*******

“Suhara!”

Lynn grabbed his hand as he extended it and shook it heartily, smiling warmly. Then, to his great surprise, she pulled him forward and put her arms around him in a quick embrace. “It’s been so long,” she said softly. “Been a long time since I seen an old friend.” Her voice reverted for a moment from her usual clipped speech into her old Chicago accent. Then she straightened and took a step back, folding her arms across her chest.

“It is good to see you too, Lynn,” Suhara said simply. “It has been many years.” His face did not betray any emotion but his voice trembled slightly.

“Well, don’t just stand there...have a seat!” Lynn slipped into an uncharacteristically warm attitude as she seated herself behind the desk and placed casually folded hands on her desk. After Suhara sat down she asked, “So how was your Resident work in Japan? You didn’t write very often.”

“It was sufficient to keep my mind busy,” he said, glancing around the room, noting the few alterations that had been made while he was gone. The pictures of her husband and children as well as a few more newspaper headlines were the only changes. Lynn did not have a very fluid personality. “I made a few friends among some of the dieka there. They are friendlier and more willing to listen than most.”

Lynn smiled. “Maybe they were just struck by Suhara-sama’s brilliant grasp of detective work.”

Suhara lowered his eyes and blushed ever so slightly, the picture of modesty.

“What brings you back to Headquarters, Suhara? Besides visiting old friends, of course.” Her eyes actually sparkled.

“I thought I might continue teaching again,” he said slowly. “I have missed it greatly.”

Lynn’s face lit up. “Excellent! We can always use you, Suhara. Your Zen teachings are always a great asset to our detectives. Do you have anyone picked out yet?”

“I have not been here in several years...I have fallen out of touch with most of the agents,” he said with a touch of solemnity. “I see many new faces...but of course this is a good thing. Perhaps you can suggest someone to me.”

“I’m sure you would like those at the top of their class.”

“Of course,” Suhara said, hoping she would give him the name of one in particular.
“Well, let’s see.” Lynn picked up and flipped through a file. “We’ve had several people who have proven to be valuable assets in one way or another...”

“I also would like to teach people who need...smoothing around the edges? A strong spirit is often the greatest asset, when it is properly channeled,” Suhara suggested.

“In that case, maybe you’d like to take Stanley,” Lynn suggested, peering at his profile. “Very intelligent, a born leader, and he’s definitely spirited; though a little headstrong to say the least. Sounds like the perfect candidate.”

“Yes, very good. Though I would like to know all the possibilities before I choose. And I would like to meet them beforehand.”

“Oh, of course. Well, there’s Nara, she’s got quite the deductive skills. And Shizo’s a very quick learner. Kwan seems to have some of your kind of experience; I don’t know if you want that or not. Oh! How could I forget,” she exclaimed, taking out a profile and laying it down on the desk in front of him. “Brains, spirit, leadership, boldness, and young enough to learn just about anything. Name’s Carmen Sandiego. She’s a rather special case; been living at the Agency for quite a few years now, so she knows Donnekahshaie and most of the staff.”

Suhara picked up the profile and examined it, hoping for a photograph but not finding one. “You say she’s been living at the Agency? This says she’s only twelve.”

Lynn nodded. “I know she’s very young, but she’s very good...remember when I said a friend of one of our agents had been looking into our cases, and you suggested bringing her in? This is her. Do you want me to send for her? She’s probably in the Computer Room...her brother works there.”

Suhara’s eyebrows went up ever so slightly. “She has a brother?”

“Adoptive brother, actually. Or maybe he’s more of a cousin. His aunt adopted her from the Girl's School.”

Suhara nodded, interested. “Send for her, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Lynn pressed a little green button on her intercom. “Shirley, go into the Computer Room and see if Carmen’s there with Rodger. I want her in my office please.”

“Yes, Chief Lynn,” Shirley’s voice replied, tinny through the speaker.

In the few minutes that they waited, Lynn gave Suhara a little more information on the prospective agent, extolling her qualities and performance as a Trainee. Suhara only half listened, his mind elsewhere.

Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door and a slight girl, barely in her teens by the look of her, entered the room. She was short and thin, and her movements graceful, free from the clumsiness usually associated with adolecence. Her hair was dark as ebony, brushed neatly over her shoulders, but her eyes were blue. The eyes were shadowed by a brown fedora, worn at that same angle, so much like someone else that Suhara had once known that he caught his breath. The girl looked curiously with clear eyes at Suhara, and once again he felt the peculiar sensation of meeting the gaze of a ghost. For a brief moment he felt as if she could see right through him, everything, past and present, and would speak to him in the voice of a woman long dead.

But she didn’t. She didn’t seem to see the shock in his eyes. The spell broke when she turned to Lynn. "You sent for me?" she asked in a voice that seemed much older than its owner.

Lynn nodded. "Suhara, I want you to meet Carmen Sandiego, the youngest addition to the Agency. She was just accepted into the Agency at the ceremony this morning."

Carmen took Suhara's hand and bowed in the proper fashion, her eyes lighting up with recognition. "I've heard a great deal about your teaching in the past year," she told him with an air of confidence that made her seem much older than thirteen. "It would be an honor to work with you."

Suhara smiled, still trying to keep the shock off his face. "I've heard good things about you as well."

Lynn started digging in her file cabinet as the other two sat down. "All right. If you two want to try working together, I'll get out all the paperwork. There's a month-long trial period, after which I'll want you to evaluate your experience. If everything works out, we'll consider you two to be partners. Since Suhara is primarily a teacher, you two probably won't be permanently assigned." She handed them the papers to fill out.

Suhara asked Carmen, “Lynn and I are going to the Bayside Cafe this afternoon. Would you like to join us?.”

The girl smiled. “I would like that very much. What time shall I meet you?”

“Two o’clock.”

“All right. I’ll meet you then.” She stood, made a Japanese-style bow, and left.
******

“How can it be?”

Suhara sat in the courtyard staring at his shoes, his shoulders bowed and his hat in his hands. His mind was racing. It must be her. It is her. But how? How did she survive?

He ran his shaking hand through his graying hair. Lynn did not see it. Was he wrong? Was he only hoping to see his old friend in a young girl that happened to resemble her? But perhaps Lynn did not see because she had watched the girl change over time. Perhaps when Carmen had first entered the Agency she had not looked like the lady in question, but now, now that she was on the brink of adolescence and her features were already beginning to lose their childish characteristics, now she looked like Catherine.

She was an orphan, she was the right age, her hair and eyes were the right color. But she had a different name. This girl called herself Carmen Sandiego, not Karlena LeVrai. Karlena had been old enough to know and remember her name. So perhaps it really was a strange coincidence, his old mind playing cruel tricks on him.

Suhara stared down at the intricately tiled courtyard. There must be some way to tell for sure. Karlena’s fingerprints had never been documented, so that was not an option. He could not go up to this girl he did not know and ask her painful questions about her past. Perhaps later, after they had been partnered for a while. He would have partnered with her anyway, even if she didn’t look like his old friend. He could sense the potential in her. But the question nagged at his mind.

There had been a way, he remembered, but wasn’t sure what. He had thought about it that terrible night in Seattle. He had looked for a way to distingish Karlena from the thousands of lost children in the world. A desk, a file...something something something...something missing...from Catherine...
******

Rodger was working on the computer as usual when Carmen burst in with a screech. “Guess what!”

Rodger looked up, grinning. “Aliens have landed?

Carmen sat down and started laughing hysterically. “No, silly,” she finally managed.

“Uh...the leaning tower of Pisa fell over.”

“Nope.”

Daieslenna took a guess. “You got into Lynn’s coffee cache and are seriously wired?”

She laughed again. “No, that’s not the reason I’m excited.”

“I give up, Bright Eyes. What is it?”

“You know Suhara?”

“The rambling old guy from Japan? Sure, I’ve heard of him.”

Carmen looked indignant. “’Rambling old guy’? Rodger, he’s only the best teacher and partner a novice can have!”

“Oh, well, if you say so. I’d rather go with Stanley or Jessica.” He paused and gave her a direct look. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“Yeah, cement head. Suhara’s my new partner!” she exclaimed, beaming.

Rodger blinked. “Huh,” he said absently, both he and Daeslenna taking on identical blank expressions.

“’Huh’? Is that all you can say?!”

“What do you want me to say?”

“How about, ‘Congratulations!’” she suggested, throwing up her arms and grinning wide. As she dropped her hands to her sides her grin disappeared, and she asked, “Something wrong, Rodger?”

“Oh, nothing really,” he said slowly. “It’s just that...I didn’t think this would come so soon.”

She stared at him, puzzled, and then at Daieslenna, who somehow managed to mirror his face to fit Rodger’s. Whether from imitation, programming or his own thought, she wasn’t sure . “What would? Rodger, I’ve been in training for a year. I know it’s a lot less than most people, but...”

“Well, it’s just that...” Rodger rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, you’ll be partners and all...”

“...and you won’t be in here as often,” Daieslenna added.

“...and you think I’ll forget about you.” Carmen scoffed. “Oh, c’mon, Rodger. You’re my best friend. You know that. You gave me a home, you helped me talk again...”

“Yes, Bright Eyes, I know. But...you’ll be living somewhere else, won’t you?”

Carmen looked baffled. “What do you mean?”

Rodger looked at Daieslenna, who said, “Partners always live close to each other, you know. It strengthens the bond between the two. I’m sure you heard about that during the training.”

“And Suhara and I live on opposite sides of the city,” Rodger added. “Some of his other students have boarded in his apartment. You probably will too.”

Worried, Carmen said, “But...his other students were from other countries. They didn’t already have a home here.” She hadn’t ever thought of the possibility that her partnership with Suhara could mean moving out of the apartment she shared with Rodger and Josephine. Was Suhara as kind as he was intelligent? Carmen had always thought so, though she didn’t know him as well as she did Rodger, Shirley, Omoro, Jessica or any of the other agents that had been living in and around the Agency since before her adoption. If she went to live at his place, that would mean the end of Josephine’s good cooking, the end of her and Rodger laughing over bad TV sitcoms, the end of gossip over the various members of the agency, the end of Rodger’s jokes and stories over ice cream and popcorn. Rodger and the tiny apartment had been a shelter from the turbulent time she had gone through before she came to the agency. Carmen had never imagined living anywhere other than Josephine’s apartment. She wasn’t sure what it would be like to live in a strange place. Already she felt uprooted, swept away toward the unfamiliar against her will. She could feel a cold feeling creeping over her, much like one she had experienced when she was lost years ago. It could bring back the fear...the nightmares...

