The Right Eye of God

by Bacon Thorn

  “I’m glad you got to sleep some more,” Peñas smiled in his droll way. “I’m afraid none of us is going to get much rest in the next twenty-four hours.”

  The stubby man with his old ivory face sat in a chair next to Navarre. Worry lines showed distinctly around his mouth, and there were shadows under his eyes.

  “How did it go with Calderón?” Navarre asked.

  Peñas shrugged. “Calderón and I went over his schedule for the next two weeks. It was hardly necessary. He has four public appearances. We can forget about three of them. The one where he will be most vulnerable will be at the Plaza México tomorrow afternoon.”

  Navarre accepted the information as one more stone in the rocky path they had been following. He stared into his coffee as if seeking inspiration. “I’d forgotten; tomorrow is the opener, isn’t it? The first bullfight of the season. Usually, a capacity audience is jammed into the stadium. Who’s on the card?”

  “Cid Campeador y Camaro, a national hero, will be fighting the La Punta bulls. The stadium will draw crowds like flies to a dead horse.”

  “What is the seating capacity? It used to be about fifty thousand.”

  “Even with the improvements, about the same.”

  “Camaro, eh? God almighty. You’re right about the crowds. They love him. I suppose Calderón is determined to go? You couldn’t change his mind?”

  Peñas sighed. “He wouldn’t even consider it.

  “Yes, even so, I know what you’re thinking, Thomas,” Peñas added with an edge of annoyance in his voice. “That Calderón’s decision is an act of foolish bravado. Not so. He values his life as much as any man does. He argues that his absence from the arena would be admitting to personal fear and would give substance to rumors of an attempt on his life. He wants the people to feel secure in their government. By showing himself, he proves that he thinks little of threats. Also, don’t forget, for weeks after a recount of ballots, thousands of people camped in the streets to protest his narrow victory. There’s still a lot of resentment from supporters of López Obrador who insist he stole the elections. Calderón wants to prove he is a man of the people, not his party. The bullfight’s an opportunity to show his common interest with the fans.”

  Navarre shrugged, accepting the decision, and decided that from a politician’s point of view it was probably logical. His own knowledge of presidential assassinations pointed to a strange folly in men who occupied the high office: they often acted recklessly, as if the presidential seal had the power to protect them from bullets. But Calderón’s decision placed a terrible burden on the men who had to defend the president—on Peñas.

  “You feel sure about the plaza?” he asked Peñas.

  “As certain as I can be of anything. Don’t you have the same feeling that it is appropriate? It’s the one place that’s toughest to defend.”

  “Yes, I do,” Navarre nodded. “I wish I didn’t. I don’t suppose Abruzza gave you anything of value? That would be asking for too much.”

  Peñas’s face sagged a little. “He’s missing,” he said.

  “Missing? What happened?”

  Old and bitter sounding, Peñas said, “When Virrey went to his house, he found Abruzza’s wife in the kitchen drinking coffee. She told Virrey that Abruzza was gone, that he often absented himself for several hours at a time. But she said he’d been depressed. He’d been thrashing and talking in his sleep. She’s worried to death, afraid he may do something to himself. I think he knows that I know about his connection to Nuños. He must be sick of himself and desperate. I’ve got to find out what he knows. We’ve got to find him. Shit! I’ve given two men the chore of locating him.”

  The men sat in silence for a moment, and then Peñas informed Navarre that in half an hour or so there would be a gathering of principal federal agents at the pensión. The purpose of the meeting was to develop a workable strategy to thwart the assassination. He said if that much could be accomplished, he’d consider himself pissed with gold and honeyed in silver.

  “What makes a dirty job even worse, Thomas, is the preparations everywhere for Día de los Muertos. By noon tomorrow, observances will begin that have been planned for weeks.”

  Navarre shook his head. He was overwhelmed. His tone was weak and inexpressive. “Isn’t that just a coincidence? There will only be thousands of mourners parading the city.”

  Broodingly, Peñas said, “Can you think of a better time to plan an assassination? Black crepe and artfully designed mourning costumes blending with wax-candy coffins, homages to the dead, fake skeletons, skulls, and graves. All beautified with sentiment, laughter and picnicking and getting drunker than four hundred rabbits.”

