Reverb

Four: Elliptical Phrase

- x -

It took Sam a while to really warm up to Pete . . . at first, he mostly just saw the suit, and the big desk and the neckties and everything. And how could I blame him? He'd grown up mostly in a kind of legal limbo, and he felt safer staying clear of guys in suits.

And Pete could be a lot sneakier than most folks ever realised . . . he could disappear sideways into the bureaucratic front, and by the time you figured out he wasn't just another suit, he had you. He blindsided people. His own blindness didn't slow him down for long; once he stopped underestimating himself, he went right back to setting folks up to underestimate him, and they went right on doing it even worse than before.

Sam underestimated him for a while, of course, but Sam's real quick on the uptake. Pete sized Sam up a lot quicker.

It was almost two years before I got Pete to admit how, in the first few days after Sam turned up, while I was looking through old photo albums and trying to get a grip on the situation – speaking of blindsiding, old memories can be real brutal when they ambush you like that – he was calling in markers and running every background check on Sam that he could line up. And that was a lot of markers. He insisted that he'd never really doubted that Sam was legit – but Pete was funny about trusting his gut. He preferred solid information.

It wasn't till they'd got well past the early stage of being way too polite to each other that I realised just how important it was to me that they'd get along. And not just get along to keep things smooth around me. I needed Sam to know how much Pete meant.

Of course, Sam never saw Pete wearing that danged hairpiece. That might've really put him off.

Pete Thornton had never been to Peru before, although he sometimes felt he'd been everywhere else on the planet. He couldn't help wondering how the country might have looked if he'd visited it before the glaucoma squeezed the world down into a dimly lit tube with a pinhole view at the end. Instead, he had to make do with the sounds and smells of Lima, which were far too much like many other cities: smog and dirt, car exhaust, and the twin subtle stinks of bureaucracy and corruption.

Julio Pacheco was, in turn, far too much like all the other government officials Pete had spoken with so far. The offices varied in size and stateliness, the carpets varied in depth and shabbiness, the desks varied in width and glossiness. The stonewalling never varied at all.

"Señor, you must understand me! Truly, we are doing all we can, but what you ask is not possible! We cannot keep track of every person in our country – why should we? We are no longer at war!"

"You're a lot more confident about that than I am."

"Señor Thornton, surely you do not think – "

"What am I supposed to think?"

Pacheco heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh. "Señor, of course I understand your concerns. But can you understand mine? I do not understand why the world still regards us with such suspicion! We broke the will of the terrorists years ago – they have run back to their mountains, like the dogs they always were."

"Dr. Velasquez didn't disappear 'years ago'. She's been missing for three weeks. Although with every day your government delays, she's been missing a day longer."

"And are you truly certain that her disappearance is . . . shall we say, mysterious? Women . . . let us be frank, Señor. We are both men of the world. Señora Velasquez – "

"Doctor Velasquez – "

"Sí, sí, of course. Doctor Velasquez. You are certain that she did not – let us say, that she did not have a gentleman friend? Is it not possible that she simply left her home to be with him? Women are like that, señor! Surely you accept this!"

"Accept it?" Pete snapped. "I'm not accepting anything of the kind!" He reached for his cane, rose from his chair, turned his head as if he wasn't sure where Sam was sitting, although he knew precisely enough that he could have tapped Sam's ear with the extended white cane. "Sam? Come on. I think it's time we left Señor Pacheco to – whatever he spends his time doing."

Pacheco's flustered excuses and empty reassurances followed after them as Sam hurried to take Pete's arm and guide him across the opulent office, through the door that led into the corridor and ultimately to the slender freedom of the street. Mindful of the sharp ears of their driver, neither spoke until they had reached their hotel suite and Sam had begun checking the carefully planted tells to see if another search had been made of the rooms in their absence.

"All clear," Sam reported after a few minutes. "Did I do any better that time? During your meeting, I mean?"

Pete didn't actually crack a smile, but the softened lines around his mouth told a loud enough tale. "You did great, Sam. I almost forgot you were there myself. Pacheco probably thought you were part of the wallpaper."

Sam grinned. He had lost track of how many government officials they'd run through so far; they had yet to make any progress at all in their mission, but at least he was getting a lot smoother at playing Pete's assistant.

"I used to be pretty good at disappearing, 'cept I never even thought about it. Then you and Dad had to point it out, damn you. That really messed me up for a while."

