7
white plaster
ALEJO SHUT THE METAL DOOR OF THE orange three-story house he shared with Gabriel and Benjamin and stepped out onto the lazy peaceful street only a Thursday morning in Coroico could deliver. And only in Coroico could one have a view such as Alejo and the guys had every time they stepped out their front door.
Their front steps lowered to a street with a steep downward slope, rushing down the mountain and leaving a breath-taking view of jade mountains peaks and scarlet flowering trees in the distance. Their street was just a narrow lane of stone stairs, really, used only for foot traffic. A corridor of tangerine and violet flowers grew wild in the dirt, forming a living rainbow along the center of the staircase.
Gabriel sat on the second step from the top, elbows propped on his knees, staring at the clouds misting up over the trees in the distance. He wore a turtleneck, as he had every day since the attack in Pakistan a month ago. His pale green eyes reflected the weak rays of the early morning sun, glazed, vacant, and bleak.
Alejo sighed and covered the few steps to slide down onto the cool concrete step next to him. “’Morning,” Alejo croaked, then cleared his throat. “I think we’re late to breakfast.”
Gabriel half-turned towards him and parted his lips, tried to think of something to say, then gave up. His gaze went back to the mist in the distance.
“You sure you want to come along this weekend?” Alejo pressed his lips together. “You can take more time off, you know.” After Alejo got the call from Ishmael in Peshawar, the twenty hour trip from here to Gabriel had seemed to take forever. Gabriel had recovered well since that day, but the playfulness seemed to be gone from his eyes. Most of his free time was spent praying or playing really melancholy music on the violin his parents gave him.
“I know,” Gabriel nodded. He swatted at a mosquito that was whining its way around his ear. “I rested a lot last week though, at Mom’s house. She about had a heart attack when you called her and told her about the skiing accident in France. Stupid person who installed barbed wire on the slopes.” His mouth twitched and some of the old sparkle glowed in Gabriel’s eyes. “I mean, what a freak accident, right? Running into wire at neck level while skiing?”
Now even Alejo almost laughed. That’s where Gabriel’s family thought he went when he disappeared with his friends for weeks at time: skiing in France. It felt good to smile. Gabriel seemed happy thinking about his mom, and the week at her house had fattened him up a bit.
“It’s just, I feel weird, you know,” Gabriel sighed, still batting at the stupid mosquito. “Like I shouldn’t be here. I mean, I see how pretty everything is here in Coroico, and I am so happy to be alive. But I should be dead.” One of his hands drifted to his throat and Gabriel’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “God gave me back my life, but now I feel that my life has to totally belong to him, you know? And what if I don’t do what he wants? What if I mess up?” Gabriel paused, and wrinkled his nose. “Does that make any sense?”
“God wouldn’t save your life just so you can feel all tortured about it,” Alejo frowned. “He saved you because he loves you, not so you can be his slave the rest of your life.”
Gabriel looked at Alejo, one sandy eyebrow raised. “Yeah, but imagine how ticked off he’ll be if after he saved my measly little life I sit around living for myself instead of doing everything I can to serve him.”
“Did Ishmael talk to you about all this?” Alejo asked, suddenly feeling cold as he remembered the trip with the Khan to the Tribal Area. “He’s not trying to tell you to go spend the rest of your redeemed life as a Taliban fighter or something, right?”
“No!” Gabriel actually smiled now and stood up, dusting off his sweat pants. “Can you see me with all those tough guys, wearing a turban? I can’t even grow a beard!”
Alejo had to laugh at the image of Gabriel wielding an AK-47 and smoking opium in the middle of the desert.
“Who knows?” Gabriel put his hands on both hips, and stretched a little, leaning to one side. “Whatever Allah has for me might even be good.”
“And it might even include Ambrin.”
Gabriel scoffed, but seemed quite pleased by the thought. “Let’s go over to the café,” he grinned. “I’m starving.”
Gabriel and Alejo joined the rest of the team in the café attached to the side of the modest Kory Tours office, which at present was sealed shut by a padlocked, roll-down metal door until office hours began. The tour agency was their cover here in Coroico, keeping them all employed in the eyes of this lazy tropical town. Benjamin also worked as a doctor in a little clinic sponsored by the government of Iran. Stalin spent his mornings at the local elementary school, teaching, of all things, Morality and Ethics class. The two of them now sat at one of the café’s small tables, leisurely spreading jam and margarine onto fresh bread from the corner store. Lázaro hummed behind the counter in the food prep space, sporting a white apron and pouring steaming organic espresso from Coroico into glazed ceramic mugs.
