Island of Thieves by Josh Lacey Page A

the hills. The air grew colder, and with each bend of the road, the craggy mountaintops looked a little closer. A couple of hours from the town, we passed a patch of old brown snow, and then, soon afterward, another newer, cleaner, whiter patch. I complained about the cold, but Uncle Harvey refused to turn on the heater in the car. He said it used up too much fuel. He reluctantly agreed to stop by the side of the road so I could get a sweatshirt from my bag in the trunk.
    Rodolfo’s map was so vague that we weren’t quite sure when—or if—we would reach our destination, but after about five hours of steady driving, we came to a rickety old house clinging to the side of the valley. It fit the description Rudolfo had given us. Geese and chickens were wandering freely through the yard, and an evil-looking mule was tethered to a post. Two scrawny dogs sprinted to meet us, snarling and growling so ferociously that I was seriously worried they were going to take a chunk out of my leg. They were followed by an old woman, bent double, leaning on a wooden stick. She shushed the dogs and blinked as if she was trying to remember where she might have seen us before.
    Uncle Harvey talked to her in simple English, asking about the necklace. She shook her head, not understanding a word, and started jabbering away in her own language. He shrugged his shoulders and said,
“No entiendo, no entiendo.”
They went on like this for a minute or two, and then he yanked a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket and drew a picture of a necklace. He opened his wallet and pulled out a handful of bills. Seeing the money, the old woman grinned and put up her hand, telling us to wait there, and hobbled into her house. She came back a few minutes later carrying a long silver necklace with a neat little cross on the end. It was nice enough, but not what we were looking for.
    â€œMuchos gracias,”
said Uncle Harvey, handing the necklace back to the little old lady.
“Adiós.”
He winked at me as if to say:
There you go—I can say a few words of the local lingo. All is not lost.
    We drove up into the hills, higher and higher.
    We passed a man standing by the side of the road with a donkey and a wicker basket filled with potatoes. We showed him the picture of the necklace. He shook his head and waved us onward.
    The car plunged through deep puddles and bounced over potholes, shaking us in our seats.
    The air was colder. The sky was darker. The mountains towered over us.
    We stopped at every farm, quizzing the owners, asking if they had sold a silver necklace to Rodolfo, the antiques dealer with the twirly ’stache.
    No one spoke any English, so our conversations took ages. We had to say everything in sign language and drawings and the few words of Spanish that Uncle Harvey managed to remember.
    We were offered a lot of jewelry. One farmer tried to sell us a goat. Another offered us each a glass of warm milk.
    Wherever we went, I heard the word
gringo.
Uncle Harvey told me what it meant.
Gringo
is the Spanish word for a foreigner, a tourist, a white person. In other words: us.
    I began to wonder if we’d made a mistake. Maybe we should have stuck with Otto. He might be a murderous criminal, but at least he could speak Spanish. Or should we have accepted Rodolfo’s offer? With him in the car, guiding us, would we have found the farm hours ago? Thinking about Rodolfo, I wondered if he’d sent us on a wild-goose chase. He must have guessed we were searching for something valuable. Wouldn’t he be tempted to take it for himself? He could have pocketed our money, drawn a fake map, pointed us up the wrong mountain, and waited till we were out of sight, then headed off in the right direction himself, going back to the guy who had sold him the necklace. Meanwhile we’d spend a few days driving around some completely different part of the Andes, searching for a farm that didn’t even exist.
    The sun