“227, that’s the one,” Galveston announced, pointing at a rusted gate bordered by two stone pillars. He jumped out and tried to open the gate to the driveway, but it was locked. We would have to make our way on foot.
Manuel pulled the car off the road and cut the engine. It sputtered to a stop. I extracted myself from the back seat and met Manuel and Galveston at the gate, the pair already plotting how they would get in. Manuel was the smallest of the three of us and was put in charge of opening the gate. He nervously pulled a stick of Canel’s chewing gum from his pocket and began to chew it incessantly, surveying his duty. Galveston put his hands together and Manuel stepped on top of them with one foot, flung himself to the top of the pillar that stood on one side of the gate, and grunted as he pulled himself to the top and over the fence. He tried in vain to open the gate, but was unable. Galveston proposed for me to be next. He would wait at the car while we found what we needed.
The gate was too high for one person to scamper over without something or someone to push off from. I repeated what Manuel had done, but with less grace as Galveston flung me to the top. I heaved my overly heavy body to the other side of the fence while Manuel attempted to soften my fall. I dusted myself off as I got on the other side.
“Alright Manuel, let’s go.” We gave Galveston a wave and headed up the short dirt road to a surprisingly modest two story house, decorated in front with a small grove of palm trees.
I ran to the front door hoping it was open, but unfortunately it was locked. Manuel made his way to the side of the house, and yelped when he found an unlocked window. I found him struggling to get the window open when I arrived. With a little teamwork we were able to force the widow open and began to crawl inside, listening carefully for a bark or growl from some unwanted creature. Hearing and seeing nothing, I decided to go in first. I grunted again as I pulled myself through the tiny opening, the sweat accumulating rapidly on my face.
I found myself in a small bedroom decorated with bright vibrant colors and a mixture of Mexican and South American art. Manuel appeared behind me almost instantly, due to the product of youthful exuberance.
“You check the house to the right and I’ll go left. We’re looking for any statues or an office, but don’t touch anything.” I barked the orders and Manuel jumped at the command.
As I made my way to the left, I entered a hallway and then a large open foyer. Each room I passed was dotted with art and trinkets, one man’s obsession with times of old. In the foyer I spotted the front door and a myriad of statues on pedestals. They all looked the same to me, but one stood out from the rest. It glistened in the sunlight streaming from the windows and an overhead skylight high in the ceiling. The statue was smaller than the others and looked older and more weathered. I got close to it and examined it under the available light. The pedestal it sat on was higher than the others and it didn’t quite sit right. This had to be the statue of the Aztec god Tonatiuh, or so I hoped, I was no Aztec aficionado. There was a liquid on it, it appeared almost the consistency of syrup, and had a faint odor of what I could only describe as “foul”. Small bubbles were present on certain portions of it.
Tonatiuh was the fifth and final sun god of the final era of the Aztecs. It demanded human sacrifice or he would refuse to move through the sky. It was ironic that in this present day it might have another victim of sacrifice.
“Manuel come in here.” Manuel hurriedly appeared and peered over my shoulder.
“That don’t look right,” he said in a low voice.
“I agree. Is this the Aztec god Tonatiuh?” He shrugged his shoulders and reached to touch it, and I grabbed his hand quickly. “Ah, I wouldn’t do that, unless you want to end up like Espinosa.” He dropped his arms to his side.
“It stinky,” he said holding his nose. “It smell like fish rotting in bucket of water.” As much as I appreciated his visual, my mind was busy plotting how we were going to get it out of there.
“Go look for a case or something. I’m going to try to find a stick. We’ll push it over and into whatever you can find.”
“Jou the boss.” Manuel disappeared again. I also left the room searching for a stick. I still needed to find the office and did as I rounded a corner from the foyer.
The office was filled with more artifacts and artwork. It was wood paneled and in the middle of the room sat the desk Espinosa had mumbled about. The desk was wooden and neatly arranged with a lamp on top. I moved around it to find that there was only one drawer, and I opened it. There were stacks of opened and unopened envelopes and a stack of loose papers. I tried to look through all the paperwork, but there was too much, and I couldn’t make out anything of significance at the moment. I decided I didn’t have time to try to delve through the stack, and hoped what we needed was contained within the bundle. I could always mail it back to the Colonel later, after I invaded his privacy. I stuck the pile of papers under my arm and made sure I hadn’t missed anything. On the desk I noticed there was a beautiful brass letter opener with a bone handle. This would do nicely as a stick, I thought.
Upon leaving the room I glanced at the pictures on the wall. They were filled with many of the Colonel, posing in his military garb, with other soldiers. There was also a Certificate of Merit with the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales, or GAFE, the Mexican Army’s Special Forces Corps. I didn’t even know they had such a thing. Other pictures were of Espinosa posing with big game fish when he was in a healthier state; a large smile on his face.
I returned to the front foyer. I crammed the papers in one hand and the letter opener in the other. Manuel had returned before me, carrying a lovely designer pinkish suitcase.
“That color suits you,” I joked, walking toward him.
“It was all I could find. It was in the back of the closet, next to a big gun locker. I won’t mind.”
