by Joe Gannon
“The Revo is over.”
“Not just our revolution, Ajax. The age of revolution is over. Cuba is a police state. The Soviet empire is gone as will be the Soviet Union itself soon enough. China is a capitalist economy run by a communist party. It is our tragedy, Ajax, that we were both the last successful revolution of the Age of Revolution and the last battle of the Cold War. We are the nation of Sisyphus, and the world belongs,” he indicated the steel door, “to men in blue suits.”
“Were you always so pedantic?”
“Very well, ignore the big picture: the Sandinista Front has been defeated. It will take years for the revolution to be so. In the meantime the new government cannot replace every policeman, soldier, and bureaucrat. They need someone to root out the diehards and administer the loyalty oath.”
“Malhora the dog.”
“Precisely. He knows our secrets, our dirty laundry. Soiled most of it himself.”
“Damn, almost makes you wish someone had killed him, doesn’t it?”
Horacio shook his head. Their last conversation had been about precisely that: why he would not let Ajax murder the bastard.
“Political expediency at the time forbade it. I did not spare him out of kindness.”
“Where’s he been, Horacio?”
“You tell me.”
“Well, the formerly roly-poly piece of shit looks like he’s finally lost his baby fat, so I’d say prison. You couldn’t’ve kept him here, so … Cuba. Isle of Pines?” Fidel’s most infamous gulag.
Horacio smiled. Ajax frowned.
“Can he do it? Lay Amelia’s death on us?”
“No. He is feeling triumphant, in a revengeful way, that’s why I’m here. He has far less power than he thinks, and is widely despised by the…”
“The civilized in the new government.”
“Precisely.”
But Ajax had another worry. He went to the cell door and gave a listen. Then whispered his one real concern, “What about El Gordo?”
Horacio smiled. “Chepe Huembes hanged himself in his room when he found out he was going back to prison. That young Spanish doctor swore a statement to it before she returned to Barcelona.” He held his hands up. “You see? Things are not that bad.”
“Said the man in the jail cell.”
Horacio pulled up his right pant leg, long red scars ran down it where a mortar had almost chewed it off years ago in the mountains. It was after he’d taken that wound that Ajax had taken command of the Northern Front and become, well, whatever he had become.
Horacio slid his sock down, revealing a cigar, a Montecristo. From his other sock he produced a match.
“I’ve already done the new government a good turn. I suspect we will not be here overly long.”
“Said the man in the jail cell.”
Horacio smiled.
“You’re wearing your enigmatic smile. I’d ask you to explain, but you are bursting to tell me. You think you’re Machiavelli, but you’re just a show-off.”
Horacio struck the match on the floor, but it failed to ignite. He rubbed a liver-spotted hand over his contorted knuckles.
“Give me that.” Ajax struck it and lit the cigar.
Horacio smoked a while. “The Frente is defeated. The revolution has failed. The country must not. Especially now. The Cold War is over, the Americans will take their chess pieces and abandon Central America to clean up their mess. You were just in El Salvador, the savagery of that civil war makes our Contra war look like children in a schoolyard. Do you dispute it?”
“No. No.”
“We cannot allow ourselves to fall into civil war. The Contra are on the verge of disbanding. But four months ago the rejectionists, the barbarians in the gringo Congress, wanted to give them a final ten million dollars. ‘Resettlement funds’ they called it. But it was meant to allow the Contras to return as an army. The new government was as terrified of that as we were.”
Horacio puffed on the cigar, offered it to Ajax.
“I only brought the one.”
Ajax studied it a moment—it was the only pleasure they were likely to have. He drew deeply on it, held the smoke in his lungs until he felt the rush of nicotine in his blood. Then he blew a smoke ring at Horacio. “Okay, ten million dollars sends the Contras home as an army. You needed them to face a different choice: stay in Honduras and starve or come home as citizens. Individual citizens.”
Horacio beamed. “Precisely! Peace was still the prize. But not just for me. You too. The opposition. All the civilized. We were united on that one point: the drip bag of money from Washington had to be cut, and the needle ripped out of the Contras’ arm. But the vote was going to be close. We needed a few Republicans to defect to our side.” He raised his hands like Moses parting the waters. “So I offered our services.”
Ajax felt another dizzy spell. But it was more than the nicotine, and worse than when he’d woken from his coma. The firmament of his life realigned so quickly he could not even rise to anger. So he lay down.
“You did it again. You did it again!”
“We did it again.” He slipped the cigar from Ajax’s fingers. “But what did we do?”
“You needed Republicans to defect. Senator Teal is a Republican. You traded on his guilt over Amelia’s death. In exchange for me rescuing young Peck, he’d give you his vote.”
