On the plateau he entered a building that was large and rectangular with a high vaulted ceiling thirty feet above a polished concrete floor. Two walls were largely glass, so that as you stood inside you had the sense of being outside. It was a museum or maybe just a big trophy case. Marquez stopped at a stuffed Siberian tiger and read a brass plaque with the date of the kill. He walked past a white rhino and touched a yak shot recently in China, then remembered in the city of Chengdu officials had auctioned permits for hunts that included some rare or endangered animals. Birds of prey hung from the ceiling. He looked up at a bald eagle with an eight-foot span.
The doors to the main house were also open and he didn’t see any signs of an alarm system or cameras, and yet, somehow, that didn’t surprise him. Marquez wasn’t allowed to bring a gun into Argentina and lacking a gun, he picked up an eight-inch knife in the kitchen. He moved slowly. He moved quietly, and there didn’t seem to be anybody here, no servants, nothing, just mechanical noises, the hum of machines, his footsteps creaking on wood stairs as he went up. He checked five bedrooms and looked through a window at what looked like a guest house across the road.
When he came back down he worked methodically through the first floor until he reached the study. The study doors were locked metal French doors with thick reinforced glass. It would take a battering ram to get in. So this was it, this was where he needed to get in. Two computers sat on a glass desk inside. A third sat alone on a separate table. He looked at everything visible and moved on and soon crossed to the guest house.
Inside, the guest house reminded Marquez of a high-end hotel suite. He found Trocca’s suitcase and clothes hanging, but didn’t touch any of it. He left again as a greater sense of urgency enveloped him, a worry about the time passing and Stoval’s return. He was outside working through the outbuildings when he heard the Range Rover coming. He stepped behind a tree and crouched down as it came into view and drove past, Stoval at the wheel, Trocca smiling.
They stopped at the last outbuilding on the plateau, about fifty yards from where he was, close enough to hear their voices. Stoval unlocked a heavy barn door and slid it open. With Trocca’s help he dragged out Chole or Chole’s body, it was hard to tell if he was alive until they got him to the rear of the Range Rover. There, Trocca kicked him until Chole struggled to his feet. He wore both hand and ankle cuffs and fell several times before they got him loaded in the back. He’d probably been in the cold shed all night, and he was injured. Marquez saw the bruising on his face.
Stoval slammed the rear door shut and they drove out the track across the plateau and dropped down into the trees and were gone from sight. Marquez tried his cell again. He hurried into the main house and tried the phones, but got a busy signal rather than a dial tone and guessed there was a code to call out. He went back outside, looked at the tire tracks running in the dirty snow and started to follow them. At first he walked, and then as he thought more about what they were doing with Chole he started to run.