Higher Cause

by John Hunt

  Marcos chose to avoid the question and asked again, “What do you want from me?”

  “You, my friend, are going to get back into the business of growing and smuggling.”

  “Not now, I’m not.” Marcos was adamant. “I am taking a few years of vacation. I like to live, and preferably not in jail. I am still under scrutiny.”

  Salingas smiled. “Did I say what it was that you would be growing and smuggling?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Marijuana, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine. I have no plans at the moment to do anything! No growing, no manufacturing, no smuggling.”

  “Señor Marcos, my friend, you have not heard me out! I said nothing of heroin. Nothing of marijuana! No, we would like you to traffic in more effective and powerful entities. Something a thousand times more lucrative.”

  Marcos was getting impatient, and he perceived that his time was being wasted. “I’m tired of the drama and games. Tell me!”

  “Marcos, we would like you to grow malcontents. We want you to smuggle distrust. From town to town throughout Baja and the North, you will surreptitiously convey our message. We want your sizable influence in Tijuana to be put to a worthwhile purpose.”

  “And what is this worthwhile purpose?”

  Salingas looked sternly at Marcos. “We are going to — subtly and calmly, silently and gradually — overthrow the democratic government of Mexico. And then, just as covertly, we are going to take over. The leaders will then do what we should have done all along. We will lead! We will build Mexico into a strong and wealthy nation. It will have direction and purpose. We need you to assist us. We need you to join us.”

  Marcos considered, briefly. “And what’s in it for me?”

  “In the end, you will be the regional governor of northern Mexico. Under some constraints, but quite free and powerful. And impossible to extradite!”

  Marcos shook his head in disbelief.

  “Why do you shake your head so? Do you doubt us?” Salingas accused.

  “Not at all. I just must take a moment to absorb. It has been a few generations since my family has been involved in a revolution.” The fat man laughed. But then he stopped suddenly, and a frown formed.

  Juan Marcos, almost humbly, began to explain his sour mood. “You said that my organization was still intact. That is not entirely untrue. But its leader has changed. A year has passed; but still, things are not comfortable for me. I am not the confident man I once was. Nor am I as ambitious. I had trust in people — people who had worked for me for years. I trust no more. I may not be the man you want.” His honesty surprised even him.

  Salingas puffed a freshly lit cigar. “Juan. Let me tell you something.” A few pleasant-smelling puffs through smiling lips. “You were set up.”

  “Yes, I know. My banker. Cruzon, has been, shall I say, replaced.”

  “No, my friend. I am not talking about Cruzon. I am speaking of another man who was working for you. I believe you know him as Jeff.”

  Marcos’ was taken aback.

  “Where is your friend Jeff these days, Juan Marcos?”

  Marcos squinted his eyes slightly, suspiciously. “He went back to the States. He said his mother was terminally ill.”

  “His mother was ill! My God, Marcos. You believe that? That is absurd.”

  “It did not seem absurd at the time. And it still seems plausible now, at least until I hear something to back up what you are saying.” Marcos was fond of Jeff. Jeff could get things done. He could be relied on.

  “The man you knew as Jeff is named Jeff Baddori. He is American DEA Has been for years. Never left.” Salingas let that sit for a minute.

  Marcos shook his head and laughed. “That is not news to me. It was so easy for him to obtain information. I figured he was either an ex- or current government man. So what? People on the inside give the most reliable information. It’s why he was so valuable working for me, I suppose.”

  “No, Marcos. He was working for the DEA — not you.” He called loudly across the room, “Señor Esperanza!” When the banker turned away from his conversation, Salingas waved him on over. “Señor Esperanza, please tell Señor Marcos about his former banker Cruzon’s less-than-admirable qualities.”

  “Yes, please do,” Marcos encouraged, with a sneer.

  Esperanza, handsome and fit and in his late fifties, had been unaware of the conversation but nonetheless declared concisely as he approached, “Cruzon was stealing from you.”

