Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  “Yeah, I ’member the place,” said Herman. “Ruins in the Mexican jungle on the Yucatán, a ways out of Tulum, as I recall. Yeah, I remember Coba. That’s the place you hired me, right? Sure.”

  Silence for a few seconds, then: “It’s been a while since I been down there, but I think I still got some friends in the area. Why do you ask?”

  More silence: “I don’t understand. You’re in Paris. Why would you be needing security in Mexico?”

  Herman listened. Adin waited. “You sure you want to do that? Why don’t you just call Thorpe and tell him? . . .

  “What do you mean, he hasn’t followed up?”

  * * *

  I was wearing a headset with a mic, using Skype to talk to Herman through Joselyn’s laptop while she and Harry used the landline in the room to book our flight and get a taxi.

  I had to be careful what I said to Herman. I knew that the front desk at the condo would be listening. While I wanted the message to get to Thorpe, I didn’t want it to get there too quickly. If it did, Thorpe would put us on the no-fly list immediately and we would never get out of Paris.

  “How are you doing? How are you healing up?” I ask him.

  “Me. I’m fine,” he says. “Fit as a fiddle. I’m back on my feet. Why don’t I just meet you in Mexico? . . .”

  “No!” With Herman you never know whether he’s telling the truth or just being stoic. I wouldn’t put it past him to jump on a plane tomorrow. “You just get better. Take care of yourself. We’ll be fine. Listen, I can’t talk long. I’ll call you again later. What time is it there?”

  It took a second for Herman to check. “Twelve minutes after eleven.”

  “Do you have something to write with?” I ask.

  “Gimme a sec.”

  I wait.

  “Got it,” says Herman.

  “Wait until noon tomorrow. Then I want you to call Thorpe’s office. Make sure you get through to him. Tell him to call the Paris police and ask about the package in the blue tarp that was left in the alley behind the Hotel Saint-Jacques early this morning. You got it?”

  “Slow down,” says Herman. “I don’t take shorthand. Saint-Jacques. Blue tarp.”

  “That’s right, blue tarp. The French police will know what he’s talking about. Tell him that the package was done by Liquida. We don’t know who it is, but I’m sure Thorpe will find out. Tell him Liquida is no longer in Paris. You got that? Tell him to check the area around Coba. I don’t know exactly where, but he can look for a large antenna array . . .”

  “Slow down. Large antenna array . . .”

  I am trying to keep the information cryptic so that Thorpe will not land on us too quickly, either before we can get out of France or before we land in Mexico.

  “That’s what I said. There should be a large building there as well. In the jungle. I don’t know exactly where. We’re guessing that that’s where Liquida is headed. And tell him we found some strange-looking software inside the package.”

  “What do mean? What kind of software? What’s it for?”

  “We don’t know. But maybe Thorpe will. Tell him the French police don’t have it, we do.”

  “OK, police don’t have it. You do. You didn’t talk to the police?”

  “No. We didn’t want to stick around. Oh, and Herman, listen. Tell Sarah not to worry. Tell her I’m getting closer to home. You can tell her about Coba, but not too much. You know the area, give her some details, but tell her not to worry. I’ll be back there as soon as I can.”

  “Got it. Where can I catch you, assuming I get ahold of some people to set up security down there?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try and call you from Mexico when we get there.”

  “OK.”

  “Catch you later.” I tap the red button with the computer’s cursor and the Skype screen closes.

  Chapter

  Forty-Four

  This morning Thorpe was in and out of his office like a jack-in-the-box. His ear to the phone, hand over the mouthpiece, Thorpe was talking to his secretary who was standing in the office doorway. “Get ahold of somebody in authority in the Paris Police Prefecture. Check our computer contacts. We must have a name and phone number for somebody somewhere.”

  The secretary looked at her watch. “It would be early evening over there.”

  “I don’t care. Get ’em at home. Get ’em out of bed. Tell them it’s urgent. I need to talk to someone in the prefecture immediately.”

  The secretary turned and headed for her desk.

  Thorpe went back to the phone. “Where did he go? . . . What do you mean, you don’t know? He called you, didn’t he? . . . When did he call, what time? . . . Well, damn it, why didn’t you call me last night? . . . I don’t care. You could have called down to the duty desk. They would have called me at home. What else did he say?” Thorpe listened as Herman conveyed the message given to him by Madriani the previous evening.

  Everything was coming to a head at once. Earlier that morning, information from immigration in the United Arab Emirates had finally come back showing that the Spanish passport with Liquida’s picture on it had moved on to Thailand.

  Thorpe immediately called Bangkok to have his people check and see when it arrived, whether the passport was still in the country and if not, where it had gone from there. Deep down, Thorpe already knew the answer. His worst fears were being realized. The information from Madriani was correct.

  Thorpe’s people were already preparing a warrant for Liquida’s arrest in Paris when Madriani’s investigator called to tell him about the dead body in the alley behind the hotel. It was too late. If bodies were popping up, Thorpe knew that Liquida would already be gone from the hotel. His only hope now was to stop him from getting out of France.

