DEVIL’S KEEP Read online

  It was miraculous.

  The opportunity had presented itself when a customer left behind a newspaper at one of her tables. She brought the paper home and read it by the light of the single dim electric bulb that her mother allowed to burn after dark. At the back of the newspaper were ads for overseas employment agencies. One caught her attention: OPTIMO. She liked the name; it sounded bright and cheerful. And she saw that Optimo had a branch office in Tacloban City, the provincial capital, about an hour up the highway.

  She went there on her next day off. The address was a shabby three-story office building, a single small room at the top floor. As Marivic entered, she found half a dozen metal chairs along walls with flaked and peeling paint. Five of the chairs were occupied by people filling out forms on clipboards. At the front wall, a plump middle-aged woman sat at a desk. A nameplate on the desk read: REGIONAL MANAGER. She impatiently motioned Marivic inside and gave Marivic a clipboard and a form—BIOGRAPHICAL DATA AND APPLICATION FOR REPRESENTATION, the form said—and Marivic took it to the last empty chair and began to fill it out, balancing the clipboard on her knees.

  The air in the room was dense and torpid. An electric fan turned lazily overhead. Marivic wiped her damp forehead with the back of one hand to keep the beads of sweat from dripping onto the form. When she was finished, she brought the clipboard to the desk and stood waiting as the plump woman examined the form. Finally the woman sent her to a clinic on the first floor for a physical exam. A doctor took her medical history, examined her eyes and ears and throat, listened to her heart and lungs, and drew a blood sample. Marivic trudged back up to the top-floor office. The woman curtly told her that the application would be sent to the head office. Whatever happened would come out of Manila.

  It didn’t sound encouraging.

  Marivic felt foolish as she walked out. What chance did she have? Everybody in the Philippines wanted to work abroad. She had wasted a day off.

  Three days later, the Manila office called. They had a job for her, but it had to be filled quickly. Could she be in Manila in two days?

  Marivic stammered a yes.

  She was instructed to return to the Tacloban office, where the regional manager gave her a reserved-seat bus ticket and one thousand pesos—more than a week’s wages at the restaurant—for incidental expenses. The plump woman told her that an agency employee would meet her at the bus terminal in Manila. While Marivic waited for her passport, she would stay free of charge at the agency’s dormitory.

  “Be sure that you’re on that bus,” the woman told her.

  Marivic hurried home to pack. The next morning she was headed north, stunned by her good fortune.

  The journey to Manila was twenty-two hours, nearly a full day and a night.

  Marivic stayed awake through the daylight hours, eagerly taking in the countryside she had never seen before. It included a crossing of a spectacular bridge high above the San Juanico Strait, terrifying but thrilling, and a two-hour passage on a large ferry that carried the bus to a landing at the southern tip of the island of Luzon.

  Manila was on Luzon, so the rest of the trip was overland. Something about that thrilled Marivic, knowing that there was no more water between her and the big city. MANILA 670 KM said a road sign at the ferry landing. Marivic pulled her cell phone from the pocket and powered it up. It got a signal, three bars.

  This didn’t surprise her. In the past ten years, cell service had proliferated throughout the country, with towers appearing even on remote mountaintops. The Philippines was cell crazy. All but the very poorest owned a phone with a prepaid SIM card. Airtime for conversations was relatively expensive, beyond the budgets of most, but a text message cost only a few centavos. For the price of a scoop of steamed rice at an outdoor food stall, you could send dozens of texts. So Filipinos were now a texting nation, universally adept, able to walk, talk, eat, drive—sometimes even make love—while their thumbs danced on the phones’ numeric pads.

  Marivic, seeing the three bars, thought about Ronnie. He had always wanted to make the journey to the big city.

