“Both the negative and the positive are attracted to the sacred place. The Garden of Eden was a sacred place, and it attracted Satan. Good and evil exist side by side.”
“And it’s that way here in our homeland.”
“The energy here is strong. The Spaniards who came with Oñate returned after the 1680 Indian revolt because they had felt the sacred in the earth. By that time they knew there was no gold, only the hard work of farming. But here, they realized, they could speak to God. Like the Pueblo Indians spoke to their gods. Here they had made a new covenant with the earth.”
“That’s what the Bowl of Dreams signifies,” Sonny mused. “The new dream, a new awareness. And people still come for that. They come for the beauty of the landscape, desert, mountains, sunsets, sky, summer thunderstorms. The painters come, the poets. It attracts those who seek a spiritual way.”
“Yes. But the books will tell you very little about the dream of the region. Don Eliseo goes to the pueblo, where they still keep the dream alive, and perhaps a few poets describe the dream.”
Sonny sipped his coffee and listened.
“Dreams come from the spirit world. Raven can enter your dream because he’s a sorcerer. Long ago everyone had the power to enter dreams, to create dreams. But there was so much power in the dreamworld that the sorcerers began to separate humans from their dreams. They began to tell people that the devil created dreams and frightened the people. People left their dreaming, forgot how to be masters of their dreams, and chaos came to the dreamworld. But dreams remained sacred, not evil. Dreams are the language of the soul, and they belong to the person who dreams. Each person had to take back his or her dreams from the sorcerer who was there in the heart. To become master of one’s dreams means one exiles the sorcerer.”
“There’s a lot to think about,” Sonny whispered.
Like all other New Mexicans, he was heir to the Calendar of Dreams. The covenant was formed on the banks of the Río Grande when the Españoles and Mexicanos came into the Pueblo world. Owl Woman greeted them and offered her body and spirit as mother. Owl Woman was Sonny’s Bearer of Dreams. Complicated things that needed to be resolved if he was going to save his ass. Save the girls Raven was kidnapping.
“More coffee?” Lorenza offered.
“No, I’m buzzed,” he replied. “No sense in just waiting around. Let’s head out.”
“Pues, vamos.”
“I’ll get my jacket.”
He pushed his chair into the bedroom, Chica trailing him. He reached under the pillow and took out the Zia medallion, pulled the chain over his head, and tucked the medallion under his shirt. Then he reached for the Colt .45.
The northern country would be cold, so he put on his heavy jacket with the sheepskin collar. He turned to Chica.
“Too cold for you to go with us. I don’t know what we’ll get into, so stay home and guard the house.”
Chica sat on her hind legs, barked, and scratched the air furiously with her front paws. She understood, but she wanted to go.
“I know you want to go, and I hate to leave you alone, but it’s best you stay. You go keep don Eliseo company, okay?”
Sonny guided his chair outside, into the van, and they were on their way.
A cold wind swept across the valley as a new load of clouds scurried across the sky. The weather was still unpredictable as a new front moved in from the north.
The phone rang as they headed toward the interstate. Matt Paiz asked Sonny if he could come by the FBI office.
“I’m on my way out of town,” Sonny answered.
“It’s important,” Paiz replied.
“Por qué no?” Sonny said. The man had some news, and the Federal Building was downtown, not far. And Sonny needed a favor from them.
“FBI,” he said to Lorenza.
“What do they want?”
“Don’t know, but let’s see.” Lorenza nodded and drove downtown, which was brightly decorated with Christmas lights. She found a handicapped parking space near the building.
Paiz and two agents, Mike Stewart and Eddie Martínez, the two who had chased Raven that summer, were sitting in Paiz’s office when Sonny and Lorenza entered.
“You know each other,” Paiz said.
“Oh, yeah.” Sonny shook hands with the agents and introduced Lorenza.
“Damned sorry about—” Stewart motioned to the chair. He and Martínez knew about Sonny’s encounter with Dr. Stammer, but they hadn’t seen him since. They looked at him with some admiration, remembering how he had found the cocaine shipment in Stammer’s office when everybody else including the DEA said no such shipment had come into the city.
“This is temporary.” Sonny smiled.