  “Please tell me something new. I am well aware of this.” Marcos said this even more obnoxiously than he had intended, but he was beginning to get angry.

  “I know you are aware of this. I heard you determined that he was using the daily fluctuations in exchange rates to take a little profit off the top. This is completely accurate. You were understandably upset by this.” He paused. “Where is Señor Cruzon now?”

  Marcos said truthfully, “I have not heard from him in almost a year.”

  Esperanza nodded. “I assumed so. I have not heard from him either. We used to have fairly regular contact, as each of us was the head of a bank.”

  Marcos wanted to get back on the subject. “Why don’t you get to your point?”

  “My point is that Cruzon was a gambling man. He loved to gamble. But he gambled in stocks and other financial assets. Señor Marcos, he used your money for his high risk gambles. But, Señor Marcos, he was very successful.”

  “Well, I always thought he was talented.”

  “Yes, he was. But he was also very loyal. Señor Marcos, every peso he had taken from you he returned soon after, along with the profits he had made. And he kept his records well. You see, he wanted to show you he could add something to your organization — something more than just moving money around. He wanted to show you that he could make more money than even your drug trade could bring in. But in the end, he learned that his honest efforts — successful though they were — could not outperform your business. And indeed, by the time of our last contact, he had stopped trying to prove that it was. And he had stopped playing with the money. As far as I can tell, he never kept any for himself.”

  Marcos became startled and defensive. Cruzon had been his longtime friend and ally, and he had killed him with his own hands, as an embezzler. He had not even given the man a chance to explain. Could he have made a mistake?”

  “How do you know this?” Marcos asked, hoping he could find a flaw in their reasoning. But Esperanza’s response didn’t help.

  “I am a banker. He was a banker. There is a network. I won’t say more.” The banker then, in an apparent effort at compassion, patted Marcos gently on the back.

  Marcos nodded his head as if out of gratitude to Esperanza. Inside he was fuming. It had nauseated him when the banker tried to console him. Esperanza was a self-inflated bastard. Perhaps he would have him killed someday, just for kicks. But first he had to think about Jeff Baddori. He had trusted that man. Marcos even had always looked forward to the occasional phone calls from Jeff. He had lost trust in most others he knew, including his own son, but not Jeff. That is why he had gone into temporary retirement. He had lost confidence in his own family and in the people in the organization he had built from the ground up. The enjoyment and rewards were gone. Now, perhaps, he was learning that his trust, and his distrust, had been misplaced.

  Salingas interrupted Marcos’s contemplation. “So you see, you were set up by Jeff Baddori, working for the DEA, on a DEA mission. He was never on your side.”

  Marcos nodded his head. Perhaps, too, it was Baddori who had killed his younger son. And yet he still hoped these men were wrong. And he still hoped Jeff was as trustworthy as he had seemed. Marcos held tightly to that hope, for other than Jeff he truly did trust no one. But even that last bit of hope was dashed in the next moment.

  “Would you be interested in knowing where Mr. Baddori is right now?” asked Salingas.

  Marcos nodded.

  Salingas walked away and said over his shoulder, “He is in
Russia on another errand for the DEA Moscow, actually. He is staying in a hotel there, under the name of one Juan Marcos of Tijuana.”

  11. Fatal Shot

  HOW SHE HAD BEEN ABLE to contact him was a complete mystery. There had to be a breach of security somewhere in the organization. Why should that surprise him?

  Sophia had somehow managed to locate him at his hotel. She had left a message to phone her as soon as possible. Fortunately she left neither her whole name nor her phone number. If she had, she would probably be dead by tomorrow.

  Jeff rushed out past the concierge when an irritating little man called to him. “Mr. Marcos, I have an important message for you!”

  The concierge handed him a piece of white paper which was just a bit too wrinkled. It had clearly been opened and refolded several times. Indeed there was even a smudged greasy fingerprint upon one corner that had no business being there. These people whom he battled against were clumsy and foolish. But they were also quite deadly.

