Page 91 of Prisoner of War
Nick grabbed one of the overhead sheets as the boat lifted over a swell. “So has the party girl, I think.”
Minnie looked at Duardo. “Yes. Her too. Zalaya killed her.” She turned away and threaded her way along the deck, ducking under the spinnaker to reach the prow and solitude.
Duardo followed her as she had known he would. She leaned back against the railing and facedhim.
He gripped the railing next to her and his knuckles were white. “I would have preferred you never learn what I had to do there,” he said at last. “Part of me died when I realized that you were there and that I must deal with you as Zalaya would.” His chest lifted, as if he wanted to say more, but he remained silent.
She could almost feel his doubt and hesitation. He was trying to find apath through everything that lay between them. She relented and softly said, “I’ve been able to put together nearly all of it from your hints. I know you only did what you had to do. Serrano was watching you as closely as anyone else around him.”
He lifted his hand. “I was trying to protect you. You will never believe that, but—”
“I believe you,” she said softly.
Again, the awkward silence.
“You knew the end was coming,” she said. “A breaking storm. I understood that as well as you did. You didn’t expect to survive this day. That is why you insisted I find a way to leave.”
She saw his chest rise and fall. “You knew that too?”
“When I found the key with the knife, I knew.”
Again, a silence grew between them. Minnie desperately sought another way around the barrier.
“The story youtold me, about killing Duardo in the hospital.” She grimaced. “It sounds confusing put that way, doesn’t it?”
Duardo shook his head. “I think of Zalaya as something apart from me. It’s better that way. You want to know what happened in the hospital? How I came to be Zalaya?”
“Yes.”
“The story I told you as Zalaya was accurate to a point.”
“But what happened to you, after the helicopter? Carmentold me the door they took you through led to the infirmary, but...” She shrugged. “After that, I can’t connect the dots.”
“The bullet was too close to my heart,” Duardo said. “The surgeons shipped me off to the city hospital for better treatment. There happened to be a cardiac surgeon visiting, one of the best in the world. He operated. Later, when the Insurrectos had taken over the city, thehospital staff destroyed all my records and took my tags so I couldn’t be identified.
“The first I knew of any of this was when I woke up to find Vistaria in the hands of the Insurrectos, the president dead and Nick and those who would be with him—including you—nowhere to be found. I spent the next few weeks going through the most painful physiotherapy and rehabilitation I’ve ever experienced.Getting shot was easier.”
Minnie saw his ghostly smile.
“Your English is so much better,” she said. “It’s idiomatic, almost flawless.”
“Zalaya’s English was perfect. I spent every moment I could watching American television and reading novels in English. There were a lot of sleepless nights.” He shrugged. “It just had to be done.” He reached out for the rail. “I must sit,” he said. “My legwas not shattered as Zalaya’s was but it still aches if I stand for too long.”
Minnie processed that as he sat down. She sank to the deck beside him. “You really were shot in the leg?” she breathed.
He cocked his knee and rubbed at the hamstring as she had seen him do countless times in the last few days. “Of course. I had to withstand the closest scrutiny.”
“Ohmigod. You did it yourself.”She felt queasy and wrapped her arms around her stomach. “That was why Zalaya was in the hospital, wasn’t it?”
“About four weeks after the operation, when I was just starting to walk again, they brought him into the same ward. He was angry they didn’t give him a private ward and made such a fuss they pulled a man in the last stages of cancer out of his room and gave it to Zalaya.”
“The poorman,” Minnie breathed.
“He was pleased about it—it gave him company he was glad to have and everyone was so relieved to have Zalaya out of the ward they were happy to keep him entertained. Only, the fuss Zalaya made alerted me. I knew Zalaya from before. One day, perhaps, a long time from now, I will tell you about that.”
“You said—Zalaya said—Duardo tried to kill him.”
“Reverse it and youhave the truth,” Duardo replied. “Zalaya tried to kill me and yes, he had the gun. He came up on me in the physiotherapy room. Afterward, I knew I would never survive the investigation as Duardo Peña and Zalaya and I looked enough alike that it was worth the risk. A nurse helped me arrange it. When I took his eye patch, I learned that it was a prop and the eye beneath was perfectly normal. Zalayamust have used it as a way of moving around incognito. If he took off the patch, anyone trying to describe him afterward would never link the man with two good eyes to Zalaya with the eye patch.”