“You’re not doing so bad,” Stewart said, looking at Lorenza. Sonny Baca always had an attractive woman at his side.
“You talked to Eric?” Paiz asked.
“This morning.”
“I see. I’ll get to the point. We found Raven’s four-by-four. We went over it with a fine-tooth comb. I’d like to share a few things we found with you.” He paused and looked at Lorenza.
“She’s with me,” Sonny said. “You know that.”
Whatever Paiz had to reveal, Lorenza could hear.
It was clear Paiz felt uneasy about the arrangement, but he proceeded. “I need your help. You know Raven, so anything you can do to help us find him before—” He stopped. “Let me tell you what we found. Two things. First, traces of coke.”
Sonny nodded. He knew Raven used the stuff. For Raven it was just a plaything, something he used to draw his cult together.
“What else?” Sonny asked.
Again Paiz hesitated, briefly glancing at Lorenza. Then he reached into a desk drawer and took out a plastic baggie. Inside lay a crumpled note. Paiz removed it carefully and laid it on the desk in front of Sonny. On it was written a phone number.
“We traced the number,” he said, glancing at Stewart and Martínez. “It’s Leif Eric’s home number.”
Sonny drew a breath. Raven was carrying around the phone number of the director of Los Alamos Labs?
He shook his head to clear the thoughts. This was too easy, too obvious. “He put that there for you to find.”
“We know that!” Stewart interrupted, his voice rising. He was the impetuous one, the one that didn’t think PIs were worth a cent. Paiz held up his hand. “Okay, it’s planted by Raven. But we have to follow up on it. So we checked Eric’s phone record. There are calls to a Dr. Alexandr Chernenko at Sandia Labs.”
Sonny shrugged. So Eric calls everyone at Sandia. It’s his business.
“Who’s Chernenko?”
“Chernenko is a top scientist at Arzamas-Sixteen, one of Russia’s two top nuclear weapons laboratories.”
“The nerds at Los Alamos call it Los Arzamas.” Martínez smiled. “Get it?”
“I get it,” Sonny replied. Arzamas-Sixteen, the little he knew, was the biggest nuclear facility the Russians had. Now one of their physicists was at Sandia Labs, working as part of the post-Cold War relationship, and he was in daily contact with Eric. What was Paiz driving at?
Paiz leaned forward. “Last year Eric took a team from Los Alamos to Arzamas to install a high-tech accounting system to keep track of the Russkies’ nuclear materials. I mean, that’s the reason they gave the Pentagon. We know that while they were there, they bought some of their scientists. One or two. We suspect they did another job on the computer system, but we don’t know what.”
“So Eric met Chernenko,” Sonny filled in.
“They worked together. The CIA has a file on Chernenko. The most interesting thing I found is that Chernenko is Ukrainian. His parents were killed during one of Stalin’s purges. He hates the Russians. He was a CIA operative at one time. It gets complicated. Do you follow?”
Yeah, Sonny thought. Without revealing what was in the FBI file, Paiz was laying out a case. Chernenko hates the Russians, he’s recruited by the CIA, and just recently by Eric. Chernenko is in
charge of the nuclear materials tracking system in Ukraine, and that’s where Raven picked up the plutonium pit.
“Are you saying—”
“I’m not saying anything,” Paiz interrupted. “We are now observing Chernenko’s lab at Sandia. We have to move carefully; the man is protected by exchange protocols. Ostensibly, he’s here to learn our expertise in dismantling nuclear warheads. But he brings a lot of stuffwith him—”
“Russian warheads at Kirtland?” Even Sonny was surprised.
Paiz shook his head to indicate he hadn’t said that. “I talked to Doyle, and he expressly said to keep our hands off Chernenko.”
Doyle’s protecting Chernenko, Sonny thought. Lord, but Paiz was developing a complex plot.
“We can’t share any of this with Eric, not yet.”
“Why me?” Sonny asked. The local FBI office was tapping Eric’s phone line, and Paiz didn’t trust Doyle as far as he could throw him, and still Paiz was revealing pieces of the puzzle.