“Whoa, Bright Eyes,” Rodger said, and she snapped back to the present. “Don’t faint! You turned pale as a ghost for a moment there. You okay?”

“Yes...I just...”

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I just was a little disappointed because we wouldn’t be seeing as much of each other as we used to. It’s okay, Carmen. I’m sorry...I guess I spoiled your big moment for you.” Rodger spoke softly, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, Rodger. I shouldn’t have made such a big deal...”

Rodger smiled. “It is a big deal! My little Bright Eyes is going to work with the creme-de-la-creme of the Agency!” He gave her a hearty pat on the back. “Second, of course, to me.” He winked at her. “You go tell him, Rodger says he spent five years already teaching you and doesn’t want you to forget the most important thing in life.”

“Really,” Carmen said, smiling. “What might that be? I’ve forgotten it already.”

Rodger gave an overdramatic sigh. “My dear Carmen, how do you expect to learn anything if you constantly forget your lessons? The most important thing to know in life is...”

“Is...?”

“Is...where...people...are...TICKLISH!” He lunged, and she shrieked. “This way,” he said expertly as she lay on the floor helpless with laughter, “you can make a person laugh even if they’d rather not. It even works on Kruchev sometimes.”

“What are you doing?” a voice asked with frank curiosity. Carmen and Rodger looked up, Carmen still laughing and wiping tears from her eyes. Lynn was standing in the doorway with an incredulous expression on her face. She glanced quickly at Suhara, who was standing next to her.

Carmen turned bright red, seeing that Suhara had been watching her. Rolling on the floor like a child was not appropriate behavior for an Acme agent: and certainly not an Acme agent who planned to be apprenticed to one of the greatest teachers in Agency history. She tried to smooth her hair and put her hat back in place, muttering an apology.

But Suhara did not seem to think any less of her for her conduct. Instead, wearing an expression that was merely amusement, he strided over to her and offered his hand to help her up.

Carmen took it and offered her thanks. “Yi Leh, Suhara-sama,” she said, bowing, suddenly formal again.

Suhara burst into laughter. Startled, Carmen looked anxiously at him, expecting some rebuke, but Suhara merely said, “I think I’ll enjoy working with you, Carmen. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with your combination of professonalism and fun.”

April 30, 1980
Josephine’s Apartment


“My little girl’s all grown up!” Josephine exclaimed, in tears, as she held Carmen so close she nearly smothered her. “All grown up and moving out already!”

Carmen struggled to breathe. “Josephine, I’m only moving across town.” She caught her breath as the large woman held her even tighter.

“But I can’t cook you nothing anymore, or buy your clothes, or tuck you in at night...”

“Aunt Jo, you haven’t tucked her in for years,” Rodger told her with an amused expression as he carried a box labeled “winter clothes” out of the bedroom he and Carmen had shared. “She buys her own clothes, and half the time she eats or spends the night at the Agency or with one of the other Seniors. She’s been in Training for months and you weren’t all torn up about that.”

“Yes I was!” Josephine protested, letting Carmen go. Carmen instinctively took several steps back, in case Josephine tried to smother her again. “I complained about it every night, and you complained about me complaining. To hear you talk, you’d think that you don’t care much at all!”

“That’s not so, Aunt Jo,” Rodger said hotly, setting the box on the table and crossing his arms. “I’m not thrilled about her moving out. But I didn’t want her to grow up in the Computer Room either.”

“You’re not angry that I’m leaving, are you?” Carmen asked the two softly.

“Of course not, honey!” Carmen stepped aside but Josephine was too quick for her and embraced her again. “We all want whatever’s best for you. Not everybody’s daughter get special recognition from the Acme Detective Agency!” She held Carmen by the shoulders and looked her squarely in the face. “But I want you to remember, you’ve always got a home here, no matter what happens, okay? I don’t care if something happens to you when you’re forty years old, you come right on in, old Josephine’ll be happy to have you.”

Rodger laughed. “Yeah, in case the Agency blows up, or aliens take over the planet, or Godzilla rises out of the Bay...”

Carmen ignored him and hugged her back. “I will, Aunt Jo,” she promised, her voice trembling slightly.

*********


"The apartment is a little out of order," Suhara explained as he opened the door for them. "I only moved back in a few days ago."

"It looks fine to me," Carmen told him. She set down the small suitcase she had been carrying and examined a painting on the wall and recognised its landscape. "Is this from Kyoto?"

He nodded, pleased with her knowledge of his hometown. "It is an antique, an item given to me by a man whose blackmail case I worked, many years ago, before you were born. Would you like to see your room?"

She nodded, and he picked up her suitcase and opened the door. He had decorated it as well as he could, not being familiar with the tastes of a twelve-year-old girl. So it looked a great deal like his own bedroom, with a few sparse decorations he had brought home from his travels; calligraphy from Japan, a basket from Indonesia, a calabash from West Africa, a colorful doll from Brazil. He figured that she would soon decorate it to suit her own tastes. However, she seemed most interested in the large window, and opened it right away. Eagerly she leaned out and peered at the city below her. "Look at that!" she exclaimed. "You can see all of San Francisco from here."

"You like it?" Suhara asked, anxious to please.

"Like it? I love it! I haven't had my own bedroom in...well, in a very long time." She continued to lean out the window.

He smiled, relieved. "Would you like some tea?"

She turned to look at him. "Would I what?"

"I am about to make some tea. Would you like some?"

"Oh, sure. Thanks." She turned back to the window.

As Suhara put some water on the stove he watched the girl unpack her suitcase and few boxes. She seemed totally at ease in her new surroundings, yet interested in everything. The new room, her new roommate did not at all seem strange to her, as if the whole world were her room and she knew every corner of it. She reminded him of someone else, someone so much like her that for a moment Suhara wondered if the ghost of his late friend stood in the room and not a young girl.

**********


Suhara lay in bed, wide awake. He listened to the clock tick, to the sounds of light traffic and the occasional dog barking outside. He waited half an hour, an hour, two hours. Then he pulled off the covers and slowly sat up. He tiptoed silently out of his room, opening the door as quietly as possible. Then he stood for several minutes outside Carmen’s room, reaching for the doorknob, pulling his hand back. He was uncomfortable about entering the young girl’s room unbidden while she was asleep. He was unsure of what he would find. Suhara wasn’t sure if he wanted to find what he was looking for or not. And yet, deep inside him, he wanted to know that it was indeed her...

He put his hand on the knob, let it rest there a moment, then turned it ever so slowly. He pushed the door slightly open and stood there for several minutes more. After hearing nothing but the sound of Carmen’s gentle breathing, he stepped inside. He walked slowly, ever so carefully, more quietly than any of the skilled thieves he had tracked. He indeed felt almost criminal, that what he was doing was wrong, that he was walking down an avenue where he did not belong. What would he do with this information if he saw what he thought he would see? Proof that this girl was the daughter of his dead friend? What good would it do Carmen for him to bring up what must have been the most painful memories of her life? Perhaps it would do her good to know that a friend of her mother’s was there to guide her, a new friend from an old life. But from the little he knew about her, it seemed as if she had traded that life for the one she had now a long time ago. She was Detective Carmen Sandiego now, not little Karlena LeVrai. Rodger and his Aunt Josephine, indeed the whole Agency, had brought her up. They were her family. In the time she had lived there, she had been reborn.

And yet, something within Suhara cried out for closure...

He would only look, and that would be it. He would not say anything. He would not release the demons. He would only look, and inform Catherine’s spirit of her daughter’s well-being. But he must look, and see if this girl truly was whom he thought.

Suhara stood at the head of the bed. Carmen slept serenely, head turned slightly, her black curls spilling over the pillow. He wondered if her sleep had ever been interuppted by nightmares. More than likely.

He lifted his hand. Suhara reached forward, and touched his fingers to her neck. She stirred slightly, and he jerked his hand back, but she did not wake. He stretched his hand forward again, touching her ever so slightly. He felt very uncomfortable standing there, and was just about to give up and draw his hand back when his fingers brushed a tiny chain.

He looped his fingers around it and drew out a necklace and locket.

His heart stopped when he saw it, tipped it forward into the moonlight. It was the one, that same necklace, the one he gave Catherine so many years ago. He remembered every detail that had been etched into its complicated design, lines and furrows that jumped and sparkled in the grey light. He flicked it open, and saw the faces of two people he had not seen in years. The older one drew such a striking resemblance to the girl sleeping in the bed that he drew in his breath.

He did not remember putting it back or walking out of the room. The next thing he knew, he was in the main room of his apartment, his mind in turmoil. For a few minutes he just stood there, his mind going at a thousand thoughts per minute. Then he walked slowly, almost casually back into his own bedroom.

He lit a stick of incense and kneeled before his little Buddhist shrine, and promised Catherine’s ghost that he would guide and protect her daughter forever.


May 1, 1980
Bayside Cafe


“It just felt so empty,” Rodger was saying, as his friends sipped their coffees and juices. “The room was so bare, and there was no one in her bed, and I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t hear her.”

Shirley stirred her coffee. “I remember when my big brother moved off to college,” she said. “We fought all the time, and I thought we hated each other’s guts. But when he was gone, I missed him.”

“My first night in the Agency apartment, it was scary,” said Priya. “I have one brother, two sisters, all of us slept in same room. I used to complain they snored too much. But my first night here, it was too quiet!”

“What about you, Jess?” Rodger asked, taking a sip of his orange juice. “Don’t you have a bunch of brothers and sisters?”

“Huh?” she asked, looking up from a pile of papers. “I said I didn’t want dessert.”

“Subject change, Jess,” Rodger informed her with amusement as the others laughed. “I was sitting here pouring my broken heart out, talking about Carmen leaving, and asked how you felt when you left your brothers and sisters.”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “Well, I was the oldest, the first to move out, and I didn’t go far...just across town to the University. They came to visit a lot. I had more problems dealing with the morons in the dorm than with homesickness.”

Shirley snorted, but was only half disgusted when she said, “That’s cold, Jess.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t see the problem,” Jessica said as she shuffled through her papers again. “You’ll be able to see Carmen as often as you like. She’s spent the night at my place, Omoro’s too, before. She’ll probably climb in the window one night to sleep in her old bed again for a while. Carmen’s a wanderer and you know it.”

