by Otto Penzler
But his phony sales pitch was interrupted when a huge bang startled them all. A bullet had struck and spattered against the resistant glass of a window nearby.
“My God! What’s that?” Díaz called.
“Get out of the room, away from the windows! Now!” José, the security man, gestured them toward the doorways leading out of the living room.
“They’re bulletproof,” Cuchillo protested.
“But they could try armor piercing when they realize! Move, sir!”
Everyone scattered.
P.Z. Evans didn’t get a chance to shoot his gun very often.
Although he and Díaz had earlier commented about Cuchillo meeting with an “accident” in a euphemistic way, in fact staging natural deaths was the preferred way to eliminate people. While the police would often suspect that the death of a terrorist or a criminal was not happenstance, a good craftsman could create a credible scenario that was satisfactory to avoid further investigation. A fall down stairs, a car crash, a pool drowning.
But nothing was as much fun as pulling out your long-barreled Italian pistol and blasting away.
He was about fifty yards from the compound, standing on a Dumpster behind a luxury apartment complex. There wasn’t a support for the gun, but he was strong—shooters have to have good muscles—and he easily hit the window he was aiming for. He had a decent view through the glass and for his first shot aimed where nobody was standing—just in case this window happened not to be bullet proof. But the slugs smacked harmlessly into the strong glass. He emptied one mag, reloaded and leapt off the Dumpster, sprinting to the car, just as the side gate opened and Cuchillo’s security people carefully looked out. Evans fired once into the wall to keep them down and then drove around the block to the other side of the compound.
No Dumpsters here, but he climbed on top of the roof of the car and fired three rounds into the window of Cuchillo’s bedroom.
Then he hopped down and climbed into the driver’s seat. A moment later he was skidding away.
Windows up, A.C. on full. If there was mold in car’s vents he’d just take his chances. He was sweating like he’d spent an hour in the sauna.
Inside the house, after the shooter had vanished and calm—relative calm—was restored, Cuchillo did something that astonished Alejo Díaz.
He ordered his security chief to call the police.
This hardly seemed like the sort of thing that a drug baron would do. You’d think he’d want as little attention—and as little contact with the authorities—as possible.
But when a Hermosillo police captain, along with four uniformed officers, arrived twenty minutes later, Cuchillo was grim and angry. “Once again, I’ve been targeted! People can’t accept that I’m just a businessman. They assume because I’m successful that I’m a criminal and therefore I deserve to be shot. It’s unfair! You work hard, you’re responsible, you give back to your country and your city … and still people believe the worst of you!”
The police conducted a brief investigation, but the shooter was, of course, long gone. And no one had seen anything—everyone inside had fled to the den, bedroom or bathroom, as the security chief had instructed. Díaz’s response: “I’m afraid I didn’t see much, anything really. I was on the floor, hiding.” He shrugged, as if faintly embarrassed by his cowardice.
The officer nodded and jotted his words down. He didn’t believe him, but nor did he challenge Díaz to be more thorough; in Mexico one was used to witnesses who “didn’t see much, anything really.”
The police left and Cuchillo, no longer angry but once more distracted, said goodbye to Díaz.
“I’m not much in the mood to consider Señor Davila’s books now,” he said, with a nod to the iPad. He would check the website later.
“Of course. And thank you, sir.”
“It’s nothing.”
Díaz left, feeling even more conflicted than ever.
You work hard, you’re responsible, you give back to your country and your city … and still people believe the worst of you …
My God, was he a murderous drug baron or a generous businessman?
And whether Cuchillo was guilty or innocent, Díaz realized he was stabbed by guilt at the thought that he’d just planted a bomb that would take the life of a man at his most vulnerable, doing something he loved and found comfort in: reading a book.
An hour later Cuchillo was sitting in his den, blinds closed over the bulletproof windows. And despite the attack, he was feeling relieved.
Actually, because of the attack, he was feeling relieved.
He had thought that the rumors they’d heard for the past few days, the snippets of intelligence, were referring to some kind of brilliant, insidious plan to murder him, a plan that he couldn’t anticipate. But it had turned out to be a simple shooting, which had been foiled by the bullet proof glass; the assassin was surely headed out of the area.
Jos knocked and entered. “Sir, I think we have a lead about the attack. I heard from Carmella at Ruby’s. She spent much of last evening with an American, a businessman, he claimed. He got drunk and said some things that seemed odd to her. She heard of the shooting and called me.”
“Carmella,” Cuchillo said, grinning. She was a beautiful if slightly unbalanced young woman who could get by on her looks for the time being, but if she didn’t hook a husband soon she’d be in trouble.
Not that Cuchillo was in any hurry for that to happen; he’d slept with her occasionally. She was very, very talented.
“And what about this American?”
“He was asking her about this neighborhood. The houses in it. If there were any hotels nearby, even though earlier he’d said he was staying near the bar.”
While there were sights to see in the sprawling city of Hermosillo, Cuchillo’s compound was in a nondescript residential area. Nothing here would draw either businessmen or tourists.
“Hotel,” Cuchillo mused. “For a vantage point for shooting?”