“I told you, we need your help. You know Raven.” Again he glanced at Stewart and Martínez. “We need to know if Raven and Chernenko are related. Are they working together?”
“But Chernenko’s at Sandia Labs? He works in the open.”
“Not really,” Paiz replied. “He’s been assigned a lab right near the nuclear reactor they have up there. The man is working in absolute secrecy.”
“In other words,” Stewart added, “he can come and go as he pleases. Without revealing anything, we talked to Jack Ward, director at Sandia. He didn’t appear concerned about security. We’d need a court order to go in and look around.”
“And of course we won’t get that court order,” Paiz finished. “We don’t want to spook anyone, especially Raven. I have to clear everything I do with Doyle in Washington, and he said hands off. Chernenko is free to continue his work, and no one seems to know what in the hell he’s up to.”
“The question is, what do you know about the Raven/Chernenko connection?” Martínez asked.
“Nada. All this is new to me.”
“We don’t have much time,” Paiz said.
“Me either,” Sonny said. “Look, I need to find Raven worse than you. In the meantime, I need protection for Rita.”
Consuelo and Catalina had disappeared, and in some way they were connected to Sonny’s dream, to a relationship he had to the families. Rita, too, was related to him: she was to become his wife. Raven had kidnapped her and Diego’s girl in the fall, and there was no telling what he might try now. The FBI wanted his help—okay, they should guard Rita while he was out running around the state.
“The woman at the restaurant?” Paiz said, looking at Stewart and Martínez.
“My woman at the restaurant,” Sonny corrected him.
“You think Raven might go after her again?”
“I don’t want her exposed.”
“Can’t blame you. I can spare agent Martínez for a few days, until we get this cleared up. And I can put a tail on you.”
“We’re okay,” Sonny said, and looked at Lorenza. “It’s Rita I’m worried about. I’ll call her and tell her you’ll be showing up,” he said to the agent Martínez. “I don’t want her to be frightened.”
Martínez nodded. “I’ve eaten at Rita’s Cocina. Great food. I may be gaining weight in the next few days.”
“Not if you stay out of the kitchen,” Sonny said, his double entendre clear. “If something breaks on Chernenko, call me.”
“I will,” Paiz said, coming around the desk and shaking Sonny’s hand. “And if you find anything, call me.” He handed Sonny his card.
Sonny glanced at it. Beneath the address and phone number was scrawled a message: “Trust no one.”
10
“Interesting,” Lorenza said as they rode down the elevator.
“Very,” Sonny agreed.
“Why can’t they just bust into Chernenko’s lab? Get a search warrant? Or have the director of the labs authorize a ‘visit’?”
“Doyle is protecting Chernenko, and Paiz doesn’t trust Doyle. They’re walking on eggshells around each other. Paiz can’t go over Doyle’s head and authorize a search, and Doyle won’t.”
“Who do we trust?” Lorenza asked.
“No one,” Sonny replied, memorizing the phone number on Paiz’s card and then tearing it in pieces and dropping it in a trash can. “Chernenko has immunity, like a diplomat, so they can’t just bust in his lab. After all, they invited him to do his magic, and his thing is dismantling bombs. Secondly, who could invent such a wild plot? Would he be building a bomb right inside the lab? I mean, they wouldn’t be that dumb, would they?”
“Would they?” Lorenza repeated.
“Chingao!” Sonny exclaimed. “Building a bomb inside Sandia Labs? Right under the tightest security in the world? What a blast, huh.”
“Quite a blast,” Lorenza agreed.
“If, and only if, people as highly placed as Eric are involved, would it be possible. It’s ironic, but if terrorists really wanted to build a bomb, inside the labs would be the perfect place. Think of all the equipment available there. Raven’s plutonium pit can be carried in by one person, the people they need can be brought in by Chernenko one at a time, then boom!”
“It would wipe out the city.”
“More than that. It would create a chain reaction. It would blow up all the other nuclear cores they have stored there.”
“A megabomb? That’s fin del mundo.”
“Yeah. Paiz needs to catch Raven before he delivers the pit. He knows that. It would be quite a feather in his cap if he does.”
“But things don’t sit too well with Chicanos in the FBI.”