  The note was worded simply. “Please call me right away. Sophia.” Jeff wondered what this could possibly mean. It was obviously very important, for he knew that she would have needed to overcome many barricades to find him and get him a message.

  Unfortunately, it was simply not the time to answer the message. He was already late for the next chapter of his deployment. He crinkled the note into a ball and pretended to place it in the trashcan near the door to the hotel. Actually though, he stuffed it into his pocket. He stepped through the revolving glass doors of the luxurious downtown Moscow hotel and into the less than luxurious street. He stopped on the stairs to look around.

  It was evening. The city was gray. Moscow had deteriorated during, and in the years since, Perestroika. The streets were in disrepair, as were the public buildings scattered throughout the city. There were certainly many fewer public buildings than there had been in the past — many had been sold to private enterprises — but the city was still dominated by government. Red Square was always kept immaculate, and this served to demonstrate the contrast between the permanent aristocracy and ordinary people.

  Jeff walked down the stairs and turned right onto Oolitse Gorykava — Gorky Street. This was a broad avenue, well-trafficked, where many of the tourist hotels were. The wet and icy street was marred with potholes; the cars usually took care to avoid them, as they swerved rapidly from side to side. Jeff remembered his first walk along the road. Most pedestrians had stayed far from the curb, and this had left Jeff abundant space to walk. It was only when one of the potholes was right beside him at the wrong moment that he had understood why the remainder of the pedestrians stayed so far from the curb. His left pant leg and the bottom left portion of his overcoat had in an instant become completely sodden with the muddy and partially frozen water expelled from the hole suddenly by the worn tire of an old Mercedes as it sped by. He swore under his breath as he remembered that day, and, like everyone else he kept himself close to the buildings far from the curb.

  Within a few blocks, he came to the cross street he was looking for: Marx Prospekt. The entrance to the metro, was on the far side of the road. He hurried down the slippery stairs, paid his fare, and waited for the next train.

  The subway was like every most other subway he had ridden over the years. It was moderately filthy, poorly lit, and permanently fouled by the odor of urine. The walls were littered with advertisements, both planned and some spontaneously applied. There was nearly a complete lack of graffiti in the place, but this was more than compensated for by an abundance of mass-printed leaflets that were plastered over every available surface.

  The platform was filled with the rush hour crowd — women and men heading home from work to see family and friends. The end of the workday did not seem such a pleasurable experience for the Russian workers however, for they did not appear particularly excited. Indeed, they seemed withdrawn and quiet as they awaited the train. Jeff knew intellectually that Russians were simply more reserved than Americans in certain public places. Their reservation was instilled by eighty years of rule by the communist totalitarian government. In contrast, he knew that the Russian people were anything but subdued when it came to their true personalities. Russians loved to dance and party.

  The light from the approaching train reflected off the black wall of the curved tunnel on the left. The noise from the track and the engine increased rapidly. A rush of air almost blew Jeff’s cap from his head as the train pushed out through the tunnel entrance.

  After boarding the train, Jeff stood in the rear corner of one of the middle cars and leaned on a pole. As the train started to move, Jeff tried to anticipate what might occur this evening, an evening that was to be the culmination of a year of preparation. He had spent six months learning the Russian language, and developed an excellent understanding of the spoken and written word, yet he had pretended to know very little of the language. He spent six more months insinuating himself into a small faction of the Russian mafia. He soon became a valued member of the broader criminal community; he was their international contact — their tie to the Mexican and Colombian cartels. He was well-trusted.

  Actually, he thought, he was well-trusted for a Mafia member. These people really did not trust anybody. They watched everyone in the organization carefully, and they made little effort to keep that secret. As in the former Soviet Union, fear was often used as a motivator. They had no expectation of loyalty such as one found in the Italian and American Mafia, so instead, families and friends were virtually held hostage. Deviation from a superior’s plan could very well result in death of not only the man responsible for the failure but anyone whom he had associated with as well. Because they very likely now knew of Sophia, the Russians might have leverage against Jeff.