  They stared at one another, and Peñas said drolly, “Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. It couldn’t be more appropriate. It coincides with the first bullfight once in a century.”

  “I suppose your agents know about Abruzza?” Navarre remarked as he and Peñas got to their feet and walked down the corridor to the large conference room.

  “Yes, they know.”

  The American’s eyes fell upon five men lounging and standing in different attitudes of conversation. They assumed attentive postures as Peñas greeted them and, resting his hand in a brief gesture of trust on Navarre’s shoulder, said, “Gentlemen, allow me to introduce a distinguished American friend of mine, Thomas Navarre.”

  The men had a hard, lean, intelligent look about them. Like Refugio Virrey and Kelly Francis Romera, there was a courteous reserve in their manner, a quiet pride, a well-deserved confidence. None of them was over thirty years of age, including Major Girado Gil, whom Navarre identified as an army officer before being formally introduced by his military erectness and sense of reserved distance from the others.

  Individually they stepped forward to greet Navarre with a handclasp. Siempre Bombito was first, a tall, gangling man with tiny pockmarks in his cheekbones, followed by Phillip de Mexico, short and stubby, powerful looking like his chief, Peñas; Cossio Dominguin, with a clear-eyed, almost innocent face; and Kelly Francis Romera, the taciturn redhead who had been assigned to Navarre as his protector. Pointing to Romero, Peñas cheerfully remarked, “You’ve already met Kelly.”

  Turning to the erect military man, Peñas said, “Major Gil comes to us with General Cortinas’s highest recommendation. Presently, he operates intelligence for the army, and I am told that his security is tighter than a flea up a tick’s ass.” This earned laughter, and the major visibly relaxed.

  “Refugio Virrey, here, you already know, Thomas, from his genius behind the wheel. He comes from the village of Verdugos. I’m told it is a small town, two cantinas, two whores, and a white flour tortilla factory.”

  Peñas rapped his knuckles on the table. Crisply he said, “Enough amenities. When Virrey contacted each of you he conveyed the urgency of this meeting and the need for secrecy. Virrey has told you the reason for that by now. Leon Abruzza is missing and he may have knowledge of an assassination plot, but somehow I doubt it. Anyway, we’ve got to find him. What we have is a plot to assassinate President Calderón. If it were the usual nut with a grudge, Thomas Navarre wouldn’t be here. We are faced with a plan that is far more ambitious.”

  Quickly, succinctly, Peñas recapitulated the story Navarre had told him in El Paso and finally put his finger bluntly on the target, as he and Navarre saw it: the Plaza de Toros during the interval of the six corridas the next afternoon.

  As Peñas had expected, his staff was fascinated, and almost as one they reappraised the dark stranger whom their uncompromising chief had drawn into their midst as a confidant, an equal, and a strong survivor.

  There was a hard glitter in Peñas’s eyes when he said, “What we’ve got to answer is the question of whether or not the farm where Thomas was taken as a prisoner of Nuños is a training farm for attack dogs. We’ve ascertained in the short time we’ve had that the veterinarian Rodriguez, who owned the farm and is dead, sold his dogs to our own border patrol, to the America
ns, and to others. Thomas and his companion were hunted by dogs from the farm. Though we can’t know what was in Raldon de la Garza’s mind, his tortured body was found not far from the farm. The question we must answer is, do dogs play some part in an assassination? Maria Montrero made an oblique reference to dogs and Duelos in her confession to de la Garza, which he repeated to Navarre, but with no particular emphasis. But her reference to a tiny, isolated town and canines seems oddly out of order. Is there significance in that? Is the fact that the village dogs were killed off for some obscure reason part of the answer we’re seeking? I’ve wracked my brain, but I can’t imagine how attack dogs could penetrate the defenses we will arrange in the plaza. I’m open to ideas.”

  Peñas paused and worried his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. “Perhaps my imagination is colorless. That’s why I invited Major Gil to join us. He had some experience with army dogs in the amapola campaign. You have the picture, Major. What’s your reaction?”

