by Bacon Thorn
Navarre’s vehemence surprised him and Yuma. She stood silently for a long moment, trembling. Suddenly, impetuously, she said, “I may go back to Mexico myself. I have some unfinished business, also.”
He reached into his pocket and held out a slip of paper to her. She took it and asked, “What is it?”
“A very private number where I can be reached in Mexico City. Peñas gave it to me.”
She took another step away from him. “Oh, Thomas,” she lamented. “This is so stupid. Goodbye.”
Briefly hesitating, she managed a stiff smile. “If I go back, I’m not sure where I’ll be. I’ll call if I get a chance. Good luck, Thomas.” She ran to the waiting jeep without looking back.
A few minutes later, airborne in the executive jet and ensconced in a window seat next to Peñas, Navarre caught a last glimpse of Yuma seated in the jeep next to the air force sergeant. She didn’t wave. He felt a piercing stab in his chest and a lump in his throat. He took a deep breath, looked down, and swallowed hard. He waited until the angle of the plane obscured her figure; then he turned to Peñas, who smiled at him sympathetically. “Don’t try to understand her, Thomas. Sometimes women are beyond comprehension.”
Navarre colored slightly and nodded in agreement. Then, when he had regained his composure, he said, “Earlier you made the point that something I’d mentioned convinced you that you have a traitor on your staff. I’ve been meaning to ask you who it was.”
Peñas hunched forward and clasped his hands. His voice was heavy. “It’s simple enough. Based on what you told me about the cigarette burns on de la Garza’s skin, we know he went through a brutal interrogation, and no doubt he talked before he was killed. When Maria Montrero skipped out on Jaime Chivaro, I gave my administrative assistant, Leon Abruzza, strict orders to keep a close watch on de la Garza. You can bet Chivaro and his buddies in the Ring of Gold knew he was the catalyst in the woman’s flight. You can’t keep something like that a secret. Abruzza’s instructions were to set up a protective countersurveillance of de la Garza. He was not supposed to know about it.
“Anyway, Abruzza told me de la Garza left his university in a van and tricked the surveillance team. Abruzza is a veteran intelligence agent. He knew how to keep track of de la Garza. Like you, I believe Raldon was abducted and Abruzza knew it was going to happen. I would never have found out about his treachery if you hadn’t related your conversation with Nuños and your call to my office from your hotel. It was never reported to me. I had expected your call because I’d been alerted by the archbishop that you were in trouble. Now, a lot of little things are explained that have puzzled me.”
Peñas pulled at his lower lip thoughtfully, his heavy black brows beetled in concentration. “I’ve also been thinking,” he said, “about Maria Montrero’s statement that the assassination would happen on Día de los Muertos. You said Nuños used the phrase once during his brief interrogation of you. So he confirmed it, but, damn it—I know I’ve asked this before—but did you get any sense of why in particular our Mexican Day of the Dead was chosen for the assassination?”
“I know it’s frustrating, Lazlo, but I don’t have a clue,” Navarre said, “and I’ve had longer to mull over it than you have.”
“Yes, it is frustrating,” Peñas said. “I’m tempted to believe the day was chosen as a sort of ghastly irony. Somehow, we’ve got to figure it out. We’ve got to stop it. God . . . sometimes I get so tired, because it always seems everything begins with crying and ends with crying. Comienza siempre llorando y así llorando se acaba.”
“That’s what Hebrano calls the human anomaly,” Navarre said. “Feet of mud, eyes of glory. The human condition.”
“Poetic,” Peñas murmured. He hesitated. “There’s another footnote to the crying I’ve got to tell you about.”
“What is it?”
“The woman, the prostitute, Gracia Esparza, the one who was murdered. When you told me about her and asked if we might find her body and give it a decent burial and locate her child, well, I called an agent I can trust in Chihuahua. I talked with him again just a few minutes before you joined me on the plane. While you were talking to Miss Haynes. Her daughter’s alive, Thomas. A lovely eight-year-old. We’ve arranged for her to stay at a convent in Chihuahua temporarily, until other, more permanent, arrangements can be made.”