“She’d have a hard time climbing in the window, we’re five stories up. Hey Jess, what is all that?” Rodger demanded, making a snatch at her papers.

“None of your business,” Jessica snapped, slapping his hand, but Shirley snatched one close to her.

“Oooohhh...isn’t this your storm track project?”

Jessica took it back. “It’s a research proposal.”

“Which means what?” Priya asked.

“I’m asking NOAA for funding and guidance, but I need to show them what I intend to do first. There’s a big meeting coming up this week.”

“Well!” Rodger was all puffed up. “Why didn’t you tell us, Jess?”

“Carmen had her graduation ceremony. I didn’t want to take her big moment away from her.”

“Quenya si atta telo”--The sun rises for all people. It was Priya who quoted the Donnekahshaie proverb. “You would not have taken away from Carmen.”

“Yeah, maybe now you can get that jerk Howie!” Shirley exclaimed amid a chorus of agreement.

“That’s not why I’m going,” Jessica stated firmly.

“Oh, come on, Jess,” Rodger said with a wide grin. “Admit it. You’re just a teensy bit eager to give that guy what he deserves.”

Jessica sighed.

“Hey, if they like it, and you go out there, are you ever gonna be around here any more?” Shirley asked, pouting.

“Yes. If they like it, I can spend my summers in Oklahoma on graduate work and my winters with the Agency.”

Rodger’s eyebrows went up. “Hey, half a year is better than nothing. Say, does Carmen know about all this?”

“Yes, I told her earlier today.”

Rodger looked stricken. “You told her, but you weren’t going to tell us? Jess!”

Jessica shrugged. “I didn’t know when I would see her again.”

“You didn’t know when you would see us again either, did you?” Shirley exclaimed.

“I knew we were going to meet at the Bayside Cafe.”

“But you weren’t going to tell us anyway. Jess, Jess, Jess,” Rodger said as he shook his head. “Just for that, we’re going to make you stay longer. Who wants dessert?”


May 4, 1980
University of Oklahoma


Jessica felt stiff and uncomfortable in her business suit. It was made of some kind of synthetic material that made her itch. She had also gone through the trouble of having her hair professionally styled, rather than just tying it back, and the roots of her hair were loudly protesting this punishment. She wondered if the stiff curls would crumble if she touched them with water when she could finally wash her hair.

Jessica glanced at her watch as she sat cross-legged on a rather uncomfortable chair just outside the board room. She was too early as usual. She shifted uneasily and clutched her folder full of pictures, notes and graphs. She heard someone--or two someones, rather--walking toward her, and she stood up to greet the board members.

But they weren’t board members. It was Howard and a woman about his age. The woman was not Janine. She was impossibly skinny and had ferretlike eyes. Howard was wearing a suit that was impressive-looking but obviously used. Jessica narrowed her eyes. He had not listened to her, he never listened to her, and even with all the stupid mistakes he had made he was still there to challenge her.

“Hello, Jessica,” he said to her. “Haven’t heard from you in a while.”

The fact that he seemed completely ignorant of his crimes made her all the more angry, but she knew she could not scream at him here, not when the people who decided the fate of her project--and her pride--would be critiquing every iota of her character. She kept her voice steady as she said, “I’ve come to propose my own project.”

He shrugged, the woman still attached to his arm. “They’ve been looking at mine for a couple years, Jessica. You don’t have any results to show from your project.”

“What results do you have? Proof that your methods don’t work?” The squirrely girlfriend jumped and Jessica reined in her anger. She forced herself to lower her voice. “I’ve got as much a chance of this as you.”

“Oh? How do you figure?” he asked. But he didn’t have time to answer, for they both heard loud chatting behind them, the board members.

Because you’re a lazy fool and your methods will show it, Jessica thought grimly to herself. A committe only thinks something’s good until something better comes along.

The two shook hands with each of the board members, exchanging small talk, Howard about his new girlfriend and Jessica about her life at the Agency. Jessica loathed their feigned politeless and concern, finding herself suddenly aching for the camaraderie of the Agency. But then she saw the girlfriend flashing an engagement ring and she remembered what had been taken from her before.

Howard, having seniority, was the first to present. He was not a good speaker and it showed in his stutter and frequent tugs at his collar, but the board was familiar with his project and mentally filled in the words he had forgotten. He seemed to be on good terms with most of them and they smiled all throughout his presentation. Jessica smiled too, because if she looked too antagonistic that would count against her. She found herself tearing apart his whole presentation, and the room turned hot. It worried her greatly. Had she really gone through all this just to get back at him? Didn’t she remember her old goals, to help the people he didn’t want to, to warn people before there was danger, back when they were still tracking together? She shifted uncomfortably, and her mind shifted back to the Agency. She remembered a relaxation technique taught to her by Omoro, who had in turn learned it from Suhara. She kept her breathing slow and steady, and found herself drifing away from the stuffy boardroom, running through pictures in her mind of tall grasses, wildflowers, the Bay at sunset...

“Ms. Grey Cloud? It’s your turn to speak.”

Jessica snapped out of her reverie. She had no idea how much time had gone by, and saw with annoyance that Howard was trying not to snicker at her. But the feeling quickly passed in an all-encompassing calm that had carried over from her mental travels. She picked up her folder and walked serenely to the front of the room.

She didn’t remember much of that presentation, only that the whole time she felt strangely calm and that the whole thing seemed to go very smoothly, almost in a dream. Everything went according to plan. She felt nothing but calm, no nervousness, no antagonism toward Howard. She didn’t even have to use her notes. Everything came naturally. She was startled awake by the loud clapping of the board members.

As she began putting her things away they came up and shook her hand, clapped her on the shoulder. They were technically not allowed to reveal who they favored until later, privately, but it was clear by their smiles and Howard’s scowl who they had chosen. She felt a deep relief and a reluctant pride.

They left, and as Jessica finished packing up her things Howard stepped angrily over to her. “You were up there thinking how great it would be to have me lose my fellowship and drop out of college, weren’t you?” he demanded.

“No,” she said, some of the serene calm still possessing her. “You did that to yourself, Howie.”

“Admit it," he said, seething with a childish kind of anger, like a little boy who has had a toy snatched from him. "You secretly wanted to destroy me. That’s why you did this whole project, just to get back at me.”

“No,” she said, feeling a strange thrill as she felt her words to be true. “No...I didn’t.”


May 6, 1980
Suhara’s Apartment


Suhara was lying half-asleep in bed when he smelled toast. He rolled over, sat up, and then climbed slowly out of bed. He stretched and touched his toes a few times, the wear of time not having tightened his muscles yet. He put on a robe and stepped into the main room, where Carmen was making breakfast. He shook his head in wonder that someone in this world woke up at an earlier hour than he did.

“You are up early,” he noted. “The sun has not yet risen, and you are making breakfast.”

She glanced up at him, concerned. “Did I wake you up?”

Suhara smiled. “No, Carmen. But I was wondering if you got enough sleep. Did you sleep well?”

“Yes. I don’t need much sleep.” She noticed a glow behind her and put down her cooking utensils to walk briskly over to Suhara’s large bay windows and open them, stepping out onto the eastward-facing balcony. He followed her out and stood next to her, and the two greeted the sunrise with arms upraised.

“Ai se quenya, mala di timya!” An early-morning jogger glanced up to hear the sweet, haunting greeting coming from the woman’s strong alto and the man’s soft tenor. One story down, a man in the apartment below Suhara’s who used the cry as his alarm-clock woke and rolled out of bed. San Franciscans were used to the customs of the di’tela.

Carmen turned to Suhara as he took her arm and pressed it gently with both hands. “So stiff,” he said, more to himself than to her. Then he asked her, “Carmen, why do we greet the sunrise?”

“It is the custom,” Carmen blurted, too startled by the strange and seemingly obvious question to think farther.

“Ai, Mahli Saia.” Suhara preferred Carmen’s Donnekahshaie name to “Carmen-san”. “Nothing important is just ritual. Getting up, brushing teeth, mindless boring chores, that is ritual. Greeting the sunrise should not be like using the bathroom.”

“I’m sorry,” Carmen stammered, turning pink.

“No no...no need to be sorry, Mahli Saia. No need to be sorry for not knowing something you have not learned yet. But you seem to have a reverence for something you do not fully understand. Tell me, Carmen, why do you greet the sunrise?”

“Because it is the Agency’s way to look upon each sunrise as a new beginning, a new chance and a fresh start...”

“Yes, yes, I know why the Agency greets the sunrise. But why do you, Carmen Sandiego, greet the sunrise?”

She considered that, looking out over the city to the splash of orange, yellow, and red in the sky, and trying to place what she felt into words. “It means...it means I’m awake, and alive, ready to feel and think and taste...it means that there’s a whole world of new possibilities stretched out before me. Everything looks clean, new, reborn. The air smells fresher....Does that sound crazy?”

He smiled. “No, Malhi Saia. It sounds very good.”

She crossed her arms loosely. “Well then...if you don’t mind me asking, why do you greet the sunrise?”

He laughed. “Demand and politeness at the same time. I greet the sunrise because the sun, to me, is like an old well-travelled friend. The sun sees everything by day, and touches it again by reflecting off the moon by night. She travels around the world once every day! So when I see her again in the morning, I always ask her how she is doing, what she has seen.”

Carmen considered that. “Ever get an answer?”

His eyes twinkled. “Sometimes. Now, Carmen, we should get ourselves something to eat before it gets cold.”

*******
“You told him your Donnekahshaie name right off the bat like that?” Shirley demanded, surprised. “I thought you were supposed to wait a bit.”

Carmen shook her head. “That’s if he’s not in my Division or outside the Agency. He’s my partner, for crying out loud. How could he not know? He has to, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to contact me.”

“Yeah, using the real name’s dangerous, especially if you’re on stakeout, right?” Rodger asked. “Besides, Suhara doesn’t know what it means besides it’s literal translation.”

“That comes with time, and with getting to know me,” Carmen added.

Rodger laughed. “He’s probably puzzling over that right now, how a girl who wears her hat in front of her face can be called ‘Bright Eyes’.”

“That’s part of the whole point of having a ‘Shaie name,” Carmen reminded him.

Shirley rested her head on her hand, her elbow on the lobby desk. “So, are we gonna be seeing you around still?”

“Of course,” Carmen answered. “I’ll still hang around the Agency...though I might be gone for a few weeks at a time if we’re in the field.”

