“He’s a free agent. Supplies MS-13, the Colombian drug gangs and the revolutionaries.”
Escobar scowled. “I don’t like free agents.”
“I know.”
“You can’t trust people who stand for nothing,” Escobar said. “You never know where they’re coming from. You have no leverage over them.”
“Right,” Castillo said.
This was an old conversation. Escobar thought he detected weariness in the other man’s voice, but he ignored it.
“So what else do we know?”
“He has a home base in Paraguay. Apparently he’d promised a load of rockets to some Colombians. They were being made in a factory in Syria. The Israelis took the place out with a missile strike. Now Perez needs to find another supplier quickly.”
“He has the money?”
“Ortega says he has the money.”
“Okay.”
“But we’re checking up on him. We have a team scanning through his history, making sure the accounts really exist.”
“Make sure they weren’t just opened last week, too.”
“Of course,” Castillo said.
Again Escobar detected weariness and maybe some irritation in his lieutenant’s voice. Escobar felt his face flush and was aware of heat radiating from his neck, cheeks and forehead. He pulled his legs from the desktop and planted his feet solidly on the floor.
“You have something you need to say?” Escobar growled.
“What? No, Seif.”
“You think maybe I shouldn’t ask so many questions? Maybe I ought to be quiet and trust you to handle things?”
“No...”
“If that’s what you’re thinking, spit it out.”
“It’s not.”
“Apparently you think you’re somehow my adviser, like maybe I need you to coach me, lead me by the hand, show me how little I understand. Is that where this all is going?”
“Shit, no. Not at all.”
“Maybe we’re equals.”
“I didn’t say that.” Castillo’s voice sounded strained. “I didn’t say any of that.”
“Hell, maybe I forgot my place. I thought I was your boss, the guy whose ass is on the line. I’m delusional, right? Maybe you should just give this prick my address, all my security codes, the whole thing. Hell, why don’t I send you my laptop and you can just hand it over to this jerk? Right, you’re the security expert.”
“It’s good, Seif. I didn’t mean to piss you off.”
“So you’re going to check this guy out, right? Not some half-assed make two phone calls and then go lounge by the pool. You’re really going to make sure this guy’s clean, right?”
“Sure. Of course. I’ve got a couple of guys running his name right now. If there’s anything weird about him, we’ll know it soon enough. Ortega vouched for him and you trust him, right?”
Escobar ignored the question. “Make sure this Perez is legitimate,” he said. “Make sure he has money. If anything doesn’t pass the smell test, you kill him, you understand?”
“Of course.”
“Good,” Escobar said before he hung up.
* * *
ESCOBAR STARED AT the phone for a few seconds and considered the conversation he’d just ended.
Castillo’s sloppiness rubbed him the wrong way. The guy knew better than to put money before security protocol. Escobar had no problem with greed, none at all. Hell, he skimmed as much off the top of his profits as he could before he sent the money to its rightful owners. But he also knew better than to allow his greed to make him careless.
Picking up a pack of cigarettes from his desktop, he shook a cigarette into his hand, slipped it between his lips and shook his head. The stakes this time were too damn high for sloppiness. Taking the gold-plated lighter from his pants’ pocket, he torched the end of the cigarette and puffed on it a couple of times until it was lit.
He tossed the lighter onto his desk, shot up from his chair and began to pace the room.
Chances were this new guy was just another customer, a gunrunner who’d lost his supplier. Fair enough. Escobar could accommodate someone like that. But he needed to be sure before he let him see how things worked. He’d gotten himself into some heavy business in the past couple of years, heavy but with the potential for a big payday if he did things right and made sure he’d left nothing to chance.
That was no problem for him. He was ballsy. But he knew better than to play things fast and loose. His childhood in Tijuana, the bastard son of a hooker, had taught him that.
His mother had been unusually beautiful, petite with glossy black hair, deep brown eyes and full lips. She’d also been unusually lazy. Gripped by poverty, Escobar could understand her decision to become a whore. But she hadn’t pursued that with much energy, either, leaving them dirt poor. By age seven, he’d found himself forced to steal so he could eat. When the old whore died a few years later, he’d felt relieved, realizing he could keep more of what he stole for himself.
He’d vowed never to carry anyone else again, the only promise he’d ever kept.
Growing up poor had left him little time to worry over the identity of his father. As a small child, he’d asked his mother. On the rare occasion when she’d been sober, she usually greeted the question with stony silences or shrill demands that he never ask the question again. When she was drugging or drinking, she usually told him stories that as an adult he’d considered the ramblings of a woman gripped by insanity or stupidity.
She’d claimed she’d fallen in love with an Iranian who ran a small restaurant in the border town. He occasionally disappeared from Tijuana for days at a time and upon his return would refuse to explain his whereabouts to her. On one occasion, a pair of gun-wielding bandits had tried to rob his restaurant. Escobar’s father had charged at them, putting himself between the criminals and Escobar’s mother. He’d met their demands for money with violence, leaving one with a fractured arm and three broken ribs and the other with a smashed eye socket and a broken nose.