Navarre sighed, flooded with immense relief.
“Thank God,” he said. “With your help, when this mess is over, I’d like to take her to Raldon’s family. They will love and care for her.”
Peñas nodded. “A fine inspiration. A lost child to fill the ache of grief.”
“I almost forgot to tell you,” Peñas added somberly. “I’ve sent a team of men to look for the desert graveyard you described. It will probably take them a while to locate it, since you can’t be sure of the direction, except that it was westerly. But they’ll find it. I hate to think what they’ll dig up. You know, a while back we located a big one outside of Juárez. More than one hundred bodies.”
Peñas frowned and shrugged. “I’ve always known that victims of the Ring of Gold have been buried at secret locations. And I’ve often thought that maybe we should not trouble the living by raising their missing dead. It just opens their old wounds, and the crying begins again. So many remain nameless. The narcos don’t leave a lot of clues as to their identity.”
“That desert graveyard was a terrible, lonely place,” Navarre said. “If I had buried a body there, I wouldn’t want to see it and be haunted by its loneliness.”
He stared out of his seat window and sighed again. “I’m so relieved that Gracia’s child is safe. I hope she never learns how her mother died, or that her death was confirmation of a curse. A woman with two mouths will speak for a dead one. That was the first part of the prediction Zopo made to me. I knew it when Nuños showed me the photos of Gracia Esparza. So did his second prediction, that I would straddle a mountain and dance in the air. And I did. Yuma and I talked about it.”
“Didn’t you tell me there was a third part of the prediction?”
“Yes . . . and I don’t have the foggiest idea what it means. In a black tunnel you will meet death. Those were Zopo’s words.”
“Jesus,” Peñas said. “You could take that in a lot of ways. He didn’t say your death, did he? It wasn’t possessive.”
“No, it wasn’t possessive.”
“Well, so far you’ve survived, my friend. I’m not sure I’d like the idea of having a prediction waiting in my life. It’s not tidy. My mother believed in witches and sorcery, God bless her. I think this old, strange Mexico will change you some more, Thomas, before it is through with you. That’s not very comforting.”
“No,” Navarre said, “it’s not.”
Peñas fell silent, and Navarre could see by the troubled expression on his face that he was worrying about a knotty problem he didn’t know how to solve. Finally, he turned in his seat to face Navarre squarely and said, “I need your help with a decision. Since it affects you, I think we’d better make it together. Let me explain. We’ve both acknowledged that you are the linchpin in any case we bring against Nuños. So your value to us can’t be exaggerated. And as I said before, the threat you represent to Nuños makes you extremely valuable to him . . . dead.”
Peñas paused, dropped his heavy black eyebrows, like thunderclouds settling ominously, and added, “Of course, you know where I’m heading.”
“Yes, you are debating the wisdom of putting me in protective custody.”
Peñas nodded solemnly. “The problem is there are significant hazards to such a solution. First, we’ve got to expect that Nuños will make a huge effort to kill you. He already has. He has the money, influence, power, and underworld contacts to send people after you. We already know he has corrupted Leon Abruzza and certainly others we don’t know about. While I feel comfortable about the loyalty of the agents I’ve personally hired, I couldn’t feel safe creating a guarded hiding hole for you that might be penetrat
ed. Also, I’m sure you wouldn’t stand for it.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.”
“Okay, I understand that. It seems to me that the only sensible solution is one that’s risky as hell. You know too much. Whether you are in Mexico or the States, you’ll be a target as long as Nuños is free. And he’ll keep after you until you make the mistake that will be your last one. Agreed?”
“Yes.”
“So, it’s logical that we make you part of the team I put together to prevent the assassination and apprehend or kill Nuños. And that means that you and I and the others are going to watch out for you as carefully as we do the president. As a working part of the team, you’ll have the protection and association of tough experts in the deadly game of prevention and retaliation. I can’t think of a safer, yet more hazardous, relationship. What do you say?”