“Carmen’s going global. Hey, think you’ll get homesick?” Rodger asked.

Carmen shrugged. “Not sure until it happens.”

“You’re not at all worried?”

Carmen smiled. “I’m more interested in all the places I’m going to see.”

Shirley sighed dramatically. “What a life.”

“Mahli Saia,” Suhara called softly down the hall. “Lynn has a case for us. Are you ready for your first case?”

“Gotta go, guys,” Carmen said, giving each of her friends a quick hug, then hurrying down the corridor toward Lynn’s office.

Lynn seated the two of them down in her office, speaking primarily to Suhara, as he was the senior of the two. “This is a wakero case. You won’t be going after the wakero herself, not on a Trainee’s first case. But we’ve been having a lot of trouble with this one in particular and I think that the bottom layer of a desalamyi wakero case is an excellent first start for a new recruit.” She picked up a file from a corner of her desk and placed it in front of them. “Laina Caidare’s extended her activities to Chile. An informant told us that villiagers near Cuzco have found ancient preserved human remains scattered across one of their grazing trails.” She pointed to a picture that Suhara had picked up. “The burial wrappings had been torn open, probably when the wakero looked inside for jewerly. Several of the remains have been determined to belong to children.”

Carmen examined the picture. It showed a scattering of bones on wild greenish-yellow grasses and scraps of rough brown fabric from the burial wrappings. Wakero nearly always recruited locals to do their dirty work for them, and although Carmen had absorbed this fact during her training along with far more grisly details, it still came as a shock to her that a person could have so little consideration for remains that could very well belong to his own ancestors.

Lynn handed each of them an identical picture of a woman. She had brown hair which she had tied back, white but suntanned skin, a mouth curled in mid-utterance, eyes that were at once both arrogant and vacant, and an undenaibly female figure. “That’s Caidare. I want you to show her picture to everybody within a twenty-mile radius. You never know where a wakero-heisla might show up, and we have no idea how many of Chile’s poor she has working for her. Laina herself’ll probably be nowhere in the area, but if you get wind of her I want you to stay clear until we get some backup in there. That chezla is well-armed.” To drive her point home she tossed to them a picture of weapons recently confiscated from one of Laina Caidares’ associates’ homes. Carmen stared at the pile of automatic rifles. “This is strictly a project to thin out her base of heisla in Chile, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Suhara said, and Carmen nodded. “We know you would never assign a desalamo to a Trainee.”

“All right then. Make sure you check in with Basil before you leave; he’ll give you a briefing on the area and give you your airline tickets. Good luck!”

May 7, 1980
San Francisco International Airport
Flight 460


Acme agents always flew coach. To fly first class was an unnecessary expense. The Agency carried such clout and prestiege that an agent was often offered a first-class seat, but the agent was to always refuse as a matter of principle. Acme agents did not lead lives of luxury. They did not stay in first-class hotels. Most often their accomodations were modest at best, and agents were trained to be able to sleep, wait, and speculate in the most uncomfortable places. Carmen knew that the plane was most likely going to be the most accomodating environment until she got back to the Agency. Sleeping in hot, buggy rooms, hiking in ankle-deep mud, freezing one’s fingers off while handling evidence, and going for days without bathing were all part of the job for an Acme agent.

Carmen felt self-concious with all the people in the airport staring at her. Agents did not wear uniforms and did not have the Acme insignia printed on anything they owned except their IDs, but San Franciscans always knew how to pick them out of a crowd. It had something to do with the fact that they packed lightly, and that they had a certain ease in the often chaotic environment of an international airport. There was something else tugging at her mind as well, making her less at ease than her partner, who was sitting calmly next to her, watching the airplanes take off and land. Something tugged at the back of her memory. The environment was strangely familiar, though she knew she had never seen the inside of this airport before; and the feeling of familiarity, which should have brought her solace, for some strange reason only made her nervous.

“Flight 460 nonstop to Santiago, Chile, now boarding seat numbers eleven to twenty-two,” the flight attendant announced. Suhara touched her arm gently and smiled at her. They both got up and shouldered their packs, then got in line with their tickets in their hands. Carmen felt a strange sense of deja vu as she entered the passenger jet, wrapped in puzzlement as she tried to figure out where it came from. She stowed her pack in the overhead compartment in silence, first taking out her casebook, a small notebook with scribblings of Basil’s briefing inside. All agents carried casebooks for keeping notes, writing down thoughts, and sketching out possible motives or approaches. They were written in Donnekahshaie, to guard against the danger of a dha reading or stealing one. Sitting down and unlocking her tray, Carmen opened her casebook and poured over the facts Basil had given them.

“You seem preoccupied, Mahli Saia,” Suhara said, breaking into her thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” she said absently. “Plane’s making me nervous.”

Suhara nodded understandingly. “No one loves riding in a passenger airplane. As an agent you will get used to it, but I know of no one who enjoys it.”

The flight was a long one, and inbetween short naps they conversed amid the hum of the plane and occasional cries of fretful children. “Suhara, why did you join the Agency?” Carmen asked, lying back in her chair with her head turned toward him.

“Ah.” Suhara leaned back in his own chair, thinking back and trying to remember. “I was always good with deductive thought. I read American detective stories and learned English, and during the Occupation I went to San Francisco to attend law enforcement classes in college. Some of my teachers did not take me seriously--this was a few years after the Pacific War, and many Americans did not think the Japanese were very smart. But one liked me very much, and he said I should apply at the Agency. The place took my breath away,” he said with a smile. “So many different people, and such a good organization. Not biased like the FBI, not helpless like Interpol. Of course I am being overly critical,” Suhara added in his gentle way, “But that was my impression at the time. They must have liked me too...I was hired a week after I applied.”

“When were you hired?”

“September eighth, 1951.”

Carmen whistled. “You’ve been there quite a while.”

“Yes, and I was less than ten years older than you. Just a college student. I was the youngest one back then.” His eyes sparkled with the memory.

Carmen struggled to stay awake, trying to direct her Adrenaline Control. Getting jet-lag would be a very poor reflection on her, even if it was her first voyage. “You make a lot of friends there?”

Suhara nodded. “I made many friends, and lost a few as well...it is the same story for every Acme agent, though different as well...”

******


They arrived in Santiago, then took a flight to Tocopilla. From there they took a bus to a small outlying villiage on the foothills of the mountains, just to the east of the Atacama Desert. They stayed the night with Enrique, an Ethnic Relations agent who was posted to monitor CIA activity and the 'disappearance' political prisoners. Suhara asked why he was not in Santiago.

“It got a little hot in there,” Enrique replied in Spanish. “I decided to hide out here for a while.”

Carmen stared. “But I thought other groups weren’t supposed to touch Acme agents.”

Enrique laughed. “No, they’re not, but if they can hire someone else to do the work for them and take the blame, well, they’ll do it! Eh, don’t you know about the rivalries between the Agency and other government and investigative groups? They’re always at odds, even though we’re always supposed to have the right of way.”

“I knew about them,” Carmen insisted. “But I didn’t think they went this far.”

“The CIA and the Yard Dogs are the worst. Though Interpol does the opposite, they’re more than happy to have us do their work for them.”

“Yard Dogs?” Carmen asked, puzzled.

“Yeah, Cuzle, slang for Scotland Yard.”

“Such a coarse term,” Suhara admonished.

Enrique shrugged. “They’ll only bug you if you go nosing around the UK, but they’re so uptight and pretentious they always make you want to say something obscene. Maybe that’s why people started calling them that. They’re not dangerous like the CIA can be, just damned annoying, always looking over your shoulder and insisting that their way is better.”

Later on, as they were getting ready for bed, Suhara said to Carmen, “You must not take what Enrique says too seriously. It is your duty to work as well as you can with most other institutions. Some of what he says is true, but you must also remember that all agencies are made up of individuals, and each has his own mind. To stereotype individuals is dangerous, for then you expect them to act or think in a certain way, and will be caught off guard when they do not.”

Carmen, who was glad to finally be able to rest, nodded and stored that knowledge in a section of her mind before falling into deep slumber.

Near Tocopilla, Chile
May 8, 1980


Carmen was still asleep when Suhara brought in the horses. He was renting them from two well-to-do farmers. Carmen awoke to the sound of the hooves in the hard-packed dirt, then smelled the aroma of vegetables and fresh tortillas. It was Enrique who was making them, a little clumsily; for where he came from that was women’s work, though he had learned to cook his own food long since he had joined the Agency. Unfortunately, there was a utensil or two which he didn’t have which, he grumbled to himself, would have made his job easier.

Carmen didn’t care. She was starving and ate everything Enrique put in front of her, regardless if it looked burned or underdone. Mouth full, she looked at Suhara and then nodded toward the horses. He understood and explained, “Lynn wants us to scour this entire area, and so that is what we are going to do. We are going to show Caidare’s picture to everyone in every villiage and on every farm from here to Tocopilla.”

“Why’s Caidare in Chile, anyway?” Enrique asked. “You’d think ripping off stuff in a place better known, like Maccu Piccu, would be a lot easier.”

“Lynn says we closed in a little too tightly there,” Suhara explained. “Or perhaps not tightly enough. She got out just before we could find her, and I suppose she decided to go somewhere a little less closely watched.”

Enrique made a face. “This area’s crawling with snakes and scorpions. A person would have to be crazy to hack around the jungle or hike the desert looking for bones and rocks.”

“You forget, Enrique,” Suhara said gently, “It is not Caidare that is doing the searching. It is the poor people of Chile who are eager for a little extra money, and will do anything to get it.”

“Won’t people be hostile when we ask about her, if we’re going after people she’s employing?” Carmen asked, and took a big bite of her tortilla.

“Yes,” Suhara answered, “So you must be very discreet, even more than usual. Look as inconspicuous as possible, and ask unrevealing questions to start. Perhaps you can say you are a student, either touring or studying the area. Only press people if you think they might have something worthwhile to say about Caidare. If not, keep going.” Suddenly he gave her a stern look. “Mahli Saia, are you listening?”

She turned her head back from the doorway, where she had been watching a child chase a half-grown mongrel puppy. “Yeah, I’m listening,” she said, anxious to get out and see this foreign country that she had only been able to glimpse at from the windows of buses.

Suhara smiled and winked. “Finish your breakfast first, and wait until Enrique puts something in your pack for you to eat for lunch. You have a large task ahead of you. You will be worn so thin you will tire of this place before long.”