When she was three months’ pregnant with Escobar, she’d walked into their apartment and found her lover stuffing clothes, cash and a small leather-bound diary into a battered suitcase. When she’d asked where he was going, he’d again refused to say, though he’d told her he worked for the government and he’d been called back to Tehran.
When she’d asked if he was a spy, he’d refused to answer. Instead he’d admonished her to forget all about him, to forget his name and face.
He had disappeared, leaving her pregnant and alone. As she’d often reminded Escobar, it was only after he was born that she’d turned to prostitution, and only to support him. If he’d ever had the capacity to feel guilt or gratitude about that, he couldn’t remember such a time.
Escobar had spent his twenties building an arms-dealing empire. He’d started small, buying weapons stolen from the Mexican army and selling them to drug cartels and other criminals. As the cartels grew, they wanted better, more sophisticated weapons. That had forced him to take his operations global so he could tap into the flood of illicit weapons washing over hot spots in Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union.
A trip to Argentina had turned everything upside down.
When the Colombian government had started spraying a drug lord’s poppy crop, he’d decided he needed to acquire shoulder-launched missiles. Escobar had been able to procure several crates of SAMs through his connections in the Middle East and Africa. The drug czar had told Escobar he didn’t want to meet in Bogota, but asked whether they could instead connect in Argentina.
For his part Escobar cared little so long as the man came with money.
He, along with a pair of his security guards, had met the man in a small apartment. The last thing Escobar remembered was something smashing against the b
ack of his head and the explosion of white light behind his eyes at the moment of impact. After that everything had gone black.
* * *
HE AWOKE THREE days later in Ciudad del Este. His right arm was chained to the iron frame of a bed. His vision was fuzzy, his mouth dry. The ceiling above him was marbled with fine cracks and occasional brown rings from water damage. The cramped area was hot and smelled of mold. It took his mind a couple of minutes to wrap itself around his situation and he realized he had probably been drugged.
As he raised his head to look around, he saw a man sitting in a corner of a room. The guy had an olive complexion, thick black hair and a long beard of the same color.
“Where am I?” Escobar had demanded in Spanish.
The guard stared at him, but said nothing. Instead he pulled himself from the chair and left the room, with Escobar shouting after him.
Several minutes later the guard returned, following another man.
The new arrival walked to the side of the bed and stared down at Escobar for several seconds. A smile was fixed on the man’s face, though Escobar saw no warmth there, only cold detachment as the man studied him.
“Bienvenidos, Señor Escobar,” the man said. “I am Ahmed al-Jaballah.”
“Where the hell am I?” Escobar demanded in Spanish.
“You needn’t concern yourself with that right now,” al-Jaballah said.
“Why am I here?”
“Ah, a much better question,” he said. He turned to the guard and said something in a language Escobar didn’t understand. Nodding, the guard reached into his pocket and approached Escobar, who tensed.
“It’s okay,” al-Jaballah said. “I’m going to have him take off the handcuffs. There’s no need for them at this point.”
“At this point?”
When the metal band sprang open, Escobar tried to pull his arm away, but it was numb and didn’t respond immediately. He focused on trying to move his fingers, just to get some blood moving through his limbs while he waited for the guard to remove the cuff from his other hand.
“We brought you here to offer you a deal,” al-Jaballah said.
“You could have called,” Escobar replied bitterly.
The man snorted.
“Yes, I suppose we could have done that, but this is much easier to explain face to face.”
Escobar’s head was still fuzzy from whatever drugs they’d been feeding him to offer another sarcastic comment. Instead he just gave a curt nod to keep the other man talking.
“Would you like a bottle of water?” Another smile that seemed forced. “You’ve been under for a long time. The drugs can dehydrate you.” The man turned to the guard and again said something in another language. Though Escobar couldn’t understand it, his head had cleared enough for him to recognize a couple of the words as Persian, a language he’d encountered during his travels in the Middle East. The guard nodded and left the room.
“I really want to know why I am here.”
“How much do you know about your father?”
Hardly considering the question, Escobar shrugged.
“Very little. He left before I was born.”
“Left you and your mother alone. That must have been hard.”
Escobar smirked. “My mother was a lazy hooker. My father apparently was a deadbeat who couldn’t wait to get as far away from her once he’d gotten some ass off her. The only hard thing was stealing enough food to take care of my mother and me. Did you bring me here just to discuss my childhood?”
“Of course not, my friend. I brought you here to discuss your future. But the path to your future lies in your past.”
That sounded like unicorns-and-crystals bullshit to Escobar, but he held his tongue, figuring the less he antagonized the other man, the better. “I’m not sure I understand,” he said.
“Of course not. Not yet, anyway.”