  She sent him a text:

  manila 670 km

  Moments later, the reply flashed back:

  lucky u

  The bus ground on. Twice more that day, as road signs passed her window, Marivic sent texts to her brother.

  manila 512

  Ronnie answered:

  :-(

  And just before dark:

  manila 402

  That got no answer at all. Ronnie was pouting, she thought, and was missing her. She would feel the same in his place.

  She slept on and off after nightfall, waking when the bus stopped in towns and small cities. Then after midnight the stops were more frequent, the populated areas bigger and closer together, until finally there was no more countryside, just an endless sprawl of streets and homes and shops and buildings, with Manila glowing in the sky ahead.

  She didn’t know exactly when they entered the city. But some of the streets became wider, and there were trucks and cars and taxis waiting at traffic signals—even at 3:30 a.m.!—and she knew they must be close. She turned on the phone and tapped out a quick message to Ronnie:

  arrived

  He would be asleep, but he’d find it first thing in the morning.

  The bus terminal was on the south side of the metropolitan area, along a broad boulevard. Most of the passengers seemed to know that they were getting close, because they began to gather their bags. Marivic stood, took down her duffel, and sat with it in her lap.

  On impulse, she unzipped it and dug down into the clothes. She brought out a small drawstring bag of red velvet with a braided cinch. She looked around, saw that nobody seemed to be paying attention to her, opened the bag and let the contents fall into her palm.

  It was her most treasured possession: a gold herringbone bracelet with a centerpiece of red rubies forming the letter “M,” encircled by a ring of small diamonds. Nothing else she owned was even remotely so expensive, but this wasn’t the real significance. The bracelet was a gift from her father, bought in Brazil for her sixteenth birthday. He had always brought thrilling surprises when he returned from his voyages, but this one was really special. It was a grown-up gift. It had made her feel like a woman.

  Marivic had intended to keep the bracelet out of sight in Manila. She had heard stories of robbers who stole gold chains and even rings, ripping them free and then running. But she had also heard of bus station thieves who snatched baggage from the hands of unwary travelers, and she could just as well lose the bracelet that way.

  Marivic folded her hand around the bracelet. She thought about her father. She imagined him shopping for it and thinking of her and carrying it halfway around the world to place it on her wrist. Just touching it now made her feel confident and secure, as if it carried some of her father’s strength and love.

  She draped the bracelet over her left wrist, and fastened the clasp.

  Some of the passengers were standing in the aisle now, impatient. Marivic looked to the front and saw that the bus was pulling into the terminal. It rolled to a stop. The front door huffed open.

  Marivic waited until most of the passengers had left. Then she grasped the handle of the bag and stepped out into the aisle. She walked up to the front of the bus and into the thick, pungent air of Manila.

  Two

  A rap on his bedroom door woke Ilya Andropov. He had given orders to be awakened as soon as the deed was done. Within a few seconds he was conscious and aware, ready to operate.

  “Done?” he asked.

  “Done,” said the voice on the other side of the door.

  “Coffee,” Andropov said.

  He came out several minutes later, a red silk robe over black silk pajama bottoms. Andropov was an elegant man, nails manicured, his stylishly cut hair maintained with a weekly trim. But his lips pursed in a perpetual sneer, and his eyes and his manner were completely without warmth. He had the appearance of a man both prim and vicious.
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br />   He walked down the hall to his office, in a walled residential compound in the Malate district of Manila. Waiting on his desk was a glass French press filled with dark coffee. He poured out a cup and picked up the telephone. He punched in a call to a number in the United States. But the routing was indirect. It ran through an Internet connection, into a landline relay from Chechnya to Moscow, again across an Internet trunk to London, from where it followed the usual pathway into the domestic circuits in the U.S.

  Though the call quality was often poor, with a lag of several seconds, this arrangement ensured that the call could not be tracked to its source.

  A woman’s voice came through from the other end, a curt “Yes.” Formalities were not required. She was speaking on a cell phone reserved for this purpose.

  “We have what you are seeking,” Andropov said. His English was crisp.

  Her reply came back several seconds later: “I’ll make the transfer.”