"It isn't good enough to be able to do it by instinct. You have to be able to turn invisible deliberately. Your father's one of the best at it, you know."

"Yeah, I know." A good trick for a journalist. An even better one for a spy. "Pete, how much longer before he turns up? I thought he'd've made contact by now."

"He knows where we are – and if he doesn't we're easy enough to find. We couldn't be much more conspicuous if we hung neon signs around our necks and walked through the Plaza de Armas playing trumpets and asking the army if they've 'disappeared' anyone lately."

"Don't tempt me. We might get more that way than we have so far."

Pete's smile was gentle, paternal. "You've never been on this end of the business before, have you? Waiting . . . he'll settle in and get himself established, and once he's invisible, he'll contact us."

"Invisibility again? C'mon."

"Well, not exactly. This is your father we're talking about, after all. He can't really be invisible, or even inconspicuous, any more than he can fly." Less. "But he can make people willing to cover for him. He'll find some way to help them, and they'll pretend he isn't there, that he doesn't even exist. You've seen it yourself, Sam."

"Yeah."

"In any country, the ordinary people who live there are the ones who know how to keep their heads down. Get 'em on your side, and you've got it made. It's even better than invisibility."

- x -

At that moment, Mac wasn't feeling invisible. He felt hot and sweaty, dusty and exasperated, and was hoping Dominica Ortiz would return quickly and reclaim her children so he could finish up his current project without another round of delays. It wasn't that the kids were annoying; if anything, they were just too much of a distraction.

María had been right; his height was a big problem when it came to blending in amongst the shantytown residents of Villa El Salvador. But the cover story she'd helped him put together was holding up beautifully, and – as usual – there was no end of stuff needing repairs in the poorer sections of Lima. If he couldn't exactly blend in, at least he could fit in and find a welcome.

He was currently working on a particularly tough challenge – a prehistoric pickup truck with an engine that apparently hadn't had any maintenance done since the Spanish conquest. As he wrestled with the sulking vehicle, Alberto Ortiz, Dominica's only surviving boy, peppered him with questions, and his youngest sister Concepción tried to climb Mac's legs again. She couldn't possibly remember the forest – the family were internal refugees from the insurgency, displaced from the uplands only a few years ago – but the tiny girl was fascinated by his height and seemed determined to treat him as an ambulatory tree, one that didn't have stinging insects lurking on it.

It might have been easier if Alberto had been asking questions about the truck, but he mostly wanted to know about the US. "If you grew up in California, did you know any movie stars?"

"Are you kidding?" Mac bent down to swap wrenches, and Concepción seized the opportunity to climb a bit higher.

"What does Coca-Cola taste like?"

Disgusting, Mac wanted to say. "A lot like InkaCola, but more sweet."

"Did you play baseball?"

"Sometimes."

"If you are americano, why are you here?"

"I thought I was," Mac grumbled. "Right up until I landed in jail, and they told me I wasn't."

"Why did they put you in jail?"

"Hey, I don't really want to talk about it. Turns out my mom lied. She told me I was, but there was no proof. My papers were fake. And here I am."

"Your mamacita lied to you?"

Mac raised his head from the depths of the engine and glowered at the boy. "Don't you call her a liar. She's dead now, and that's – " His already strained Spanish vocabulary failed him. "Mean," he concluded in English.

Alberto dropped his head. "I'm sorry, señor. I didn't mean it."

"No problema." Mac stood up to stretch his back, removed Concepción from his knee level and set her on his shoulders. She crowed with triumphant delight and grabbed a double fistful of his hair. He yelped.

Alberto was leaning against the rusted-out front fender of the truck, trying to look casual and worldly, with no success. "Do you think my mama is pretty?"

"Huh?" Mac didn't have to pretend his confusion.

"If you think she's pretty, you could marry her, and then you could stay here and the priest would not scold and complain."

"Hey, 'Berto, slow down . . . "

"And you could teach me things. You could teach me to fight, like in the American comic books! Bam! Pow!" Alberto boxed an imaginary enemy. "Then I could fight the soldiers, like you did, and keep Isabella safe when she goes to school."

"Whoa, Alberto. Punching that soldier was just plain stupid. If your mom hadn't helped me out when his buddies chased me, I'd've been in real trouble, and I'm tired of being in trouble."

"But it worked! The soldiers left Isabella alone and chased you instead! That was very brave of you!"