******


The horse’s smooth steady gait kept her relaxed but alert as it trotted casually down the path. Suhara had stayed back in the village where they were staying. It was not unusal for partners to separate for a short period of time, given that the work was not dangerous. There was only a very small possibility that she would get in any kind trouble, and to prepare for that she had a small gun hidden underneath her vest. All agents in the field carried them, though only a handful had ever had to use them. Only if lives were threatened were they allowed to shoot, and even then Acme agents were expected to find other ways out.

The countryside was beautiful at the foot of the mountains, into which Carmen was going ever deeper, the trees and bushes turning greener and thicker the farther she went. Through holes in the foliage she could see small rocky farms. Only when she got just outside of Tocopilla would it begin to thin again; and she wasn’t going that far today. Brilliantly colored birds sang in the trees, along with hooting, yowling monkeys. Butterflies nestled among equally vivid patches of flowers along the side of the road.

Carmen was surprised at how many people there were. She didn’t even have to go looking for them, they would show up around her horse whenever she came near a small village. She figured it was the custom to greet strangers, and as inconspicuous as she tried to make herself, she was still an outsider. Small children, the girls wearing faded dresses and the boys only pants, gathered around the horse and laughed hello. Then the men, in work pants, boots, and T-shirts, would come up to her and ask her business in a friendly yet firm tone. Carmen showed them the picture of Caidare and asked if they had seen this woman from “her own country”, which was not really a lie, since Caidare was an American. The men furrowed their brows and studied the picture, one of them always giving it a mischevious second glance and saying they’d wished they had. Then they would hand it to the women, who came behind wearing faded flowery dresses and carrying the youngest of the children, and they studied it equally seriously. But no one said they had seen her.

Most of the people Carmen met in villages were women. The men she questioned on the road or in their fields, always getting off her horse and talking to them eye-to-eye as a show of respect for an equal. If someone wanted to make polite conversation she stayed for a few minutes, both because it was rude not to and because a conversation always had the potential to turn into a lead. But after five small villages, twenty farms and seventeen passers-by, Carmen had turned up nothing.

“Do not get discouraged, Mahli Saia. No one said this would be easy,” Suhara told her as dusk fell that night and she hungrily devoured her dinner. “We may be here a week at least before we turn up anything. If Caidare and her heisla were that easy to catch, they would be in jail now and not running from the Agency.”

The second day they rode out together over the stretch of road that Carmen had covered earlier, then split off about a half a mile or so afterward. Carmen questioned two more villages with no more luck. As she rode alongside the edge of another farm, she saw a woman instead of a man tilling the fields. She turned her horse onto the thin grassy path to investigate.

“Why are you working out here in the sun? Where is your man?” Carmen asked in Spanish, careful to seem merely curious and concerned, not mocking.

The woman straightened her self painfully and wiped at her brow. “He is sick,” she said simply. She took note of Carmen’s clothing and added, “We have no money for a hospital.”

“Maybe I can help you,” Carmen told her in Spanish, noting that the woman had an accent, maybe Aymara Indian. It was Agency policy to give anyone assistance, within reason, because usually the beneficiary would pay them back with a clue or lead, on a later case if not the present one. “But first can you tell me if you have seen this woman?”

The short, squat woman hobbled over and took a quick look. Then to Carmen’s surprise she scowled and swore in what must have been Aymara. “That one, she’s why my husband’s sick! Last year’s crop was bad, and the money we had didn’t last long, so last month he went looking for work in the city and said this woman offered him money to dig holes. He went out in the jungle where she told him, and made him dig up dead peoples’ bones! I told him to stop, that he would make the spirits angry, but he didn’t listen to me. Said we needed the money. And yesterday he came home, white as flour, his leg all swollen from snakebite! Ai, some dead person must have made that snake bite him, Aleujo is too careful to get bit. And now we have no money for medicine...”

Carmen was off her horse and started tugging the woman before she finished talking. She showed the woman her ID and said, “Listen, I can get your husband medicine, if he’ll talk to me. Can you help me get him out on a stretcher so we can take him into the city on a bus?”

The woman was all too eager to comply. Carmen left a message with the woman’s son so that Suhara would not be wondering what had happened to her. It was a good thing she did, because the bus took a few hours getting there, and by the time Aleujo had been made comfortable and questioned, it was dark and the buses had stopped running. Carmen spent the night feeling quite pleased with herself on a spare hospital cot, and caught the first bus in the morning.

Near Tocopillo, Chile
May 10, 1980


“So he told you Caidare wanted to keep him for another two weeks? That means she plans to stay here for a little bit longer,” Suhara said as they sat together over lunch at Enrique’s. “Even so, we need to call in some backup if we want to apprehend her this time. Did he have any idea where she was going from here?”

Carmen shook her head. “He did say that she didn’t seem happy with what she was finding here, so maybe she’ll go back to Peru,” she offered helpfully.

Suhara was less enthusiastic. “Yes...or Egypt, or Cambodia, or Mexico. I wish we had a better idea of where she was stationed.”

“We should alert the local authorities anyway,” Carmen told him eagerly. “We can’t let her get away if she’s so close.”

“Yes, but we do not have a very good idea of where exactly she is.”

Carmen frowned, frustrated. “Then what are we supposed to do? Let her get away again?”

Suhara shook his head. “No, Mahli Saia. We must think of the best thing to do. Come,” he said, standing up. “Let us go out for a bit.”

“Where are we going?” Carmen demanded as he led her up a path through the mountains.

“To think,” Suhara said simply, and would not say anything more regardless of how much Carmen pressed him.

After about an hour Suhara led her to a outcrop of rock that overlooked the valley and the desert, and had her sit down. “Well?” Carmen demanded. “How is sitting here going to help us catch Caidare? Couldn’t have we done this thinking back at Enrique’s place?”

“First of all, Mahli Saia, our assignment is not to catch Caidare. You have your priorities misplaced, Mahli Saia, and it is clouding your vision. You have to make it clear again to be able to see what you need to do next.” He sat down next to her and nodded toward the scene that opened up before them. “Every once in a while, if you feel you cannot find your way or believe you may be going in the wrong direction, you must stop for a moment and pull yourself out of whatever you are doing, and do something completely different.”

“But won’t this waste time?” Carmen pressed. “Caidare’s only going to be here for two more weeks.”

“Hush, Mahli Saia. Look at the landscape. What do you see?”

Carmen turned away hesitantly and looked. “I see trees, grass and desert. What about it?”

“Keep looking, Mahli Saia. Sit and watch it for a few minutes. Perhaps you will see something more, perhaps something will change.”

Carmen stared at the open grassland and desert, frowning. She sat and waited, and as she did the wind changed and rustled the leaves. A hawk called in the distance, and a little later the birds began to sing again. The scene below her began to take on complexity, adding onto itself more colors and textures. Carmen began to relax in spite of herself. She turned to see Suhara watching the countryside with a look of calm concentration, the sun lightly touching his serene features. He sensed her eyes on him and asked, “Now what do you think we should do?”

She looked back over the plain. “Alert the authorities but not expect too much. Keep questioning people, try to put together a pattern, and then determine what Caidare will do next.”

“Good, Mahli Saia. Always let them come to you. Otherwise they can creep up behind you and catch you unaware, if you are too eager and not watching your back. Always remember, if your ability to reason starts slipping, sit down a while and think clearly before you keep going.”

Near Tocopillo, Chile
May 11, 1980


Carmen’s horse trotted casually down the road. Suhara was right, regardless of the flavor and beauty of this place, she was beginning to tire of it. Pushing a picture in front of peoples’ faces and asking them twenty questions wasn’t her idea of a grand time. She began to daydream as the sun rose in the sky and warmed the leaves, and didn’t even notice when her horse turned off onto a side road that branched off from the main one.Suddenly the ground blew up beneath her and she landed hard on her rear.

“Ah, dhamochi,” she cursed. She looked up to see her horse running across the field. He had been spooked by a snake that now sat on the path, staring at her with beady but benign eyes. As it crawled off the path she rose painfully and rubbed her hind end, then walked a little stiffly to where her horse was standing, nibbling on something in the fields. She doubted he was eating the crop, but knew she had better get there quickly to make sure. She whistled to him, trying to get him to come back.

But the horse would have none of it. He kept trotting just far enough away that she couldn’t grab his bridle. After half an hour of coaxing, cursing, and commanding, Carmen lost her temper and ran at it with a stick. The horse loped off toward a small stable, where it could smell other horses and even an enticing cache of carrots. Carmen limped up to it and grabbed its bridle, but by this time the horse had had enough of its game and barely glanced at her. She was about to pull it away when she heard an angry woman’s voice--speaking English.

“...supposed to do with....stupid lazy....SICK? How could he have gotten sick? They’re...be able to...WITHOUT stepping on...”

The voice was thick with contempt, and seemed to roll out of the small dwelling next to the stable with an irate kind of force. Every bone in Carmen’s body told her that she should turn around and alert Suhara. But something else tugged at her, allowing her to rationalize taking a closer look. If she didn’t know for sure if it was Caidare, than what was the purpose of going back to tell Suhara?

Carmen crept closer, so slowly and quietly that the handful of scrawny chickens in the yard only clucked once and moved just a few feet aside for her to pass. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up and stopped for a moment, listening and watching, waiting for a sign that someone had spotted her. But she sensed nothing. She sneaked ever so slowly up to the weathered back door, which had been left slightly ajar. With great caution she put her eye to the crack, tense in case someone should see her and she should have to spring away. But the three figures she saw in the little hovel did not see her, and one--the woman whose picture she had been carrying for the past few days--was arguing with the others.

“How the hell am I supposed to find anything around here if you people keep recruiting the biggest morons in the country? Can’t you find me someone that won’t get their neck broken on the first day?”

“It was the horse,” one of the men facing her said timidly. “He broke his neck because...”

“Shut up!” The woman hollered. “I’ve had enough of this place. We’re moving to Guinea. It’s relatively untouched and I won’t have people constantly looking over my...”

She was interrupted by a cry of pain from outside. Someone hit Carmen on the shoulder from behind with the blunt end of a rifle, and she looked up to see a young man in tattered jeans and T-shirt aiming it at her. The three people in the hovel rushed out, and Carmen looked up to see Caidare staring down at her, arms crossed, with a scowl on her face.



