Free The Second Bat Guano War: a Hard-Boiled Spy Thriller by J. M. Porup

Watters.”
    Shrunken head flicked his ponytail in one hand, eyed the gaping hole in my sweater. “Are you sure it was us he mentioned?”
    “Positive. Ambassador’s son is a stickler for details. Like father, like son.”
    The man stood. He held out his hand. “I would remember the American ambassador’s son.”
    “Or maybe you know my ex-fiancée,” I said, ignoring the hand. “Katherine? Goes by Kate? Would have volunteered about nine months ago.”
    They both shuffled their feet. Echo let out a fart, blushed. “There are many people with that name,” she said. “It is a common name. Now if you please?”
    I made a show of looking past her at the picket signs. “No War For Ore,” I said. “This got something to do with Ovejo? The lithium, perhaps?”
    Ovejo was the socialist president of Bolivia. Pitt had mentioned him once over beers and whores. The Bolivian government was demanding more money for the mining concession, threatening to nationalize the mine if their demands were not met.
    “We are busy right now,” Echo said. She massaged her belly, and I realized she wasn’t fat, or at any rate not just fat: she was pregnant. “Call next time. Before you come. Maybe then we talk some more. Yes?”
    I climbed out of the chair, my face wrinkling with kindness, tears coming to my eyes as the spring left contact with my spine. “We must think of the unborn,” I said. “What future are we leaving for our children?”
    “Of course.” Still the man’s hand hovered in midair, an insistent dismissal.
    “You got a brochure or something?” I said. “The Legion doesn’t want me I’ll try again with you.”
    A glossy trifold brochure attacked my chest. I folded it and stuffed it down the front of my pants.
    “I never caught your name,” I said, and took his hand.
    “No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
    He released me, but I held his hand tight.
    “I never said he was American.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “The ambassador’s son.”
    I sashayed out on the landing. The door closed behind me. I went down the stairs, letting my feet fall heavy on the steps, noting the noise each made. At the bottom, I opened the door and lit a cigarette. I took a puff, threw the cigarette into the gutter. I slipped back inside as the door clicked shut.
    I didn’t move. I listened. Silence. I slid out of my flip-flops. Still nothing. I picked them up in one hand, and tiptoed up the stairs, skipping the creaky ones.
    Voices raised inside the office. I pressed my ear to the door, careful to stand below the peephole. They argued in Spanish.
    “I tell you, he knows!” The man’s voice was hysterical.
    “He knows nothing.”
    “He tries to stop us, what we’re doing—”
    “Gaia will never allow it—”
    “—helps those who help themselves.”
    My eavesdropping was interrupted by a tap on the glass below. I looked down the stairs. Some kid. Wait
—Paco?
Of all people. He waved. I put my finger to my lips, shook my head.
    “What if we’re wrong? What if—”
    “What if, what if, what if.” The woman’s voice was condescending, scornful. “We do her will. Have faith. We shall join her soon. All of us.”
    Paco tried the locked door, rattled the handle. I slashed my arms sideways, an umpire denying the winning touchdown.
    “Check the video.”
    Footsteps came closer to the door. “Waving at the camera. Some homeless.”
    The woman snorted. “Doesn’t know how lucky he is.”
    I jammed my feet back into my flip-flops. Jumped, grabbed the video camera and ripped it from the wall. Couldn’t have them knowing I had eavesdropped. Plaster showered on the landing. I spiked the camera, claimed my six points and threw myself down the stairs three at a time. I was in the street before I heard the upstairs door open.
    I sprinted along the crowded sidewalk, crashing through groups of Brits in zip travel pants, the kind of tourists who thought slumming in Lima made them worldly adventurers. Behind me, a frenzy of pocket