by Mark Dawson
He was getting too old for this shit.
When he got back to the room Caterina had taken his Magnum .357 out of the holster. The bathroom door was open. González was on his knees, his hands in front of his face. She was pointing the gun at his head.
“How do you get paid?” she asked him.
“Cash on delivery.”
“So, what?––he’s got to be alive?”
“He don’t got to be. More for me if he is, though.”
“Ah,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
The gunshot was audible all the way across the scrubby desert.
* * *
60.
CAPITÁN VICENTE ALAMEDA lived with his wife and three children in the upscale neighbourhood of Campestre. The district rubbed against Highway 45, just before the crossroads with Highway 2, and massive maquiladoras were gathered on one edge of the neighbourhood. Plato continued along an avenue that could have been in any city north of the border: a Starbucks, Chili’s, Applebee’s and strip malls. He turned into Alameda’s street and parked. Razor wire lined the top of brick and stucco walls. Uniformed guards stood watch at gated entryways. Gold doors on one home reflected the lamp-light. Parked in the driveways were BMWs and Lexuses, many with Texas license plates. Alameda’s house had an Audi in the driveway. There was a large garden. A pool. Four or five bedrooms judging from the windows on the second floor. A set of gates, although they hadn’t been closed.
It wasn’t a policeman’s house.
Plato got out of the car and looked up. The sky was full of stars, a rind of moon hanging over the silhouette of the factories on the edge of the neighbourhood. He made his way up the street to a small zócalo where the grackles in the eucalyptus trees called out in drowsy alarm.
He pressed the intercom.
“Yes?”
“Capitán––it’s Jesus Plato.”
“Plato? It’s late. Do you know what time it is?”
“I know. But I need to talk to you.”
“Tomorrow, Jesus, alright?”
“No, sir. It has to be now.”
The intercom cut out. Plato stood at the gate, staring through the bars at the home beyond. The curtains in one of the large windows on the first floor twitched aside and Plato saw Alameda’s face.
He held his finger on the intercom for ten seconds.
He would wait as long as it took.
After a minute, the front door opened and Alameda came outside. He was wearing slippers and a dressing gown.
Plato slipped between the gates and met him in the garden.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Alameda hissed. “You’ve woken the children!”
“I must be some kind of idiot. How long have we known each other?”
“Ten years.”
“Exactly. Ten years and you’ve never invited me here. We’ve had barbeques at my place and at Sanchez’s, but you never did the same. Don’t know why that never struck me as odd. Now I can see why.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The first thing I would’ve asked is where you could possibly be getting the money to afford a place like this. It’s not on a captain’s salary, I know that much. Not wondering about that could all have been stupidity on my part, I’m capable of that, but I don’t think so, not this time. I think it was wilful blindness. I didn’t want to look at what was staring me in the face.”
“I had an inheritance. My father-in-law.”
“No you didn’t. Drug money bought all this.”
“Come on, Jesus. That’s crazy.”
“I don’t think so. I’m sorry it’s come to this, sir, but you’re under arrest.”
“You want to do this now? Now? You’re retiring.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I’d have to talk to Emelia, of course, but I’m thinking maybe I can stay on another six months. There’s a lot of cancer that needs to be cut out. Now’s a good a time as any. Maybe I can do something about that.”
“You know what that’ll mean for you and your family?”
“I know I swore an oath. When I retire, I aim to have done what I promised to do.”
“You’ve lost your mind, Jesus.”
“That’s as maybe, Capitán. But you’re still under arrest.”
Plato took out his cuffs and, with Alameda’s wife and children watching open-mouthed from the windows, he fastened them and led him back out and onto the street.
* * *
61.
“AND THERE YOU HAVE IT,” Felipe said with a grand gesture. “The best equipped methamphetamine lab in Mexico.”
Isaac and his two colleagues looked suitably impressed. That was good. Felipe had been struggling to maintain their confidence after what had gone down at the mansion. He had struggled a little during the flight south to maintain his mood. The day since the attack had been an ordeal. There was nothing from Adolfo. One of the men thought that he had seen the foolish boy led out of the house at gunpoint but he couldn’t be sure. There had been no word from him. No ransom. No gloating message. Nothing.
Felipe had very little idea of who had been responsible. He only knew who it was not. It wasn’t the cartels. Only Los Zetas had the kind of military training to do what had been done and, even then, it would have taken more of them than the six that had been counted. But if not them, then who? The Army? Special Forces? The Americans? His sources said not. The Luciano family seeking revenge? Hired mercenaries? Again, there was no suggestion that it was them.
Who, then?
The Englishman?
He was at a loss.
Isaac was admiring the thorium oxide furnace. The gleaming new laboratory had restored his faith.
Felipe knew why: greed.
The promise of great wealth had a way of doing that.