MacGyver gave up. The boy's hero worship was unshakeable, and he needed to get the beat-up old truck running, preferably that year. He was making good progress here, but he hadn't been able to connect with Pete and Sam yet, and he didn't know if they'd learned anything that would help clear his path – or at least help him spot potential pitfalls ahead. And he was more hesitant than usual about contacting Pete – he didn't feel the usual cocky confidence about being able to slip in and out of a meet without raising a ripple of notice. He tried to reassure himself that it wasn't Sam's presence throwing him off, making him second-guess himself. Thanks to Pete and his advance planning, there was a fallback plan; but that was a long way short of inconspicuous too.

The Party has a thousand eyes and a thousand ears.

Or it used to, and Mac wasn't sure how much might be left of an underground intelligence network that had once seemed as all-seeing and swift as the rumour mill from Hell. On his last trip to Peru, too many people had known, too easily, who he was and what he was doing. He'd made it out alive with María, but it had felt like he'd only succeeded because Shining Path didn't have a good enough reason to stop him.

And now . . . according to the official reports, Shining Path was yesterday's problem: Guzmán, the architect of the terror, had been captured in 1992, and the revolution had crumbled after a couple of years of trying to live without its head. Guzmán, 'Chairman Gonzalo', was in prison for life – at least they'd had the sense not to make him a martyr through execution – the country was rebuilding itself, the displaced refugees were beginning to return to whatever was left of their villages after years of bombings and burnings, massacres and disappearances. If he could just get this danged truck running, it would be loaded up with shabby, precious household goods, and another contingent would be off at the first opportunity, fleeing the stinking slums of Lima for the cleaner air of the mountains.

MacGyver wished he could go with them. Villa El Salvador made his skin crawl, and it wasn't just the foul air and the dusty humidity. Mac lifted a protesting Concepción from his shoulders and zoomed her around for a few minutes of imagined flight before he set her down, hugged her fiercely, and reluctantly let go to turn his attention back to the stubborn truck.

- x -

Sam sensed, for the third time in the last half-hour, that Pete's attention was wandering. He looked up from the grant proposal he'd been reading out loud – they hadn't been able to bring any of the special equipment that would have allowed Pete to keep up with his own paperwork, but Pete wasn't about to let that slow him down.

"You know, most people would find invasive insect species eradication boring from the get-go, but I don't think that's the problem right now."

Pete started guiltily. "I'm sorry, Sam. I – really, I'm very grateful that you're willing to take the time to do this – let's go back to the beginning of the section on the Asian long-horned beetle."

"Let's not." Sam set down the file, swung his legs to the floor, paced to the window. The inevitable morning fog hadn't yet burned away. He might not be able to actually see the peaks of the Andes through the smog and haze of wintertime Lima, but at least he could pretend that the mountains might shimmer into view at any moment. He wished he could ask Pete what was wrong, but they both knew.

Instead, he stated simply, "It's been five days."

Pete heaved a long sigh. "You're right, Sam. Go make arrangements for the car."

"We don't have an appointment with anyone today. What do I say if they ask why we want it?"

A mischievous smile ghosted across Pete's face. "I keep forgetting – you're still pretty new at this. Don't tell them anything. Shrug and blame it on the tiresome, unfathomable old man. You can even try to wheedle some sympathy out of them for putting up with me."

Sam was opening his mouth for an indignant protest when he saw the twinkle. His mouth snapped shut. After a moment, he nodded. "Yeah. That'll work."

He was halfway to the door when the phone rang, the shrill half-jangle of the front desk. He glanced back at Pete. "You didn't tell me you signed up for the telepathic hotel service."

Pete was reaching for the phone, his fingers locating the source of the sound so smoothly that a casual observer might never have suspected the blindness. "Thornton."

"Señor Thornton? You have a visitor."

"Yes?"

"He says his name is also Thornton."

The wave of joy that broke across Pete's face was bright enough to burn away the residual fog. "Send him up!"

Michael Thornton was thinner than before, and he still walked with a limp. But there was a new firmness to his eyes and jaw that even Pete could see. The change made his heart catch. It certainly hadn't been there when Michael had been released from prison the year before, his sentence shortened for good behaviour and the testimony that had taken down the other members of the ring, only to face an future sterilised of opportunity. Not even his father's influence could overcome a felony conviction for selling government secrets. The best Pete could do for him was help him find contract work overseas, in a country desperate enough for foreign expertise that it would give a second chance to an ex-convict.

