Guardian of Lies

by Steve Martini

  “Tell your agents that it is absolutely essential that the Costa Rican authorities hold her for questioning. Also tell them to make sure she’s given adequate security. We think there’s already been one attempt made on her life. And tell the agents that Justice and State are working on some kind of documentation to get permission from the Costa Ricans so that we can question her. It’s going to be dicey. She’s a Costa Rican national. Tell your agents that if the local authorities let her go, I want a tail put on her twenty-four-seven. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if she tries to leave the country, stay with her.”

  “Hold on a second,” said Mendez, “something’s coming in now.” He went off the line for a second. Thorpe could hear voices in the background. Then Mendez was back. “They’re less than a mile from the signal, do you want to hold?”

  “Yeah, I’ll stay on the line.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  As Realtors will tell you, location is everything. For us, the good news is that Costa Rica sits dead center, right on the spine of the Americas.

  The airport in Pavas is smaller than San José International, known as Juan Santamaría. The Pavas airport caters to domestic flights and eco tours to the coasts. It offers occasional international charters, from small prop jobs to jets, the occasional Citation, and even a Gulfstream or two as we learn today.

  Ordinarily you couldn’t touch a charter flight from San José to northern Mexico for anything close to thirteen grand. But the bad economy and the good location have conspired to make things possible. These days, flights coming from the south are often snagged in the air by radio if the passengers are willing to allow a few more on board in return for a good discount.

  Today we get lucky. A Gulfstream is already on the ground, sitting on the runway. It is headed from Panama City to Los Angeles and will stop in Mexico City for the couple who are now getting ready to board.

  A phone call from the charter desk out to the plane, followed by a quick vote by the other two people already on board, and for a little over eleven thousand dollars all three of us have a ride north.

  “Do we get any hors d’oeuvres on board?” asks Herman.

  I give him a look to kill.

  “Just wondering.” He gives me a moping face. “Been a while since we had breakfast.”

  “There is food on board.” The man behind the counter is working the computer, not even looking at us when he says it, so he doesn’t see the broad smile on Herman’s face.

  “See, it pays to ask,” says Herman. “Bet you they got beer too,” he whispers in my ear.

  The man at the counter barely looks at our passports, just long enough to take the names and put them in the computer, then hand them off to the resident immigration officer a few feet away who punches them with an exit stamp and hands them back to us. We allow Maricela to take the lead on this as she speaks impeccable Spanish and makes Herman and I appear almost civil.

  If I’d known, I could have saved us five grand, though I may be happy to be a Canadian citizen on the Mexican end. There are no boarding passes. We just haul our luggage out onto the tarmac. When the three of us climb the steps and get inside, we see the luxury of the deep leather chairs, all of which seem to swivel and recline. The four other passengers are standing next to a center table, munching and clinking their iced glasses.

  They turn with broad smiles and introductions to welcome the rest of the partygoers. Hi, my name’s Paul. I’m an international fugitive. Please excuse the blood on my hands. There simply wasn’t time to wash up.

  Instead I shake hands and use my Canadian name to make new friends. I haven’t figured out what I do for a living yet, but I’m sure they’ll ask. I take the cell phone from Herman, move to the back of the plane, and make one last attempt to reach Harry.

  “We got ’em,” said Mendez.

  “Did you get the woman?” said Thorpe.

  “If she’s with him, they’ll have her in just a few seconds.”

  “What do you mean? Either you have him or you don’t,” said Thorpe.

  “The agents are turning onto the street right now. They’re less than a hundred feet from the signal. They’re right on top of them, could reach out and touch them,” said Mendez.

  “Can you hear what’s going on?” said Thorpe.

  “What do you mean it’s a different tower?” Mendez was talking to someone else. Thorpe could hear more voices, a lot of excitement at the other end. “What?”

  “What’s happening?” said Thorpe.

  “Sir, there’s a little confusion here. We’re getting some signals we don’t understand. There’s got to be a tower malfunction. The signal’s been handed off to three separate towers. What? How fast?”

  “What’s going on?” said Thorpe. “Talk to me.”

  “According to our technicians the signal is moving again. Whoever has the phone is doing about a hundred and forty knots.”

  “What?”

  “That’s about a hundred and sixty miles an hour.”

  “I know what a goddamn knot is,” said Thorpe.

  “He appears to be on an airplane.”

  “Do we have any military assets in the area? WACs, anything that can track it on radar?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, find out. And see if you can get the tower at the airport to call the plane back. Costa Rican police ought to be able to do something. And call me when you know.” Thorpe slammed the receiver down so hard it bounced off the cradle on the phone and onto the floor, where he got up and kicked it.

  Nitikin had spent most of his life shielding the bomb and harboring it for a purpose. In his youth, the device was an instrument of the revolution. That Khrushchev would not use it for that purpose and share the power with their comrades in Cuba had angered Nitikin. The revolution was an ideal, pure and pristine. Yakov had never abandoned his country. On the contrary, its leaders had abandoned the revolution. Despite all the years he spent in hiding, Yakov Nitikin was still a soldier.