“His and four or five colleagues. He’s quite the rising star.”
“So that’s why you sprung me from the nuthouse, where you put me.”
“I ‘put’ you there because I could no longer protect you in Honduras. The cost of your life, the cost of your freedom here, at home, was too high. The hospital was the best I could do.”
Home. Horacio had said the word. But where was he? Where was home?
Horacio studied the cigar in his hand. “What happened to young Peck?”
“He turned out to be a bit of a prick. Maybe he knew ‘the Age of Revolution was over’ and wanted one last ride before the carousel stopped.” Ajax sat up. “He got a kid killed. Wanted to soup up his ‘kidnapping’ and got some college student who looked like him arrested in his place. That boy died badly, Horacio. His last hours were an agony. Then he got dumped in an unmarked grave with who knows how many others. And all so Peck could play at revolution.”
Horacio blew a long stream of burned Montecristo up at the ceiling. “Yes, idealists are always the worst.”
Ajax shot up off his cot. Snatched the cigar from Horacio’s twisted hand. A hand as twisted as his soul. Ajax hauled him up by his shirt and blew the cigar ember to a blistering red.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to burn your eyes out.” Ajax held the hot ember an inch from those watery windows. “‘Idealistic’? You knew him? Peck? You recruited him! The whole fucking thing was your operation!”
Horacio held up his hands and held his breath. “I did not coerce him. He volunteered. I met him in Mexico, at the airport. He was frustrated by his work in El Salvador. Nothing he did had any effect on the war, nor America’s role in feeding the slaughter. I showed him he had one asset he could use. He could affect the outcome of a war, just the one here, instead of there.”
Ajax stuck the cigar in the old man’s mouth and set him back on his bed. “Jasmine too.”
“She is a great compañera. She has served the Frente and the Farabundos well.”
“That’s why we couldn’t find Peck. Why no one knew where he was. He wasn’t working for the death squad Charlies or the Farabundos. He was working for you.”
“For us, for Nicaragua, for peace.”
“Piss on your peace. How many have died for your grand Central American peace plan?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone who’s died in every war died for peace. And yes, we have won, again and you have helped to achieve that victory! How fucking dare you!” Horacio was off the cot in a flash, pointing the red-hot coal at Ajax. “We are a piss-poor nation, most of the world is, and you know that in our coun
tries war is a form of employment. Pay a campesino more to pick up a gun than he earns from the plow and he will! Take away that employment and he will pick up the plowshare and the pruning hook. And it has come to pass.”
“Stop sounding so biblical.” Ajax paced the length of his cell, four steps. “Did it at least work? Your little scam? Did Teal deliver?”
He turned his palms up. “The ten million was defeated. But it seems the vote was not as close as we expected. But had it been, we had our ace in the hole.”
“What if Teal finds out?”
“Not Teal! You. And Gladys.”
Ajax sat down. “I’m assuming if she wasn’t safe you’d have told me by now.”
“She is quite safe. I could’ve had her out a week ago, but she has an absurd loyalty to you.”
“Well, she shot me. More like guilt.”
“I think not, she said something about ‘the obsessive-compulsive and the catatonic’?”
Ajax chuckled. It was a good feeling, made him less inclined to strangle Horacio.
“You’re very valuable operatives, you know. You two. You’ve got a skill set that could be of great use in this new world.”
Ajax sat down. “Said the man in the jail cell.”
But Horacio seemed excited by the idea. “Ajax, you know the old saw, when a door closes, another opens. The Americans are riding high now. They think they won the Cold War with fortitude and budget deficits. But they have been wrong on most things for most of this century. Get into the First World War? A mistake. Staying out of the Second World War? A mistake. Squandering their wealth in Vietnam? A mistake. Arming these mujahideen to bleed the Soviets in Afghanistan? Wait to see that mistake blossom. No, if you want to know which way the wind is blowing, look where the Americans point and turn in the other direction. They think we are at the end of history, that everywhere will become America…”
“A McDonald’s in every capital.”
“More likely a Starbucks nowadays.”
“A who?”
“Didn’t you get out in Miami at all? Starbucks is the new McDonald’s as the icon of the Americanization of the world. It’s a European café, but without the je ne sais quoi. They call it a ‘coffee shop.’”
“Why?”
“The Americans are fetishizing coffee, the way they once did burgers and fries. I personally think it is a sign of their cultural collapse, but that’s been predicted before. Still, it might do wonders for our coffee prices.”
By this point Ajax had laid his head over, like a quizzical dog. “How the fuck do you know all this?”