  Bluntly, Gil answered, “Scared shitless. I know you’re aware, sir, that I was one of fifteen officers who were assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department’s K-9 corps for intensive training. That was a few years ago, but I haven’t forgotten. It’s uncanny how formidable and intelligent a well-trained dog can be. In the first few months of training, canine recruits acquire absolute obedience to voice control, learning to respond to as many as fifty different commands given under all sorts of distracting noise conditions.

  “As to the psychological impact on the crowd in the plaza, well, I don’t think it can be measured. As a rule, most people are paralyzed in the presence of a large, aggressive dog.”

  Into Navarre’s mind flashed the face and bright eyes of the dog standing on the cliff above his head and gnawing on the rope that was his and Yuma’s lifeline. That animal had known just exactly what it was doing when it attacked the hemp. So had the voiceless black hound that followed him and Yuma up the carved stone steps in the canyon wall.

  He returned his attention to Gil, who hesitated, thought for a moment, then added, “Another thing that strikes me from what you’ve said is that you seem to have put a limited value on attack dogs. Look at it this way. Suppose attack dogs have been trained to go after selected targets? They could be commanded to strike at various points in the crowd. The idea would be to cause confusion, to create hysteria and panic. Can you imagine what would happen in the arena when, say, fifty or sixty vicious dogs start slashing and cutting their way through rows of people? Pandemonium! Just the kind of distraction to unnerve agents, break down discipline, and leave holes open to the president for snipers.”

  Gil paused. “The idea is not far fetched at all, sir. The problem, it seems to me, is how do you get the dogs into the arena without discovery?”

  Peñas was shaken, as was every man sitting at the table.

  Unaffected, Major Gil added, “Also, how do you shoot down rampaging dogs in a throng of people without killing the people you’re trying to protect?” Silent for a moment, Gil added, almost imperiously, Navarre thought, “If I were charged with the direction of killer dogs trained to attack specific targets, I’d equip each one with a K-9 vest. It’s designed to provide maximum protection and maneuverability. An attack dog wearing body armor is almost invincible, hard to stop unless hit in a vulnerable spot, like an eye. Its popularity is well established. At least one dog in the K-9 units of every state in the US is equipped with the vest.”

  Major Gil’s supercilious attitude irritated Navarre. He projected an odd, off-key note that distanced him from other men in the room. He wondered if they were offended by his aura of arrogance, or was it his military training that conferred a special status on officers like Gil, who were ingrained with a lofty hauteur found in some men destined for an outstanding career?

  Curtly, Navarre asked the major if he had an opinion as to why all the dogs in Duelos had been killed.

  “Simple,” said Gil, affably flippant. “If Nuños was raising attack dogs at his farm, he would have made certain they were isolated from the curs and scavengers who’d attached themselves to poor families, particularly those living on the edge of poverty. The strongest motivation, stronger than hunger, for dogs of any breed is the sexual drive. It’s the reason for the variety of mongrel breeds that keep multiplying. In my opinion, Nuños had the dogs in Duelos killed to prevent accidental contamination of his special dogs by common curs with weak strains of heredity. Also, the disappearance of the village canines would be scary and mysterious to the superstitious.”

  Raising his eyes directly to Peñas, Gil said with annoying presumption, “Though I haven’t been asked for an opinion, I am certain that some piece of the president’s clothing is missing. It would be used for identification purposes. Many dogs with K-9 units have been trained to improve their keen natural sense of smell, imbedding in their brains a selective priority which allows them to zero in on a target and completely ignore dozens of other distinctive odors and aromas. A dog uses its sense of smell like a human uses sight to interpret its world. It is estimated that dogs can detect smells one thousand to ten thousand times better than humans.”

  “Yes, sir,” he emphasized to Peñas. “I would never discount the effectiveness of attack dogs in a crowd. It might work in the arena, but I don’t believe it’s ever been done before.”

  When Major Gil completed his explanation, Lazlo Peñas nodded his head and glanced at his watch. His face was haggard. “Well, gentlemen, Major Gil seems to have put the nut in the shell for us. It is now 5:00 p.m. In less than twenty-four hours, President Calderón and his party will set down in the Plaza de Toros by helicopter. Twenty-three hours . . . twenty-three lousy hours. Virrey, will you please fix coffee and sandwiches. We’ve got to plan quickly in the time that’s left to us. I think we must presume that attack dogs have been delivered here in the city. The question is, how will they get into the arena?”

