The Titicaca Effect Read online

  “No, but I’ll live.” Stout stood up, then staggered a moment with a rush of dizziness. “I think.”

  A few minutes later the pair of Americans were heading down the road to La Paz in a beat-up Bolivian army staff car, the humorless soldier at the wheel. It was dusk, and the lights of the city were starting to glimmer. It was, as always, a singularly beautiful sight.

  The city of La Paz is in a valley surrounded by the Bolivian altiplano, a high plane that stretches between Andean peaks. Dominating the skyline on the opposite side of the city from the airport is Illimani, a spectacular mountain that had turned pink in the light of sunset and was quickly fading to a muted red.

  More than 1.5 million people live in the city, which ranges in altitude from 10,650 to more than 13,000 feet above sea level. As the car descended into the valley, Stout could see that a good portion of the city was made up of tin-roofed dwellings that were constructed with bricks the color of terra cotta. Nevertheless, there were tall buildings in the downtown area, and from the hillside the city looked quite cosmopolitan.

  “Those are awfully small houses,” Stout said.

  “Yep,” Freeman answered. “That’s where the Indians live. There are basically two kinds of people in La Paz – the Bolivians of Spanish descent, who consider themselves to be ‘white people,’ and the Indians, many of them claiming to be descended directly from the Inca. As you might guess, the Indians are mostly servants and laborers. They’re descended from several tribes, but they’re collectively called either ‘Cholitas’ or ‘Aymara.’ I’m afraid I haven’t been able to figure out the difference.”

  “How long have you been here? That plane went down almost three weeks ago.”

  “They called me in within 48 hours of the crash. This is my 18th day in Bolivia.” He grinned at Stout. “I’m living proof that the altitude won’t actually kill you. I had the same problem you did when I first got here. That’s why I’m putting you right to bed. I can tell you from personal experience, you need time to rest without exerting yourself.”

  “Normally, I’d disagree with you. I’m damned anxious to know why I’m here, but a little sack time sounds great. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.” Stout scratched his goatee absent-mindedly, the way he often did when he was puzzled. “When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I’m under orders not to talk about it outside a secure environment,” Freeman said, nodding toward driver. “I’ve arranged a briefing tomorrow morning at the American embassy. I can tell you this much now, though. That plane was brought down by something we don’t understand, and you’re here to try to shed a little light on it.”

  “The waterspout, I gather. What’s the story on that thing? Does it really come back every day?”

  “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, Thad. Just relax and enjoy the scenery.”

  The staff car rattled further down into the valley toward the heart of the city.

  Chapter 3: The President

  Alberto Maldonado frowned slightly when the buzzer sounded. He had been concentrating on the report on his desk, and he wasn’t at all sure that he liked what he was reading.

  “Mr. President, Miss Montoya is here.”

  He pressed the intercom button and replied, “Please show her in.” He would get back to the report, but first he had other, more pressing business to take care of. Events seemed to be unfolding more quickly every day, threatening to careen out of control at any moment. He was determined to control the situation.

  At age 39, Alberto Maldonado was the youngest president in modern Bolivian history. After years of see-saw changes in the Bolivian government as various factions of the military had gained, then lost the presidency to other factions, the people had grown weary of it. They had insisted on handing control back to civilians in the mid-eighties. Maldonado was the third President to take the executive office since that had happened, and only two years into his five-year term he had done more to improve the personal situations of individual Bolivians than any other president in the country’s checkered history. As a result, he was enormously popular with the people. So popular, in fact, that he was rapidly developing an almost mythic, larger-than-life persona, on a par with Simon Bolivar, Che Guevara and even John F. Kennedy. Like most powerful men, his ego allowed him to be comfortable with that fact.

  He had campaigned on a plan, instead of a promise, and his plan was working. He had told the Bolivian people two things: first, that it was time they quit bemoaning the fact that an 1879 war had landlocked the country by ceding its only seaport to Chile; and second, that they had to enter the modern world or perish. He alone had the vision to realize that twenty-first century commerce would not rely on seaports and roads. The new frontier was electronic and the road to the future was virtual. His plan was to transform Bolivia from the poorest nation in the Americas, relying mostly on illicit drug traffic for trade, into a technology powerhouse. He would educate Bolivia’s children in the sciences, pour all the money he could scrape together into wiring the country for the internet, build satellite centers to uplink and download information, and export the intellectual output his people rather than the produce of coca farms hidden in the jungles of the lowlands. He talked incessantly about bandwidth and brainpower being the two most important products that his country could develop.

  Such massive change could not be effected overnight, of course, especially in a country with so few resources to create the infrastructure required to implement his vision. So he had kick-started the strategy with a series of pilgrimages to the headquarters offices of some of the world’s largest and most powerful technology-creating and technology-using businesses. Instead of lobbying Washington for U.S. aid, which always came with strings attached, he had spent his time in New York, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Boston, Tokyo and London, courting the movers and shakers of the technology world. He knew that if he could secure their investment in his country, the hearts and minds of the politicians would inevitably follow the money.

