by John Lutz
Laker was watching the semi-circular columned portico within which were the main doors. He was hoping Theresa V. Lydecker would eventually emerge from them. Over lunch, he’d read in a newspaper that the Ministry of Culture was holding a cocktail reception in the Palacio to welcome the dancers of the American Ballet Theatre, who’d be giving a series of performances over the next week. Laker was betting that Terry’s cover would require her to attend.
The reception was a stroke of luck. Otherwise, he would’ve had to watch for her outside the embassy. Perimeter security was bound to be tight, and he’d have run a high risk of being spotted.
But was Terry being stationed here a stroke of luck? That remained to be seen.
They’d met at The Farm, the CIA’s training facility in rural Virginia. All recruits to the Agency were cocky—it went with the territory—but Laker and Terry stood out. Everybody knew Laker had turned down offers from NFL teams to serve his country, and he hadn’t been averse to basking in their admiration. Terry was beautiful and fearless. She excelled in small-arms marksmanship, unarmed combat, and all the other deadly skills they were learning. She and Laker were like the football team captain and the homecoming queen: everybody expected them to have a romance, and they did.
A fling, anyway. Laker soon tired of arguing with Terry and broke it off. He wasn’t much interested in listening to women back then, though he’d had two good ears.
Terry became a legend at The Farm, and not just because she aced all the courses. In one fieldwork exercise, the students were dropped off at a shopping mall. They were to find hapless strangers and persuade them to drive them to Baltimore. Terry went into the mall and disappeared for a week. She said she’d persuaded a man to drive her to Las Vegas, since Baltimore was too easy. She left no one in doubt of how she’d persuaded him. Maybe the point of the stunt was to get back at Laker. Instead, it almost got Terry washed out of the CIA.
Their paths had crossed only once since, when they were both working out of Lahore station five years later. Pakistan, then as now, was one of America’s most dubious allies. Terry was running a valuable asset in the Ministry of Defense in Islamabad. He called her in the middle of the night, saying that his superiors were on to him. He had to be pulled out. Terry wanted to drive to Islamabad at once. Laker and the station chief tried to persuade her the asset was panicking and imagining things. She’d only make matters worse if she went to Islamabad.
She went anyway. The asset ended up in prison. Terry was demoted to a desk at Langley.
Since he’d gone to the Outfit, he’d heard nothing about her. He wondered if age and hard experience had had the same effect on her as they’d had on him, made her less cocksure, more patient.
He doubted it.
The wait stretched on and on. The light was fading. But he had no trouble recognizing Terry when she stepped between the pillars of the portico. If her hair was dyed now, she’d dyed it the same honey-blond it had been in her youth. She was wearing high heels, a short red skirt, and a print blouse. A small, elegant leather handbag hung by a strap from her shoulder. Laker didn’t doubt that it contained her Glock.
It would be a bad move to startle her. When she was thirty paces away, he rose from the bench and advanced into the light cast by a street lamp. Then he stood still, keeping his hands well away from his pockets.
He saw the hitch in her stride as she recognized him. She scanned left and right, then walked right up to him, stopping just beyond his reach. Her face, with high, rounded brows over heavy-lidded blue eyes, a short nose, and a wide mouth, was as beautiful as ever.
“You’ve got a hell of a nerve, Tom Laker,” she said.
He said nothing.
“You think I’ll cut you some slack. Just because we slept together a few times before I kicked you out.”
Terry’s memory always worked to her advantage. He said, “I’m making no assumptions.”
“Good. Because the only way I’ll help you is advise you to turn yourself in. You fucked up big-time in Tallinn, Laker. Either that or you made some kind of deal with that asshole Barsinian. Sooner or later, you’ll have to face the consequences.”
“I know that. But there’s something else going on, something bigger. All I ask is that you give me a hearing.”
The low-lidded eyes surveyed him for a long moment. Then she smiled. “I have the feeling this is going to be a long story. And these shoes are pinching. There’s a good café across the street. Let’s go.”
