Where There's Smoke

“Lara, you okay?”

She nodded her covered head. “Do you think we’ll be stopped again?” she asked the priest, her voice muffled by the scarf.

“Probably not, but if we are, we’ll stick to the same story. Keep your head down and try to look like you’re grieving.”

“I am grieving,” she said.

From the backseat Key told her to keep the pistol ready to fire if necessary. She nodded acknowledgment, but said nothing more.

At one time the population of Ciudad Central had exceeded one million. Key doubted that half that many lived there now. Even taking into account the lateness of the hour, the city appeared deserted. The streets were dark, as most city streets would be past midnight. But these streets were beyond dark and sleepy—they were dead.

Structures that had once been thriving businesses and gracious homes were now battle-scarred shells. Nearly every window in the city had been boarded up. No light shone through those few that hadn’t been. Lawns that marauders hadn’t completely trampled were in a sad state of neglect. Vines and undergrowth grew unchecked. The jungle was reclaiming territory that had belonged to it long before man had striven to tame it.

On walls and fences and every other conceivable surface had been scrawled graffiti advocating one junta or another. The only point on which all sides seemed to agree was their hatred for the United States. Cartoons depicted the president in all manner of disgusting and humiliating postures. The American flag had been desecrated in countless ways. Key had been in many countries hostile to the United States, but he’d never felt the antipathy as strongly as here, where it was as powerful as the stench of raw sewage.

“Oh, my God!”

Lara’s gasp drew Key’s attention forward. A woman’s body was hanging by the neck from a traffic-light cable. Her mouth was a gaping, black, fly-infested hole.

“Some of El Corazón’s handiwork,” the priest explained to his horrified passengers as they passed beneath the swaying corpse. “Montesangren women are valued as soldiers. They’re not spared military duty because of their gender. When they’re found guilty of an offense, they’re dealt with just as harshly as their male counterparts.”

“What was her crime?” Lara’s voice was husky with revulsion.

“She was exposed as a spy who carried secrets to Escávez. They cut out her tongue. She drowned in her own blood. Then they hung her body in that busy intersection. It’s a warning to everyone who sees it not to cross El Corazón del Diablo.”

Considering the risks Father Geraldo was taking to help them, Key didn’t blame him for his closet drinking.

“Here we are,” he said as he pulled the jeep into a walled courtyard. “You’ll find it changed since you were here, Mrs. Porter. The few Montesangrens who are still faithful to the church are afraid to have it known. I hold daily Masses, but more frequently than not, I’m the only one in attendance. That makes for empty offering plates.”

Key alighted and looked around. The courtyard was enclosed on three sides by stone walls covered with bougainvillea vines. When Father Geraldo noticed Key’s interest in the arched opening through which they’d entered, he said, “Until three years ago, there was a very beautiful and intricate wrought-iron gate. It was requisitioned by the rebels.”

“Sounds like the Civil War when the Confederate army made cannonballs from iron fences. What’d the rebels use your gate for?”

“Pikes. They severed the heads of the generals of Escávez’s army, impaled them on the pikes, and left them in the city square until they rotted. That was shortly after you left, Mrs. Porter.”

She didn’t quail or turn pale or faint. “I’d like to go inside,” she said in a level voice. “I’d forgotten how ferocious the mosquitoes here can be.”

Key admired her fortitude. Maybe the danger they’d experienced tonight, coupled with seeing evidence of so many atrocities of war, had inured her. Then he reminded himself as they carried their gear toward the entrance of the rectory that she’d experienced an atrocity firsthand.

One of the encompassing walls of the courtyard doubled as the exterior wall of the church. It was taller by two-thirds than the other two walls. Typical of Spanish architecture, the sanctuary had a bell tower, although the bell was missing.

Another of the walls formed the exterior of the school, which Father Geraldo sadly explained was no longer used. “I wished to teach catechism, but all the various juntas wanted th

e children indoctrinated to violence and retaliation, which are incongruous with Christ’s teachings. The nuns were faithful, but feared for their lives. Parents, under the threat of execution, were afraid to send their children to class. Eventually the enrollment dwindled to nothing. I closed the school and requested that the nuns be reassigned to the States. There had been so many clergymen executed that all elected to leave.

“For a while the vacant school was used to house orphans. There were dozens of them, victims of the war. Their parents had either been killed or had abandoned them to join the fighters. One day soldiers arrived in trucks and transported the children to another place. No one would ever tell me where they were taken.

“This,” he said, unlocking a heavy wooden door, “is where I live and do what little work I’m still permitted to do.”

To Key, the rectory was extremely claustrophobic, but he was accustomed to having the sky as his ceiling. The priest’s quarters were a warren of small rooms with narrow windows and low, exposed-beam ceilings. Key had to duck his head to pass through the doorways. His shoulders barely cleared the walls of the dim corridors. More than once the toes of his boots caught on the seams of the uneven stone floor.

“I’m sorry,” the priest said when Key tripped and bumped into a wall. “The rectory was built by and for European monks much smaller than you.”

“No wonder they prayed all the time. They didn’t have room to do anything else.”

Father Geraldo indicated that they precede him through a connecting doorway. “I have refreshments in the kitchen. You’ll be glad to know that it was modernized in the late fifties.”

By contemporary American standards, the kitchen was woefully outdated, but it was centuries ahead of the other rooms of the rectory. They sat down at a round table while Father Geraldo served them fruit, cheese, bread, and slices of a canned ham one of his relatives in the States had smuggled to him. Out of deference to his meager hoard, they ate sparingly.