The guard returned carrying two bottles of water. Al-Jaballah took one and handed the other to Escobar, who snatched it from his grip. His throat felt dry and swollen from dehydration. The bottle of water was cold and wet and he figured it had been sitting in ice. Twisting off the cap, he brought the bottle to his lips and guzzled down half its contents before setting it down.
“Please drink up,” the man said. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
“Frankly, I’d prefer something stronger. And a cigarette.”
“No alcohol,” al-Jaballah said. “I do not drink. I’m a devout Muslim.”
Fantastic, I’ve been nabbed by a band of Persian teetotalers. Escobar felt irritation begin to overtake him, smothering any fear and uncertainty he’d felt about his plight. Figuring he was in no position to raise hell—yet—he swallowed hard and nodded. “I didn’t realize that.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Al-Jaballah reached into his pants’ pocket and pulled from it a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He tossed both next to Escobar on the bed.
Escobar nodded in appreciation and gathered up the cigarette pack like a hungry dog with a bloody steak. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious, but seeing the cigarettes made him keenly aware how much his body craved one.
“You know little of your father.”
Escobar, who was focused on lighting his cigarette, shrugged his shoulders. “What’s to know? He left when I was young. He ran a restaurant. He never married my mother. He came to Mexico in the 1970s and left in the 1980s. Not much of a story to tell.”
By now he’d lit a cigarette. He took a deep drag from it and enjoyed the feel of the smoke filling his lungs. The hit of nicotine seemed to cause his vision to sharpen. He also realized he was damn hungry. Before he could say anything, though, al-Jaballah cut him off.
“Your mother told you nothing else?”
Escobar blew a line of smoke from the corner of his mouth and gave the other man a hard look.
“She said a lot of things. Most of it was bat-shit crazy. Loco. None of it was worth repeating.”
“Try me.”
“She said the old man was a spy, an Iranian spy.”
“You didn’t believe her.”
The Mexican leveled his gaze at the other man. “Look, the woman did a lot of drugs, especially after my old man left. She was not in her right mind. He left her pregnant and alone. He took most of their money. That doesn’t sound like a spy. It sounds like a damn deadbeat. But there you are. It’s what happened. If believing he was a spy helped her sleep at night, fine. But I never believed it.”
“She told you the truth. He was sent to America in the late 1970s after the revolution. He was part of a sleeper cell Iran set up in Mexico.”
“To do what?”
Al-Jaballah shrugged.
“For the most part, nothing. Occasionally he’d cross the border and meet with a source, not that we had many in those days.”
“We? So you’re an Iranian spy, too.”
“Something like that. We’ll get to that in a minute. But your father was a highly trained operative. He and a dozen other men were sent to Mexico for a specific reason. When the Embassy was taken, the revolutionary government had no idea how the U.S. would react. Some thought America would wait it out. Others assumed they would attack Iran. If that happened, he and his counterparts were to cross the border and strike U.S. targets.”
The revelation meant little to Escobar. If there ever had been a point where he’d cared about having a father, that part of him had died long ago. It really was only a matter of curiosity for him.
His body tensed. He’d moved close enough to the Iranian to try to lunge at him, take his weapon and knock him out.
Just before he could act, though, the doorknob twisted and the guard returned. This time he carried a plate of food. Immediately the smells of the food reached Escobar. A pit
seemed to open inside him and he remembered that it had been days since he’d eaten. He also knew he couldn’t take two armed men at once, especially with him unarmed and weakened.
Instead he relaxed and kept pushing for more information.
“So what does this have to do with me?” he asked.
The other man smiled.
“An excellent question. Your father, before he died, was part of a small group of men who served the revolution, who agreed to martyr themselves if necessary to defend it.”
“I still don’t see...”
“Wait, I’m getting to that. He was a patriot. He was upholding something he believed in. Like my father who served with him, he hated the shah, hated the West and how they used our people and our resources for their own ends. He wanted to serve the revolution and he did.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Escobar countered. “I grew up in Mexico. I don’t give a damn about you or your country.”
The other man’s smile widened though it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’d like to say I find your candor refreshing. I don’t. I find it obnoxious. However, after the way we’ve...” He paused and seemed to be searching for the right word. “After the way we’ve inconvenienced you, you deserve an explanation.
“Your father and my father and other men like them served in a small group called the Circle. It’s a unit of the IRG—the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.”
“So what were they? Spies? Soldiers?”
“It’s so much more than that,” al-Jaballah said. “We are the firewall. We’re what stand between the clerics, the civilian government and anyone who might try to take down our government. We go through the Guard. We find the people who aren’t totally loyal to the cause or who may stop being loyal down the road. We eliminate them. We’ve taken out clerics. We’ve taken out members of the civilian government. Here’s what this means for you... The world has changed a lot since the shah was driven from power. But in many ways it hasn’t changed at all. What you have going for you is that you’re at home in the Western world. You’re well traveled. You can move with little or no obstruction. No one will link you to us.”
Revolution Device Page 4