by Jack Slater
“Not mine exactly, but my country’s. Your people take bribes because mine take drugs. Without us, there is no market, and there is no cartel. No bribes, no violence, no death.”
The Mexican said nothing. It was all true. His confirmation wouldn’t change that.
Burke changed tack. “They killed my boss, did you hear? His name was Mark. I met him once. Real nice guy.”
“You get used to it,” Hector replied with a bitter laugh.
“I hope not. What about yours? What do you think of him?”
“Who – the colonel?”
“The admiral. I heard you on the radio at the prison.”
“Oh, Vicealmirante Abalos,” Hector said, unable to conceal the sneer of disdain that crept onto his face at the mention of the man’s name. “Is this between just us?”
“You have my word.”
“Look around, Agent Burke, and tell me – do you see any ocean?”
The American, looking confused, confirmed that he did not.
“No. Toluca is a funny place to harbor an admiral, isn’t it? The kind of place you might stow an officer who doesn’t know very much about sailing. The problem is, he knows even less about soldiering.”
“No arguments there,” Burke murmured before falling silent for a few moments. “What do you know about him – Abalos?”
Something in the agent’s tone raised Hector’s suspicions, though Burke was staring studiously ahead. “He’s new. Why?”
“This is off the record, correct?” Burke said, echoing Hector’s own earlier caution. He continued after receiving a confirmatory nod. “His name came up a few months ago in an intercepted phone call. We were unable to determine who the remaining participants were. But the message was clear enough – the admiral has been on someone’s payroll for quite some time.”
Hector knocked his now empty beer bottle onto its side, after which it began to roll sonorously away. “Carreon,” he spat.
“Perhaps.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Hector asked. “Why not take it to someone more senior?”
Burke stood, prompting him to do the same. The American extended his hand and said, “Because I think I can trust you. I want to know who killed the administrator. And I suspect that that and this mess with the prison is all connected. I just don’t know how. But I intend to find out, and I think we might be useful to each other. Don’t you agree?”
Hector glanced down at the agent’s extended hand and considered the offer for a little time before responding. His instincts screamed a competing, argumentative chorus: that to protect his family he would be wise to run as far and fast away from this as his legs would carry him. And as it always did, a countervailing argument that safety was only illusory so long as his country was ruled from the shadows by men like Fernando Carreon, Ramon Reyes, and turncoats like Abalos.
He nodded curtly.
The two men shook hands.
24
The girl was awake. The one his guards had brought two nights earlier. Her eyes were puffy from tears, and she looked as though she hadn’t slept in days.
Carreon crossed his arms and without hiding his interest examined her figure. “At last, you emerge.”
“I’m hungry,” she said simply.
“It’s been two days,” Carreon replied. “I’m not surprised.”
He took a step forward, and the girl flinched. “Who are you?”
Carreon grinned. “You don’t know?”
“You look familiar.” She paused, biting her lip before continuing in a softer, more childish voice, “Why did you bring me here?”
“Why –?” Carreon said, surprised for the first time. He shook his head. “You misunderstand. I had nothing to do with your arrival.”
“Then who did?” the girl exclaimed, her voice rising.
“That, my dear, is a very good question.”
“Who are you?” she asked, voice harsh and accusatory now. “Stop playing games.”
He considered his answer for a few seconds. Better to learn her name first, he decided. His own carried with it a somewhat checkered baggage. And he didn’t want to scare her off. Not yet, at least. She was… intriguing. Or at least, her presence was. She was a captive too.
Which begged the question: Could she be useful?
“Why don’t you go first?”
She glowered at him, fists curling into white-knuckled bunches like a little child.
“I’m sorry.” Carreon smiled. “Another game.”
Still, he did not make the first move, wary of scaring her off. He fell silent, but held her gaze without blinking, knowing that the human brain abhors such a vacuum. Few are those able to resist filling a void.
“I’m Jennifer,” she said, keeping her cards close to her chest. “Now you.”
Carreon inclined his head, appreciating the subtle intelligence of her answer. So she did know how the game was played, after all. Perhaps not so ingenuous as she seemed. Curiouser and curiouser. “Nice to meet you, Jennifer.”
He paused for a few seconds to test her resolve, but soon saw that she would not break so easily a second time. He stretched out his hand. “Fernando.”
Jennifer’s eyes flared in recognition. She took an involuntary step back, eyes flaring white. “You…”
“Have we met?”
“I know you. I’ve seen pictures of you. What do you want with me?”
“I want nothing from you,” Carreon said smoothly, although it wasn’t even close to being true, and his answer had shifted subtly from the question regardless. And then, remembering, he cocked his head and whispered, “Jennifer…”
The two fell silent, Jennifer Reyes backing away from him warily, prey unwilling to tempt the hunter into action, knowing that her efforts were fruitless all the same. Carreon decided to choose a different path. There was no sense knocking the girl further off balance. She would doubtless be useful. The question was only: how?
“You said you were hungry,” Carreon said in an airy tone of voice. “Come, let’s eat.”