  But now that he was old, he was confused. He longed only to spend time with his daughter, to see her again, to talk to her, to hold her. He wanted to see his granddaughter, Katia, whom he had seen only once as an infant, but whom he talked about endlessly with Maricela, asking questions and looking at photographs. All of these were now lost, left behind in his hut at the encampment. He had cried himself to sleep, bellowing like a baby the night Maricela left the camp. Something had snapped in him. He feared for her and could not wait to call her on the phone.

  He now hovered anxiously on the edge, caught between duty and the desire to escape.

  Nitikin knew that there was no way to bargain with Alim. To attempt it was to invite a quick death. How does one bargain with the devil? The moment Afundi knew that the bomb was armed, he would pull out his pistol and Yakov would be dead. There were times he thought he hated the man enough that he could kill him, but the thought of sabotaging the bomb never entered his mind.

  To fail now was to betray everything he believed in, all that he had worked for all those years. He had traded a life with his family for the mission of the bomb. It was not his child, though there were times when he felt as if it throbbed with life, the embryo of revolution.

  He searched for some way out, some method by which he could satisfy duty and still see his daughter. What he needed was time.

  Yakov was working through an open side panel of the wooden crate, inside the container, presumably checking the device for any damage, as instructed by Alim.

  Nitikin had lied to him. The bomb was entirely safe to transport. The safety device was redundant. After all, the warhead had been designed for delivery in the belly of an unmanned MiG jet, a cruise missile launched from a ramp, not unlike the V-1 rocket. The gravitational and kinetic forces applied to the warhead at launch were probably three or four times greater than those experienced in the most violent vehicle collision or other accident.

  True, the safety device would prevent the
bomb from achieving a chain reaction if the gun was fired accidentally, but there was no chance of that unless the cordite charge was loaded under the breech plug, which only a fool would do except immediately prior to deployment.

  For Nitikin the safety device had but a single purpose: it made him indispensable and kept him alive. It had one other advantage—only he knew whether the safety device was engaged or not.

  “He wants to know if there is any damage.”

  Nitikin was startled by the voice coming from behind him. He looked out and saw the brooding face of the interpreter standing in the bright sunlight just outside the open door of the container.

  “No, it looks fine. I’m just checking the last few items.”

  “Then I can tell him the device is in working order? You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” Yakov spoke from inside the box, without looking. When he didn’t hear any further comment, he stuck his head out and saw the larded backside of the interpreter twenty feet away, walking in the other direction along the deck, toward the bridge.

  Nitikin turned back to the bomb. He used the flashlight he’d borrowed from the interpreter to check and make sure that the minute groove cut into the safety wire was properly aligned, a quarter turn, ninety degrees, in a clockwise direction. Once satisfied, he took hold of the wire and turned it counterclockwise until the groove in the wire was facing straight up.

  Very gently, so as not to break the delicate bond holding the wire to the safety disk, Yakov eased the wire toward himself until he saw the fine red line painted on it at the outer edge of the bomb case. The safety disk was now clear of the gun barrel. It was housed in a separate supporting container welded to the inside of the bomb case. Reinserting the safety in the barrel would take knowledge of the settings as well as fine hand skills that even Nitikin doubted he possessed any longer.

  Yakov crawled from the crate, closed the wooden side panel, and screwed it down tight.

  Arming the bomb had fulfilled his duty as a soldier even though he had no intention of informing Alim until the last moment, and then hopefully through a note or a message delivered by another. Now Yakov was free to escape and join his family, if he could only find the means.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Unfortunately the Gulfstream had everything on board but an in-flight phone system. The copilot who saw me trying to talk to Harry on takeoff told me to shut it down. The cell phone might interfere with their avionics.

  An hour into the flight and the passengers seemed to settle down. The other two couples paired off to seats and settled in for the ride. Herman and I spent the time in the rear of the plane trying to explain to Maricela what we’d found when we returned to Lorenzo’s apartment.

  At first she couldn’t believe that he was dead, and when she finally came to accept it, she blamed herself for leading the killer to his front door.

  “You don’t understand,” I say. “Lorenzo was selling them information.” I showed her the fax from his machine.

  As she read it her eyes gravitated to the name at the bottom of the page. “That’s it. I remember. I heard only once, but his last name was Afundi. I knew that I’d heard it. I just couldn’t remember. But why? Why would Lorenzo be working with them?”

  “The oldest reason in the world,” says Herman, “money.”

  “You mean he sold Katia’s life for a few dollars?”

  “He may not have known that they would try to kill her, but I doubt if there’s any question that he fingered Pike.”

  “How did he meet such people?” she says.

  “He was dealing with the same people your father is,” I tell her.

  “Yes, but my father has no choice.”

  “Regardless, the result may be the same. We need your help.”

  “How?”

  “We can’t identify either Alim or your father. We need to find them and track the container until we can get the authorities to stop it. If we don’t, a great many people are going to die. Do you understand?”

  She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me. “I cannot believe my father would do something like that.”