“Hey, good morning!” Lázaro called cheerfully. He kicked the mini refrigerator door closed after replacing the milk. “Come on and have breakfast! Fresh marraqueta bread, and I’m letting you all have some of my brownies.”
Alejo grinned and he and Gabriel scraped some chairs over to the tiny table with the others. Lázaro had learned to make awesome brownies and cheesecake from his mom back in Puerto Rico, and his desserts made the café really popular with tourists.
“Sure, I think I could choke down one of your brownies today.” Gabriel casually nodded his thanks as Lázaro plopped down a mug of strong creamy coffee in front of him. “Or two. Depends on how much I think you need to have your self-esteem improved today by me eating your food so you won’t, you know, think it’s gross or anything. Oww!”
A stale circle of bread flew through the air from where Lázaro had returned behind the counter and thumped Gabriel in the side of the head. Gabriel rubbed his head in mock pain as Alejo jerked crossly towards Lázaro. “Hey! He’s got to be careful, you know.” Alejo knew that the worst of Gabriel’s injury was healed, but he still felt protective, maybe guilty that something so awful had happened to a member of his team and he hadn’t been able to stop it.
“So,” Stalin mumbled around a large mouthful of bread smothered in jelly, “we’re gonna meet our clients half way up the trail, right?”
Alejo made a face at the sight of crumbs spewing across the table. “Yeah, all eight of the Paraguayans are going to meet us up there.” They would meet on the trail up to Uchumachi, the mountain top where Kory Tours led the wilderness survival tours that were completely booked every other week by Prism trainees. Everyone down here in Coroico thought the Kory Tour guys were up there teaching survival skills to tourists from all over South America. Uchumachi was isolated, perfect for Alejo and his team to train others.
This weekend would be extra busy, because there would be a special guest: Ishmael Khan, all the way from Pakistan. It had been a year since the Khan had attended one of their trainings, but he claimed that it was long overdue, that he had missed Bolivia and missed them all.
Alejo suspected that he mainly wanted to check on Gabriel, his “nephew”, who had given him quite a scare.
As the junior member of the leadership team, Lázaro was staying behind to man the café and Kory Tours. Lázaro didn’t mind terribly much, well aware that the gringa girls who came to the café for organic coffee thought he looked hot in the Irish tweed hat he always wore and that white apron. The café wouldn’t have any business without his brownies, anyway, so it was a logical choice.
“So, we’ll be back on Monday afternoon, then.” Alejo clasped hands briefly with Lázaro, and swung one of the streamlined North Face backpacks full of supplies they had prepared last night onto his back. “Tuesday we’ll start getting everything ready for the crusade.” Alejo and his team had already picked the spot for the operation against Salazar, a greasy sandwich kiosk in Cochabamba’s market where the man met his old college buddy every second Friday of the month. The street was packed and hemmed in by tall buildings. No one would ever know where the sniper’s bullet had come from.
“Call me with any news,” Alejo instructed half-way out the door, then turned back to snatch another brownie off the table. “Thanks for breakfast.”
“Anytime!” Lázaro called, tipping the brim of his hat to them all. As they left, Alejo could have sworn he saw Lázaro checking his reflection in the bamboo-framed mirror along the wall, flicking off stray bread crumbs with a satisfied smile.
It was 8:30 in the morning on Sunday when Alejo’s sat phone buzzed with a call. The group had just finished a discussion called “Ethical Questions Related to Justice” and were now lounging around debating and munching granola bars for breakfast. He pulled the phone out of the leg pocket of his pants, glancing at the screen for ID.
“Lázaro.” Alejo wandered from the clearing and entered the relative coolness of the forest at the top of the Uchumachi mountain. A thick cloud of mist still hung over the tops of the tangled foliage, not yet burned away by the mid-morning tropical sun.
“Alejo. I’ve got news.” Lázaro’s voice twitched with excitement. “The speaker for the crusade we’ve been planning….he’s down here. I saw him.”
Alejo blinked, suddenly at a loss for words. “Uh, he’s there? In Coroico?” Wasn’t that what Lázaro had just said? “Do you know why?”
“Yeah, you’re going to love this. It appears the guy is some kind of amateur sculptor and he entered that contest here in Coroico this weekend. I saw the guy walk by on the sidewalk this morning, when I was setting up the café. He’s with five staff members, and I followed them over to Henrich’s for breakfast. I got a table close to theirs out on the porch and heard, like, everything they said.” A long, long pause. “He’s going to Thailand again,” Lázaro said. “After her leaves Coroico, the day after tomorrow.”