I put the papers on the ground and moved toward the statue. I instructed Manuel to open the case and put it in front of the statue. I would then use the letter opener to push it in. Manuel opened the case and a pair of shoes fell out as he held the lid. I poked the back of the statue with the letter opener and it began to jostle it from its perch. As I pushed it further, a curious thing happened. A whining sound emanated from the base. Before pushing it further I peeked under the statue and saw a small button it was sitting on. We had an Indiana Jones situation here. It seemed to be attached to an alarm, but an alarm that would send who? I decided I didn’t really want to find out and stopped my pushing.
“Manuel, just scoop it up with the suitcase. I’ll hold this button with the letter opener.”
Manuel clumsily kept the case open, and when I motioned I was ready, he shoved the case around it. It plopped in the case with a thud, while I put pressure on the button. Manuel immediately closed the case up, leaving me holding the button down. I could see the liquid had left a nice ring on the pedestal from where it had slid off the statue.
“Do you see anything I can put on the button?” I asked him. He looked around hurriedly, smacking his gum more.
“The shoe, give me a shoe and your gum.” Manuel grabbed one of the shoes and the gum from his mouth and handed them to me. “Put it right on top.” Manuel carefully placed the shoe and gum on the top of the letter opener’s tip. “I think that’s got it,” I told him and slowly moved the opener from the button. It held in position precariously.
“I don’t know if that will hold it for very long,” I started, but Manuel didn’t hear me, he was already heading for the window we came in. I grabbed the papers off the floor and by the time I made my way out the window, Manuel was already in the yard dusting himself off after tumbling out the window.
As I stood up outside the window we suddenly heard a loud screeching sound and the clang of heaving metal. I turned to see a metal panel close from above the window. The screeching got much louder and became deafening. Manuel raced from the yard to the front gate and I followed closely on his heels, startled from the sound. All the windows of the hou
se had closed up with metal shutters, trapping any would be intruders inside, which could have been us. Galveston waited eagerly at the gate.
“What happened?” He yelled over the whining sound.
“Push it through the bars,” I yelled at Manuel. He began to shove the pink suitcase through the bars, but it got stuck halfway. Galveston pulled on the handle hard, and effectively ripped it off due to the force. I ran up behind and gave the case a swift kick, sending it scurrying across the dirt road.
“Well that was effective,” Galveston managed to quip as I gave Manuel a boost over the fence and in turn he helped me scale back over. We didn’t waste any time with explanations as Galveston picked up the case and threw it in the car as we jumped in. Manuel grinded the gears as he floored our lovely escape vehicle away from the house. As the dust settled behind us, we calmed ourselves steadily and began to relax.
“What happened back there?” Galveston asked, eyeing the road behind us.
“He had some sort of alarm installed. We could have been trapped inside,” I said excitedly.
“Yeah, you were lucky. I noticed something strange about that house.”
“I’m glad you tried to warn us,” I said, agitated by his words.
Manuel was sweating nervously. I was surprisingly calm, having become used to our antics. I settled myself into the back seat and scattered the various envelopes and papers in front of me.
“What did you find in there?” Galveston asked, as he too wiped the sweat from his brow. I stared at the papers.
“I’m not sure. We got the statue. Clearly there is something sticky on it that I’m assuming shouldn’t be there. I’m betting this is what poisoned Espinosa.”
I began to go through a few of the papers, mostly financial items of no importance until I came across an envelope addressed to Colonel Espinosa and dated just about two weeks ago. It had a postmark from Sao Paulo, Brazil. I did my best to translate the Spanish writing and was just about to ask Manuel for help, even though he was driving. It was a rough translation, but I was able to determine the general theme and managed to decipher the following from the letter.
Dear Alfonso,
Thank you for the contact. I have moved into the new apartment in
the city and the move from Rio was easy. I will be unable to contact
you directly since I don’t know where the facility is yet. I met with
the man you told me about. I am excited that this opportunity will
allow me to further my own research. The secrecy behind this project
has me worried. I am wondering if I am getting in over my head. I’m
not sure I trust these men. When I am done I will meet you in
Monterrey. I have received the preliminaries of the project and have
begun working on it as we had discussed. It won’t be the same as
when we worked together during Special Ops. I will send you my
new address in Sao Paulo.
Ernesto
I searched through the other letters, but saw nothing more from Ernesto Patelo. At the bottom of the stack of papers was a neatly folded piece of paper. I opened it and read the contents. It was Espinosa’s itinerary for what would be his fateful encounter with the silver case.
Flight one arrives 13:30 77M, agent will exit and leave case on
ground. Do not touch or attempt to open or contract terminated.
Confirm with predetermined satellite phone number last four digits.
Plane one will depart immediately. Flight two depart 13:55 to
Monterrey Intl. Change planes. Flight three depart 15:20. Arrive at
Sao Carlos. Flight to Rio and Mexico City will be arranged on
arrival.
It appeared as highly organized and professional, with little room open for error. But why go to the trouble of doing this? Why not just fly it directly Brazil? I posed my question to Galveston and filled him in on the letter and the itinerary. He had no answer to my question. I handed over the papers for him to look at as I continued to try to unravel the many pieces of the puzzle
“Look how hard it has been for us to trace their pattern. Would we have been able to figure out what they were up to by anything other than luck?” Galveston surmised openly as we entered the city.