  “What do you mean, software? What kind of software? . . . You mean he found it with the body? What was he doing messing with the body? Listen, never mind! If he calls again, you find out where he is and tell him to stay there. Do you understand? And call me.” Thorpe hung up. “Susan!”

  Two seconds later his secretary was back in the doorway.

  “Find out who was on the desk last night at the safe house, Madriani’s condo. Tell them I want the telephone records for last night, all the audio recordings from Madriani’s phone. Tell them to transmit them over here immediately.” When Thorpe looked up, Bill Britain was standing in the doorway right behind the secretary. “What is it?”

  “More bad news, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s all, Susan.” Thorpe motioned Britain into his office and told him to close the door.

  The second Britain got the door closed he started talking: “Our embassy people in Paris just called from the hotel . . .” He looked at his notes. “Saint-Jacques, I think it is. When they showed the people on the desk the poster with Liquida’s picture, they recognized him. Said he was a guest but that he checked out very early that morning. According to them, it was about forty minutes before they heard all the sirens behind the building in the alley where the body was found.”

  “Did they have a passport with a name?” said Thorpe.

  “Again, another Spanish passport, only this time the name was Jorge Menold.”

  “They know he can move around on those things,” said Thorpe. This was because there was no visa requirement for Western Europe, the Americas, much of Asia, or the Middle East. For Liquida’s purposes, a Spanish passport was almost as good as one from the United States.

  “French authorities have already put out the name to have him picked up if he shows at any of the airports under that name,” said Britain. “But so far nothing.”

  “He’s not that stupid. By now he’ll have a stack of passports like a deck of playing cards, dealing off the bottom as he moves,” said Thorpe.

  “And there’s more,” said Britain. “The body in the alley . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s one of our two guys from NASA.”

  “I knew it,” said Thorpe. “I knew it. Tell
Susan to get Llewellyn up here right away. We need to talk.”

  Britain opened the door, delivered the message, and closed it again.

  “Which one of the two of them was it?” said Thorpe.

  Britain looked at his notes. “According to his U.S. passport, his name was Raji Fareed . . .”

  “Software guy,” said Thorpe. “That makes sense. Looks like Madriani’s man was telling the truth.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind. Anything else?”

  “Fareed was booked into the hotel under an Egyptian passport with an alias,” said Britain. “The hotel desk said they never saw him in the flesh. Only his passport picture. It was delivered by another man who brought the passports down in a bundle. They said the guy booked an entire floor of rooms for a week. They checked out a day early.”

  “How many in all?”

  “Seven, according to the desk. Six showed up on the first day. Liquida arrived with his new Spanish passport three days later,” said Britain.

  “Get copies of all the passports. Make sure the photos are clear. And I want those rooms scoured, anything they find bagged and brought back here, do you understand?”

  “Our people from the embassy are already working on it,” said Britain. “But I’m not sure the French authorities are going to allow us to take evidence if it relates to the murder in the alley.”

  “Do it anyway. Check and see if they found a computer. If so, tell our people not to let it out of their hands. Tell the French it’s embassy property. Put it in a diplomatic pouch if they have to. Go to the State Department and tell them we need a backdated diplomatic passport in Fareed’s name. Shoot it over there. Tell the French he was on State Department business acting as a courier. If State gives you any trouble, tell them to call the White House. Did you check the hotel to see if there was any sign of Madriani, Hinds, or Joselyn Cole?”

  “We checked. No sign. The front desk looked at their passport photos and didn’t recognize any of them.”

  “Have our people check the other hotels in the area and do me a favor, put all three names and their passport numbers on the no-fly list. Do it immediately. And make sure they’re not just tagged for additional screening. I want them held with a notation to contact the legat’s office at the U.S. Embassy. And tell the embassy to contact my office immediately if they find them.”

  “I can put them on the list but it won’t be updated with the airlines until tomorrow,” said Britain. “And without a warrant, the French authorities won’t take them into custody. How do we hold them?” said Britain.

  “Don’t worry about that. Just go out to the airport, get their luggage, give them a ride to the embassy, and keep them there. We’ll worry about the legalities later.”

  Britain turned to head for the door.

  “One more thing,” said Thorpe.

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of resources and juice do we have down in Mexico at the present time?”

  Britain wrinkled his forehead with the thought. “I’m not sure the Mexican government has a handle on what’s happening down there right now. We don’t have much influence, if that’s what you mean. What do you need?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “If you need boots on the ground, my guess is your best bet’s gonna be Drug Enforcement.”

  “Then get ahold of somebody at DEA and tell them I need a meeting, later today if possible. Tell them this comes from the highest authority. The man in the big house at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

  Chapter

  Forty-Five

  Coming in from Paris, Harry, Joselyn, and I decided to steer clear of the U.S. air carriers with connecting flights through the States. We feared that Thorpe might have his net out to snag us coming through U.S. Immigration before we could make our way south to Mexico.

  Instead we caught an Air France flight from Paris direct to Mexico City. There we hopped a connecting flight to Cancún. Arriving just before midnight, we rented a car and took rooms for the night in a small hotel just south of the city.