“Thanks, Terry. And don’t worry, I won’t try anything.”
“I’m not worried. Not because I trust you. Because I can take you down, anytime I want.”
Laker didn’t argue. He and Terry walked abreast, arm’s length apart, across Avenue Juárez. Terry chose a sidewalk table, despite the traffic fumes. One of those odd, stubby coatracks they have in Mexican cafés stood by the table. It was four feet tall and bristling with prongs. Terry hung her purse on it and hitched up the strap so that her Glock would be in easy reach. The waiter approached and they ordered tequila. Herradura was good enough for Laker. Terry insisted on Don Julio 1942.
She eased off her shoes without taking her hooded gaze off Laker. “Let’s hear it.”
“There were no complicated secret negotiations between Barsinian and me. We fought and he won.”
“The great Laker, top operative of the agency whose name none dare speak, beaten by a slightly overweight Army enlisted man?”
“Barsinian was a highly trained agent of the FSB.”
He was expecting her to scoff. But Terry only looked thoughtful. She said, “Word from Langley is, the head of the agency whose name none dare speak called the DCI recently.”
“What did he say?”
“That the DCI had shit for brains. Mason said his people had been checking the story Barsinian told the Army about what he’d been doing between his hitches and it didn’t hold up. When he was supposedly in Tehran visiting relatives, he was really in Moscow being trained by the FSB. Or so Mason claims.”
Laker sipped his drink. He felt warmed by more than the tequila.
Terry read his face. “Yeah. Your boss is still in your corner. In the eyes of the CIA, you are a long way from rehabilitated. But I’m willing to listen.”
Laker told her about the Comercio Marineo. When he was finished, Terry summoned the waiter and ordered another tequila. Laker shook his head.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Terry said. “What’s in the container from Magadan?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you guess . . . ?”
“Munitions. Small arms and explosives, for the ethnic Russians in the Baltic.”
“Why send them the wrong way around the world in an Ecuadorean freighter?”
“To obscure that they’re coming from Russia.”
“Seems like a very questionable plan to me.”
“It’s working so far. I’m the only who suspects.”
“And you don’t know much,” said Terry, with a tart smile. “So what’s the rest of the plan?”
“Fighting intensifies in the Baltic states. Moscow says somebody has to restore order. And orders the tanks to roll.”
“NATO isn’t too popular in the Baltic right now, thanks to you. But the treaties are still in effect. An attack on one member is an attack on all, including the U.S. You think the Russians are willing to start World War III?”
“I don’t know.”
Terry’s glass arrived. She emptied it in one swallow. “There is only one reason why you’re not lying facedown on the ground while I’m cuffing your wrists.”
“And that is?”
“We’ve been getting disturbing intel out of north-west Russia. Army units concentrating along the borders. Air and naval assets shifting to nearby bases. We thought they were running a bluff, but—”
“Maybe they’re not.”
She folded her arms under her breasts and cocked her head. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you to set
up a meet with your station chief. And the ambassador. Only those two, and on neutral ground.”
“Neutral ground? I thought you said you were willing to face the consequences of your actions.”
“I am.”
“So when do you surrender?”
“After you seize the ship.”
“What if the station chief and the ambassador refuse to go along with your plan?”
“Then I’ll stop the ship myself.”
Terry gave her slow smile. “You know, Laker? You can still do it.”
“What?”
“Make my panties wet.” Turning, she signaled the waiter and pointed at her empty glass. “Okay. I’m going to let you walk out of here. We meet again, 5 P.M. tomorrow. Someplace very open, very public. Say the monument to the martyrs in Chapultepec Park.”
“You’ll have the station chief and ambassador with you?”
“No, Laker. The first step is I poke around a little and decide whether I believe you.”
“We don’t have much time. We don’t know when the freighter will arrive in Puerto Chiapas.”