The American Drug Enforcement Agency classified a lab as a “superlab” if it could produce more than ten pounds of meth every week.
The one that Felipe had built could produce twenty pounds a day.
Wholesale, a pound of methamphetamine was worth $17,000.
The lab could produce 140 pounds a week.
140 pounds had a value of over two million dollars.
The lab stood to make him over one hundred million dollars a year.
Isaac wandered further down the line: the hydrofluoric acid solution vat, the aluminium strip and sodium hydroxide mixing tank, the huge reaction vessel, the filtration system, the finishing tanks. The first cook had been completed overnight and the meth had been broken down and packed in plastic bags, ready to be moved. “May I?” he asked, looking down at the bags.
“Please,” Felipe replied.
The gringo opened the bag and took out a larger-than-usual crystal. He held it up to the light and gazed into it.
Felipe knew it was pure.
C10H15N.
Eight-tenths Carbon.
One-tenth Nitrogen.
One-tenth Hydrogen.
The formula didn’t mean much to him apart from this: it would make him a whole lot of money.
“I knew it was good,” Isaac said, “but this is remarkable. How pure is this?”
“Ninety-eight per cent,” the chemist said. He looked up and down the line like a proud father.
“Very good,” Isaac said. “Very good indeed.”
“Have you seen enough, my friend?”
“I think so.”
“We should get you back to the plane. You have a long flight ahead of you.”
Felipe stepped out of the laboratory and into the baking heat. The land dropped down on all sides, covered with scrubby brush. The horizon shimmered as if there was another mountain range opposite this one, a thousand miles away. A trick of the heat. His cellphone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and looked at the display. He hoped it might be Adolfo. It was not a number he recognised.
“Hello Felipe.”
“Who is this?”
“You know who I am.”
He frowned. “The Englishman?”
“That’s right.”
“Then I am talking to a dead man.”
“Eventually. But not today.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you.”
“You told me what?”
“That I’d find you.”
There was a loud crack and one of Felipe’s guards fell to the ground. He looked over at the man; the initial response was one of puzzlement, but, as he noticed the man’s brains scattered all across the dusty track, the feeling became one of panic. Isaac screamed out. Felipe spun around, staring into the mountains for something that would tell him where the Englishman was––a puff of smoke from his rifle, a glint against a telescopic sight, anything––but there was nothing, just the harsh glare of the sun, a hateful kaleidoscope of refulgent brilliance that lanced into his eyes and obscured everything.
“Felipe.”
He still had the phone pressed to his ear.
“Listen to me, Felipe.”
“What?”
“I wanted you to know––your son is in America now. He’s been delivered. The Mafia, isn’t it? How will that go for him?”
Felipe pulled his gold-plated revolver from its holster and shot wildly into the near distance. “Where are you, you bastard?”
He started in the opposite direction, towards his second guard. The man was on one knee, his AK-47 raised, scanning the landscape. A second crack echoed in the valley and a plume of blood fountained out of the guard’s neck, bursting between his fingers as he tried to close the six inch rent that had suddenly been opened there.
“Felipe.”
“Show yourself!”
Isaac and his men ducked down behind the car.
“I should thank you, really,” the Englishman said.
He crept backwards towards the entrance to the lab. “For what?”
“I thought I was bad. Irredeemable. And maybe I am.”
He backed more quickly.
A bullet whined through the air, slamming into the metal door and caroming away.
“Stay there, please.”
He wailed at the rocks, “What do you want from me?”
“You reminded me––there are plenty worse than me. I’d forgotten that.”
The rifle shot was just a muffled pop, flat and small in the lonely quiet of the mountain. He turned in time to see the muzzle flash, fifty feet to his left and twenty feet above him. A stinging pain in his leg and then the delayed starburst that crashed through his head. His knee collapsed. Blood started to run down his leg, soaking his pants. He dropped forwards, flat onto his face, eating the dust. He managed to get his arm beneath him and raised his head. Through the sweat that was pouring into his eyes and the heat haze that quivered up off the rocks, he could see a man approaching him. The details were fuzzy and unclear. He had black camouflage paint smeared across his face, the sort that gringo football players wore. He had a thick, ragged beard. He was filthy with dust and muck. He had a long rifle at his side, barrel down.
Felipe tried to scrabble away, his good leg slipping against the scree.
“Isaac!” Felipe yelled. “Help me!”
There was no sign of him.
The hazy figure came closer.
“Please,” Felipe begged.
The man lowered himself to a crouch and blocked the way forwards.
“I’ll give you anything.”
Felipe raised his head again. The sun smothered him. The pain from his leg made him retch. The barrel of the rifle swung away, up and out of his field of vision. The Englishman straightened up. Felipe saw a pair of desert boots and the dusty cuffs of a pair of jeans. He scrabbled towards them.
The muzzle of the rifle was rested against the top of his skull.
