“None.”
“That’s what I thought.”
He wanted to know, so he asked. “Why did you sign on with the Agency?”
“They recruited me out of college. I was just finishing a double degree in criminal justice and international relations when they invited me to apply.”
“You could have gone on to do almost anything.”
“It’s hard when you’re five-four and female to get people in law enforcement to take you seriously. But the Agency did.”
“How did you end up down here wearing a habit?”
“That’s a long story.”
“We’ve got plenty of time.”
“I was thirteen when there was an attempted coup against the socialist government. My parents wouldn’t let me come to Venezuela that summer, afraid I’d be in danger. In the years after that, I watched life for my family here go from bad to worse. The president was re-elected. Everyone believed he would save us. Then thirty-percent inflation became triple-digit inflation.
“Crime exploded. My Tío Antonio was carjacked. My cousin Maritza saw robbers shoot and kill her neighbor on his front porch. My cousin Yasmira was abducted by a taxi driver who took all her money at gunpoint and then raped her.”
“God, I’m sorry. Did anyone catch these bastards?”
“No.” She wished. “It got worse after that. When the new president took over, all he cared about was protecting his power. He used the intelligence service to harass and kill anyone perceived to be a threat, turned districts over to organized crime and drug cartels to patrol, and got into the drug trade. The economy crumbled. Food became scarce. And then my Abuelita Isabel got sick with lymphoma.”
Dylan didn’t like where this was going. “She’s the one who made thepasticho?”
“Yes.” Gabriela sat up, grief on her face, tousled hair hanging just below her shoulders. “We tried to bring her to the US for treatment, but she didn’t want to leave Venezuela. We did what we could to help, sending food and money, but as often as not, it was stolen. There was nothing else we could do. There were no drugs for her, not even morphine for pain. Three months later, she was gone.”
Gabriela’s face crumpled, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “I felt helpless. I loved her so much, and I never got to say goodbye.”
Dylan sat up, too, took her hand. “I’m sorry.”
Tears spilled down Gabriela’s cheeks. “I hate to think of her suffering. She never did an unkind thing to anyone. She deserved better than that.”
“Everyone deserves better than that.”
Gabriela sniffed. “I tell myself that she is no longer suffering. She’s at peace and with God now. But I miss her.”
“Of course, you do.” Dylan wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs.
He wasn’t unfamiliar with the experience of losing a loved one or watching his community struggle. Hurricane George. Hurricane Irma. Hurricane Maria. Floods. The Caribbean drought. Earthquakes. He and his cousins joked that Puerto Rico was the unwilling star of a reality TV series calledPuerto Rico Se Levanta—Puerto Rico Picks Itself Up—and it was now Season Ten. But he’d never lost a relative like that.
“I wanted to dosomething, so when they came to me with this idea, I was all for it. When you asked why I became a nun, I told you the truth. This was a job that only I, a Latina who speaks fluent Spanish with a venezolano accent, could do.”
Dylan understood now. This wasn’t just a job for Gabriela. It was about family. “You’re incredibly brave.”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing like the work Agency officers did during the Cold War, sneaking behind the Iron Curtain, playing cat-and-mouse with the Stasi and the KGB, trying to get intel out of China and North Korea.”
Dylan didn’t know about that, but he did know a thing or two about cartels. “The Andes Cartel doesn’t fuck around. If they’d caught you, they wouldn’t have hesitated to kill you in any one of a number of terrible ways.”
That didn’t seem to scare her.
“Most of the time, I did observed and reported what I saw in coded letters that I mailed to my superiors via Peru. I had no hidden cameras, no radios, nothing that would give me away. Ididput listening devices in Father Alberto’s office and his car, but once those were out of my hands, there was no way for anyone to know I wasn’t a Sister.”
“The Agency must have gotten a lot of actionable intel from that.”
Her brow furrowed. “I didn’t get what they wanted most—visual proof tying thatmalparidoLuis Sánchez to Sergio Ruiz and the Andes Cartel.”