Pete swallowed hard as the hotel door swung open. You're really not in a position to tell anyone that Peru is just too dangerous. Michael had known the future would be rough, but still . . . he'd been trying to reach his son since before they'd left LA, with no word back till now.

Then Michael was inside, wrapping his arms around his father, pounding him on the back. "Dad! Dad? You okay? I'm so sorry, I didn't even know you were in the country, not till last night – I was way off up-country and they just stuck the messages in my inbox, damn them . . . what the hell are you doing in Peru?" Michael took a moment to look around the room. "Sam! You're here too? Where's MacGyver?"

He looked back at his father and frowned at the expression. "He is here, right? You wouldn't be doing this without him. Whatever you're doing. I know you wouldn't. Why are you here, anyway?" A fresh shadow crossed his eyes. "Mom's okay, isn't she? It's not that?"

A brief hesitation flitted across Pete's face. Michael flushed. He doesn't trust me. He still can't trust me. It's never going to change. His face burned even hotter under the high-altitude sunburn.

Pete tilted his head towards the suite's sitting nook, with its overstuffed chairs surrounded by stacked files and reports.

"Your mother's fine, Michael. But you'd better sit down. There's a lot to tell you. Yes, MacGyver is here in Peru, but he's not with us. Sam and I came here officially; Mac . . . well, we're still waiting for him to make contact. He should have arrived at least five days ago."

Michael tried to meet his father's eyes, to let him see the gratitude that washed through him at being trusted. He remembered, with a shock, that Pete couldn't see his face clearly enough, and rage at the unfair world threatened to swamp the gratitude.

Pete reached out to Michael and placed hand on his shoulder, unerringly in the dark. The firm grasp said everything that needed to be said.

"I'm sorry about the hesitation, Michael. I've been dealing with governmental bureaucrats since we landed at the airport here in Lima. Earlier today, I hedged my answer when Sam asked me if I wanted another cup of coffee."

Michael let Pete guide him to a chair, only half aware that it should have been the other way around. He'd been in prison when the glaucoma had ambushed his father; in the course of a scant handful of Pete's prison visits, he'd gone from the hawk-eyed old spymaster who never missed a detail to a hesitating shadow with dark glasses and a white cane. Pete's slow return to confidence had followed, but Michael's slender faith in the world, never very solid, had recovered much more slowly.

Pete settled himself, then leaned forward, clasping his hands together. "How's it going? Really? God, it's good to see you. It's just not the same only having the phone calls. And I'm always wondering if we're being tapped."

"Um . . . good, actually. Really good. I – I didn't think I'd really get into the work, but once I got over the altitude sickness, I found out I liked it."

Pete beamed. "Yeah?"

"In fact, I love it. There's something that's just so crazy about trying to make things work around here – even a small success feels like you've really done something, really made a difference." Michael had emerged from prison with a newly-minted advanced degree in electrical engineering, and a newly fierce determination to prove he deserved the forgiveness his father had already given him. "Sometimes it's pretty crazy, when you feel like you're hanging onto a cliff by your eyebrows, and then your Jeep reaches the top and somehow or other some pack of demented engineers managed to put up a pylon there."

Sam spoke for the first time in some minutes. "And another pack of psychos has climbed all the way up there and blown up the same pylon. Don't you ever worry that they'll go after you?" His voice was harsh.

"Sam – " Pete tried to intervene.

Michael only shrugged. "I suppose they might. But hey, I could've stayed in LA and gotten beaten to death by a mugger. It sure beats flipping burgers."

Sam blew out his breath. "Crap. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm . . . kind of on edge is all." He glanced at Pete, sensed agreement, continued. "We haven't heard from Dad since we got here. Pete, we were going to . . . "

"Yes, I know. We will." He turned to Michael, his face serious. "And you could help us out, Michael, if you're willing to. I don't suppose you'd be up for a little cloak and dagger stuff?"

Michael tried not to look as if he'd just been offered tickets to first-row centre court seats at a championship basketball game. He didn't succeed. "What do you need me to do?" Need. Dad needs me!

"You've got your own car here, right?"

"Yeah . . . "

"Good. Your driver can enjoy a nice long siesta in the hotel lobby. You're going to take the Operations Director of the Phoenix Foundation on a field trip. Congratulations."

- x -

I've always had one big problem with being undercover. It isn't the deception – although I'm not too crazy about that, not when most of the folks you meet are decent people at heart – or the danger, or the tightrope walk feeling when something unexpected happens (it always does) and you have to improvise. I kinda like that part, actually.