He heard the thunk of a bolt-action rifle, a bullet pressed into the chamber.
The click-click of a double-pulled trigger, and then nothing.
* * *
62.
LIEUTENANT SANCHEZ had delayed them for an hour. Captain Pope had made an angry phone call and, eventually, Sanchez had been contacted by someone from the Ministry of Justice in Mexico City and had been ordered to stand down. The six agents had dispersed into the streets to take up the search. Anna had taken a room in a hotel with a decent internet connection, hooked into GCHQ’s servers and spent hours running search after search. She was tired but she did not sleep. She stayed awake with pots of strong coffee and nervous tension.
She hacked into the municipal police database and withdrew everything she could find about Jesus Plato. She started with his address, plotting alternative routes to his house from the mansion and then looking for CCTV cameras that might have recorded his Dodge as it passed along its route. There were half a dozen hits––the best was a blurred shot from the security camera at a Pemex gas station showing Milton sitting in the front seat of the car while Plato filled the tank––but nothing that was particularly useful.
She extracted the details of Plato’s private car and ran that through the number plate recognition system that had recently installed on the Mexican highway system. That was more successful. The Honda Accord was recorded heading south: first on the 45, then past Chihuahua and onto the 16. It was picked up again on the outskirts of Parral, leaving the city on the 24 and heading to the south-west.
Towards the Sierra Madre.
Fourteen hours of driving.
She told Pope. He left with two of the others.
It was a long shot. They were hours behind him.
Then she skimmed intelligence from the army that said that Felipe González, the boss of La Frontera cartel, had been shot to death in the mountains.
It was all across the mainstream news hours later.
It started to make more sense.
The Accord was recorded heading north again, on highway 15 this time, heading up the coast. The camera had taken a usable picture, too. Milton was driving. He turned to the west at Magdalena, back towards Juárez.
She warned Pope that Milton might be meeting with Plato.
They put his house under surveillance.
They watched the police station.
No sign of Milton.
Plato went out in a taxi the next day. They followed him. He picked up the empty Accord in the car park of a maquiladora on the edge of town. He drove it back home. They saw him take a rifle from the back of the car and lock it in a gun cabinet in his garage.
The gun that killed González?
It didn’t matter.
They had struck out.
Milton was a ghost.
Gone.
ANNA EXCUSED HERSELF for half an hour and found a payphone in a grocery store. The phone was in the back, inside a half booth that was fitted to the wall. It looked private enough. She dialled the number she had been given several years before. She had never had the need to dial it before and she was anxious as she waited for it to connect.
It did.
“My garden is full of weeds this year, the herbicide isn't working.”
“Perhaps you should use a shear to clip the weeds.”
“Shears are too indiscriminate; besides, weeds must be pulled out by the roots.”
“Thank you,” the operator said. “Please wait.”
After a moment, the call was transferred.
“Anna Vasilyevna Dubrovsky.”
She held the mouthpiece close to her mouth. “Hello, Roman.”
“How is Mexico?”
“Hot.”
“Did you find the man?”
“We did, but then we lost him again.”
“And now?”
“He is still lost. They are looking for him.”
“Are you still working on the case?”
“I believe so.”
“And do you think you can find him again?”
“It depends on him doing anything foolish like allowing himself to be fingerprinted.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Maybe. I have a better idea where he is headed no
w. And I know where he has been in the last couple of weeks. There might be something there that I can use. So maybe.”
“Shcherbakov wants to talk to you about him.”
“The colonel?”
“Your trip to Moscow is postponed. He is coming to speak to you instead.”
“In London?”
“Next Monday. Be at the usual place at eight. You will be collected.”
Now she really was nervous. The colonel was coming to London? “Fine,” she said.
“The man––you saw him?”
“Very briefly.”
“What did you make of him?”
“He had been beaten. But there is something about him. He is not the sort of man you would want to have as your enemy. Why is he suddenly so important?”
“The colonel will explain. But an opportunity has arisen that requires a special kind of operative. Someone just like him.”
“You know he won’t work for us?”
“We think he will. We have something––someone––that he wants.”
* * *
EPILOGUE
The Coyote
* * *
* * *
63.
MILTON LOOKED up into the sky. It was midnight and the stars, spread out across the obsidian canvas like discarded fistfuls of diamonds, burned with a fierceness that was more vivid than usual. The Milky Way was so clear it looked like a soft footpath that had been placed with great thought between the constellations. He thought of those stars, dead for millions of years, their light only just now reaching the Earth. He paused for a moment to straighten out a kink in his boot and, realising that he was tiring, dropped his pack and allowed himself to sink back down into the sand. He sat and gazed up, lost in the glorious celestial display. The black blended away into infinity and unbeing and he felt utterly, and completely, alone, as if he was the only man in the universe. It was a sensation that he recognised, one that had been with him for most of his adult life, and certainly for the last ten years.