again. “But, alas, the records from those years were destroyed during the time of a different government.”
“Destroyed? How?”
“I am not certain.” The deputy minister spread his hands in apology. “It was a long time ago. There was much turmoil from unimportant factions that wished a coup. Sendero Luminoso and others. You understand.”
“I’m not certain I do.” The important Englishman smiled, too.
“Ah?”
“I don’t recall an attack on the interior ministry.”
“Perhaps when they were being photocopied.”
“You should have a record of that.”
The deputy minister was unperturbed. “As I said, a different government.”
“I will speak with the minister himself, if I may.”
“Of course, but, alas, he is out of the city.”
“Really? That’s odd, since I saw him only last night at a concert.”
“You are mistaken. He is on vacation. In Japan, I believe.”
“It must have been someone else I saw.”
“The minister is unremarkable in appearance.”
“There you are, then.” The Englishman smiled as he stood and bowed slightly to the deputy minister, who returned a pleasant nod. The Englishman left.
Outside on the wide boulevard of the elegant old city famed for its colonial architecture, the Englishman, whose name was Carter Letissier, flagged down a taxi and gave the address of his Miraflores house. In the taxi, his smile evaporated. He sat back and swore.
The bastard had been bought. And recently, too. Otherwise, the minister would have allowed Letissier to waste his time in the files only to discover the records really were missing. Instead, the records must not have been destroyed yet. But Letissier also knew they would be gone by the time he could get an appointment with the minister. He glanced at his watch. The ministry was closing. Given the normal lazy habits of Peruvian deputy ministers, the records would not actually disappear until tomorrow morning at the earliest.
__________
Three hours later, the grand offices of the Ministry of the Interior were dark. Armed with his 10mm Browning semiautomatic, Carter Letissier broke in dressed completely in black and wearing the black boots and antiflash hood with respirator of the British SAS counterterrorist commando. At one time he had been a captain of the 22nd SAS Regiment, a proud and memorable period in his life.
He went directly to the filing cabinet he had learned contained Amazonian documents, found the section on permits, and extracted the folders for the two years he needed. He erected and flicked on the minute lamp he had brought with him. Under it, he opened the folders and photographed the pages with his minicamera. As soon as he had finished, he returned everything to where it belonged, collapsed his light, and slipped back out into the night.
In his private darkroom in the Miraflores house, Letissier, now a wellknown importer of cameras and equipment to Peru, developed the film. When the negatives were dry, he made large prints.
Grinning, he dialed a long series of numbers and waited. “Letissier here. I have the names of those who led scientific teams to the location you wished in the years you wished. You have paper and pencil ready, Peter?”
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CHAPTER
THIRTY NINE
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10:01 A.M., Thursday, October 23
Syracuse, New York
The old industrial city of Syracuse was nestled in the autumn-colored hills of central New York state, a land of rolling farmland, ample rivers, and independent-minded people who enjoyed the great outdoors from the safety of their sprawling lakeside metropolis. Jonathan Smith knew all this because his grandparents had lived here, and he had visited them yearly. A decade ago, they had retired to Florida, where they had fished, surfed, and happily gambled until first his grandmother had died of a heart attack, and then within three months his grandfather had followed, too lonely to go on.
Jon gazed out the window of the rented Oldsmobile that Randi was driving. As they sped along, she shifted lanes, preparing to leave Interstate 81 going south to join Route 5 east toward where they hoped to find Marty. From here he could see familiar landmarks in the central city— the historic brick Armory, the Weighlock Building, and Syracuse University’s recent Carrier Dome. He was glad the old buildings were still standing, an affirmation that there was some sort of continuity in this precarious world.
He was tired and tense. It had been a long trip from the Iraqi desert to Syracuse, New York. As Gabriel Donoso had promised, a Harrier jet had picked them up and flown them to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. There Randi had finessed a ride on a C-17 cargo jet. Once aloft, she had sweet-talked the copilot out of his notebook computer, and Jon had tapped into the Internet to search OASIS, the Asperger’s syndrome Web site. Finally he had found Marty’s message on the ABCs of Parenting page, part of the Web site’s extended Web ring:
Coughing Wolf,
A riddle: Who is attacked, separated, stays home with Hart’s erroneous comedy 5 ways east, is colored lake green or thereabouts, and whose letter is stolen?
Edgar A.
“That’s the message?” Randi had read it over his shoulder skeptically. “Your name’s not even on it. And there sure as hell isn’t any `Zellerbach’ mentioned.”
“I’m Coughing,” he explained. “Think: Smith Brothers cough drops. My uncle who treated Marty swore by them. Marty and I joked about it all the time. Horrible-tasting black things. And what does a wolf do?”
“Howls.” She rolled her eyes. “Howell. Unbelievable. That’s really stretching it.”
He smiled. “That’s why we agreed to address our messages to each other that way. We figured they’d expect us to use E-mail to communicate, but going through the Asperger’s site gave us a place to hide out, as long as we came up with some kind of personal code. For Marty and me, since we grew up together, it’s no problem. We have a lot of shared history to draw on.”
“So he fashioned this message from allusions the three of you would understand but with any luck they wouldn’t.” She crouched next to him. “Okay, I’m hooked. Translate it.”
“The first two things are obvious: Marty and Peter were `attacked,’ and had to `separate.’ But Marty `stayed home.’ That is, he’s in the RV someplace and may still not know where Peter is.”
“Clear as a bell,” she said with more than a little sarcasm. “So where are Mr. Zellerbach and the RV?”
“In Syracuse, New York, of course.”
She frowned. “Enlighten me.”
” `Hart’s erroneous comedy.’ ”
“That tells you he’s in Syracuse?”
“Absolutely. Rogers and Hart’s Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse was based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. So, Marty’s in the RV somewhere in or near Syracuse.”
“And `five ways east?’ ”
“Ah! That was particularly clever of him. I’ll bet we’ll find him on some kind of Highway `five’ on the `east’ side leading into Syracuse.”
She was doubtful. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
They had landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and caught a ride over to Dulles, where they had eaten breakfast and bought new clothes—simple dark trousers, turtlenecks, and jackets. They had discarded what they had worn in Baghdad and boarded a commercial flight for Syracuse. They had been watchful the entire morning, their gazes never ceasing to look for anyone too curious. For Jon, the entire trip had been one of fighting off tension between the two of them. He was getting over the shock of looking at Randi and thinking for a moment she was Sophia. But still, the fact was unchangeable: The face, voice, and body were so close that it kept his pain simmering. He was amazed that they worked together as well as they did, and he was grateful for her help in getting him out of Iraq and back into the United States.
A half-hour ago they had landed at Hancock International Airport northeast of Syracuse, where Randi had rented the Oldsmobile Cutlass.
Now they were on Route 5— there was no Interstate 5— watching both sides of the road as they skirted the city.
” `Colored lake green,’ ” he read. “Something on this highway refers to the color green, and it involves a lake. A landmark. Maybe a motel.”
“If you’ve interpreted the gibberish right,” Randi pointed out, “we could pass something like that a hundred times and not notice.”
He shook his head. “I’ll know. Marty wouldn’t give us anything that hard to figure out once we’d gotten this far. Keep driving.”
They cruised through the suburb of Fayetteville, still searching for the final references in the message. They were growing discouraged. They passed country clubs, malls, car dealerships, used-car lots, and all the other satellite businesses of the citified suburb that had once been a country town. Nothing rang a bell.