The waiter returned with her third shot. She waited until he left, then said, “Don’t rush me. Right now, I trust you enough to let you go, and no more. So go.”
* * *
At five the next day, he was walking slowly up a broad path toward the memorial to the Niños Héroes. Six tall white marble columns adorned with black eagles commemorated six cadets who’d died defending Chapultepec castle, on the hill behind the monument, in 1847. It was an especially sad monument for an American, since they’d been fighting American troops.
There were a lot of people enjoying the green, spacious park on this sunny afternoon. Some were sitting on the steps of the monument. As he drew closer, he saw that one of them was Terry.
She looked as relaxed and comfortable as the people around her, sitting with her legs straight out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. She was wearing skintight designer jeans and red ankle boots, with a black top that bared one shoulder and hung loose around her waist. Her Glock could be hidden under it or in the red leather shoulder bag, matching the boots, that rested on the marble step next to her hip.
As he approached, she lifted her sunglasses to rest on her piled-up golden-brown hair. “You’re getting sloppy, Laker. A slow, straight down the middle approach. What if I had ten agents planted around the perimeter? You must actually trust me.”
“I don’t have much choice.” Laker sat beside her on the step.
“That’s true. I’ve had an interesting phone conversation with Señor Pablo Esquierdo.”
“Who is?”
“The Comercio Marinero’s agent in Puerto Chiapas.”
“That was a rash thing to do, Terry. You may have made him suspicious.”
“Not a chance. I speak Spanish like a native—a Mexican native. I said I was Señora Montoya, of the local Carrier plant—”
“And if he calls back?”
“He’ll get a secretary who’ll say, ‘Carrier. Señora Montoya’s office, can I help you?’ C’mon, Laker. This is not my first time at the rodeo. I asked him if he had capacity for five containers of HVAC equipment, bound for Guayaquil. Which I picked because it’s the headquarters of CENI Shipping and the Comercio Marinero’s home port.”
“Is that where the ship’s bound?”
“Yep. My guess was good. Next stop after Puerto Chiapas. But he said the ship isn’t taking on any cargo at Chiapas. It’s going to the shipyard for a refit.”
“That’s no reason to turn down a paying customer. The bills of lading from Vladivostok say that it’s unloading nine containers at Chiapas. So it would have room. Why would a cargo ship turn down cargo?”
“I couldn’t press him without arousing suspicion. He was trying to interest me in another ship that could take my HVAC equipment. But I did manage to find out a few things about the Comercio. It has a crew of nineteen. Four officers, all European, fifteen sailors, all Filipino. The captain is a Pole, named Jozef Korzeniowski. He joined the ship in Magadan.”
“I wonder if he has Russian connections.”
“CIA has a file on him. Classified highly enough I’d have to fill out a Need to Know in order to access it, unfortunately. It’s possible he’s the only one who knows about this secret cargo. Your munitions or whatever it is. I’ve been asking people about box boats—”
“What?”
“Container ships. Typically the containers arrive sealed, on a train or a truck, and they just load them onto the ship. The paperwork says what’s supposed to be in them, but nobody looks inside. If they’re reefers—refrigerated containers, for perishables—the crew has to wire them up. Otherwise, they don’t have anything to do with them. They’re stacked in the hold or on deck and sit there till the next port, where stevedores unload them. In fact, my source said, the crew is discouraged from going near the containers. The shipping lines are afraid of pilfering.”
“The sailors are second-class citizens, especially if they’re Filipino.”
“Yeah. Bottom line, Laker? I still am not ready to buy into your munitions for the Baltic theory. But you’ve done enough to establish the probability the Russians loaded something they don’t want the world to know about in Magadan. And the chance that Captain Korzeniowski will not head for Guayaquil is one the U.S. cannot afford to take. We need to know what’s in the container.”
Laker let out a sigh of relief. “Did the agent say when the ship was expected in Puerto Chiapas?”
