The Venezuelan

by Bill King

  “Have a seat, Arturo,” he said, sitting down at the wooden picnic table and propping his boot up on the bench. “You look worried.”

  “That’s because I am,” said Sanchez, sitting down across from Lima and placing his red beret on top of the table. “I’ve just heard some disturbing news. Very disturbing.

  “More refugees?”

  “No, much worse than that,” he said, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  Lima was now more curious than concerned. Were their situations reversed, what would concern the Brazilian most would be reports of a caravan of several thousand refugees heading down the highway toward Pacaraima.

  “What could be worse than that? Is your colonel relocating his desk down to the border to be closer to you?”

  Sanchez laughed and removed a cigarette from the rumpled pack he kept tucked inside his fatigue shirt. He lit it and took a long drag before slowly releasing the smoke through his nose.

  “Have you ever heard of a terrorist named Mateo Calderón? He goes by the name of Fósforo.”

  “Wasn’t he the guy the Americans captured last year?” asked Lima.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “We were never sure, one way or the other,” said the Venezuelan. He maneuvered his tongue to remove a piece of beef from his lunch that had stuck between his teeth, before turning his head to one side to spitting it out onto the ground. “We’ve been hearing rumors over the past eight months that the American CIA was holding him in some remote hellhole outside of the United States.”

  “That makes sense. So why the worry?”

  “Our intelligence agents are picking up rumors that he was broken free from captivity and has been sighted recently in Guyana.”

  “How recently?” asked the Brazilian.

  “Within the past week or two.”

  “How reliable is this source of yours?”

  “There’s the rub. This is a new source, so we have nothing to base his reliability on.”

  “So, why are you telling me this?” asked Lima, both intrigued and confused. “Usually, our two countries don’t share their innermost secrets, especially not recently.”

  “Because he worries me. As bad as things are these days, they would be infinitely worse with him in charge.”

  Lima just sat there for a moment, his eyes focused on the distance beyond Sanchez’s shoulder, deep in thought.

  “No, Arturo, I haven’t heard anything at all about your man, Fósforo,” he said finally. “But I will inquire, discretely, with some colleagues of mine at the Amazonas Military Region. Perhaps they have heard something.”

  Sanchez stood up and grabbed his red beret from the picnic table.

  “Thank you, my friend. I owe you one.”

  ◆◆◆

  Cortez and Gonçalves stopped for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant while on their way back from a meeting downtown at the Houston Police Department headquarters on Travis Street.

  The lunch crowd had already thinned out and they were the only two customers in the small dining area. After the matronly woman had taken their order—tamales for Cortez, cheese enchiladas for Gonçalves—the SSA brought up the subject of Brazil.

  “You once mentioned that you had spent some time in Brazil back when you were in the military,” he said, downing about half his plastic cup of water and holding it up until he caught the waitress’ attention. “Ancora un po'.”

  “You realize that’s Italian, don’t you?” said Cortez, smiling wryly. “The Spanish phrase is más agua, por favor, although I’m pretty sure she also speaks English.”

  “Whatever,” said the SSA, swatting his hand in the air dismissively. “Just because I have a Latin surname doesn’t necessarily mean that I speak Spanish. Anyway, let’s talk about your trip back to Brazil. This is going to be a tricky one, especially if it turns out the Agency is actually involved in this.”

  “Don’t worry, Jack. I will keep our suspicions about them to myself, at least until I get a better feel for the players.”

  “The first person you need to get a read on is Carpenter, the chief of station. That’s going to be critical because if we guess wrong, we’re royally screwed.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Cortez.

  “Applebaum and I will work our contacts in the States to try to give us a more complete picture of the battlefield, so to speak. Specifically, we need to learn more about Margaret Donovan and this guy, D’Angelo, and what role they play in this whole thing.”

  “And don’t forget about our friend, Marco.”

  As they were paying the bill, Cortez’s mobile phone rang. It was Clarice Robideaux calling from Brasilia.

  “I just received a call from my brother in Breaux Bridge,” she said, sounding frantic. “My family’s hardware store was completely destroyed in a fire last night.”

  “Was anyone hurt?”

  “No, it started around three in the morning,” she said. “It’s a total loss.”

  “Have they figured out yet how it started?”

  “Yes. The fire investigators have determined it to be arson.”

  “Arson? Do they have any suspects yet?”

  “That’s the delicate part,” she said, now sounding perfectly under control. “They found a piece of paper with a typed message setting on the driver seat of the business panel truck, which was parked in the parking lot beside the building.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said GREETINGS FROM COMPOUND X-RAY.”

  “Oh.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, we’ll reach out to the New Orleans Division and let them know,” said Cortez, leaving a five-dollar tip on the table before the two of them headed out of the restaurant to their parked vehicle. “It looks like the fire is now a federal case.”

  “Thanks, Pete.”

  ◆◆◆

  Olivier Gauthier hated American traffic, even though the traffic in Montreal is no walk in the park, either, especially in the wintertime. Still, he was used to Canadian drivers. It made him cautious, alert, unlike the drivers here in Houston. The sunshine and seventy-degree temperatures in February and March seemed to lull them into a false sense of security.