  For the next few minutes Thomas Navarre was party to a simple plan of organization which Peñas at the end admitted was as full of holes as a moth-eaten rebozo. He had guided the planning with the overriding presumption that attack dogs would be let loose in the Plaza de Toros.

  Striking among the spectators at random, the dogs would bring more than their flashing teeth and bristling hair as they ripped, gnawed with their razor-sharp fangs, and gouged panicked men, women, and children. Their frightening presence would spread a contagion of fear. Hysterical people would bolt and run, clogging exits with their own bodies.

  Major Gil, a hard-nosed pragmatist, observed, “The bitchy problem is going to be how to tell the bad guys from the good ones in the crowds. Nuños’s men aren’t going to announce their identity with a bugle. They wouldn’t be heard anyway.”

  “That’s why we’ve got to stop the dogs before they get inside,” Peñas said sharply. “If they get past us, we’ll have no choice but to kill them, and that means spraying them with machine guns from the air and the ground. Guns that can pierce canine armor. Hitting a weaving human target is tough enough for an expert sniper. Zeroing in with a scope on a leaping dog in a mass of screaming people is an impossibility. So, the dogs must be shotgunned, knocked down by machine-gun fire, or gassed, whatever is most effective. It’s a hell of a choice. We’d probably kill as many people as dogs. But I don’t see any alternative to slaughtering civilians accidentally.”

  It was at this point that Navarre said, “Lazlo, surely now that it seems clear that dogs are part of the assassination attempt, will Calderón reconsider his decision to go to the arena? If not for his own sake, then for the people?”

  Peñas cast a hard glance at Navarre. “I don’t think he will change his mind, Thomas. Of course, I’ll try to convince him. But it’s also my duty to point out to him that if he cancels his appearance, it merely delays the assassination attempt. Better to deal with the devil you know than one you have to locate.”

  Navarre fell silent, and Peñas said to the group, “If my thinking is right, Nuños will be at the plaza
. He’s got too much at stake to turn this final stage over to a subordinate. The how of the killing is what we don’t know yet. But we can assume Nuños is counting on Calderón being there at four o’clock. I think we can be sure that somebody who knows will confirm that for him. Now, before we start taking the plaza apart piece by piece to figure out how the dogs will get in, are there any suggestions or comments? Anybody? Thomas?”

  Navarre was on the verge of arguing with Peñas, of pointing out how foolhardy and arrogant it would be for Calderón to go ahead with his appearance in view of the probable events to be enacted on Sunday. But he knew Peñas had already made the same argument in his own mind. Obviously, he was very familiar with the president’s thinking and how far he would go to preserve the idea of the stability of his government by choosing to place himself and others in jeopardy. It went without saying that the responsibility such a decision placed on Peñas was staggering.

  Navarre shook his head and said nothing.

  “Okay,” Peñas sighed. “Let’s tackle the plaza.”

  Just as he bent over to study a large map of the Plaza de Toros laid out flat on the table, a telephone at his elbow rang shrilly. Frowning, he picked up the receiver and muttered bueno into the mouthpiece, then looked strangely at Navarre and handed the instrument to him.

  Navarre was astonished to hear Yuma Haynes’s frightened voice in his ear. Low and urgently she whispered, “I can’t talk. I don’t trust what’s happening here. Hurry! I’m at Cid’s house . . . I . . .” Her voice ended and Navarre realized that pain was shooting through his fingers from his convulsive grip on the hard plastic receiver.

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  Chapter XVIII

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  Even before he saw the shock on Navarre’s face as he replaced the receiver, Peñas knew Yuma Haynes was in trouble. Attuned as he was to the various signs of human stress, he was certain by the tremor in her voice when she asked for Navarre that she was in danger and she was probably in the city. For a fleeting moment he could have kicked himself for not predicting she would do something foolish. Navarre had been uncomfortable with their parting in El Paso, though he referred to it only briefly on the plane. It was his own fault that he had not arranged with the American authorities to detain the woman in El Paso until it was safe for her to return. But how could he or Navarre have expected her to rush back into the lion’s mouth without a second thought?