“It’s the most logical solution. I accept.”
It was three hours later, after Navarre was awakened from a long nap and disembarked from the jet with Peñas, that he was introduced to Refugio Virrey, a wiry, dark man in his early thirties with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. He had been waiting with a limousine at Querétaro Airport for the unscheduled arrival of the jet transport. Beside him in the front passenger seat was a taciturn, redheaded man, Kelly Francis Romera, of whom Peñas cheerfully remarked, “Yes, this one, this Colorado, somehow claims to be a Mexican national, but with that hair and preposterous name, one wonders. You may as well get used to him, Thomas. He has orders to stick with you day and night. He may allow you enough privacy to brush your teeth without looking on.”
Romera’s mouth quirked at the corners and he nodded his head at Navarre. The American was not surprised by the deadly looking light machine gun which rested in his lap.
Once Navarre and Peñas were comfortably seated in the rear of the car, Peñas said with a trace of affection in his voice, “One of Virrey’s specialties is driving a car at breakneck speeds down dark and crooked streets as if he were being chased by the ghost of the Aztec Mictlantecuhtli. He is also useful in other ways,” Peñas grunted. “I should add that this vehicle is armored from the front bumper to the back, including the windows, which are composed of bulletproof glass.”
Virrey’s white teeth flashed in acknowledgment of the compliment. The automobile was already in motion as Peñas remarked, “While you took your nap, Thomas, I was thinking about Leon Abruzza. He may be able to throw some light on the assassination. Maybe.”
“Are you going to take him into custody?”
“Yes, without him getting anxious, if I can help it.”
“Can he really help?”
“Maybe. It’s been my experience, Thomas, that when people fall into the money trap, they can’t get out because of the idea of exposure. Yes, I’m sure Abruzza could be valuable, but unless the drug rats have changed their techniques, Abruzza is privy to very few helpful facts. He is not a fool—a foolish man, yes, but I have grave doubts that he knows anything of sizable value. Shit! Suddenly, I’m tired, Thomas. I’m going to close my eyes until we reach the city. Also, thank you. Thank you for going to Duelos. Thank you for coming back to Mexico. I should have said that sooner.”
Peñas relaxed against the seat. His ivory face was composed almost instantly, it seemed, in a mask of untroubled thought.
Momentarily, Navarre studied the strong visage of the resting Mexican security chief, the resolute chin, the high cheekbones, the broad forehead, bold features of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage—the mestizo tradition, and he thought how very little different was the modern struggle for Mexico from the turmoils of the past.
It was a rare plot of Mexican soil which had not been soaked in blood one time or another, with Mexicans fighting Mexicans or Mexicans fighting foreigners, but most often Mexicans fighting Mexicans.
He thought that nothing much had changed in Mexico’s five-hundred-year history. Indians had fought for their land in the sixteenth century at the time of the conquest. Their descendants were still fighting for it three hundred years later in 1810, when the banner of the valiant priest Miguel Hidalgo—emblazoned with the Virgin of Guadalupe—was carried against the royalist forces of Spain’s Ferdinand VII, whose followers adopted the Virgin of Los Remedios as their patron of retribution. They had won, and then lost a few years later. And so it had gone.
No, nothing much had changed. The fight for personal security, glory, and independence was still going on. The politicians still took advantage of the people. Thieves and corrupters like Nuños still milked the public for profits, preying on human weaknesses. The old wounds never healed. The old resentments had never been settled—only the cast of characters had changed. It was a sad, lonely thought.
Peñas could not have been asleep for more than five minutes when Virrey said in a calm voice, “Trouble ahead. Armed city cops and a barricade.”
Before Navarre could react, Peñas had come fully awake and leaned forward to stare through the front windshield. “I don’t like it. It smells like a trap. Drive through it.”
As the big limousine hurtled toward the white wooden barrier ahead, Peñas said informatively to Navarre, as if he were pointing out a landmark of interest, “The front windshield is three inches thick, made from a super-tough glass-and-plastic weld.”