  When he started the process, he had also known that he had nothing tangible to offer. The infrastructure was a dream and the skill sets existed only in his mind, so he took a course that less visionary leaders would have found extremely distasteful. Behind the closed doors of corporate boardrooms, he talked openly of the exploitation of his people. He pressed hard to sell the idea that starvation wages in North America were the equivalent of the Promised Land to Bolivians. He derided Mexico as far too expensive and characterized the Koreans as greedy. He painted a picture of national stability created by more than a decade of democratically elected governments and a stable currency. He guaranteed the chief executives of the world’s major corporations that if they would but make only a minor investment in his poor country, they would harvest obscene margins between the cost of the manpower and the selling price of its output.

  The fact that Alberto Maldonado was a passionate, well-educated, erudite and extremely attractive man did not hurt his cause, particularly in those few instances in which the board room had included women. He had no trouble gaining access to the real decision-makers. Bolivia might be perceived as a backward country, but he was still a head of state, and those don’t come calling every day even in the most powerful corporations. He had sold his ideas with a combination of personal presence, passionate logic and unrelenting charm, and it had worked far better than even he had dared hope it would. In a seesaw global economy, the world’s corporations were in search of new, innovative, yet affordable investments that could advance their corporate agendas. The president of Bolivia had gotten lucky. He was in the right place, delivering the right message, at precisely the right time.

  The initial steps were small ones within the context of corporate investment, but represented huge gains for his people. The first opportunity was to create a massive data entry facility to be shared by several of the largest companies. Every day, they would airfreight tons of paper to La Paz. Within hours, hundreds of typists would be translating the do
cuments into streams of electronic bits that could be sent via satellite to storage in corporate computers throughout the world. The formula had worked in Jamaica; it worked even better in Bolivia. The country was more than 80 percent literate, and almost anyone who could read could be quickly trained to type. Accuracy actually improved if the data entry personnel did not speak English. The wages were so low that the corporations padded them on the books to keep the operation from looking like slave labor, but for the workers in La Paz, they represented significant boosts in income along with the promise of steady employment. Maldonado had even used his popularity and prestige to convince the bureaucrats to stop enforcing a decades-old law that made it illegal to pay workers by the hour. The corporate consortium had built the data entry and satellite facilities, and Maldonado had exchanged the promise of significant tax advantages for permanent no-cost use of the satellite uplink to further his other business initiatives.

  Almost overnight, the president had begun to deliver on his campaign promise. Hundreds of new jobs were coming to Bolivia. That success was quickly followed by many more, including the creation of a school to teach advanced programming languages, founded by Microsoft in return for a guaranteed pick of the best graduates. Two minor research facilities were under construction in Sucre and Potosi, to be linked by fiber optics to a similar, larger facility already completed in La Paz. And the ancient university in La Paz, historically starved for funds, suddenly found itself awash in corporate-sponsored research grants. The people were extremely pleased.

  So it was not without some apprehension that Alicia Montoya was ushered into the office of the president of her country. She was a Bolivian teacher employed by the U.S. embassy to teach Spanish to the children of the Americans who worked there, and she had no idea why she had been summoned to the presidential palace. She only knew that she was about to meet the one man in Bolivia that almost everyone idolized. Even though she was in her early thirties, she felt like a schoolgirl meeting the captain of the football team for the first time. What could such a man possibly want of her?

  “Miss Montoya,” the president rose to greet her, oozing the charm that women found so endearing. “Thank you for coming. I hope it wasn’t too much of an imposition. Please…have a seat.” He had circled around his desk and pulled out a chair for the nervous schoolteacher. As was his habit, he took the chair opposite her rather than returning to his own seat. He knew it put people at ease if he stayed on the visitor’s side of the desk, and to the first-time guest it was always a captivating gesture.

  “I have no idea why I’m here,” she replied nervously. “Have I done something wrong?”

  Maldonado smiled softly. “I assure you it’s nothing like that,” he answered. “I wanted to meet you because I need your help.” He paused for dramatic emphasis. “No - the people of Bolivia need your help.”

  Montoya looked surprised. “The people of Bolivia do not even know who I am. In what way can a teacher of the Spanish language serve people who already speak it?”

  The president leaned toward her, looking directly into her eyes. “You can be of great service to your people,” he responded. “All you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open and tell me what you see and hear. That’s all.”

  “You want me to spy?” Montoya looked startled. “Why? Nothing important happens at the embassy. The Americans do nothing, ever. What could I possibly learn at the embassy that would interest the president of Bolivia?”

  The president’s voice took on a soothing tone. “Not what, Miss Montoya. Who. We want to know about your friend, Mr. Freeman.”