  “The price is now fifteen.”

  “What? We had an arrangement!”

  “That was for an item of ordinary quality. This one is exceptional. It’s literally a one-in-a-million specimen. You can’t do better.”

  Because of the transmission lag, speaking on the connection was like using a two-way radio. When Andropov stopped talking, he found that the woman at the other end had already launched into a diatribe. He caught the last few words:

  “—filthy thieving motherfucker, I’m not paying it! Do you know what I can do with fifteen million dollars?!”

  “If you don’t complete this sale, I suppose you can do anything you want with the money. At least for as long as you are able.”

  This stopped her. Andropov knew that it would. He often had this discussion with prospective clients, and it always ended the same: with Andropov getting what he wanted.

  “How do I know it’s true, about the quality?” she asked. “All I have is your word.”

  “We both depend on mutual trust and discretion,” Andropov said. This was an exaggeration: Andropov and his group were much less vulnerable than his clients. But it sounded good, and it always seemed to soothe those who needed reassurance.

  Andropov heard a long silence, longer than the circuit lag.

  “I can’t get it right away,” she said finally. “It’ll take a couple of days. I’m not that liquid. Fifteen million, I wasn’t ready for that.”

  “I’ll be watching for it,” Andropov said.

  He ended the call, sat back, and lifted the cup of coffee to his lips. Still hot. Fifteen million in less time than coffee needs to cool. Given the choice between life and cash, even those who truly love cash will always choose life. Just a chance of life was good enough. The choice had to become real, that was all. Then things became clear.

  What a business, he thought.

  Three

  Lorna Valencia was already awake, fixing breakfast for Ronnie before he left to harvest copra on the steep mountainsides beyond the village. She kept her phone in a pocket of her housedress, expecting that Marivic would call at any time, as soon as she arrived in Manila. This should have happened already, she thought. But perhaps the bus was delayed.

  When Ronnie woke and came to eat, he showed her the last text from Marivic:

  arrived

  The message was almost an hour old. This irritated Lorna. An hour in Manila, and the girl couldn’t find a few moments to contact her mother? Her brother, but not her mother?

  She tapped out a brief message to Marivic, trying not to seem upset, and brought Ronnie his usual breakfast: a plate of fried eggs, fried rice, and fresh fruit. As Ronnie ate, Lorna waited for a reply. Nothing.

  The boy scooped up the last of the food, swallowed, and stood. He left his phone on a wicker stand by the front door—there was no signal up on the mountainside—and picked up his bolo knife, which hung from a peg beside the door.

  “She’s probably asleep already,” Ronnie told Lorna as he left. “She’ll send another text when she’s awake.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said.

  The entire day passed. No text, no call.

  When Ronnie came home, Lorna waggled her phone in his face.

  “You were wrong,” she said. “Nothing.”

  “She’s probably busy,” he said. “Wait until she has some time tonight.”

  By 9:00 p.m.—their bedtime—there was still no text.

  “Something must be wrong with her phone,” Ronnie said.

  “She could borrow someone’s phone for a text.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t know anyone yet.”

  Lorna laughed out loud at this: the idea that Marivic, friendly and vivacious, could be in Manila for an entire day and not make a single acquaintance.

  That night she slept fitfully, woke earlier than usual, and immediately reached for the phone, hoping to find a message from overnight.

  Nothing.

  “Mommy, she’s there, she’s all right,” Ronnie said as he left the house. “You’ll hear from her today.”

  She heard doubt in his voice, though. Something was wrong, and he knew it too.

  That morning, after the little ones had gone to school, Lorna put on a Sunday dress. She dropped Ronnie’s phone into her purse, along with her own, in case Marivic called him first. She walked out to the highway and caught a local bus to Tacloban.

  She found the Optimo office and took a seat at the desk across from the plump woman.

  “It’s about my daughter. Marivic Valencia is her name.”