  “Perhaps, as you say, he has no choice. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to do what we can to help him get free.”

  She looks at me, then nods. “Then I will help you,” she says.

  “Good.”

  Three hours later we land in Mexico City to off-load the first passengers. I tell the pilot that my cell phone is on the fritz and ask him if there is any way he can send a message over the plane’s VHF radio to a friend in San Diego. I can’t very well tell him about the bomb without raising eyebrows and being arrested.

  Instead the man lets me use his cell phone. I take it to the back of the plane for privacy.

  It is after hours. The office will be closed, so I call in the open to Harry’s unguarded cell line. I don’t have Rhytag’s phone number or I would make the call myself.

  Harry doesn’t answer. I can’t be sure if he is even carrying his regular cell phone any longer. Harry hates cops. With the federal government now listening in, he has probably flushed the phone down the toilet.

  Nonetheless I leave the message to have Harry call Rhytag and tell him about the bomb. I give him the name of the ship, Amora, and its estimated time of arrival in Ensenada. I am hoping that the feds are listening in.

  Then I call Harry’s house. Again he doesn’t answer, so I leave the same message on his home phone. For the moment, at least, it’s all I can do.

  Liquida got bounced like a Ping-Pong ball all over the hemisphere trying to get back to northern Mexico. From San José he shuttled to Houston and from there caught a connecting flight to San Diego. He didn’t even try to fly south from there. Instead he rented a car and stopped for coffee at one of his haunts, a twenty-four-hour Internet java shop just outside National City.

  Inside he ordered a latte and sat down at a computer to check his e-mail. He was anxious to snag the Arab’s message and read his lies. Liquida knew that between the coffee and the raghead’s brazen deceit, it should be enough to get his blood going again, to keep him awake at least until he could get across the border.

  He was feeling pretty good. He had spent several hours snoozing on the planes, dreaming of ways to entertain his employer. He wondered if the man had family, and if so whether they had any money, and how much an ear or part of a nose might go for among relatives in the Middle East. He could give them a discount and sell him by the pound, a piece at a time. Liquida dreamed that maybe he could take the Arab alive, and get him alone somewhere, in which case the one thing he could promise the man was that he wouldn’t die fast.

  At least Liquida could now relax. According to the note he took from the dead cartoon critic at the apartment in San José, he had plenty of time to meet the boat at Ensenada. It wasn’t due in until sometime around noon tomorrow.

  He punched up the screen on the computer and waited a second to enter the floating ether of his endless e-mail domains. Then he slipped down through the junk mail and found what he wanted.

  Liquida opened the message and sure enough there was text on the screen, so he knew that the Arab was lying again. The e-mail was filled with irritating false praise for the fine job he had done. Because of this, his employer wished to reward him with valuable commodities—gold and fully marketable narcotics and hints that they might even throw in the moon and the stars. But Liquida would have to stop by to pick it all up personally since FedEx was balking at delivering the heroin and the springs on their van couldn’t seem to take the weight from the mountain of gold they had for him. They apologized for the inconvenience and said they hoped he’d understand.

  Liquida was angry with today’s e-mail provider. If their bullshit checker had been working properly, every word in the message should have been underlined, flashing and depositing little drips of brown down the screen by now.

  The Arab translator even gave him an address in Tijuana where Liquida could hook up his trailer to haul th
is treasure trove home, and told him tomorrow, four o’clock sharp, not to be late. The Arab’s other assassins must charge overtime, thought Liquida.

  He wrote down the address, signed off on the computer, finished his coffee, then looked at his watch. He wondered if it was too late to drop by one of his suppliers and pick up some stuff, or whether the guy would still be awake. Then he dismissed the thought; after all, that’s what doorbells were for.

  And if he didn’t answer, there was always the fire alarm.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  It was edging up toward ten o’clock at night by the time the sleek Gulfstream dropped us at the airport just a few miles south of the port at Ensenada. In less than ten minutes we had our luggage, and had cleared customs as well as immigration. A single sleepy-eyed officer took one look at our bags, then searched for a blank page on our passports, hit them with the stamp, and welcomed us to Mexico.

  We took a taxi and laid up overnight in a small hotel on the waterfront near the pleasure-boat docks on the harbor. We booked a separate room for Maricela, while Herman and I bunked together to save cash. We were now down to a little under seven hundred dollars. As a last resort I could always try my ATM card, though by now I am certain that Templeton will have it blocked.

  The following morning we get up early and grab breakfast at a small restaurant on the waterfront. Most of the stores and shops aren’t open yet. We find an outdoor market that has what we need.

  I open our piggy bank and we use a little over a hundred dollars of the cash we have left to buy a beach bag, some items of clothing for Maricela, and a few snacks. Since the fire, except for a few sundries and necessities she purchased yesterday morning on her way to the phone company in San José, Maricela has nothing.

  Back in our room I stand at the window and look out at the small boats in the slips that line the floating docks in front of the hotel. Off to the left is the cruise terminal with its long concrete dock that, at the moment, is empty.