“Because I pay attention to the big picture you so despise, and to all its smallest components. Because the world is like a jigsaw puzzle. Because you must have the larger picture in your mind to put it together. Because individual pieces will pop out, come loose, and they must be put back or the entire jigsaw is in danger of collapse.”
He reached over and tapped Ajax’s chest. “You know this in your heart, my son. There will be a respite after the collapse of communism while the stars realign, but this ‘brave new world’ will be neither. Nevertheless it is our world, and it must be protected by people who are brave, and sometimes bloody-minded.”
Ajax took the cigar back. “Said the man in the jail cell.”
“I maintain not for long. And if I am right will you consider my offer?”
“I didn’t hear an offer.”
“Will you at least consider my reasoning as to the value of you and Gladys as operatives?”
“I don’t even have a passport.”
“Oh, I’m sure Senator Teal will help with that. After all, you and Gladys did save Jimmy.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Really? Because James Peck returned to the bosom of his family a week ago with an amazing tale about being rescued by the dashing Ajax Montoya and the daring Gladys Darío with much added praise for his home-state senator. And as young Peck will stick to that tale, Senator Teal will doubtless help both of you with your nebulous immigration status.”
Horacio held out his hand for the cigar, like a magician finishing his last trick—the big finale. But Ajax refused to applaud and put it in his mouth. “Did you run all this by Gladys?”
“Certainly not!” He rubbed his throat as if at some memory. “That woman thinks I’m her enemy.”
“Yeah, she’s funny that way.” He took a long drag on the cigar, it was down to a stub, but somehow Ajax thought he wouldn’t be here very long. “You guarantee me she’ll get out of Nicaragua safely, I’ll consider the offer you didn’t really make.”
Horacio looked at his watch.
“She should be in Miami soon.”
Ajax let him have the cigar.
“And as I didn’t tell you about Gladys until you asked, you haven’t told me about Krill. So I ask: is he dead?”
Ajax nodded.
“And you didn’t kill him?”
Ajax shook his head.
“Good. Gladys will no longer need her moist towelettes.”
44
Gladys Darío looked out the window of the 727 as it left Nicaraguan territory for the Caribbean Sea. She was painfully aware that the last time she’d seen that sight she’d had Ajax by her side and a bag full of money and the Needle at her feet. Now she was alone, was leaving Ajax behind, again. But at least she had the Needle, it was her talisman now—if she brought it to Miami, Ajax was bound to follow.
She’d known almost before she’d hit the water what he was doing. Again. She’d hitchhiked to Managua and spent three days staking out Horacio’s house before slipping over the back wall and into his bedroom. She’d awoken him with the Needle to his Adam’s apple and the promise he’d help Ajax or die where he was.
“I already have. He’s in a safe house.”
That had thrown her. More so the news that it was Jasmine who’d told him when and where to pick them up.
She’d dragged him out of bed. “Take me to him, now!” But he’d insisted Ajax had to remain hidden because he was wanted for killing El Gordo Sangroso and had to be smuggled out of the country.
“Gladys, he said nothing would be worse than for you to be implicated in the murder, you were there that night. He said you would know to trust me if I gave you this message: ‘You have one more mission: to deliver bad news to Indiana. Get it done.’”
* * *
“Is Miami your final destination?” A pretty blond flight attendant whose legs Gladys had already admired leaned over, a sheaf of immigration papers in her hand.
“Indiana.”
“It’s cold up there. Are you connecting through Miami?”
“Yes.”
“Are you an American citizen?”
Gladys wasn’t sure anymore. “I have an American passport.”
“Then you’ll need one of these.”
Gladys politely accepted the card, and turned her gaze back out the window. The leggy stewardess did not offer an immigration card to the passenger next to Gladys. And Gladys did not speak to the handsome young man with the beautiful eyes.
But there he sat, in his gore-spattered uniform. The boy with the long eyelashes sat very still, looking straight ahead, waiting patiently.
ALSO BY JOE GANNON
Night of the Jaguar
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joe Gannon, writer and spoken-word artist, was a freelance journalist in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution, writing for The Christian Science Monitor, The Toronto Globe and Mail, and the San Francisco Examiner. He spent three years in the army, graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and did his MFA at Pine Manor College. After a stint teaching high school in Abu Dhabi, he is now working on his next novel. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Also by Joe Gannon
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LAST DAWN. Copyright © 2016 by Joe Gannon. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photographs: man © Stephen Mulcahey/Arcangel Images; forest © Matt Tilghman/Shutterstock; clouds © Mark Owen/Trevillion Images
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.