*******


“She should be back by now.” Suhara was very still, straight as a post, staring out over the road. Enrique looked up from the food he was preparing. “She’ll be here, Suhara. She just gets wrapped up in her work.”

Suhara turned to him, his face stern. “No, Enrique. She has always been on time before. I should have gone with her, should have watched her more closely...” His voice trailed off.

“She’s trained to take care of herself. This isn’t the most dangerous place in the world, Suhara.”

Suhara frowned, looking darkly out over the landscape. “She is only a Trainee, on her first case. She is capable enough, but still...” He paused, as if sensing something in the air, then picked up his gun. “Something must have happened. I am going to go look for her.”

“Without dinner? At least have something to eat before you...hey wait!” Enrique called after him as he rode swiftly down the dirt road.



*******


“Who are you?” Caidare demanded in heavily accented Spanish, brows furrowed as she struggled to determine if the girl kneeling before her was at all familiar.

Carmen’s mind raced. She could not pass herself off as local, as she didn’t look it. She gave Caidare the first thing that popped into her mind.

“My name is Esperanza,” she replied in perfect Spanish, “and I’m visiting relatives here. My family immigrated to Spain a few years before I was born. I’m sorry if I’m tresspassing,” she added with a little whine, trying to imagine how a twelve-year-old girl other than herself would act.

One of the men had to translate for Caidare, whose grasp of Spanish was obviously restricted to common phrases and oaths. One of Laina’s eyebrows went up, but she didn’t seem convinced. “Why were you sneaking around my property?” she demanded.

Carmen thought fast, taking the few seconds needed for the translation and hiding the fact that she understood Caidare’s English. “I went out riding and I got lost, and I came to ask for directions. I just want to know how to get back to Pamino village.”

“So you decided to creep around the house rather than knock on the door?” the man with the rifle asked.

“I heard people yelling,” Carmen answered, “and I didn’t want to bother anyone who was fighting. I...I was scared,” she added for extra effect. It wasn’t hard for her to make her voice tremble. “Please let me go...I just want to go home, and I haven’t done anything.”

“Let the kid go,” one of the men said in English. “She’s not going to do anything.” Carmen took care to keep her face impassive, as if she could not understand what he said, and continued to stare at Caidare with what she hoped was a look of innocent pleading.

“You moron, you know that there’s Friscans around here,” Caidare snapped at him. The word Friscan sent cold shivers down Carmen’s back, but she kept her expression blank. “All it takes is for one of them to ask this kid about me and they’ll all rush in. I don’t know where this kid came from and I don’t really believe her...but we can’t just let her go.”

“So what do we do with her then?” the first man asked. “Can’t bring her with us...we’ve got enough things to keep track of as it is.”

“Can’t shoot her,” the man with the rifle said. “At least not unless we have to. Friscans can smell blood from miles away.”

“Yes, and I don’t want to give them any more reasons to come after me,” Caidare added, almost as an afterthought. She turned to Carmen, who was trying very hard not to let fear creep into her eyes. “You,” Caidare addressed her in a contemptous tone of voice that she used for all the Chileans, peasant and police officer, “where did you say you were from?”

Carmen almost told her before she was given the translation. “Pamino village,” she said simply, keeping her replies short in fear of tripping up and revealing too much.

“Crawling with Friscans,” Caidare grumbled, lip curled. “I don’t know, maybe we should just tie her up and leave her in the bathroom...”

One of the men nodded to something he saw out the window. “We’d have to tie her horse down as well, otherwise her relatives might find it wandering around and wonder where she is.”

The man with the rifle had been watching her with a puzzled frown, as if there were something about her appearance that he could not quite put his finger on. Carmen turned to him and felt a cold prickling down her neck as she realized he was staring at the slight bulge in her vest where her small handgun rested. Something in her eyes must have given her away, for suddenly he reached out and grabbed her arm, swinging it wide from her body, then reached into the side of her vest and snatched the weapon. “What’s this!” he exclaimed, holding up his find, and the others made similar explanations.

Caidare’s gaze turned to stone. “And what, may I ask, is such a little girl doing with something like that?” she asked in a deceptively soft voice that dripped venom.

Carmen began to tremble, and this time she wasn’t acting. “My...my relatives said that some of these areas are dangerous, so they gave it to me...”

Caidare snatched the piece and examined it, and her gaze became even more frosty as she did so. “Your poor Chilean relatives gave you this? In order for them to have done that, they must have stolen it...”

“Well...well they said they took it off of a tourist,” Carmen stuttered, flailing and desperately trying not to drown. “But I don’t know for sure if...”

“...from a police officer,” Caidare corrected, giving Carmen a level look as a spider does to a fly. Carmen thought it best to say nothing.

“What do you mean?” one of the men asked. “Are you saying that’s a cop’s gun?”

“I recognise the make,” Caidare said. “It’s certainly used by other people...both police and criminals...but it’s favored by the Friscans.”

There was a tense silence. Carmen felt a bead of sweat trickle down her neck.

The man who had proposed her release earlier spoke up. “So she’s got a Friscan’s gun. So what? Maybe her relatives really did rip it off. She’s much too young to have any kind of police job...or any job at all, other than pounding corn,” he added with a laugh.

But Caidare was still watching Carmen, looking right through her, her expression turning darker with each moment. “I seem to remember,” she said slowly, her voice tinged with malice, “a newspaper article about this year’s new recruits...one of whom was a remarkably young girl...” She took a swift step forward and Carmen’s heart leaped into her mouth as she heard the loud click of the gun. “You’re that Friscan, Santiago, aren’t you!” She brought her arm back swiftly and hit Carmen on the side of the head with it.

“Don’t kill her!” the man with the rifle exclaimed. “Ave Maria! If she’s a Friscan and you kill her, do you know what the rest of ‘em will do to you?”

Carmen put her hand to the side of her throbbing forehead. She flinched and was startled to see blood on her fingers.

“Dammit, she’s a Friscan!” Caidare exclaimed, furious. “All the way out here and they still found is!” She sneered at Carmen. “They must be snatching them from the cradle. This kid can’t be more than fifteen, if that. Kid, you just ended your short career!” And with that she shoved the gun into Carmen’s face.

“No!” the rest exclaimed, the consequences of an agent’s murder driving them to restrain Caidare and shove the weapon’s aim upward. A shot rang out and a bullet buried itself in the ceiling.

Carmen took this opportunity to scramble up from the floor and bolt out the door.

“Get her!” Caidare screamed wildly. “Kill her! Goddamned Friscan!” She fired off a round with Carmen’s own gun at the fleeing girl, but was too angry to aim correctly. She snatched the rifle from her startled cohort’s hands and ran for the stables.

******


Carmen was on full Adrenaline Control and sprinting faster than an Olympic medalist. She didn’t bother to look back, but ran hell-for-leather toward the road. As she reached it, Caidare pounded out of the stable on horseback with the rifle ready in her hands. Carmen could hear her right behind her and felt herself coming apart, hearing Suhara’s warnings echo through her mind, broken suddenly by Jamihl’s voice, coming crystal clear as he stated for the five millionth time his cardinal rule: Never enter a dangerous situation without your partner!

Suddenly a sharp angry pain in her leg almost brought her to her knees. It was followed immediately by the loud report of the rifle. A hot wave of panic raced through her as she realized she had been shot. Driven by simple instinct, she leaped to the side and crashed through the foliage, even though the tearing muscle almost made her pass out. As she rolled head over heels she caught a flash of crimson spreading over her pant leg. She leaped up in a flash, ducking and weaving with every bit of skill she had learned in her survival training.

Though Caidare could not aim as well, and though Carmen was adept at moving around in undergrowth, Carmen could still be easily seen and Caidare fired shot after shot. Caidare spurred the horse and yanked at the reins, laughing and yelling as if she were on an English fox hunt and enjoying the game more than anything else in her life. “Come on, Friscan!” she cried. “Come give Laina Caidare some good sport! Run faster, little girl, I’ve almost got you!”

Carmen felt both panic and lack of air begin to cloud her mind and sight. She leaped over boulders and ran up steep inclines like a jackrabbit, trying desperately to find a path that the horse could not follow. The pain in her leg combined with the fear of the hunter at her back almost blinded her and she felt sick. Everything else disappeared and her whole world was painted with blinding pain, Caidare’s shouts, and a wild desire to find rock, water, anything that would slow the horse and its rider.

Suddenly she tumbled head over heels down a steep hill and scrabbled for a hold at the end of a small plateau. There were a series of jutting rocks that she fell more than jumped down upon, trying to keep out of the rifle’s range as Caidare still fired from the hilltop, and loud cracks echoed about her as the bullets ricocheted off the stone. At the bottom of the plateau Carmen collapsed, doubled over from pain and exhaustion. She looked up to see Caidare pulling her horse toward the grassy back of the plateau, where the incline was less steep. Carmen struggled to rise and found that she could not. Her knees buckled under her and she felt the earth sway beneath her. Her eyes beginning to fill with tears, she scrambled around to look for something--anything--to use as a weapon for a desperate last stand when she heard a familiar voice.

“Mahli Saia! Mahli Saia!” it called, and she looked up to see Suhara riding toward her across the plain. For a brief moment she wondered if she were dreaming or already dead; then she pulled herself to her feet and scrambled toward him as Caidare rode already halfway down the incline. She reached him, arms outstretched, as Caidare reached the bottom of the plateau and began firing at the two of them. Suhara pulled her up onto his horse and wheeled around, and they galloped off madly in the other direction. Suhara’s horse was quick while Caidare’s was tired, and the last thing Carmen heard as she fell into unconciousness was Caidare’s angry cursing as Suhara bore them to safety.

Santiago, Chile
Intensive Care Unit
May 14, 1980


The first thing Carmen saw when she opened her eyes was a white ceiling full of tiny cracks and pits. She stared at it for uncounted minutes, time moving as slowly as her mind. There was an odd combination of mildewy smells and disenfectant. Then she heard a cough next to her and her eyes instinctively flicked to her left. She saw nothing but a patched but clean curtain hanging in between her and a shadow little more than an arm’s length away. Her eyes fell to her outstretched arm and suddenly realized where she was as she saw the IV tube taped to the inside of her arm. But how did I get here?

 “Mahli Saia.” Carmen turned to the right and saw Suhara sitting next to her, concern etched into his careworn features. “How are you feeling?”

