The Year of the Ransom

24 May 1987

Wanda let him in when he knocked on her door. “Hi!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “How are you? How’d things go?”

“They went,” he said.

She took both his hands. Her voice softened. “I’ve been so worried about you, Manse.”

That felt almighty good to hear. “Oh, I take care of my hide. The operation, well, we nabbed most of the bandits without loss to ourselves. Machu Picchu is clean once more.” Was clean. Was left in its loneliness for another three centuries. Now tourists halloo everywhere. But a Patrolman shouldn’t pass judgments. He needs to be case-hardened, if he’s to work in the history of humankind.

“Marvelous!” Impulsively, she hugged him. He hugged back. They retreated in a slight, shared confusion.

“If you’d come ten minutes ago, you wouldn’t’ve found me,” she said. “I couldn’t sit and do nothing. Went for a long, long walk.”

Dismayed, he snapped, “I told you not to leave this place! You aren’t safe. We’ve planted an instrument here that’ll warn of any intruder, but we can’t trail around after you. Damnation, girl, Castelar’s still at large.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Better I should climb these walls? Why would he chase after me again?”

“You were his single twentieth-century contact. You could possibly give us a lead to him. Or so he may fear.”

She grew serious. “As a matter of fact, I can.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

She tugged his hand. How warm hers was. “C’mon, relax, let me fetch us a beer, and we’ll talk. That hike I took cleared my head. I started thinking back, reliving the whole business, except free of terror and, and unfamiliarity. And, yes, I believe I can tell you what point Luis is bound to make for.”

He stood where he was. His pulse slugged. “How?”

The blue eyes searched him. “I did get to know the man,” she said low. “Not what you’d call intimately, but the relationship sure was intense while it lasted. He isn’t a monster. By our standards he’s cruel, but he’s a son of his era. Ambitious and greedy—and in his heart a knight errant. I searched my memory, minute by minute. Kind of stood outside and watched the two of us. And I saw how he reacted when he learned the Indians would rebel and besiege Francisco Pizarro’s brothers in Cuzco, and the troubles that would follow. If he appears as if by miracle and raises the siege, that’ll put him straightaway in command of the whole shebang. But over and above any such calculations, Manse, he has got to be there. His honor calls him.”