  Jeff had planned a scenario that he had played out several times in the past — get close, become a trusted member, and acquire the evidence needed to bring the criminals to justice. In this case, however, he never had any intention of pursuing a criminal prosecution. The Russian legal system was in enough disarray, and prone enough to bribery, that no legal intervention into the Mafia’s activity would be remotely effective. Jeff had become convinced that the many members of the Moscow police force were beholden to the Mafia.

  The Russian Mafia was mostly mythical. The criminal entities here were more like gangs than an organized network. The danger was their large number and the very real chance that someone would indeed organize them into a functional structure that might become a powerful influence in the international arena.

  Much of the so-called criminal activity with which they were involved was animated by an entrepreneurial spirit: trading gasoline for clothes and automobiles for houses, for instance. Jeff did not want to interfere with these productive pursuits. But the Mafia went beyond these ventures and into racketeering — running protection schemes and trafficking in drugs and prostitutes. Drugs had always flowed into the United States from organizations in Latin America and Asia. The DEA was accustomed to dealing with those organizations. But the Russians were new to the game — and getting aggressive. They had begun by developing a market for their product within their own country, but although the demand was there, the money was not, and so prices were too low. Unlike the founders of most fledgling businesses, the drug lords of Russia quickly learned the value of marketing internationally and sought access to the seemingly unlimited American market. They had started small, but their ideas became progressively more grandiose. They traded what they had an abundant supply of — Russian guns — for drugs produced in a variety of regions. In the process they had developed a robust relationship with the Latin American cartels. Jeff Baddori had inserted himself into this developing relationship, and brought with him the combined Russian Task Force of the CIA, FBI, and DEA.

  Their mission was simple. Shut down this immature Russian drug industry before it could blossom while eliminating the flow of Russian weaponry to the cartels. The Russian government knew nothing of Jeff’s activities, but had they
known, they may have even assisted him in his efforts — for the money the Russian Mafia earned from the drugs would no doubt be channeled into efforts to obtain increased power within the struggling Russian Federation. The presence or absence of tacit approval of the government was immaterial, however. The truth was that if the government knew what Jeff was up to, then the Mafia would soon learn, and he would be dead.

  They were the most violent group Jeff had ever worked with, for neither personal integrity nor civil law had power to enforce contracts of any kind here. Only fear was used to enforce contracts, and these people were becoming masters at using fear outside their organizations, as well as within.

  The train haltingly traversed the underground maze that was the city’s subway transit system. Finally, at the second to last stop, Jeff walked out. He strolled up the stairs of the dimly lit station, slowed by the several dozen people who had exited the cars ahead of him. On the street level, he turned to the right and walked quickly down the street. This part of the city was in complete disrepair, the low buildings tightly packed and poorly kept. The people who slowly strolled along the cracked sidewalks seemed likewise in disrepair. This area was depressed psychologically as much as it was economically.

  As always, Jeff carefully examined his surroundings. He could see on this street the effects of the Mafia, for set amongst the rundown buildings, every few hundred feet, was a business that seemed to be thriving — clean and well-painted. These enterprises were either part of, or receiving special protection from, a local segment of Moscow’s underworld. For a business to thrive anywhere in this city, the local Mafia, as well as the equally aggressive local bureaucrats, had to be paid off frequently. Although bribery and protection payments might deter a budding business venture in most developed countries, the Russians were undaunted. They were used to this, having become experts at the art of bartering, manipulating, and bribing just to stay alive during the long years of State control.

  Dusk was over, and it was now night. He worried briefly about Sophia’s note, and he was eager to answer it, but he could not risk losing his concentration now. He turned down a side street toward the back parking lot of a small factory.