Alejo clenched his teeth, hard. “Ok, I’m not sure you really want to hear the rest,” Lázaro rambled on, “but you’re going to anyway.” Gabriel appeared next to Alejo and Alejo punched the sat phone’s speaker button since they were away from the others and a thousand feet above Coroico. Lázaro’s voice blared distorted out of the phone’s miniature speakers.
“After they finished breakfast, I took a little stroll through the plaza to check out the sculpture exhibition, which I had not done since I’ve been so darn busy at work this weekend. I found, unfortunately, the statue that S…that the speaker entered in the exhibition and I am just sad that I’m the one who had to see it and be here describing it to you.”
“I need to get back to the group. Can you hurry this up?”
“I’m getting there,” Lázaro insisted crossly. “So the guy made this humongous statue out of white plaster or something. I think it’s supposed to be himself as some great benefactor. He’s got himself sitting on a chair, and then around him are four little boys on the ground, looking at him. There’s an older boy, like maybe twelve, sitting on the guy’s lap. There’s a lot of detail in this thing, so I go closer and see that all the kids have either a little notebook or backpack with their name engraved on it. Like I said, wish you were here.”
Alejo rubbed his temple and spoke before allowing himself to think. “Did any of them say Ruben?”
There was a long pause, and then Lázaro said, cautiously, “Now that’s freaky. How did you know? That’s the kid on the guy’s lap.”
Alejo’s head reeled but he managed to focus, fingers digging into the phone. Rage filled him, and he let it, anything to keep away the tears he really didn’t want Gabriel seeing.
Gabriel leaned against a fat banana plant, visually disturbed. “What are you going to do, che?”
“I’ll call you back.” Alejo flipped the phone shut and jammed it into his pocket. He and Gabriel stared at each other for a moment, and then Alejo whirled around and began to pace. Fallen eucalyptus leaves perfumed the air as his sandals crushed them into the ground.
“We have to move the crusade up,” he told Gabriel, still pacing.
“I agree. We have to do it before the trip to Thailand.”
Alejo slammed a fist into the trunk of the banana plant, swearing loudly. Ruben! To think that after all this time, Salazar still remembered, was still gloating. And why shouldn’t he? No one cared, no one was going to make him pay.
Where was justice? Apparently, hiding her eyes.
No, God is justice, and his eyes are always on the earth, to reward the righteous and punish the wicked. And right now, I’m his hands. God help me if I just sit here and watch without doing something.
Gabriel was trying to calm him down. “Listen, che, I’ve got all the equipment we need at Boris’ house. I can hike into town and find a new spot. I don’t need a lot of time to do calculations.”
Alejo narrowed his eyes at Gabriel, feeling possessed. He tried to concentrate, running through the same arguments he had had with himself on too many occasions.
Are you really thinking of killing the guy? Murder is a sin.
Yeah…but so is allowing the innocent to be hurt or killed.
Are there other options?
Let the national authorities punish him according to the law...
That really hadn’t gone so well in the past. Salazar and anyone with the power to do anything were constantly scratching each others’ backs. A total indifference to his activities had only made Salazar more bold in breaking the law, knowing no one would care.
“No.” Alejo stopped in his tracks and held up one hand. “In Cochabamba the sniper could easily get away. It can’t work here in Coroico.” Gabriel seemed crushed. “Coroico is too small,” Alejo continued, “too nosy. Everyone sees everything, and the population here is too small for us to avoid suspicion in the investigation. But I have an idea. Tell me honestly if you can do this.”
He explained his idea to Gabriel, whose lips twitched into a smile, then broadened into a genuine grin as he received the challenge to put his considerable talents into action—now. Gabriel let out a low whistle and looked at Alejo.
“Sounds great, but there’s always the possibility of more people being onsite besides just the speaker. The staff, for sure, would be collateral.”
“Of course,” Alejo said. “Let them be collateral. They know, I’m sure of it. They’re with him almost 24/7.”
“Oh, this is going to be fun!” Gabriel’s eyes were shining again, and he pounded Alejo on the shoulder before turning back towards the clearing. “I’ll get some stuff from Boris’ place. Then, I’m going to mail a package.”
Gabriel marched happily back towards the Khan and the other guys, probably to share the good news that they would get to be part of the operation as a bonus to the weekend.
Alejo slowly slid down against the trunk of the sleek banana plant and buried his face into his arms.