“That’s what I wondered. Now, I’ve gotten his credit card information from the bar and data-mined it. I’m waiting for more information but we know for a fact it’s an assumed identity.”
“So he’s an operative. But who’s he working for? A drug cartel from north of the border? A hit man from Texas hired by the Sinaloans? … The American government?”
“I hope to know more soon, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Cuchillo rose and, carrying the Dickens, started for the library.
He stopped. “José?”
“Sir?”
“I want to change our plans with the bus.”
“Yes sir?”
“I know I said I wanted safe haven for all bus passengers in Sonora on Friday, that nothing should happen to the passengers here.”
“Right, I told the men to wait to attack until it crossed the border into Sinaloa.”
“But now, tell the men to hit a bus here tomorrow morning.”
“In Sonora?”
“That’s right. Whoever is behind this must know that I won’t be intimidated. Any attempts on my life will be met with retribution.”
“Yes sir.”
Cuchillo looked as his security man carefully. “You don’t think I should be doing this, do you?” He encouraged those working for him to make their opinions known, even—especially—differing opinions.
“Frankly, sir, not a tourist bus, no. Not civilians. I think it works to our disadvantage.”
“I disagree,” Cuchillo said calmly. “We need to take a strong stand.”
“Of course, sir, if that’s what you want.”
“Yes, it is.” But a moment later he frowned. “But wait. There’s something to what you say.”
The security man looked his boss’s way.
“When your men attack the bus, get the women and children off before you set it on fire. Only burn the men to death.”
“Yes sir.”
Cuchillo considered his decision a weakness. But José had a p
oint. The new reality was that, yes, sometimes you did need to take public relations into account.
At eight p.m. that evening Cuchillo received a call in his library.
He was pleased at what he learned. One of his lieutenants explained that a shooting team was in place and would assault a large bus as it headed along Highway 26 west toward Bahia de Kino tomorrow morning.
They would stop the vehicle, leave the men on board, then wire shut the door and douse the bus in petrol and shoot anybody who tried to leap from the windows.
The communications man on the shooting team would call the press to make sure they arrived for video and photos before the fire was out.
Cuchillo thanked the man and disconnected, thinking of how much he was looking forward to seeing those news accounts.
He hoped the man who had shot at him would be watching the news, too, and would feel responsible for the pain the victims would experience.
Glancing up from his armchair, he happened to notice that a book was out of order.
It was on the shelf above the case containing the Ulysses.
He rose and noted the leather spine. The Robbers. How had a Schiller gotten here? He disliked disorder of any kind, particularly in his book collection. One of the maids, perhaps.
Just as he plucked the volume from the shelf, the door burst open.
“Sir!”
“What?” he turned quickly to Jos.
“I think there’s a bomb here! That man with the book dealer, Davila; he’s fake. He was working with the American!”
His eyes first went to the Dickens but, no, he’d flipped through the entire volume and there’d been no explosives inside. The assassins had simply used that as bait to gain access to Cuchillo’s compound.
Then he looked down at what he held in his hand. The Schiller.
“What is it, sir?”
“This book … It wasn’t here earlier. Abrossa! He planted it when I gave him the tour.” Cuchillo realized that, yes, the book was heavier than a comparable book of this size.
“Set it down! Run!”
“No! The books!” He glanced around at the library.
22,000 volumes …
“It could blow up at any moment.”
Cuchillo started to set it down, then hesitated. “I can’t do it! You get back, José!” Then still holding the bomb, he ran outside, the security guard remaining loyally beside him. Once they were to the garden, Cuchillo flung the Schiller as far as he could. The men dropped to the ground behind one of the brick walls.
There was no explosion.
When Cuchillo looked he saw that the book had opened. The contents—electronics and a wad of clay—colored explosives—had tumbled out.
“Jesus, Jesus.”
“Please, sir. Inside now!”
They hurried into the house and got the staff away from the side of the house where the box lay in the garden. José called the man they used for making their own bombs. He would hurry to the house and disarm or otherwise dispose of the device.
Cuchillo poured a large Scotch. “How did you find this out?”
“I got the data-mined information on the American in the bar, the one who was drinking with Carmella. I found records that he was making calls to the book dealer. And he used his credit card to buy electronic parts at a supplier in town—the sort of circuits that are used in IEDs.”
“Yes, yes. I see. They threatened Davila to help them. Or paid the bastard. You know, I suspected that man, Abrossa. I suspected him for a moment. Then I decided, no, he was legitimate.”
Because I wanted the Dickens so much.
“I appreciate what you did, José. That was a good job. Would you like a drink, too?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
Still calm, Cuchillo wrinkled his brow. “Considering how the American tried to kill us—and nearly destroyed a priceless collection of books—how would you feel if we instructed our people on Highway 26 not to get the women and children off before setting fire to the bus?”
José smiled. “I think that’s an excellent suggestion, sir. I’ll call the team.”
Several hours later the bomb had been slipped into a steel disposal container and taken away. Cuchillo, the engineer explained, had unwittingly disarmed it himself. The panicked throw had dislodged the wires from the detonator, rendering it safe.