  The teacher met the President’s gaze. “Tyler? What about him? What has he done? He doesn’t even work at the embassy. He’s with the FAA.” She paused, then added, “Anyway, I only met him two weeks ago. I hardly know the man.”

  “My sources tell me otherwise, Miss Montoya. They say you have been seeing him socially.”

  “Sources? What sources?”

  “Are they correct, Miss Montoya? Have you seen him socially?”

  “Yes. I mean, sort of. We’ve had dinner twice. What of it?”

  “Please, Miss Montoya, do not be offended. I am only asking these questions to determine whether or not you can be of assistance. Mr. Freeman is in no trouble, and we mean neither of you any harm. It’s just that he has information we need, and I was hoping you might help us get it.” The president looked genuinely contrite, as if he had somehow insulted an honored guest and was begging forgiveness.

  Montoya softened, mindful of the fact that she was, after all, talking to the president of her country, a man who was honored and respected by nearly everyone. If her country needed her, perhaps she could help. “What do you want to know, Mr. President?”

  “Mr. Freeman is being very tight-lipped about his investigation of the airline crash and he tells my people nothing. Our own investigation of the crash has turned up some troubling information, and we need to know what he knows and whom he has told. If he has a theory about the cause of the crash, we must know it before he tells the rest of the world.” He paused. “Make no mistake about it, Miss Montoya. This may be critically important to the future of Bolivia.”

  “Can’t you just ask him?”

  “No. If I were to summon him to the palace to question him, he would just become more secretive. FAA investigators release information only when they’re through with their investigation. Unfortunately, that will be too late for our purposes.”

  The schoolteacher frowned. “What makes you think he has told me anything?”

  “I don’t think he has, but he might. If I am right, the secret he is guarding is simply too big to keep. He will need someone to confide in. If that turns out to be you, we just want to know what you know. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  Montoya digested that thought for a moment, then said quietly, “Forgive me, Mr. President, if I seem confused. Your words sound perfectly reasonable, but I can’t shake the feeling that you’re asking me to develop a relationship with a man for the sole purpose of satisfying the government’s curiosity. It certainly sounds like spying.”

  “Perhaps.” The president smiled, but added nothing more.

  Alicia Montoya sighed. She wasn’t comfortable with her situation, but she couldn’t think of a way to refuse the president. In her wildest dreams, she could not have predicted this situation. Besides, she really liked Tyler Freeman. “May I think about it?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid not. “I need your answer now. Time is very short.”

  Montoya looked at her feet for a moment. “I’ll do it.”

  “Thank you, Miss Montoya,” the president replied, sounding relieved. “I am grateful. I also want to meet Mr. Freeman. I was hoping you could arrange that.”

  “How?”

  “We are having a small gathering for the American ambassador and his staff tomorrow night. I have already made sure that you will be included, because I have told him that some of my people wish to meet the educator who is doing such a fine job teaching Spanish to the Americans and their children. I suspect Ambassador Previn is looking for you right now, to invite you.”

  “And you want me to invite Tyler. What if he’s busy?”

  Maldonado laughed. “Dinner with the president? He’ll make the time. Besides, my guess is, by noon tomorrow he will want to meet me as badly as I want to meet him.”

  Montoya hesitated, then asked, “Mr. President, what is it about the crash you want to know? Why is this so important to the future of Bolivia? Is it terrorists or something?”

  “We do not think so,” he answered. “But there are some circumstances surrounding the crash that we need to know more about, that’s all. I am not at liberty to say more.” The president stood.

  Sensing that the meeting was over, Alicia Montoya stood as well. “I will do what I can, Mr. President. If I learn anything, whom do I contact?”

  “My assistant will give you a private telephone number, Alicia. May I call you that? For now, speak onl
y to me about this. And thank you again.” He guided her toward the door to his office.

  “Of course, Mr. President. I only hope that I can help.” She turned and shook his hand, then exited, smiling broadly.

  The president of the Republic of Bolivia walked to the window, opened the drapes, and stood looking out over the city of La Paz, its lights twinkling in the gathering dusk. He rubbed his temples as if he had a headache, then frowned.

  He sighed. “It begins tomorrow morning,” he said to no one.

  Chapter 4: The Takeover

  The morning cold numbed General Linares’ fingers as he gripped the weathered railing of the old motor launch. He squinted against the sun, trying to make something of the movement he could see on the distant, terraced shores of the Island of the Moon. He was riding in the first of a convoy of six boats, which trailed behind him in single file. Altogether, 18 soldiers were in the convoy, all of them armed with automatic weapons and carrying field equipment. There would have been more soldiers, but he had had to leave some behind when he had commandeered the last available launches from the fishermen of Copacabana. Unfortunately, most of the larger fishing boats had already left for the day’s work when the troops arrived in the bustling little city, and the two boats that were stationed at the docks of the Armado Boliviano – the Bolivian navy –were both being repaired.