  This morning we get up early, grab a light breakfast, and drive south along the Mayan Riviera. The sun is bright. The azure blue sea is beautiful, rolling waves piling up on the sugar-sand beaches as we race along the highway.

  We head for the coastal town of Tulum. I have not been there in years. My recollection of the area is of ancient Mayan ruins, walls of white coral stone on the cliffs above the beach overlooking the Caribbean. The conquistadors who first glimpsed them from the sea described them in their journals as alabaster marble palaces. It was a view that sealed the fate of the Mayans, for it inspired visions of limitless silver and gold in the minds of the Spaniards.

  For the better part of an hour we drive along the coast highway. There are people on the beaches and the occasional “Tourista” van with vacationers, though not nearly as many as I recall from my trip to the Yucatán ten years earlier. Stories of heads lopped off in resort towns like Acapulco and shootings along the border tend to put a dent in tourism. Ordinarily the excesses of narco violence would cause me to wonder what risk we are taking by coming here. The fact that we are chasing Liquida is its own set of perils, causing any other fears to seem incidental.

  Joselyn is sitting next to me studying a tourist map from the hotel. In one hand she has a printout of the notes from the flash drive hidden in the eyeglasses of the dead man from Paris. We still have no name for him.

  “It looks like there is a connecting highway going west out of Tulum.” She plots it with her finger on the map. “Coba looks as if it’s, maybe, I’m guessing about forty kilometers west of Tulum. I’m not sure about the scale on this map.”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” I tell her. “It’s been a long time. The last time I was down here I was pretty well lost. If it wasn’t for Herman, I’d probably be buried in the jungle out there somewhere.”

  “How did you meet him?” she asks.

  “He was working for a security company in Cancún. We hired an entire team of them for executive protection. Herman turned out to be the only one I could rely on. We connected and the rest is history.”

  “Along the way he took a few bullets,” says Harry. “Herman’s a regular magnet. If it’s made of metal, you can be sure he’s got a piece of it somewhere inside him. For a man with nine lives, he’s used up twelve of them.”

  “If you’re keeping score, you must miss him,” says Joselyn.

  “What’s not to miss? Biggest human shield I’ve ever seen,” says Harry. “You bet I miss him. And for a big man he moves pretty fast. At least he did before this latest episode. Who knows now? He may be nothing but a walking comp claim. May have to put him out to pasture.”

  “Yeah, you tell him that. Just make sure you’ve got a forty-yard running start when you do it,” I tell him. “Harry likes to sound indifferent and cold,” I tell Joselyn. “The fact is he and Herman have a lot in common.”

  “What’s that? Yeah, now you’re gonna tell her we’re half brothers,” says Harry. “Same father, different mother. How is it we’re the same? Tell me.”

  “You’ve got the same selfless spirit. Don’t be ashamed of it. You’re just a smaller shield,” I tell him. “If somebody shot at us, it would be a footrace to see which of the two of them got to the bullet first. Harry’s only problem is he’s not fast enough.”

  “Who, me?” Harry sounds hurt.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Never!” he says.

  “Do you remember if there was a hotel in the town of Coba?” Joselyn changes the subject.

  “I didn’t know there was a town,” I tell her. “As I recall, Coba was more of a wide spot on the road. Except for the Mayan ruins, there wasn’t much there. Last time I came, I was driving in from the other direction, coming east off the highway between Cancún and Mérida. I passed the turnoff to Coba and never even saw it. I ended up a few miles from Tulum before I realized. I had to turn around and go back.”

 
“So you’re telling me it doesn’t have a Holiday Inn?”

  “Not unless they’ve done a lot of urban renewal in the last ten years.”

  “We have to sleep in the car tonight, I got dibs on the backseat,” says Harry.

  “As long as you don’t snore,” says Joselyn. “You do, you’re sleeping in the jungle.”

  “We’ll find something. As I remember, there were some archaeological tourism lodges in the area. We might not get electricity or Wi-Fi, but they should have beds. The ruins used to draw a fair number of tourists. I don’t know if they still do or not. The cenotes used to get some divers as well.”

  “What’s a cenote?” says Harry.

  “It’s a pool of fresh water. Some are underwater caves. The Yucatán is dotted with them. Similar to Florida,” I tell him. “The entire area is flat as a board with a low canopy of jungle. Very dry in places. It has coral underneath with aquifers, subterranean rivers that flow through the porous rock. Every once in a while, there’ll be an opening to these underground rivers, a small, deep pool with steep perpendicular sides.

  “Floridians call them sinkholes. The Spaniards called them cenotes. The Mayans believed they were sacred. A source of water. They built their cities around them. At one point it’s estimated that Coba may have had as many as a million people living in the area.”

  “You’re kidding,” says Joselyn.

  “No. Not even half of the ruins are excavated. Thieves used to come in at night and dig for treasure. The government tried to keep them out, but the area is so large it’s like trying to fence off the city of L.A. Now I’m sure the authorities have bigger fish to fry with the cartels. There is also a lake as I recall, and gators—what the Mexicans call crocadillos. I was told to stay away from the lake. I remember it had deep muddy banks. The crocs have been known to take a few tourists who ventured too close to the water.”