I didn’t really understand at first what he meant by the statement, but then I got it. Galveston was trying to think like they were. “What procedures would cover the tracks and allow the least chance of being traced by any government or private organization”, he thought, putting himself in the operatives’ minds. It would have been easier and faster to just get on an airline and fly the device to Brazil, what we hoped was the ultimate destination, but that was easily traceable and the FBI could unravel it in a few days. The more stops they did, the more muddled the trail, but they were dealing with intermediaries that didn’t have the same alliance to them as their own agents. That had been our stroke of luck.
“They were trying to stop the trail with this guy, Espinosa,” Galveston explained. “They shouldn’t have flown from the U.S. They should have just driven it across the border and flew it out of Mexico.”
“His friend’s name is Patelo, but the Colonel said this is who got him involved. From the letter it appears it was the other way around. The Colonel got Patelo involved, but why?” I asked Galveston.
“That’s the million dollar question, my friend,” Galveston replied.
“It appears he now lives in Sao Paulo and moved from Rio de Janeiro, probably just a month ago. And then we have this poisoning thing. Why try to kill Colonel Espinosa?”
“I can think of many reasons. We have some good leads now,” Galveston turned to me from the front seat. “We have a lot of thinking to do and we have to ask the Colonel some more questions. First, who is this Patelo, second, what does he do, and third, now that I think about it, who got the Colonel involved?” Galveston again wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “I know one thing though; our answers appear to lie in Brazil.”
-Chapter 37-
“Manuel, stop at that store, I need to make a call, I can’t use my cell phone,” Galveston said pointing to a small grocery store with a TelMex payphone out front.
Manuel pulled into the small parking lot where the small grocery store sat, surrounded by a myriad of food stalls. Galveston got out and went to the nearby payphone. He used a calling card and feverishly punched in a bunch of numbers to the phone before dialing the number of the hospital.
I stayed in the back of the car and tried to adjust myself by tearing my legs off the vinyl seat. I observed the scurrying of people to and fro, unaware of the curious Americans that held such dire information about the future use of energy. This was why we were here, I thought. These are the people Dr. Sloan’s invention could help, maybe making life a little more simple, but we were fighting a multi-headed hydra. A monster of tremendous proportions, fueled by greed and power, unsure of how many heads the monster had. We could make a difference, and we could stop their quest, but we had to be smarter, and now, much more careful.
Galveston came into view out the front of the windshield, and entered the passenger side of the car. He slumped down in the seat and sighed, leaving the door open.
“Well, it’s not good news. The Colonel is dead, cardiac arrest and respiratory failure.”
“Oh no,” I gasped. “We were too late.”
“No, we never had a chance. We’re just lucky we got to him when we did.”
Manuel just stared at us, noticeably shocked at our complacency over the Colonel’s demise. Galveston sighed again.
“Yeah, we had no chance. They wanted him dead, and they wouldn’t have allowed anything for him to be cured.”
“Are we going to take the statue to the doctor?” I asked.
“No, I think we need to take it and get it analyzed by May. Maybe he can figure out where the statue and the poison came from.” I didn’t relish the idea of flying with the thing that just kil
led a man, but I understood his point and the importance of getting it analyzed. It was the only material evidence we had on who was doing this. It was becoming more clear that the trail really did point to Black Bear, but still the nagging question remained of who was ultimately behind it.
I looked at Manuel, forgetting our new teammate was not abreast of our plan. His face was pale and he seemed to scoot his back more firmly to the seat and the door, as if waiting for a chance to escape. Galveston noted his unease.
“Manuel, why don’t you go get yourself a drink, you look a little shaken.” Manuel slunk away from the car as Galveston and I discussed our next set of moves.
What was Black Bear planning? Clearly they would go to any lengths to accomplish their objective, but the bigger question still lingered like a smelly fish, why? Why would a company jeopardize their standing in the international business arena, as well as open themselves up to potential and complete self destruction? Galveston looked to me for answers, as I was the supposed “expert” in all things economic.
I had mulled these questions before, and I managed to come up with the main driving forces of this unscrupulous activity. Money and power. Men and companies had been driven by these two things through history, dating back to the East India Trading Company in the 1700’s, to Enron and WorldCom of the late 20th century. They were all fueled by the insatiable need for more money and power, until they imploded. But they all had another motivation that was more subtle, fear. That was the motivation I found more intriguing. What was Black Bear afraid of? If a company is profitable and confident in their business, why take unnecessary risk? This is what I needed to explore. I had an idea that Black Bear wasn’t what it seemed, a robust titan, but almost like a frightened teenager who didn’t want to get caught after taking Dad’s car out for a night of partying. Galveston enjoyed my analogy and understood what I was saying. It became apparent we had to get back to San Diego, and fast. We had a lot of work to do, and we were still vulnerable due to that tiny file at Genesis. It was only a matter of time before Black Bear made the link and we turned from the hunter to the hunted.
Daniel Ganninger - Icarus Investigations 01 - Flapjack Page 17