Ted Bell - Spy

“I know the answer,” the boy had said, deep vertical creases of concentration forming above his long, already commanding nose. “Wait, it will come.”

“I am patient beyond words,” the witch said.

“If I could save only one thing,” Muhammad Top said, “it would be the fire.”

“Yes,” she whispered, placing her hand atop the boy’s head. “Guard the fire,” she whispered. “You must save the fire.”

He had made her words his life’s calling.

The big man now stood, rose to his full height, six and a half feet, stretched, yawned, and walked through his opened bedroom door and out onto his circular veranda. A gourd hung from a peg beside the door and he dipped it into a wooden bucket of water. He drank. He placed his hands upon the wooden railing still wet with dew and gazed down with complete satisfaction at the tranquil scene below.

Enraptured by the sight of his sleeping treetop village, he almost missed the black scorpion moving swiftly along the railing toward his left hand. The little beast was feeling aggressive, waving his lobsterlike pincers in the air. The poisonous jointed tail was held aloft, curved over his back, ready to strike. He’d found one of these ferocious and deadly monsters in his boot yesterday. He was ill disposed toward them this morning.

He lifted his hand a few centimeters to allow the insect passage beneath it and then slammed his hand down on the rail and smashed the creature with a satisfying crunch beneath his palm.

Life was short, but good, he sighed to himself, scraping the remains of the insect from his hand.

Swirling spirals of mist rose from the damp jungle floor. The damp air created perfect halos around the bobbing torches, the countless fireflies of light streaming below. These were the servants and guard changes. His men rushed with guttering torches across the suspended ropewalks linking the circular thatched and tin rooftops of varying diameter below. These were called roundhouses. The larger ones, like the mosque, were built nearer the ground.

Wisps of smoke curled from chimneys, mingling with the mist. In two of the larger roundhouses, built only fifty feet in the air, fires were now being stoked for cooking. Fans drew off smoke during working hours, to prevent even a wisp from escaping the canopy above.

The day was beginning.

Around the great blue dome of the central mosque (the only tiled roof he allowed) were the larger circles of the great common roundhouses and storage rooms built in the last few years. They provided barracks for House Guards, food and water storerooms, dining, emergency generators, and, of course, vast stores of weapons and ammunition stockpiles.

Above these, smaller circular structures housed officers of sufficient rank to warrant private quarters. Near the river, a sick bay was adjacent to a small room for special prisoners to be interrogated.

Viewed from this position high above, the village resembled, he had always thought, a bizarre flowering, a profusion of manmade silver mushrooms, growing in the thick fragrant air amongst the towering dark trunks of the Amazonian trees. Poisonous mushrooms, he liked to think, yes, poisonous to be sure. To the core.

In the beginning, when all the magic spread out below him was but a vision, he had chosen a simple Spanish name for his hidden refuge in the rain forest, La Selva Negra. It was, he decided, the perfect name for an empire erected in dark hatred.

The Black Jungle.

19

WEST TEXAS

Y ou think that phone will ring if you just stare at it long enough?”

“No, I don’t, Daisy. It was a crazy idea, going down there and talking to that Mexican boy. I could have easily gotten us both killed. I don’t know what I was thinking. Plain stupid, I guess.”

“Well, stop staring at it then. Listen, why don’t you go on outdoors, honey? Take a nice long walk. Go riding or something. You haven’t ridden Rocket in a month or more now. He could use a little giddy-up and go and so could you. For Pete’s sake, Franklin.”

“I don’t want to even look at a damn horse.”

“Is something wrong, darlin’? You’ve been acting funny all week.”

“No. Nothing’s wrong.”

“Listen. Those boys that rode down to Mexico were volunteers. Every last one of them. They all wanted to go. Their families wanted them to go! Look for their sisters or their girlfriends or whatever. All you did was swear them in. You thought you were doing the right thing and you did your duty. That’s all anyone can ask of a body.”

“Yep.”

“You think you should have gone with them. Well, you couldn’t. You’ve got an obligation to protect this town. And God knows it needs protecting. You went down there and tried to do something for those girls and it didn’t work. You’ll think of something else.”

“Yep.”

“You don’t want to talk. Fine. Go do something then. Turn on the television. Read a book. Dance a jig. You’ll go flat crazy sitting around here all afternoon staring at a telephone for lord knows what reason. Or, I will.”

“I am sorry to be such a bother to you,” Franklin said, getting slowly up from his armchair. “I reckon I’ll go on into the office now. Got some work to do.”

He plucked his short brim off the rack and started for the front door.

“Franklin, it’s Sunday afternoon. This is time you should be with your family.”

“I was trying.”

“I ain’t never seen you like this, honey. Don’t say hi to anybody at church. Don’t smile when you shake hands with the preacher. These are your friends, Franklin. Folks who love and admire you.”

“I’ll see you later on then, Daisy. I’ll take the pickup in case you decide to go on over to your sister’s in the good car.”

“You planning on being home for supper?”

“I can’t rightly say at the moment.”

“What can you say?”

“That’s all I can say.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too, baby girl.”

FRANKLIN DROVE slowly into town. Wasn’t any traffic to speak of, it being Sunday. Just a couple of good old boys heading out to the Wagon Wheel to catch the second half of the Cowboys on the wide screen. The sun still had a ways to go before it set down and that gave him a little lift. He’d do some deskwork, take his mind off things. Keep his eye off the clock.

He figured he’d try and get that report done, a short version of the one they had asked him to write up here about a month ago. It had been sitting on his desk, staring at him long enough. Just like high school papers, wait till the day before something’s due to write it. Most folks never got out of high school their whole lives he thought, but that was just his opinion.

Some time ago, he’d written what they called a White Paper. It was on illegal immigration. This he’d done at the request of the Texas Sheriff’s Association. He wasn’t special, everybody got asked to write the same thing and send it to some bureaucrat in Austin, whether they lived near the border or not. Well, he sent his in. Next thing you knew, somebody or other up in Washington had called up the governor’s office about his report.

The lady in Austin who’d called him here back in November had said something about how they were fixing to have a big government terrorism pow-wow down in Key West, Florida. State Department, CIA, Border Patrol, and who knows who all else was supposed to be there. Part of the program or presentation or whatever you want to call it was going to be about border problems with Mexico apparently.

The woman from the capital said they’d be real interested in a short version of what he’d put in his paper. The part about increased violence along the border and anti-Americanism. Border Patrol officers getting shot at, stoned on a daily basis by kids heaving rocks. Weapons coming across through tunnels. Drugs by the ton, above and below ground. And the outright lawlessness that prevailed in some of this territory just south of the border. How it was spreading this way.