“The bed by the window,” she said in an even voice. “I like to be near the light.”
Mack nodded, dropping the knapsack on the other bed. And then he kicked off his shoes and sank down onto her bed, stretching out and placing his hands behind his head. “Good. I like this one better too.” And his eyes were challenging.
Her eyes met his challenge for a long, unwavering moment. Then she sank down in one of the chairs. “I want you to stay here while I contact the RAO.”
“The who?”
“The RAO. The … God, I can’t remember what the letters stand for, and I don’t really give a damn. It’s the largest group of rebels. They’re the ones working the most with the CIA—they should know where Van Zandt is.”
“And you want me to stay here while you talk to them? Forget it, Maggie.”
“Pulaski, we can’t be sure they haven’t been warned about you. Your voice is distinctive—all they’d have to do is hear that rasp and recognize you.”
“Then I won’t talk. I can be discreet, Maggie. But I’m not going to let you go into a lion’s den alone.”
“I don’t need some goddamned man watching out for me!” The nervous tension that had been simmering within her all morning ignited, and fury lit through her like a forest fire. “Don’t think that sleeping with me gave you some sort of rights over me. I can take care of myself, and I’m not about to start relying on some insecure male who’s got something to prove and thinks he owns me. No one owns me, mister, and no one is responsible for my well-being but me.”
He remained calm and unmoved during her tirade. “Got anything else to say, Superwoman?” he taunted gently.
Her anger evaporated as swiftly as it had come. “All right. I’m sorry for flying off the handle. Why do you want to come with me?”
“Because it’s my butt you’re trying to save. I figure I have some responsibilities to myself, even if you won’t let me have any toward you. It would be nice if you could look upon this as a cooperative effort—you save me when the need arrives, I return the favor when the time comes. But I know you have problems with that, and that’s okay. I just don’t want to sit in the Holiday Inn waiting to hear what’s happened to you.”
Maggie laughed, a forced laugh, but a laugh all the same. “Tell you what. Keep your mouth shut and your shades on. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re my husband, Jack Portman.”
“God, we’re back to him again?”
“We’re back to him again. I don’t suppose I’ll fool the RAO, but unless the informer at Third World Causes has been amazingly efficient, they shouldn’t suspect you at all.”
“You think there’s an informer? Is that how people managed to find us time after time? Is that why Peter Wallace wound up dead?” They were reasonable enough questions, ones to which Maggie had no answers.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m being paranoid again. But you’re not going to stay put and let me find out, are you?”
“You know me pretty well by now.”
Maggie shrugged. She did know him pretty well by now, and she knew he was determined to stick to her like glue. “Well, then, we’re just going to have to find out together. Let’s go.”
He’d already slid his feet back into his battered Nikes. “Yes, ma’am. I’m ready.”
The headquarters of the RAO had been moved, at the Honduran Government’s polite but inflexible request, from the high-rise office building in downtown Tegucigalpa to an unprepossessing location across the river in one of the less desirable neighborhoods. Everything looked prosaically normal, the neatly painted lettering on the plaque outside the soft pink building, the children playing in the streets. Even the armed soldiers standing guard outside the main entrance were relaxed and smiling. Until Maggie asked for Enrique Castanasta in her liquid Spanish.
“Who wants him?” the suddenly hostile soldier demanded in thickly accented Spanish. The expression in his dark, distrustful eyes suggested that no mere female could have anything of importance to discuss with such an illustrious person.
She hesitated. On the one hand, if she gave them her phony name it would give them some measure of protection. There was a good chance someone at Third World Causes was far too talkative and then she’d be in trouble. But Enrique Castanasta was not the sort to grant interviews to any American turista who happened to show up, even accompanied by a hulking, mute male. She was far more likely to get to see him and to find out where Van Zandt was if she told him a variant of the truth.
“Margrethe Bennett of Third World Causes, Ltd.,” she said. Mack didn’t make a sound, didn’t move a muscle, but she could feel his sudden tension. “This is my companion, Jack Portman. We’re good friends of Jeffrey Van Zandt, and we’re hoping General Castanasta could help us find him.”
The names meant something to him; she could tell by the flickering of his basilisk eyes. But which names—Van Zandt and Third World Causes? Or Margrethe Bennett and Mack’s previously used alias? Or all of them? His reply wasn’t illuminating. “Wait here.”
Maggie stood there with the afternoon sun beating down on her bare head, wishing she’d managed to arm herself with a pair of mirrored sunglasses like Mack’s. Her rumpled jumpsuit was already sticking to her in the heat, her feet hurt, and her nerves were strung as tightly as high wire.
“Why the hell did you give him your real name?” Mack muttered in her ear. “Weren’t you taking a big chance?”
“It was either that or not get in to see Castanasta at all,” she replied without turning. “Don’t bug me, Portman. I know what I’m doing.”
“I sure as hell hope so.” He stepped back as the soldier reappeared in the doorway.
“He’ll see you. Alone,” he added, waving his machine gun as they both stepped forward.