“Not really. A group of Hispanic agents sued the agency for discriminatory practices a few years back, and a judge ruled for the agents. Paiz was the instigator,” Sonny said as they left the building.
“Do you trust him?”
Sonny thought a moment. The Bureau had been used as a political tool to destroy a lot of good people during the Hoover years, so had anything changed?
“Don’t know. Come on, race you!” He pushed the button on his chair and sped down the sidewalk. Lorenza took up the chase. People on the walk jumped out of their way.
When they arrived at the van, she was breathing hard and Sonny was grinning. “You win, I buy lunch.”
Lorenza drove them north on I-25 to Taos. Sonny used the opportunity to read the book on top of the stack: Kearny’s entry into New Mexico in 1846. What was called in some history books a peaceful invasion by the Army of the West had not been so peaceful. In various communities the Nuevo Mexicanos revolted against the new American rulers. One reason the Nuevo Mexicanos had been so poorly organized for resistance was that their governor, Manuel Armijo, ran out on them.
“Governor Manuel Armijo was the only turncoat the manitos of New Mexico ever produced,” Sonny said, making a note. “Sold out and retreated to El Paso.”
He was reading interesting passages aloud to Lorenza.
“Surrendered?”
“He didn’t even surrender to the gringos, he just took the money and headed for México.”
“Well, there are bad apples in every barrel. Think of all the Chicanos who have gotten medals for bravery in the wars since then.”
“A lot,” Sonny acknowledged.
The Hispanic population was one of the most decorated ethnic groups in the country. They had more than proven their loyalty to the U.S.A., and yet as late as World War II, a Mexican American soldier killed in combat could not be buried in a national cemetery in Three Rivers, Texas. You were good enough to die, but not good enough to share the earth you fought for.
“Maybe Governor Armijo had a point,” Sonny said. “The New Mexicans were farmers, not soldiers. To have resisted Kearny would have been a bloodbath. A lot of manitos would have been killed.”
He leaned over the counter and made a note: “The New Mexican army, what was left of it, did not confront the Army of the West, an
d Kearny was free to march through Las Vegas, Tecolote, and San Miguel del Vado and into Santa Fé on August 18.”
Then he laboriously added Kearny’s route to the map he was drawing, a star for the capital, Santa Fé, La Villa Real de la Santa Fé.
Outside, the gray clouds of the storm front swept in from the west, their shadows mottling the landscape. The juniper-covered hills on the way to Santa Fé took on a deeper hue. The winter earth was the color of skin, pink fading into brown, a tawny color of the sere grass, the soft curves of the hills. Like the soft curves of a woman.
At La Bajada red Triassic sandstone and shale ran like a gash up the mesa. The same red rock stratum, Sonny guessed, which north of Jemez Pueblo formed a spectacular small canyon. He had often driven past Jemez Pueblo to the Red Cliffs, where pueblo women sold horno bread to hungry weekend tourists. There the red was crimson, not bright but imbued with light, a light emanating from within the earth. Bright in summer and snow splotched in winter. A sight that always took the breath away.
To the north the blue Sangre de Cristo Mountains loomed more massive and closer to the earth as the clouds hugged the tall peaks, especially snow-covered Baldy. Last night’s storm had left a fresh coat of white on the side of the mountain, so the snowy outline of a greyhound was well defined.
They drove through Santa Fé without stopping and headed north to Española, where they turned toward Chimayó. Sonny knew the Jaramillos, a family that owned the Ranchos de Chimayó Restaurant, so they stopped to eat. The restaurant was gaily decorated for Christmas: a tree sat in the corner of the lobby, and under it a nacimiento. The owner pleasantly greeted Sonny and Lorenza and sat them at a table by the fireplace.
The aroma from the kitchen and the cedar burning in the fireplace created a feeling of well-being, a feeling of home. Sonny sniffed the pleasant food fragrances and thought of his mother. He had called her that morning, trying to assure her he was well, just busy. She worried about him. Armando had told her about the van and she wanted to know why he needed a van. You need to stay home and rest, she said. This Christmas I want all of us to be together. Sonny assured her it would be so, but he wondered if any Christmas would ever be the same again.