  He periodically glanced over at the drivers in the cars that zipped past him on Interstate 45, heading into downtown Houston. Some appeared to be talking on the phone through the vehicle’s audio system, others seemed to be singing along with the radio, or a playlist stored on their mobile phones.

  A few even appeared to be talking to the person sitting in the passenger seat beside them.

  He leaned over slightly and patted the black woolen winter coat neatly folded on the seat beside him. It had been cool when he left Breaux Bridge that morning, somewhere in the low forties, but certainly not cold enough for such a heavy garment.

  Underneath the coat were the tools of his trade: a Glock 19 pistol tucked inside a Blackhawk Serpa polymer holster. He had already inserted one magazine and chambered a round.

  Another magazine was tucked away inside the center console, underneath a large stack of paper napkins he had picked up at various fast food restaurants along the way. The other two magazines, along with four boxes of Speer 147-grain nine-millimeter hollow point ammunition, were hidden under the floorboard in the rear of the black Jeep Cherokee, along with the spare tire.

  He figured if he needed more than thirty rounds in one fight, he was probably a dead man anyway. Still, since he would definitely be a dead man if he ever ran out of ammunition during a gunfight, it’s better safe than sorry.

  In his line of work, he counted on people being unaware of their surroundings, or easily distracted. Quick and easy, before the target knew anything was amiss. That was his motto. He hoped his current target would be equally oblivious to whatever was going on around him.

  Somehow, though, he doubted he would be so lucky. While he considered himself to be an honorable man and not a sneaky little bitch like many of the you
nger generation coming into the profession, he was not about to give the FBI agent even the slightest warning.

  Not even a fraction of a second.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 19

  Brasilia, Brazil

  It was a warm weekday evening in Brasilia, typical of summertime in the tropics. Clarice Robideaux and Lucinha Baker sat at a cozy table for four in a noisy churrascaria in the Brazilian capital city. Baker was the FBI’s Legal Attaché assigned to the embassy. She was also Robideaux’s communications conduit with the FBI.

  The large open room was packed with famished carnivores, eager to consume as much red meat—and in as many varieties imaginable—as they could physically stuff down their throats. The beer and French fries—batatas fritas —were equally abundant. The noise level made it difficult for conversation without leaning into the other person, which was fine with the two women. It also reduced the possibility of their conversation being overheard.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about your family’s business,” said Baker, reaching her hand over and resting it on Baker’s before removing it. “The New Orleans office will get to the bottom of it in no time, but I think we both know who is behind this.”

  Robideaux sighed and nodded her head.

  “That SOB Calderon has crossed a line he’ll live to regret,” said Clarice. “Any idea how they knew about me and my family?”

  “I think we both also know the answer to that question perfectly well.”

  Neither spoke while the waiter brought their wine to the table and poured it into the empty wine glasses in front of them.

  ““Pete Cortez will be arriving down here on Wednesday evening to work with me on the human trafficking investigation,” said Baker, occasionally glancing around the room in hopes of detecting anyone seemed who overly interested in them.

  Robideaux, of course, already knew that he was coming and that his true purpose had nothing to do with human trafficking. She just wasn’t sure exactly when he was arriving.

  “That ought to pique Ryan’s interest,” said Robideaux, smiling as she took a sip from her glass of white wine. “Unfortunately, I’m afraid I don’t have much to report on my end yet. Ryan has been keeping to himself. Not a word about the Venezuelan.”

  “Nothing?”

  “He told me they had shut down the HIMALAYAN VULTURE program. That’s the one that kept Calderón hidden in that remote camp in the Amazon.”

  “Closed it down? Just like that? No after-action review?”

  “Nothing. It’s like they simply want to bury it.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “That they shut it down without review? No. Did they shut it down to everyone else except for two or three key people? Yes, I think it’s almost certain they did.”

  “That’s not very promising,” Baker said, clearly disappointed. “Shall we tell the servers that we’re ready to begin eating?”

  More than a dozen white clad waiters, each carrying a large hunk of cooked meat speared on a thick stainless-steel skewer, were meandering among the tables, offering to slice off a piece of meat for their carnivorous patrons to sample. There were plenty of more upscale churrascarias in Brasilia, but Baker preferred this one. She said it was more authentic.

  “I suggest you try to avoid the neck,” she said, a helpful piece of advice for someone new to the whole churrascaria scene. “Otherwise, you should try a little bit of everything.”

  Despite having been living in Brasilia for the past eighteen months, this was the first time Robideaux had been inside a churrascaria. She was not a vegan by any stretch of the imagination, but she did prefer fish and chicken to beef.

  “Would I sound too much like an amateur if I ask the servers what each particular cut of meat they’re offering is?”

  “That might be a good idea,” said Baker, laughing. “Although occasionally you might hear something that will make you gag. Sometimes, you’re better off not to know.”