  “You’re her mother?” the woman said. “I’m glad to see you.”

  “Why? Is something wrong? It’s more than a day since she got to Manila, and I haven’t—”

  The woman put up a hand. Stop. She reached for a phone, punched in a speed-dial number.

  “The main office thinks I stole the expense money and the fare,” the woman said as she waited with the phone against her ear. “They chewed my ass yesterday, now they can chew yours.”

  She spoke into the phone: “Yes. About the Valencia girl. Her mother is here.”

  The plump woman handed the phone to Lorna, but before Lorna could speak she heard a female voice in the earpiece, commanding and brittle.

  “You’re the mother of Marivic Valencia? That little thief is your daughter?”

  “Marivic is not a thief.”

  “She took expense money and a bus ticket, but she never went to Manila.”

  “Of course she did. I watched her get on the bus,” Lorna said.

  “So you say, but she wasn’t there when it reached Manila—”

  “She sent a text—”

  “—and now I’m out the cost of the bus ticket and the cash.”

  “Someone was supposed to meet her at the terminal. Maybe they missed her. Maybe they were late.”

  “That was me,” said the voice on the phone. “And I wasn’t late. I was there when the bus pulled in. I was waiting. There was no Marivic.”

  “Something’s not right.”

  “Yes. A girl takes bus fare and a thousand pesos and promises to arrive on the bus, then never arrives—that’s not right.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  “Who knows? Maybe she met a smooth-talking pimp on the bus and decided that his job sounded easier.”

  “Not my Marivic!”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  The voice on the phone said, “I should hold you responsible for our loss. But what good would it do? So just go away now. Stop harassing my employee. This matter is at an end.”

  The voice clicked off in Lorna’s ear, and she handed the phone across the desk.

  “You have to help me,” Lorna said.

  “What can I do?” the plump woman said. “They say she wasn’t on the bus. They were there, I wasn’t. Neither were you.”

  “I want to speak to someone else,” Lorna said.

  “Who?” said the woman. She spread her arms wide, taking in th
e small room. “Who else do you see? There is only me and my boss in Manila, and you just spoke to her. You have to go. Now.”

  The woman glared at Lorna, adamant.

  Lorna got up and walked out. She stood on the sidewalk and considered her options. Really, there was just one place left to go. She had hoped that she wouldn’t need it. Like most Filipinos, she avoided contact with the Philippine National Police, believing that no good could come of it.

  But she saw no choice.

  The Tacloban headquarters of the PNP was three blocks from the Optimo office. From the front desk, Lorna was shunted to the office of a PNP sergeant who—to her surprise—seemed friendly and receptive. He took notes and nodded sympathetically as she told him her story. Lorna showed him the series of texts on Ronnie’s phone and related what the plump woman at Optimo had told her.

  “It’s now more than thirty hours since Marivic arrived in Manila. And I know that she arrived.”

  “But no contact in that time?” the sergeant asked.

  “None at all. No calls, no texts. I’m worried sick.”

  “I’m sure that you are,” the sergeant said. “My oldest is fifteen. I can just imagine.”

  “You’ll help?” Lorna said.

  “I’ll put together a report today and send it to Manila. If there’s any mischief, that’s where it occurred.”

  “Thank you. And what will Manila do?”

  “Ah, Manila, that’s the problem.” The sergeant gave a small, pained grimace.

  “What problem?”

  “In Manila they are very busy. Many, many reports and requests.” He gestured toward his notes. “And in this case, we don’t even know that there has been a crime. Not that I doubt you. But I don’t think this will get much attention. Sorry to say it, but you shouldn’t expect much from Manila.”

  “That’s all? You can’t do anything more?”

  “I will pray for the safe return of your beloved child,” the sergeant said, and he got up and showed her to the door. And that was it.

  That evening, when Ronnie returned home from work, Lorna told him about her trip to Tacloban and what had happened there at the agency office and with the police.