T. Parker - The Jaguar

“Tell her what you need to know, Bradley. And please, save me a little room at the end. I’ll write something brief to Owens. Owens can help.”

Bradley stared down at the maps while Mike made coffee. Bradley could hear the buzz of the grinder downstairs. When Finnegan came back a few minutes later Bradley had found what looked like a very promising place where he could meet Erin near the Castle.

“This, here,” he said, pointing to a small circle with tiny stylized waves sketched within. “It’s a cenote?”

“Yes. Just as I have indicated.”

“Five hundred yards from the compound.”

“I’m confident of that measurement.”

“So the cenote is there. Even if your source material is fifty years old, that cenote will be there.”

“Bradley, the cenote is five centuries old. Fresh water, coming up from the aquifer. Fresh water, sustaining thousands of the Maya in that area, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Mike went downstairs to get the coffee and Bradley slowly and carefully composed the letter. It thrilled him and frightened him that their lives now depended on written words. Every movement of the pen seemed freighted with consequence, every word a potential miracle or catastrophe. He had spent years writing poems, trying to get one like Neruda’s but he never even approximated one.

Now he told her, concisely and clearly, where he would be waiting. Using the map, he described the cenote’s exact location so that she could find it without difficulty or doubt. He gave her two consecutive days to be there-day ten, which was the ransom day, and the day preceding it. Wednesday. Tuesday. He would be there, all twenty-four hours of each day. He would be there. It was not a promise or an approximation but a fact. Not until he had finished did he write two lines to tell her he loved her more than he loved anyone or anything on Earth. I will come to you, like you asked me to in your song. He left room for Mike. Then he turned over the swatch of fabric and faithfully re-created Mike’s map of the compound and the surrounding grounds.

When he was finished he checked the map and read the directions over very carefully, then looked up at Mike. “Can we send all three birds? Three messages, three maps, triple our chances?”

“I was about to suggest it.”

“They’ll take what, four days to get there? If they can make it through the hurricane at all?”

“She’s only a category two,” said Finnegan.

“Write your part to Owens.”

He stood and handed the pen to Mike.

When the letters and maps were finished and rolled and fitted into the containers, Bradley held the birds upside down one at a time while Mike fixed the capsules to their legs. He gave each container a little tug when he was finished. The birds felt warm and capable to Bradley and they allowed themselves to be handled. Bradley said a silent prayer for each one, trying to customize it for the individual bird.

“Bradley,” Mike said softly. “You can pray but you will never be answered because God does not listen. He does not control the lives of men. He only influences them through intermediaries. And never because of a prayer.”

“What makes you think I was praying?”

“Thoughts can be loud.”

“More of your bullshit. I’ll pray if I want.”

Just before midnight Mike opened the attic window. The air was heavy but the rain had stopped. Bradley held the warm strong Samson in his hands and kissed the top his head, then he reached through the window and released him into the night.

In the taxi early that morning Bradley called Hood on the satellite phone and told him that he had found Erin. He described the Castle, the compound, and their larger geographical positioning within the geography of Yucatan. He told Hood the GPS coordinates.

“That tracks,” said Hood. “Armenta is bringing me to Merida-less than two hundred miles from Erin. How many people do you have?”

“Twenty-four. But Charlie, get this-I don’t think I’ll even need them.”

“Talk.”

“I’ve found a way to communicate with her. I’ve told her to go into the jungle the day before the ransom is due. There’s a path and a cenote. All she has to do is get a few seconds to herself. She’s got help. She’s made a friend. Anytime she can make it is okay. We’ll be there all day. Caroline, Cleary, and I will be waiting.”

“She’s got a phone?”

“No phones. Pigeons. Long story.”

“Pigeons?”

Bradley’s heart soared though somewhat drunkenly. He had almost forgotten what hope felt like. “It’s going to work, Charlie. We’re going to pull this off. She’s going to be all right. Have you heard from her? What did she say? Please tell me everything she said. Don’t leave out one word.”

Father Edgar Ciel keyed his way into Erin’s room that evening and gently pulled the door shut behind him. “You asked to see me.”

“Yes, thank you. Please come in and sit.”

Ciel was a tall man, though slender, and he crossed the room with an angular grace, watching her closely as he passed her to sit in the old armchair. He wore a priest’s short-sleeve black shirt with the white stiff collar and black jacket, pants and shoes. His crucifix was large and silver. There was no gun on his hip that Erin could see and she wondered if in all of her trauma and exhaustion that first day she had only imagined it. He was pale. Behind his wire-rimmed glasses his eyes were blue and luminous.

“I want you to ask the Catholic Church to intervene on my behalf,” she said.

“The Vatican is a bureaucracy,” he said with a small smile. His voice was soft and clear and unhurried.

“It’s supposed to be the greatest church in the world. How complicated is a kidnapped woman? I am a Catholic and proud of it. I have confessed a million times. Do something, Father. I saw them feed a man to the leopards. The devil walks this castle free and proud. Maybe more than one of them. You have sensed this, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do something.”

Ciel stood and went to the window and looked out. Past him Erin saw the fronds whipping and a dark layer of clouds sitting high in the southeastern sky. “We must deal with practical realities, Mrs. McKenna. We must deal with your problem directly. I have spoken to Benjamin. He says he will not release you until he has received what he wants. He will not say exactly what he wants. To me, he seems to have less interest in the ransom than he did a few days ago.”

“He wants me to sing for him.”

“He is expecting you to sing tonight before the Jaguars. But he assuredly wants more than that.”

“Why does it feel like you’re on his side? Are you? Am I the problem here? A distraction from your fundraising efforts for the Legion of Christ?”

He turned to her and she saw the dampness in his eyes and the quiver of his chin. “I will do anything in my power to make sure you leave this place alive. My church is thousands of miles from here, and my God thousands more. I am working for your freedom. Until you are free I can offer you comfort in the Holy Spirit.”

She remembered Father O’Hora again, from when she was just a girl. He had the same kind eyes as Ciel and the same near hush about him. He had always seemed both faithful and hapless. But he was the man you could trust. He was the man who would do what God would do. God’s agent. Legionnaire for Christ.

She looked into Ciel’s eyes and remembered O’Hora’s eyes at her father’s funeral and they were the same in their deep empathy and powerlessness. She remembered despising that powerlessness then, and sensing for the first time that the affairs of God and men were separate. She remembered comparing her father to Father O’Hora, and deciding that her father had been the better man-at once joyful and profane and intensely emotional-not a man caged by faith and controlled by doubt. And she remembered thinking that God himself would strike her dead at age thirteen for such thoughts.