Ted Bell - Spy

Harry didn’t pick one up, but he’d heard on the street you could buy a counterfeit Brazilian passport from Brazilian officials for a measly $5,000. And that passport, under the current waiver program created by some benevolent genius in Washington, opened the portals to the fabulous Magic Kingdom lying immediately to the north of the Mexican border. The waiver made a valid Brazilian passport all you needed to travel throughout the United States.

Think about that one for a minute and your head will explode.

He was pretty sure the blossoming suicide bombers hanging around the mosque had figured that one out long ago. If you could afford five grand for a passport, you didn’t need to worry about sneaking across the Mexican border to blow shit up in Houston or Chicago or wherever. Just hop a flight to Miami. That’s pretty much what Harry was thinking about when the girl had showed up on the stool right next to his.

He’d gone into the first bar he’d seen that looked air-conditioned. No windows, so it was dark inside, too, and he’d felt all safe and cozy inside sipping his cerveza fria with a whisky back at the bar. Then, at some point, a girl was sitting next to him. A nurse, she said. It was her day off. What was her name? Caparina. Yeah, that was her name, pronounced like that Brazilian drink he liked, the one made with limes and Cachaca, grain alcohol distilled from sugar cane. Lethal.

Caiparinha. Some kind of butterfly, she’d said it meant in English.

So, what the hell, he’d bought her a few beers, not many, only a hundred or so. She’d asked him if he wanted to get busy and he said, yeah why not?

Why not? Jesus, he knew why not now. She had a torn Wanted Dead or Alive poster in her free hand and Harry immediately understood that he was up creek number two without a paddle. Now that the sun was up she was comparing his face with the Xeroxed one on the wanted poster. There was a small painting of the Holy Virgin stuck on a nail just above Harry’s head. Caparina smiled at him, then reached up and slapped the poster over the painting, the nail head sticking right through Harry’s forehead.

A warm breast brushed his cheek as she settled back down, kind of squishing herself onto his lap.

“Mmm-pf!” Harry said, and she looked at him for a long minute and then pulled the gun out of his mouth. The oily aftertaste was pretty bad, but at least he could work his jaw. He thought she was being a good girl, but then he saw her reach for the cell phone on the night table.

“Don’t do that!” Harry said.

“Porque no?” she replied, looking again at the poster with the big fat number prominently displayed on the bottom. Harry tried hard as he could but he was darned if he could come up with a zippy and compelling answer to that question. Why shouldn’t she call the telephone number on the poster and collect the reward? Seriously. Why the hell not? In fact, there were many thousands of reasons why she should do exactly that. Hell, if their roles were reversed he would do exactly the same—

“You’re pretty,” he decided to say, letting her have both the pearly whites and the sleepy brown eyes. Harry was an okay looking guy. He’d been told he looked like Bruce Willis with hair. He didn’t see it, but frankly, whatever. Some times it worked, some times it didn’t. This time, thank you Jesus, it did. She hesitated, then put the phone back and looked at him, that cute little smile on her face. Caparina could obviously tell Mr. Happy was back in town and restless; maybe looking for a place to settle in for a spell.

She got busy. You know, one for the road, after all she had nothing to lose and Harry certainly did not. He was reduced to thinking of turning himself in, getting the reward, and then escaping again. Admittedly, it was a plan with a lot of holes.

He meant what he said. She was pretty. She was a drop-dead babe even sober, meaning when he was sober not her. He looked at her face, too, as she started rocking back and forth on top of him, grinding away at him until he was hard as stone. She had what Harry the world-traveler called a pretty version of the U.N. face. Part Chinese, part Indian, part mestizo, part brown skin gal. She had long purplish black hair, full lips, and amazing breasts that were now swinging dangerously close to his lips.

“Hey,” he said, “C’mon on.”

“What?”

“You know what.”

“Beg me,” she said.

“What?”

“Beg.”

“I don’t beg.”

“Oh, yes you do, Mr. Harry Brock.”

“All right, I’ll beg.”

“I don’t hear you.”

“Please.”

“Louder.”

“I can’t. Somebody will hear us.”

“We’re in a deserted mosque, Harry. No one can hear us.”

“Wait. We’re at my place?”

“Of course. You don’t remember?”

“No. I mean, yeah. I sort of knew. I guess I forgot. All mosques look pretty much the same to a guy like me.”

“You want to kiss my titties, Harry? This one? Or, this one?”

“Yes. Both.”

“Beg me, Mr. Brock.”

“Please. I beg you. I’m not kidding. I am sincerely begging here. This could be it for me. The swan song of Harry Brock.”

“There. Happy?”

“Oh god, yes. Now the other one.”

“Be gentle, Harry. That’s a good boy.”

WHEN HARRY WOKE up for the second time that morning he realized he had a cigarette in his mouth and involuntarily took a puff. Nothing in recent memory had ever tasted so good. The girl reached over and plucked it from his lips so he could expel the smoke. Shit. He was still cuffed to the damn bed. He must have dropped off for a couple of minutes. The girl took a drag herself and then she said, “I know a joke.”

“Yeah? What?”

“A man is in bed with a woman. After they make love, the man says, ‘Do you smoke after sex?’ and the woman smiles at him and says, ‘I don’t know, I never looked.’ ”

Harry burst out laughing.

“That’s pretty good,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Fell asleep, huh?”

“For about twenty minutes.”

“Did you call?”

“Mmm.”

“You called? Holy shit. Aw, Christ, Caparina.”

“Calm down, Harry.”

“Calm down?”

“I didn’t call who you think I called.”

“The number on the poster. For the reward.”

“No.”

“Ah. Well, okay, who did you call?”

“My ex-husband. He’s on his way.”

“Your ex-husband is coming here? Now?”

“What are you doing down here in Brazil, Harry? You’re obviously an American. You have no identification. No passport. Nothing. Only this gun and a few thousand pesos. You don’t speak Portuguese. Or even Spanish.”

“I’m a tourist.”

“You came all this way to buy those shitty Nikes? Six hundred tourists die every year in this crappy town. And that’s only the reported number.”

“That’s why I’ve got the gun.”

“I’ve got the gun, Harry. Last night, when you were drunk, you said something about las Medianoches.”

“Really? What’d I say about them?”

“That the jihadistas had your friend. You came down here to look for your friend, Harry? Who is your friend?”

“Why is this important to you?”

“Hassan can help you I think.”

“Hassan? Who the hell is Hassan? Every second guy you meet around here is called Hassan.”

“My ex-husband. He’s a good guy, speaks perfect English. Very tough. Not everyone in this country is intimidated by the Mafia-Araby.”

“How can he help me?”

“You can help him.”

“Why the fuck should I do that?”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

“Not necessarily. Anyway, who’s your enemy?”

“The enemy of my people. The jihadists in the jungle who call themselves Las Medianoches. This bastard Papa Top.”