She glanced at her watch. “Approximately twenty-four hours from now.”
With Terry, relief was generally short-lived. “For Christ’s sake! I need to meet with the station chief and the ambassador as soon as possible. You know how slowly official wheels grind.”
“I’ll make the call.”
She rose, taking her cell phone out of her purse. He made to get up.
“No, stay there. I don’t want you listening in and giving me advice I don’t need.”
So Laker sat where he was and watched Terry pace as she waited for her boss to come on the line. Her long-legged, hip-swinging gait was pleasurable to watch. Practically every man who passed gave her a lingering look.
The station chief must have come on the line. She was talking. Gesticulating. Abruptly she fell silent. The look on her face alarmed Laker. She ended the call. He got to his feet as she ran back to him.
“They won’t meet with me?” he said.
She didn’t pause and he fell in beside her. “We have to move. They’re coming for us.”
“Drop the phone. They can track it.”
A kid was approaching on a bike. Terry smiled at him and said something in Spanish to make him stop. She tossed the phone to him. The kid stood there, astonished.
“Vamos!” Terry called. Turning to Laker, she said, “My boss is an asshole. No brains and no balls. He wouldn’t even hear me out.”
“Maybe we can go over his head to the ambassador.”
“No, Laker. Anything that comes from you is fruit of the poison tree. They’re after us. They’ll tase us and put us on a plane to D.C.”
Striding quickly, they were nearing the boulevard that bordered the park. Another kid was idling beside one of the cars parked along the curb. Terry spoke to him and handed him some pesos. Laker figured she’d hired him to watch the car. It’d been a sound precaution: the car was a little red Mercedes-Benz SUV. As they got in, Laker said, “Can they track your car?”
“Yep. We’ll leave it at the subway station.”
“I’m sorry, Terry. You threw me a line and I pulled you in.”
“Never mind. What matters is, the asshole cut me off before I could even give him the details.”
“So they won’t be waiting for us at Puerto Chiapas.”
“Nope. We’ll be on our own to stop the ship.” Terry smiled grimly as she maneuvered the car out of the space. “However the fuck we’re going to do that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Laker was standing atop one of the big rocks that made up the breakwater between the harbor entrance and the beach at Puerto Chiapas. It was a beautiful afternoon. The sea was calm, the sky cloudless. The sun, low in the west, was a smear of blindingly bright yellow. He was squinting at the horizon. Thought he could see a bump. Definitely a ship. Probably the Comercio.
Hearing a horn honk behind him, he turned. Terry was waving from their car, parked on the palm-tree lined beachfront street. He trotted toward her.
The car was a battered old Honda. Terry had rented it, with a large advance cash payment, from a man she’d met in the market square. Then they’d driven into the hills to visit mines and quarries, hoping they could find someone to illegally sell them TNT for a bomb to fasten to the ship’s side. They’d had no luck.
Terry said they could force their way onto the bridge and take the captain hostage. She had her Glock. Laker said Korzeniowski had probably prepared for that possibility.
Laker and Terry were at their wits’ end. And exhausted by their night’s journey. Puerto Chiapas was a small town at the end of a series of worsening roads served by slow buses. With time running out, she’d set off to survey the port facility while he watched for the ship. Since neither of them had a phone to access the website that gave ship coordinates, there was only the old-fashioned way.
“She’s inbound,” Laker said as he got in the car.
Terry turned to him. The hooded blue eyes were bright and the full pink lips were smiling. She had an idea. Even before he knew what it was, Laker felt his heart lift.
“We’ll be ready,” she said. She twisted the key and with a series of coughs the car started up. Bucking over broken pavement, swerving around other cars, mule carts, and stray dogs, she crossed the town to the wide road that led to the port.
They stopped at the back of a line of trucks, waiting to clear security and enter the port through a gate in a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Terry turned off the road, then turned again. The Honda slid down into a shallow arroyo.