“Where are we? What happened?” Carmen demanded, feeling strangely out of place and vulnerable.

“We are in Santiago’s main hospital, in Chile.” His concern deepened. “How much do you remember?”

Carmen racked her brain, the events of the past month running through her mind. “Lynn sent us out on assignment. We went looking for information on a wakero. We went out on horseback. Enrique was there. I went out and...ah, dhamochikai!” She paled, and her hands shook slightly. “The wakero, she tried to...”

“I know,” Suhara said softly.

“But how did I get here?” Carmen demanded, glancing round at her surroundings. “Santiago’s miles away from our base.”

“Bus.”

“Bus? But how did I get away from Cai...” She stopped in the middle of the word as she remembered, and turned to Suhara with a combination of gratitude and shame. “You were there.”

Suhara took her hand. “You are very lucky, Mahli Saia. We almost lost you. Do not worry, Caidare cannot hurt you now,” he told her, mistaking the look on her face.

“No no...I mean...I’m sorry...”

He blinked. “Why?”

Her words tumbled out over themselves as she struggled to make him understand. “Suhara, I didn’t listen...you told me not to look for Caidare...I didn’t do anything I was supposed to I should’ve waited for my partner I shouldn’t have got into it alone...”

“Hush, Mahli Saia.” Suhara took her other hand and held them both gently in his own. “We did not think Caidare was there, so you cannot blame yourself for running into her.”

“But I should’ve waited or got you or something...”

“Mahli Saia, listen. Mistakes can kill. The slightest miscalculation can end an agent’s life.” He softened. “But not everyone can forsee everything. There will come a time when you will be able to sense if you can investigate alone. This is something that neither the Agency nor I can teach you, and is only gained through experience. I can point you in the right direction, but you must do most of the learning on your own. It is only your first case, Mahli Saia.”

Carmen was overcome with emotion. “Suhara...”

“Rest, Mahli Saia.”

She felt a flash of anger and guilt. “Suhara, why are you being so nice to me? I ruined our case! I put both of our lives in danger!”

Suhara squeezed her hand. “You must not put your energy into resenting your mistakes, Mahli Saia. You must use to recover and mend them. Mulling over your past errors does not help you unless you learn from them. And have you?”

Her voice was barely audible. “Yes.”

Suhara nodded. “Then that is all that needs to be said. Sleep now.”

******


Suhara leaned back in his chair, watching the girl sleeping so peacefully even after she had so recently come so close to death. What a nightmare the bus ride had been. The agonizing hours-long wait, the potholes that threatened to tear out the mechanics at every jolt, that pulled at the crude bandage covering the still-bleeding wound, and his anxiety while watching Carmen's face grow paler and paler as the bullet sapped more and more life from her body. Suhara had had a horrible vision while watching her face, one of another woman pierced by a bullet, who had not been so lucky. Carmen could all too easily have had an identical death. She had the same spirit, the same ire, the same reckless manner. Suhara crossed his arms and watched the girl sleep, the hospital ward silent except for the beeping of machinery and the occasional cough or moan. If things are left they way they are, he reasoned, her fate will be exactly the same. All of Catherine's best and worst traits came out in her daughter. She seems not to have inherited anything from her father! But what am I to do? She may be too rigid in her ways for me to do anything, and I do not wish to alter her. But I also do not wish for her to die. It is all too likely that she will follow her mother, in life as well as in death. "Too many thoughts and worries," Suhara said out loud, then was silent as he tried to clear his mind. If he erased the doubt and fear, the right answer would come to him. All he could do was Wait. He sat there serenely and patiently, minutes and hours meaning nothing as his mind found the solution to his problem.

May 20, 1980
Acme HQ


"Unbelieveable. Simply unbelievable!”

Suhara and Rodger stood outside Lynn's office as she held conference with Carmen inside. "Conference" was the word Lynn used; "Reprimation" would have probably been closer to the mark. Suhara had been told to wait outside, for Agency superiors were not supposed to embarrass their agents by chastising them in front of others. Unfortunately, most of Lynn's remarks could be clearly heardoutside the door. Rodger had shown up, seemingly on intuition, knowing that Carmen would be upset after a meeting with an angry Chief Lynn. He shifted uneasily from foot to foot, unable to defend Carmen from the angry diety inside the office.

"I have never seen such reckless behavior,” Lynn’s voice boomed through the door. “You knew that your mission was not to pursue Caidare, and yet you confronted her!"

Carmen could softly be heard trying to defend herself. "Chief Vickman, I did not confront Caidare. I was only trying to determine..."

Lynn didn't let her finish. "Then what on earth was she shooting at you for?" she demanded. "You know you are not to enter an uncertain situation without your partner. Especially as a Trainee on her first case!"

Suhara sighed softly; Rodger looked pained. As Lynn continued her lecture they both heard a clicking of heels and presently Shirley rounded the corner with an armful of files. She saw Suhara and Rodger standing outside the door and stopped, giving them a quizzical look. Another outburst from Lynn answered her question.

Shirley frowned. "Carmen's getting her head bitten off, isn't she?" Rodger gave her a disapproving look, for as fond as Shirley was of Carmen, she was also a known gossip.

Suhara explained. "Carmen met up with some unfortunate circumstances that were not brought about entirely by accident."

"On the case you guys were working?"

"Yes."

Shirley smiled sympathetically. "Well, we should probably take her out to the Bayside Cafe after this, huh? Come get me after Lynn finished chewing her out. I know Carmen'll need it."

She scuttled off. "Yeah," Rodger said absently. We would know, he thought to himself.

Lynn was wrapping up. "I don't ever want to see this kind of blockheaded behavior from youagain, detective. You're smart enough to know better and you're too valuable for us to lose you. I'm going to give you a week to cool off and rework your strategy, and you had better hope that the trail isn't cold by then. Do you understand?"

They heard a mumbled assent and then Carmen emerged, head down and her hands in her pockets. "Hey, Bright Eyes," Rodger greeted her, putting a quick arm around her shoulder. "You want to go out for a bite to eat?"

She didn't look up. "Okay."

Suhara spoke up. "Why don't you stay and visit with your friends for a while. I will go back to my apartment, and will see you there later tonight. All right?"

"Okay."

The pair found Shirley and they walked together to the Bayside Cafe. Shirley generated an endless stream of talk, as usual, but neither of the other two seemed to have any interest in it. Carmen kept her head down, and Rodger watched her, concerned.

Suddenly Shirley let loose a shriek. "Oh my god, look who's here!" she exclaimed, and bolted to one of the tables where Jessica Gray Cloud was engrossed in a menu. The other two sprinted behind on Shirley's heels.

"Jess! What on earth are you doing here?" Rodger demanded, as Jessica looked up with a slightly irked expression on her face. "It's the height of the storm season, isn't it?"

She looked at him like she might a pesky insect. "I had some free time and decided I'd drop by, that's all."

"Bull. You heard Carmen got hit and you couldn't resist coming in to make sure she was all right," Rodger countered. Shirley burst out laughing.

"Won't your research suffer?" Carmen asked.

"It can look after itself for a bit. I have some competent people working on it this time," Jess told her with the slightest hint of a smile. "Now what's all this about getting hit?"

"Don't play dumb," Rodger chided. "You must have known what happened, otherwise you wouldn't have come out." She managed a grin. "I didn't come all the way out here to see your ugly face again, that's for damn sure." They all laughed at Rodger's mock indignant expression.

"Well, as long as you're all here, you might as well sit down," Jess told them, motioning toward the other three chairs and calling for more menus.

"Glad to see you too." Shirley plopped down into her seat and scrutinized her menu with a sigh. "All the best things are fattening."

"An ice cream isn't going to hurt you," Carmen told her.

"Yeah. Even if you are a little on the plump side...ow!" Rodger cried out as Shirley smacked him with the menu. Shirley, who was indeed a little on the plump side, examined her hips with her hands.

Jess frowned at her. "Rodger just said that to get a rise out of you, Shirley. Don't pay any attention to Rodger, nothing he says is important."

"Hey!" Rodger shouted.

Jess ignored him. "So how has your first case been so far, Carmen?" she asked. Carmen, who had been smiling at the antics of her friends, started frowning again.

"Lynn chewed me out for being reckless."

"And were you?"

Carmen shrugged. "A bit, I guess."

A waiter materialized out of nowhere. "Are we ready?" he asked the little group. They all made their orders and nobody said anything more until he returned with their drinks.

Then Jess spoke up again. "It is much too easy to get drawn into the excitement," Jess told Carmen, stirring the ice in her cola. "It happens to the best of us, and only experience can dictate when we can move forward, and when we can retreat."

Carmen nodded. "Suhara said something like that."

"I'm sure...Suhara has quite a bit of influence in the Agency, and for good reason." Jessica became quiet and her eyes had a faraway look in them. "When the wind pulls at you, you want to follow it...it has a force far above you. But if you blindly let it tug you along, you will end up in a vortex you can't escape."

Carmen nodded solemnly. She had learned that all too well. Jess took a small sip of her soda and continued. "You can't counter it, either...it's much too strong for one person to fight against directly. You'd be blown apart by its sheer strength. But there is a way--and I'm sure Suhara will show you how to do this--to battle the wind on both the offensive and the defensive. Instead of facing it or turning your back to it, you turn to the side. The wind flows around you, and you can move easily without getting too close or too far away." She smiled suddenly. "Perhaps Lynn will let me take you on a field trip."

Carmen brightened. "You think so?"

Jessica shrugged. "I've no idea. I know it's Agency policy for the elder to teach the younger, but I'd have to see if Lynn thinks I have anything worth teaching. Maybe I'll ask her through Suhara. He seems to know a lot about this sort of thinking."

"The old guy does have his uses, doesn't he?" Rodger reflected, grinning.

"The old guy is a lot more useful than Rodger will ever be," Jess said laiconically.

******


When Carmen arrived back at the apartment, it was already growing dark. She felt a bit apprehensive as she opened the door, as she was still unsure what Suhara thought of her, and she wondered if he was at all bothered by her spending the day with them. For the first time in her life, Carmen felt unsure about her position in the Agency. An agent was supposed to bond with his or her partner, to tell them their thoughts and worries so that nothing would surprise one or the other if an urgent situation arose. Of course, the Agency viewed itself as a family, so it was perfectly acceptable for an agent to go to anyone about a concern.

