CHAPTER SEVEN

China wakes to the sound of dripping water and crows fussing outside her window. She is on a hard cot in a bare room with a ray of dusty light parading across the room. What day was it?

She is no longer tied up but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t still a prisoner. No doubt the door is locked, and she will stay here until they decide what to do with her.

She stands up to straighten her back and starts her yoga and stretching exercises like she does religiously all her adult life.

After an hour, she goes to the door and bangs on it. “I need to go to the bathroom,” she yells through the small window of bars in the middle of the door. But there is no answer.

She paces and talks to herself, going over her options, what she knows and doesn’t know and the hours pass without so much as a meal to keep her energy up.

“Moises, you bastard,” she yells at the top of her lungs. “At least give me some food and let me go to the bathroom.”

The door clicks. She hears it distinctly. It takes her by surprise because she hasn’t realized that the door is electronic. It looks old and crudely made. She also realizes that they have heard her, which means that they are listening. That makes sense. They want the codes. At least somebody did.

She checks the door and it swings open. Nobody is outside her cell, so she creeps out and down the hall to the right, trying to remember the layout of the farm from her early days when she has trained there.

She finds a bathroom and quickly makes use of it. She realizes that it is unlikely she will escape so she may as well be comfortable. Time to find a kitchen and some food to eat.

She walks boldly down the middle of the hall and finally comes to the cafeteria. It is deserted. She walks into the kitchen at the back of the room and immediately smells the coffee.

“The coffee is for me,” Moises says. “Your tea is on the table.”

China walks over to the kitchen table and sits down. “Do I get a last meal or what?”

“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” Moises says. “You can eat as many meals as you like. The fridge is over there, the stove works and the cupboards are full. I just did the groceries this morning.”

“But I can’t leave.”

“No, you can’t.”

“So, I am a prisoner here.”

“You made yourself a prisoner the moment you landed at Asuncion airport.”

Silence.

“What are you going to do with me?”

“They want the codes.”

“We swore not to give it to them. Neither side.”

“Until you came back,” Moises says.

“How many are left?”

“Four,” Moises says. “Enrique and Lourdes died last year in a car accident.”

“So, they died of natural causes.”

“Not at all. Their bodies were mutilated beyond what a car accident would do.”

“They were tortured for the codes?”

“Yes.”

“But I have them.”

“They don’t know who has them or even if anybody has them. They are simply checking every possibility until they get their answers.”

“Did they tell them about me?”

“They told them about me,” Moises says. “They thought that I was the one with the codes.”

“Why did they think that?”

“Because that’s what I told them.”

“So why are you still alive, Moises? How did they not get to you?”

“They did get to me. But they can’t kill me because I have the codes. They’re in my head, you see. I have a photographic memory, as everyone knows, and I committed them to memory.”

“But you don’t have the codes. I never let you see them exactly for that reason.”

“They don’t know that.”

China is silent.

“I’m an old man just waiting to die,” Moises says. “I wanted to make sure that they believed me about the codes only being in my head and then I would make sure my death was public and spectacular so there would be no doubt.”

“And they would believe the codes were gone forever.”

“Yes,” Moises says. “And then you decided to pay us a visit.”