Chapter 11

"We survived the parent visit" Hunter had written in his work journal. Ecole Privée de Chamousseau had been accommodating, allowing an international student to board in their old, musty building during that week instead of commuting. Of course he had met her parents because Burt had told them that his brother, the one who had visited Dayton, was living in Paris. He had even offered to act as tour guide when his schedule permitted. His schedule had been flexible.

That week in March seemed far, far away at him at the moment. The second leg of their flight to Buenos Aires was interminable. Paris to Madrid had been an easy hop but the trip across the Atlantic on Iberia Airlines with kids screaming and a plentiful number of unwashed bodies had made each hour drag. Travelling with Katie meant economy class rather than business class to keep a lower profile.

Katie had turned 18 before she arrived in Paris. Her disappointment at the lack of enforcement of a drinking age in France bothered her at first because she wanted the thrill of being carded, but she put it aside. At her request Hunter had taken her to a nightclub to celebrate her arrival. He doubted that she would ever drink rum again, no matter how it was disguised. Most of the mess ended up in the toilet only because Hunter had held her head to aim. The young woman from Dayton, Ohio had not been able to function the next day until the early evening.

By the time of her parents' visit, she had adjusted to the rhythms of the city. Hunter and Katie had spent a good deal of their time speaking only in French and working on her accent. Her flat Midwestern pronunciation didn't sound pretty.

She was reading a young adult novel in French at the moment, ignoring the noise and smell around her. Hunter was jealous. She patted his hand sympathetically without looking up from her book. He returned to studying the enhanced maps of the target area.

La Boca was one of the largest of the old neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. It was crumbling and somewhat unsafe, peopled with the working poor, or simply poor people. There were plenty of old buildings and large pockets of aged industrial sites.

When Hunter had marked the body dump sites, it had formed a large semi-circle whose center was the neighborhood of La Boca. The hideous truth of Argentina is that its bloody dictatorial past may have hidden the Child hunting grounds for decades. During the worst period of "disappearances," when the military was dumping drugged people alive from helicopters in the ocean far from shore, every neighborhood had experienced losses. No one would ever know which missing people had been disappeared, and if so, by whom or by what.

Only in the past year had a new pattern appeared, and the reason, as far as Hunter could determine, was sloppiness. Newark, Lithuania, Milan, Nigeria, Jakarta, Alexandria and Johannesburg had been subtly planned to prevent discovery. The pattern in Buenos Aires was too obvious to an experienced eye.

In keeping with the operating procedure of his company, Hunter had hired a translator/service provider to meet them at the airport. His and Katie's Spanish skills would only allow them to make simple requests and that would not be enough for this trip.

Hunter had already decided that Mr. Teller and Ms. Binder knew far too much already, although they hadn't tried to derail him in any manner. To the contrary, they had sent him a bottle of fine champagne for his work in London with a typically cryptic message of appreciation for vermin control.

The plane landed. Customs was simple with Katie holding his arm and leaning into him at customs control. Duena met them at the exit as if they were long lost friends seeing each other after a long absence.

In the car, with their luggage, Duena handed him a dossier with the last of the materials that he had requested. Over lunch she began to fill in the gaps of his knowledge about the city, which were many.

La Boca wasn't safe outside of several blocks on one street, which was a tourist destination with its colorfully painted houses. Purse snatchers and pickpockets were pervasive during the day. Drug dealers and muggers were just as common at night. There were some gangs but they were small and unprofessional.

Hunter was intrigued. Despite the satellite imagery, he needed to eyeball the neighborhood. After switching to a small van and changing clothes to match the locals, Duena gave them a tour. Every once in a while Hunter would get a twinge of sensation, suggesting that Children were near, but he couldn't pinpoint any of them.

Several different blocks of warehouses caught his attention but he sensed nothing. He drew red circles on his map and told Duena to keep driving. The day was spent driving down every street, sometimes half-a-dozen times.

The next morning Katie and Hunter took a few extra moments to lounge in bed. Katie gripped his hand tightly.

"I didn't like that neighborhood yesterday," she said. "It's alien; it's strange. The people look scary."

"The people looked scared," Hunter said. "We are on the right track. I can feel it."

"This is what you do for a living?" Katie said more than asked. "Whatever romantic notions I had went away while we were sitting in that van. I liked it better when I didn't know about stuff like this."

"No, there is no going back," Hunter said. "You have me though and I have you. We are going to see this episode through together. It's okay to be afraid. Fear keeps you from getting sloppy."

"Fear keeps me hiding under the sheets," Katie said.