She had worried for nothing. Suhara brightened when he saw her and offered her tea. As she sat on the plain brown couch, he brought out a wooden box that rattled. He unfolded the box onto the table, taking out little carved marble figures and arranging them on the box's gridlike pattern. "Do you know how to play chess?"

Carmen shook her head, watching with interest. "I've seen the grandfathers in Chinatown playing in the park, but I never learned."

"Chess is easy to learn, hard to master," Suhara said as he carefully placed all the pieces in their appropriate squares. The warm aroma of the steaming tea wove its way throughout the room and settled into Carmen's body with a calming feeling. "You must take to heart all the different powers hidden in each piece, their special meaning and use. You must learn all of the secrets locked within the squares. Once you begin to understand this simple yet complex model, you can begin to apply all its lessons to both your work and your life.When to advance, when to retreat. Stubbornness versus sacrifice. How to find your way both in and out of your enemy's traps, and how to use them against him. Now watch, and learn.”

Near Tikal, Guatemala
June 4, 1980


Laina Caidare chewed her fingernail, half crouching and half sitting on the twisted dead tree on the floor of the steamy hot Guatemalan jungle. She slapped absently at mosquitoes that buzzed around her unprotected legs and arms below her short sleeves and short pants, and kicked at the rotting plant debris on the forest floor. A big yellow centipede scrambled from between the leaves. With a half smile, Laina scooped the wriggling creature onto the toe of her heavy-duty black boot and punted it over the undergrowth into a pit where several locals dug into a rock-pitted hump in the earth. It landed on the head of one man, who yelped and jumped until the creature fell to his side and he recognized it as nonpoisonous. He turned his back on it and went back to his work. Laina, her amusement gone for the moment, went back to chewing on her fingernail.

Suddenly one of the men yelled, and a frenzy of digging possessed the little group. The knot of them squeezed tighter together in order to move a large vertical stone, about half the size of any of them standing. Seeing the size of the stone, Laina jumped up and ran to their side, eagerly watching as they scraped with bare nails against the mud that held the stone stable. “Come on, now, you’re almost there,” she muttered over and over in English, leaning eagerly into the pit, forgetting that they couldn’t understand her. It didn’t matter. They had all felt the draft of cold air behind the stone, signaling a hidden cavity, and each of them reached with grimy hands to bring it to light.

One of them jumped up and ran back into the woods. Laina turned on him. “You, what’re you doing? Stop now and I’ll pay you nothing!” she bellowed, glancing about for something to throw at him. There was no need. He picked up a sturdy branch for leverage and joined his companions in the pit. He stuck it in the small hole behind the stone and they grasped it with both hands. With a great effort they all leaned back, backs wet with perspiration and the stale-sweet smell of sweat in the air. The ground and roots beneath them shifted as the stone’s massive weight and size was wrenched to the side.

The locals heard a click behind them and they all scrambled back as Laina, with a gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, pushed past them and entered the small crevice on hands and knees. The locals, a couple of them smiling, muttered to themselves.

“Is she going to shoot ghosts with it?” one of them demanded of another, trying not to snicker.

“Powerful guns they must have where she comes from,” another muttered. “Ghost-pistols. I need to get myself one of those.”

“It’s not for ghosts,” one toward the back hissed warningly. “It’s for making ghosts. I’ve seen her use it on those who try to follow her, searching for a single button or bauble for themselves.” The little group fell silent.

The grotto smelled of musty earth and was crisscrossed with roots from the trees above. A single scorpion fell from the roof, brushing Laina’s hair. With an angry flick of her wrist, she swept the blue-black creature from her head onto the floor, then crushed it under her flashlight with a powerful thrust of her arm. It thrashed its legs and its poison-tipped tail madly, then went still. Laina gave it a disparaging flick with her finger, then crawled all the way through the opening, waving the flashlight back and forth. Stones the size of her hand littered the grotto floor, and she glanced up to see where they had fallen from the roof. The entire room, about the size of a large closet, had been tiled in this way, roots snaking out from between the stones.

A satisfied grin lit up her face as the flashlight beam fell onto the opposite side of the cavity. Five bundles lay stretched along one side. She crawled over to the largest of the five, set in the middle, and pulled her knife from her belt. With one long slash she ripped open the bundle. The glitter of gold greeted her eye, and she gleefully tore at the bundle until she had freed the exquisite necklace from the moldy bones. She set to work on the other four bundles, and scowled as they yielded nothing but old bones, a tuft of hair, and rotting fabric. She stuffed the necklace in her pocket and shoved the tattered bundles aside. Near the wall was a small hole where some old vessels stood. At one time they probably held food for the deceased occupant’s journey to the afterlife; now they held only earth from the roof as it fell over time. Laina worked one free from the earth and examined it as well as she could in the meager light, working it over with the flashlight beam. A slow smile spread across her face as she recognized the handiwork. This particular style always sells well at the auctions.

Laina cleared out all the pottery and handed it to the locals waiting outside, accompanying the pieces with the usual threats in her broken Spanish: “I know how many in here, so I better count same number later! You get pay when this done, not before, and if one steals even smallest piece, gets handed over to the military…if he survives! Do you understand me?” The locals nodded mutely, though not without anger, some wondering if the work and the threats were worth it to feed themselves and their families. At least one had decided on the spot to give it up once this site was done. The little Laina paid just wasn’t worth it, and he missed his family. May God grant that the crop doesn’t die next year, for no hunger is worth this slavery.

Once the pottery was out and the bundles thoroughly picked over, Laina did a curious thing. She took her knife and began popping out the tiles that lined the walls of the cavity, digging behind them and peering at the flat stones for any signs of marking or decoration. The locals watched, puzzled, wondering what she would want with rocks. All three walls she pulled apart, and would have started on the roof as well had the small space not begun to fill up with soil. It did not matter anyway. The thing she was looking for would have been in plain sight, would have been decorated with the sign she had been searching for. None of the crudely hewn rocks bore any kind of emblem. In frustration, Laina snatched up a tile and snapped the thin stone in half. She thrust both ends into the soil and left the tomb, disgusted. She and the locals then left the site, a yawning chamber spilling forth soil, roots, and human bone.



Acme HQ
June 14, 1980


Lynn sighed. “Always one step behind.”

“How soon did our people find this site after Laina left?” Suhara asked, examining the photograph before him of the raided grave in Lynn’s office.

“Barely a day, if that,” Lynn muttered, disgusted. She flopped down in her chair and folded her arms. “I swear, that woman must keep track of our people on radar. She must have them all fitted with little collars.”

Enrique scowled at her. “Listen, it’s hard enough tracking the heisla, they’re so damn well trained and know their areas so well, so you can imagine what tracking the wakero herself is like.”

Lynn shook her head. “I know tracking someone as unconventional as Laina is difficult, but you are an Acme agent. No case unsolved, remember?”

Carmen frowned at another picture, this one taken inside the tomb. “I don’t understand…why would Laina take apart the walls? The stones that had been placed there don’t look like they had been worth anything.”

Lynn gave her a look. “If you had been sticking to your MO readings and not been going around crook-hunting, you would understand this by now.”

“Lynn,” Suhara said softly.

“Don’t Lynn me,” she snapped at him. “She has to show responsibility if she is going to stay on this case.”

Enrique took the picture. “Laina’s crazy, that’s the bottom line. She thinks she’s on the trail of some magic artifact, and she’s willing to destroy both graves and lives to get it.”

Carmen made a puzzled, half-believing face. “Is that really true?”

Suhara blinked slowly. “Laina’s interest in the supernatural is not fact, it is mere speculation. So therefore it should not be taken too seriously.”

Grunting, Enrique muttered, “What other ideas do we have for this woman’s motives? She’s completely erratic. She tears apart graves that have nothing in them she can sell. Some of the things she finds, she doesn’t sell. She keeps them for herself. And they usually have some magic connotation connected to them.”

“It would help if we had an idea what she was looking for,” Lynn said. “Unfortunately, none of you seem to want to give me any.”

“We don’t have any ideas ourselves,” Enrique snapped. “I don’t think Laina herself knows. She just runs from one half-baked text to another, connecting theories that don’t have any connection. Remember when she went looking for Atlantis?”

Suhara smiled briefly. “Under the streets of Chicago, if I remember.”

“Exactly,” Enrique said, his voice half scornful, half amused. “Can you think of a less likely place for an undersea empire than in the middle of a continent?”

Carmen snickered. “Are you sure that’s what she was looking for?”

“No, I’m not sure,” Enrique conceded. “That woman doesn’t make any sense. But that’s what she was researching before she started digging in people’s basements. Maybe she took a side trip. Maybe she was trying to throw us off the trail. Maybe she figured she would find it in the least likely place, because all the obvious places had already been searched. Who knows.”

Suhara shrugged. “All in all, the magic motive theory cannot be proven. It comes from hearsay and a few odd coincidences that do not correspond with the usual wakero’s movements.”

“The woman has enough money,” Lynn told Carmen. “She comes from an old colonialist family. You’ve seen pictures of her house. It’s not like she really needs to dig out this stuff and sell it, black market or auction or anywhere else. The only motive we can think of is that she’s after something else.”

Carmen shuffled the photographs around in puzzlement. “But the file you gave me stated that Laina’s an extremely intelligent person and well versed in new technology. Why would she believe in old myths?”

“Belief in myth does not signal foolishness, Carmen,” Suhara told her softly. “Many people believe in myths. That is why they still like to tell stories about mummy curses and pyramid powers, UFO’s and secret societies. They probably always will.”

“There are still lots of stories surrounding the excavation of King Tut,” Lynn added. “Several of the main people on the team died from one thing or another; some attribute it to ancient curses. People like that sort of thing.”

“They take interest in the mysterious and the unknown,” Suhara said, nodding. “Probably Laina is no different.”

“Indeed,” Enrique said, nodding to himself. “Lots of highly intelligent people end up chasing mad dreams, or nursing strange obsessions. It’s a shame, really. If we can more of them rooted in reality then they could help us solve some of the world’s real problems.”

Carmen scratched her head. “Is there any way we can figure out just what Laina thinks she’s going to find?”

Lynn shrugged. Suhara said, “Perhaps she is only looking for something not magic, just unusual…a one-of-a-kind piece to cement her place in history. We do know that, in her twisted frame of mind, she thinks that whatever she is doing, whatever she finds, will somehow benefit the world at large.” He gave a grim little smile. “Of course, one of our people have ever gotten close enough to Laina to ask her.”

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