No, the big problem I have – other than the habit of getting way too involved – is that, for some reason, I have an awful time remembering to answer to any name but my own.

Maybe it's because I went through some pretty spiky years in my teens, refusing to answer to my first name, or to anything but the nickname I wanted. Even my mom gave up after she saw how much it meant to me – although I would actually answer when she used it. But I sometimes think the stubborn deafness that comes back to haunt me started there.

Unless I've got no choice at all, I stick with the name I know.

In Spain, the Philippines, Mexico and Central America, the name tended to get turned into 'Maco' – but in Peru, it picked up the clipped terminal consonant of a Quechua word. Even the small children could pronounce it, although Concepción obviously thought it was a funny name for a person. But it was recognisably his own.

"Maq'! Maq'! Señor Apodaca is here for his truck!" Alberto dashed in from the street, panting.

" 'Bout time," Dominica Ortiz grumbled. She had delayed her marketing, insisting on being present for the negotiations over the now-finished truck repairs. Mac agreed privately. Usually, he enjoyed the more relaxed attitude about time that prevailed outside the borders of the States; but right now he was crowding up against a deadline he couldn't admit to anyone.

The announcement was hardly needed; Hector Apodaca was one of those people you could always hear coming. He was an ideal contact and source for local information: affable, garrulous, apparently friends with everybody, and too good-natured for his breezy tactlessness to offend. Mac wondered how he ever managed to cram his oversized geniality into the cab of his truck, or how he'd managed to sustain that cheerful certainty of good will through the years of terror and violence. Perhaps it had built up from appreciating the daily miracle of not being dead.

"So. You have brought my fine roaring pack mule back from the grave, eh?" Apodaca ran a hand along the dinged and rusted hood as if he was patting a beloved racehorse. "I brought you a dead thing, and now you give me back my life. My children's lives! Now you will tell me how much money you want for fixing her, and I will weep and insist that I cannot pay so much, and I cannot charge my customers enough to pay you and still feed my poor starving family, and we will weep and curse and insult each other, and call each other crooks, and then we will agree and shake hands and swear brotherhood and have a drink."

"Wow. That's pretty efficient." Mac blinked, and Apodaca grinned. "How about we just skip to the end? Not the drinking, the agreeing part."

Apodaca scowled melodramatically. "And what should I do to amuse myself for the rest of the day?"

"Um, get some work done?"

The big man roared with laughter. He had scooped up Concepción and slipped her a sweet as he avalanched into the shed where Mac had been doing the repairs, and now he swung her up in his arms and tickled her with his moustache. She squealed and grabbed at it with sticky fingers; he fended her off with practiced ease and set her on top of the truck cab, where she surveyed the world with round dark eyes.

"Tell ya what." Mac looped his thumbs into the pockets of his tattered jeans. "I'll lower my price – which is already so low that I wouldn't be able to feed my own starving family if I even had one – if you'll do me a couple favours. First, when Mama Ortiz here is ready to take her family back to Junín, you take her right away. No making her wait. And you don't overcharge her, either."

Apodaca threw up his hands. "Since we have already sworn brotherhood, of course. We are family."

Mac looked at Dominica Ortiz and raised an eyebrow. "Will he follow through if I'm not here to remind him?"

Apodaca beamed. "Mama Ortiz will never let me forget!" He leered at her and waggled his eyebrows; she laughed and flapped her hands at him as if shooing away a chicken. "Even if she waits until Isabella is all grown up and accepted at the college, she will remind me."

Concepción had started to wander away; Mac fielded her before she reached the edge of the cab roof and slung her onto his shoulder. "That's one."

"One? There is more?"

"Yeah, but I'm pretty sure you can afford it. I don't need money as much as I need help."

Apodaca drummed thoughtful fingers on the truck. "A man who can fix things such as you can, Señor Maq, can make money and hire help."

"That kind of help is only worth what you pay for it. I need advice, and information. And I need to get to Huancayo."

"Huancayo?" The first truly serious expression crossed the man's face.

"Yeah. Can you help me?"

Apodaca spread his arms wide, palms extended. "Why has God placed us on this earth if not to help each other?"

"Glad to hear it. How long will it take?"

"I must speak to a few people. I will come back this evening, or perhaps tomorrow. You will be here?"

"Sí. Oh, and one other thing."

"Another thing? What is it now, señor?"

"Try to remember to put oil in the truck once in a while, okay?"

- x -