  For the next forty-five minutes, they sampled many different cuts of meat, washing it down with sparkling water and red wine from neighboring Chile. Eventually, Robideaux pushed her plate forward and her chair backward, signaling to the servers that she’d had enough.

  “So, tell me about the new program you mentioned. SOARING CONDOR, I believe you called it.”

  “On the day I got back to Brasilia, Ryan informed me that the decision had been made in Langley that I would not be read into that particular program.”

  “Isn’t that a bit unusual, what with you being the number two person in the station?”

  “No more so than Ryan not being read into HIMALYAN VULTURE.”

  “Touché,” Baker laughed. “Sometimes, you people amaze me.”

  “However, I don’t believe that it’s an actual program with an actual mission. In fact, I think it’s almost certainly a dummy program. We tend to throw layer upon layer of gobbledygook when we want to bury something deep, where nobody can accidentally stumble upon it.”

  “You guys actually do that? Really?” Baker was being facetious.

  “It wasn’t by mere coincidence that the Agency completely missed the fall of the Soviet Union thirty years ago,” said Robideaux. She was being self-deprecating while, at the same time, pointing out one of the most inexplicable failures in the Agency’s long history.

  ◆◆◆

  Carlos Briceño rubbed the palm of his hand across his chin and exhaled slowly. He had just received an unexpected proposal from the man sitting across the table from him. The man had been a friend of his parents, someone he had not seen since he was a young teenager nearly twenty years earlier.

  The man, probably now in his early fifties, had been a junior foreign service officer at the American Embassy in Caracas back then and was an above average tennis player. He had taken lessons from Carlos’ father, a longtime member of Venezuela’s Davis Cup team who gave private lessons to a select clientele, most of whom were in position to advance his burgeoning career as a corporate lawyer.

  “Look, Mr. D’Angelo, I left Venezuela with my family years ago,” said Carlos. “I cut ties with the old country a long time ago. I’m even on the verge of becoming a U.S. citizen.”

  “Carlos, please call me Dominic,” said the older man, taking a sip from his glass of iced tea before setting it down on a cardboard beer coaster.

  He was wearing a teal polo shirt underneath his navy two-button blazer and looked like a New England tourist wintering in Miami. His silver mustache was neatly trimmed.

  “Of course, Dominic,” he said. “I have a wife and daughter now, both of whom were born and raised right here in Texas. My job is here. My family is here. My life is here. Venezuela is in the past for me.”

  “I understand your hesitation, Carlos,” said D’Angelo, a New Yorker whose tan certainly hadn’t come from wintering in the Northeast. His accent sounded like any of a number of talking heads on television, all of whom seemed to be from New York, even the ones who weren’t. “I came to you because you are an up-and-coming leader in the local Venezuelan émigré community here in Houston…and because I knew your parents well.”

  Katy is a suburb of Houston and home to the largest group of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States. Outside of South Florida, that is. Most had arrived in Texas during the past decade. Many, like Carlos, had once worked for Petróleos de Venezuela, the country’s state-owned oil and natural gas company, before bringing their skills and talents to the capital of the world’s energy industry.

  “I really don’t want to get involved in politics, especially foreign politics,” said Carlos. “I have too much at stake here.”

  “Well, your friend Roberto told me you would probably react this way,” said D’Angelo, a look of disappointment on his face. “Still, I figured it was at least worth asking.”

  “Well, Roberto certainly has more of a passion for the past than I do,” said Carlos. “As for me, I prefer to look to the future.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong a
bout people like Roberto,” said the older man, taking a drink of iced tea. “While you prefer to look to the future, men like Roberto prefer to shape the future. That’s the real difference.”

  If Carlos was insulted by what D’Angelo said, he gave no sign of it.

  “Well, Dominic, I wish you and your unnamed clients the best of luck in your venture,” he said, scooting his chair back as he stood. He shook hands with the older man. “As for me, my life is here now, and I don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize it.”

  As he walked out through the door of the sports bar, Carlos wondered what Roberto Lazarus had gotten himself into.

  ◆◆◆

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much of interest to report, Jack,” said Lucinha Baker over the secure telephone in the communications suite at the embassy in Brasilia.

  “I’m not surprised,” said Gonçalves, who was in his office in the FBI building in Houston. It was midafternoon. “The Agency is pretty good at keeping the secrets it wants to keep.”

  Baker proceeded to describe her meeting with Robideaux at the churrascaria in Brasilia.

  “So, they just shut it down without any after-action review?” asked Cortez. “That doesn’t sound even remotely plausible to me, especially not for an organization that routinely ties itself in knots over secrecy.”

  “I don’t believe it, either,” said Baker.

  “Someone is obviously cleaning up the mess,” he said. “It just isn’t Robideaux. Then again, why would it be? She only seemed to have a tangential tie to it, almost like letting her know was a courtesy or a formality in case something went wrong, or they got caught.”

  “We talked a little about the fire at her family’s business, but she didn’t have anything new to report on that, either,” she said. “I reassured her that the New Orleans office will ferret out who the local participants were.”

  “No offense to the New Orleans guys, but I think the answer to the mystery lies in South America, not Louisiana.”