The Cain File Read Online Free PDF Page B

make your way. And you ended up turning tricks. Hanging outside rich people’s parties to pick up the leftover men.”
    Kacha gave a shrug. “Little Irpa needs to eat.” She wiggled the baby again. “But we really came looking for my cousin. Tica. She was arrested.”
    “Arrested?” Maggie let go of the door, turned back around. “What for?”
    “Protesting the bulldozers. The oil companies. Plowing up our village. In the Yasuni.”
    The Yasuni. The part of the Amazon Beltran’s cronies were itching to tear apart.
    “You’re Kichwa?” Maggie asked.
    “We are.”
    “How long ago did this happen?”
    Kacha stared off in thought as she toddled Irpa. “Over a month ago now. We were released. But Tica wasn’t. We’ve tried to check the prisons. But no one will tell us anything. No one will even talk to us. So here we are, looking for her.”
    “And you haven’t seen your cousin Tica since she was arrested?”
    Kacha shook her head.
    “What’s her last name?”
    “Tuanama.”
    “Tica Tuanama. Do you have a picture by any chance?”
    Kacha jostled her niece. “Tica’s sixteen. Slender. Fair-skinned. Long hair. Pretty hair, shiny and black. Tribal tattoos on each cheek.” She indicated under each eye.
    Maggie had gotten involved with this operation to stop Commerce Oil and men like Velox. She thought it was just about them breaking the law, denuding the land, and fouling one of the two lungs. But that wasn’t all of it, she realized. It was also about the people who got in their way.
    “Let me look into it, Kacha. Don’t make any more enquiries. Be careful. How can I get in touch with you? Where can I send you a letter?”
    “There is no mail here.”
    “Anyone you can trust?”
    She shook her head no.
    “Do you ever go to the Internet cafes?”
    “Sometimes.”
    “And do you have an email address?”
    “Doesn’t everyone?”
    “Tell me what it is.”
    Kacha recited it and Maggie repeated it to herself three times. “When I get back, which might take a few days, I’m going to email you from an address I’ll get from one of the free services. I’ll send something made up around Jennifer Lopez—the singer? It’ll look like spam, so check your spam folder. Do you know what I mean?”
    Kacha nodded once.
    “Good. The email will be full of rubbish. Reply to it with just a phone number and a date and time to call you. But here’s the trick: add ninety-nine to the phone number. Got that?”
    “Add ninety-nine to the phone number you are to call.”
    “Right, and add one digit to the hour and one day to the date. So if you want me to call you on June secondat seven p.m., you say ‘June third at eight p.m.’ Got that?”
    “So if anyone is watching they will be too late. Very clever. What about time zones?”
    “Just use your time zone. It’s the same as mine.”
    “OK. I think I have it.”
    “Sure you do. You’re a smart girl. No one will be watching you, but they might be watching me. What we’re doing is burying our conversation, so it’s hard to track. But not impossible, eh? Be careful. The free email addresses you get are scanned regularly.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “Well, now you do.”
    “Right. Thank you. I am so anxious to learn what you find out about Tica . ”
    “It’s the least I can do. I’ll wire money when I get a chance. Might take a couple of days—until I get back home.”
    “I’ll be happy if you just find Tica.”
    “I’m going to do that too,” Maggie said, although she didn’t want to say whether Kacha’s cousin would still be breathing. “You know—I’m a lot like you.”
    Maggie felt Kacha’s eyes scour her and could tell that she didn’t believe a word of it. “That must have been a very long time ago,” she said.
    “I was born in a small village in the Andes. My mother was Quechua. So we’re both Incas. Although my father is American. I was brought up in the U.S.”
    “And now? You’re flying through windows? Men with guns