Cuchillo had enjoyed watching the bomb-disposal robot—the same way he liked being in his parts manufacturing operation and his drug synthesizing facilities. He enjoyed watching technology at work. He had always wanted the Codex Leicester—the DaVinci manuscript that contained the inventor’s musings on mechanics and science. Bill Gates had paid $30 million for it some years ago. Cuchillo could easily afford that, but the book was not presently for sale. Besides, such a purchase would draw too much attention to him, and a man who has tortured hundreds to death and—in the spirit of mercy—painlessly shot perhaps a thousand, does not want too many eyes turned in his direction.
Cuchillo spent the rest of the night on the phone with associates, trying to find more details of the two assassins and any associates they might have, but there was no other information. He’d learn more tomorrow. It was nearly midnight when finally he sat down to a modest dinner of grilled chicken and beans with tomatillo sauce.
As he ate and sipped a very nice cabernet, he found himself relaxed and curiously content, despite the horror of what might have happened today. Neither he nor any of his people had been injured in the attack. His 22,000 volumes were safe.
And he had some enjoyable projects on the horizon: killing Davila, of course. And he’d find the name of the person masquerading as Abrossa, his assistant, and the shooter who’d fired the shots—a clumsy diversionary tactic, he now realized. Probably the American. Those two would not die as quickly as the book dealer. They had destroyed an original Friedrich Schiller (albeit a third printing with water damage on the spine). Cuchillo would stay true to his name and would use a knife on them himself—in his special interrogation room in the basement below his library.
But best of all: he had the burning bus and its scores of screaming passengers to look forward to.
FRIDAY
At one a.m. Cuchillo washed for bed and climbed between the smooth sheets, not silk but luxurious and expensive cotton.
He would read something calming to lull him to sleep tonight. Not War and Peace.
Perhaps some poetry.
He picked up his iPad from the bedside table, flipped open the cover and tapped the icon to bring up his e-reader app. Cuchillo, of course, generally preferred traditional books for the most part. But he was a man of the 21st century and found e-books were often more convenient and easier to read than their paper forebears. His iPad library contained nearly a thousand titles.
As he looked at the tablet, though, he realized he must have hit the wrong app icon—the forward camera had opened and he found he was staring at himself.
Cuchillo didn’t close the camera right away, however. He took a moment to regard himself. And laughed and whispered the phrase he’d used to describe himself earlier, “Not so bad, you old devil.”
Five hundred yards from Cuchillo’s compound, Alejo Díaz and P.Z. Evans were sitting in the front seat of the big Mercury. They were leaning forward, staring at the screen of Evans’s impressive laptop computer.
What they were observing was the same image that Cuchillo happened to be basking in—his own wide-angle face—which was being beamed from his iPad’s camera to the laptop via a surveillance app that Evans had loaded. They could hear the man’s voice too.
You old devil …
“He’s in bed, alone,” Evans said. “Good enough for me.” Then he glanced at Díaz. “He’s all yours.”
“Sí?” asked the Mexican agent.
“Yep.”
“Gracias.”
“Nada.”
And without any dramatic flair, Díaz pressed a button on what looked like a garage door opener.
In Cuchill
o’s bedroom, the iPad’s leather case, which Evans had stuffed with the potent incendiary explosive last night, detonated. The explosion was far larger than the American agent had expected. Even the bullet-proof windows blew to splinters and a gaseous cloud of flame shot into the night.
They waited until it was clear the bedroom was engulfed in flame—and all the evidence of the attack was burning to vapors, as they’d been instructed to do by Washington—and then Díaz started the car and drove slowly through the night.
After ten minutes of silence, looking over their shoulders for police or other pursuers, Díaz said, “Have to say, amigo, you came up with a good plan.”
Evans didn’t gloat—or act shy with false modesty, either. It was a good plan. Data-mining had revealed a lot about Cuchillo (this was often true in the case of targets like him—wealthy and, accordingly, big spenders). Evans and Díaz had noted not only his purchases of collectable books, but his high-tech acquisitions too: an iPad, an e-reader app and a number of e-books, as well as a leather case for the Apple device.
Armed with this information, Evans duplicated the iPad and filled the case with the deadly explosive. This was the actual weapon that Díaz smuggled into the compound and swapped with Cuchillo’s iPad, whose location they could pinpoint thanks to the finder service Evans had hacked into. With Díaz inside, holding the iPad to show Davila’s latest inventory of books, Evans had fired into the windows, scattering everyone and giving his partner a chance to slip into the bedroom and switch the devices. He’d fired into that room’s windows, too, just in case Díaz had not been alone there.
The bullets would also serve a second purpose—to let Cuchillo and his security people believe the shooting was the assault they’d heard about and lessen their suspicion that another attack was coming.
Lessen, but not eliminate. The Knife was too sharp for that.
And so they needed a second misdirection. Evans let slip fake information about himself—to Carmella, the beautiful woman who was part of Cuchillo’s entourage at Ruby’s Bar (phone records revealed he called her once or twice a month). He also fed phony data-mined facts that suggested he and Díaz might have snuck a bomb into the library. He’d hollowed out a copy of Schiller’s The Robbers—Sorry, Fred—and filled it with real explosives and a circuit, but failed to connect the detonators.