Navarre could see the cluster of uniformed men scatter awkwardly and shout ugly profanities as it became clear to them that the deadly black car would crash through the barrier at high speed and run down any human unfortunate enough to stand in the way.
As the speeding car sent the puny wooden barrier reeling and swept past the glowering, disappointed counterfeit cops, Navarre saw in a flash a tall, thin man, with a distinctive horizontal scar between his nose and lips, lift a murderous-looking manual rocket launcher to his shoulder and fire. The explosion came from the rear of the limousine, and the vehicle jumped as if it had struck a deep hole in the road. The jarring thump pushed the limousine sideways, in a tearing, rocking motion that lifted Navarre off his seat and slammed him against Peñas. And even as the car slewed to the right, Virrey was swinging the wheel into the direction of the twisting slide, correcting and straightening the vehicle.
Virrey didn’t need directions from Peñas to stop the car and commandeer a spotless ten-year-old dark-green Mercedes from an elderly driver who had just returned from a bottle shop. Romera was polite, authoritative, and firm. He explained that the limousine he drove bore important government people who must attend an urgent meeting and couldn’t be delayed. He pointed solemnly at the trail of broken and dislodged parts littering the streets behind the disabled limousine—oil, motor parts, twisted brake pads, and smoking rubber from a deflated wheel were visible. He gave the driver his business card and told the man he would be compensated for the use of his car and reimbursed for the cab fare he would have to pay to get home.
He accepted the keys to the Mercedes and said a wrecker would soon come and haul the damaged auto away. The driver smiled tentatively at Virrey, and the three men took seats in his car.
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Chapter XV
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Pappe Nuños sat at his desk in his office in Mexico City. He was in a room at a respectable address in a genteel neighborhood where the houses were slowly deteriorating to shabbiness. To gain admittance to his personal hideaway, he had unlocked the gate to a private entrance into a small, gracious gray adobe and walked inside. This was Nuños’s safe house. He had purchased it in such a circuitous manner that his real identity was completely unknown, and he had visited the rooms—three chambers, a bath, and a kitchen—less than a dozen times in four years.
The rooms were protected by every subtle electronic safeguard against professional listening devices that he had learned about in his twenty-four-year career as an activist and a policeman. They housed, among other things, motion sensors, powerful cameras hidden in household objects, three complete sets of false identity papers, a miniature camera, a small photo lab, and clothes fashioned in modish style
and cut to flatter and diminish the size of his figure. Also, there were several human-hair wigs and a makeup kit.
Nuños had flown to the capital after having spent three miserable days in a noisy helicopter, first searching in the vicinity of the graveyard and killing place where Ruperto Esquivel was supposed to have dispatched and buried the Americans. He had not discovered that his segundo was missing until late in the afternoon on Monday, the same day Esquivel departed in a van with his prisoners. His call to the farm had been routine to determine that the disposal of the Americans had gone as planned. He had no reason to doubt that they had been killed and buried. At least sixty other bodies he knew about were in graves under the sand. When he was informed that Esquivel had never shown up again after he returned to the farm on foot about noon to obtain a second vehicle, some dogs, and handlers, he was astonished and enraged. It was obvious to Nuños, even without the details, that the Americans had escaped.
Delayed two days by urgent business, he was in a fury when he called up his helicopter and directed the pilot to fly into the desert. He was determined to locate Navarre and the woman and promised himself relief from his anger over Esquivel’s betrayal by killing the man with his own hands when he found him.
When he discovered the first abandoned van in the desert, his anger changed to caution. The sight of the blackened skeleton of the second van and the five charred bodies, two of them dogs, was a heavy blow to Nuños.
He stood next to the resting helicopter with the desert wind plucking at his clothes and tried without success to reconstruct what had happened. There was no doubt in his mind about the identity of the burned carcasses. The blackened remains of the dogs lying next to the unrecognizable human corpses made it evident that Esquivel, Elidio, and the dog handlers were the victims.