He noticed that Jennifer’s fists were still compressed into hard little gemstones. He walked alongside her, rather than toward, demonstrating an empathy for which he was not well known. Then again, it wasn’t so much empathy as a tactic, one honed through personal experience of the difficulty of catching flies with vinegar.
Still she held back. He allayed her fears, at least of him. “Jennifer, you know who I am. And I suspect now I know who you are also. But you must know that you are not my captive. We are both prisoners in this place.”
She didn’t believe him. That much was evident. Neither did she move.
“Then I will eat,” he said, walking inside. “You can join me if you wish.”
Hunger and intrigue soon proved a more potent motivator than fear, and she joined him at the dining table – or at least near it. It was about eleven in the morning, and the customary breakfast feast had mostly been cleared away, leaving behind only a selection of fresh fruits and cakes.
Carreon selected an apple and a chocolate almond cake, not because he was hungry, but to allay the girl’s fears. He took a seat and started eating. Jennifer remained a few feet away, though he noted that her hands had relaxed somewhat.
“What do you mean you’re a prisoner?” she ventured after a long pause. Her tone was tinged with disbelief.
“Your husband is Ramon, correct?” Carreon said, glancing up from his plate.
“You know he is.”
“Do you think that your husband expected people to take you?”
She flinched. “Don’t talk about him like that.”
“Answer the question.”
“No. No, of course not. He –”
“– was taken by surprise. And so was I.”
“But that’s not possible,” Jennifer exclaimed.
“And yet here we are…” Carreon shrugged.
“This is a trick. You, you…” She trailed away.
“There is no trick. No illusion. The same peo
ple who kidnapped you did the same to me. Look around. You’ve been here two days. Have you seen any visitors? You think I would languish here with you for so long just to hoodwink you?”
“I don’t know, I –”
“You haven’t left your room. I know that. But you have ears, don’t you? And your room looks out onto the courtyard, and the only road in and out of this place. Does it not?”
Jennifer fell silent as she considered the question. Carreon studied her as her mind turned, studiously examining her expressions without appearing to do so. It was like leading an anxious oxen to a jungle watering hole. Pushing too hard would only undermine her trust in him. Better to let her take the first step. To build trust. What he would use that trust to achieve was as yet unclear. But he would find some value in it, he was sure of that.
She joined him at the table, nervously reaching for a plate and stacking it with food, which she proceeded to devour without modesty. It was a full ten minutes before she was done, during which time Carreon said nothing.
“I’m still hungry…”
“I’m surprised.” Carreon grinned, gesturing at the half-emptied selection of delicacies on the table. “That’s all they give us until morning.”
Jennifer’s eyes widened. “What?”
“I’m kidding… they’ll bring lunch out soon.”
“They,” she repeated. “Who are they?”
“That,” Carreon murmured, “is an excellent question. Why don’t you ask them?”
Her forehead crinkled, and she looked around anxiously. “What are you talking about?”
“The walls have ears, Jennifer,” Carreon said, gesturing around the room and leading her attention to the camera looking down on them. “They’re listening anyway. Why not ask them?”
Jennifer gulped and shook her head. Carreon nodded and stopped pushing. His message had been received. The girl now understood that she needed to watch what came out of her mouth, though it was precious little already.
“I wouldn’t worry. I suspect we’ll find out what they have planned soon enough. Though I doubt we’ll like what they have to say…”
25
The administrator’s office suite at the DEA’s 700 Army-Navy Drive headquarters was cold and mostly empty when Leo Conway limped inside. Not empty in the physical sense, for office workers aimlessly wandered to and fro with nothing particular to do – their main cause for existing having so recently passed away – but in an emotional one. It seemed somehow grayer.
Conway stood in the entrance way, a satchel bag over his shoulder shielding his healing left arm. A cold lump of marble froze in his gut as he surveyed the scene. They were like him, but he was not like them. Not anymore. Not after what he had done.
“Leo,” a familiar voice called out, high and tired and broken. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at home.”
“Lisa…” Conway whispered, sighting Lisa Rushkoff for the first time. She’d been Engel’s executive assistant for the past five years, going with him from job to job.
And now she was alone.
“You’ve been crying,” he said for lack of anything else. And it was true. In her late forties, normally businesslike and efficient, with a runner’s frame, dark, heavy bags now clung to Lisa’s eyes. She seemed somehow smaller, less alive, hunched with grief.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, and for a moment Leo was wracked with worry. Worry that she saw right through him. That she knew what he had done. And that everybody else did as well.
Pull yourself together, he told himself.
For now, at least, they would think he was grieving just like them. And he was, that much was true. But his was a tortured morass of emotion, for he was not solely the recipient of grief but the cause. And that is a difficult position for any man to occupy. Let alone one so craven as he.
Leo gulped.
“I had to get out the house,” he said, and that was true also. Mark Engel had been his friend. Their wives were friends. And when his own wife now looked at him with concern in her eyes, he saw accusation in its place. Mark was dead, and it was his fault, and there was no changing that. There was only survival. And that was the real reason for his presence.
“I understand,” Lisa said, nodding. But she didn’t really. She couldn’t, because she did not know. “I’m the same way. Of course it’s different for you. You were there…”
“Maybe we can do lunch?” Leo offered weakly. “He’d like that, I think.”
“Yeah,” Lisa repeated. “Yes, I think he would. Oh, Mr. Engel…”
It was always Mr. Engel to her, wasn’t it? Never Mark. A sign of respect, he supposed. Or just professional distance. Some people were like that, and maybe Lisa was one of them. Not anymore, though. All those barriers had been washed away.
“That’s right. Lunch,” he repeated and turned away, grateful for any excuse to escape this moment.
His own desk was mostly as he’d left it. A few papers had been moved, and he suspected the place had been photographed. Investigators were like that: they investigated things. It was in their DNA, he supposed. They left no stone unturned not because they had any particular desire to see what was on the other side, but because they were driven to do so.
Had they learned anything about him, he wondered, as he’d done every waking hour since waking from that living nightmare in Houston, spattered by his dead friend’s blood? And if so, what did they know?
“Pull yourself together,” he mumbled out loud through gritted teeth the second the door to his private office was closed. He banged his head against it, relishing the jolt of pain that surged through his skull.
He returned to his desk and set the satchel down next to it. A manila folder sat at the center of his desk. It wasn’t one he recognized, but then he saw dozens like it every day. He had, at any rate. Though he suspected those days were long gone. He was a middling chief of staff who had once had the privilege of working for an excellent boss. But now Mark was dead, and he, Leo Conway, had the stink of death on him. It would be career kryptonite inside the Beltway. No one would hire him, not now.
And for what?
That was the shame of it. He’d valued Mark’s life for the price of a bet on a three-year-old gelding at the Belmont Stakes – a horse that never stood a chance of winning anyway.
He opened the file, and his eyes instantly widened. All thoughts of Mark Engel fled. His handler would want to see this. Maybe it was even enough to buy his freedom.
“You think he took the bait?” Trapp asked, watching on a grainy screen as Conway’s car sped out of the underground parking lot and into traffic.
“Kinda looks like it, doesn’t it?” Pope replied. “Kelly – we getting anything?”
Typically, the junior special agent’s short-cut hair was impeccably turned out, though she’d had as little opportunity for personal care as any of the rest of them. It was difficult to see the precise details of what was on her screen, but it looked like a map of the DC area.
“The counter on the corner just buzzed. Not much more than a banana, though. I’m guessing he didn’t read it the whole way through.”
“Good,” Pope mused.
Trapp remained silent. They had hoped for this outcome. The radioactive isotope was largely contained between several sheets of paper within the file that were slightly stuck together. The act of pulling them apart would release a thin sheen of dust – cesium 136. The dosage of radiation that would, if things went well, fall upon Conway’s handler was equivalent to about a dozen x-rays. Just enough to tickle the DARPA radiation sentinels, and no more.
Kelly’s laptop was tied into a direct feed from the Metro police command center. The duty officers had been told that they were calibrating several of the sensors, and to ignore minor anomalies over the next few days. Their hesitation necessitated the lubrication of a call from the DARPA program manager, who in turn had required coaxing of her own.
A red icon superimposed onto a map of DC rendered
on Kelly’s screen showed where one of the radiation monitors had been triggered on the corner of Army Navy Drive and South Eads Street. Trapp watched for any further indication that the system was working, but still nothing.
“Where is he?” he asked.
“Cell phone has him…” Kelly murmured, switching tabs, “… on George Mason Memorial Ridge, crossing over the Potomac.”
“Wonder where he’s headed?”
Trapp’s question prompted only a disinterested shrug from the young agent, and he quietly chided himself for vocalizing something quite so obvious. The truth was, he didn’t really like counter-intelligence work. It was all shirt and no pants. Or was it the other way around? A whole lot of sitting around on your ass and waiting for something to happen. He didn’t know how Pope did it.
He peered down at Kelly’s laptop and watched as the blue dot that indicated Conway’s sedan passed by the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and then grinned, releasing an audible exhalation of breath.
Pope looked up. “What’s so funny?”
Trapp pointed at the screen. “James Bond here just drove past the International Spy Museum.”
“How about that.”
Guess it was funnier in my head, Trapp mused.
He returned to his previous train of thought. He hadn’t minded helping Nick out with his training program. Attempting to avoid being caught by legions of hungry young counter-intelligence agents who’d just burst out of Quantico full of the Bureau’s latest methods was good for his fieldcraft. And it was less dangerous than being shot at by the Russians or the Iranians. Not quite as fun, but a damn sight less hairy.
But deep down, he was getting itchy. Ikeda was right. All this sitting around on his ass thing might be what got Nick going, but it was putting him to sleep. Blunting his edge. And what happened next, anyway? Once they identified Conway’s handler, this would become even more fully an FBI matter. Up till now, his and Ikeda’s presence could be easily explained away as inter-agency cooperation. But if Pope decided to bring the guy in, then the Agency’s fingerprints couldn’t be anywhere nearby.