Guardian of Lies: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  He remembered waking up on the cot in his hut, the piercing beam of the flashlight in his eyes, and the helicopter with its giant rotors whipping the air in the clearing. In his mind he could see the large steel container with its open door yawning wide, waiting to swallow him.

  Yakov lay there for what must have been several minutes. But try as he might he could remember almost nothing after entering the cargo container. He recalled seeing the wooden crate, the pressure of his back against the hard metal wall. He had a foggy image of Alim, his cold, evil eyes looking down, his lips moving, saying something. Nitikin couldn’t be sure if the image was real or imagined.

  He touched his naked wrist and realized that his watch wasn’t there. He remembered trying to find it in the bag under his bed but being stopped by the interpreter. Then suddenly he reached down and felt for the shape and the hard plastic of the cell phone in his pants pocket. It was still there. Yakov took a deep breath, brought his hands up, and pressed his fingers to his temples. He closed his eyes and tried to stop the spinning motion.

  As the fog in his head began to clear, his eyes focused farther out, on the room and his surroundings. He was dizzy with the constant sensation of motion. The shaft of light piercing the room through the small round window in the wall was also in motion, as were the thin gauze drapes that seemed to dance from the rod above the window. Slowly it settled on him, he remembered the Port of Tumaco, and realized he was on board a ship, but for how long?

  Yakov struggled to sit up. He lifted his leaden legs and dropped his feet onto the floor. No wonder they were so heavy, he was still wearing his boots. He crunched with his abdominals as he pushed with his arms, lifting his upper body until he was sitting upright at the edge of the bed. The blood raced to his stomach as his head pounded.

  He sat there for two or three minutes unable to move as he collected his strength and looked at the door. The nausea rising in his stomach suddenly curbed his appetite.

  Yakov stood up and then stumbled over to the washbasin in the small bathroom. He doused his face with water, then checked the phone in his pocket for any sign of a cell signal. The little screen read NO SERVICE. The time on the screen read 11:22. It was almost noon. He couldn’t remember if there was a change in time zones between the encampment in Colombia and Panama City.

  When Nitikin tried to open the door to the cabin he found it was locked. He tried releasing the four steel-handled levers that sealed the door tight. Yakov couldn’t budge them. Somehow they’d been jammed from the outside. He went back into the bathroom, grabbed a tin cup, and started banging on the steel door until, a few seconds later, the door swung open, revealing one of Alim’s minions standing there with an assault rifle pointed at him.

  As he was escorted along the deck at the point of a rifle, Yakov looked to see if he could find any sight of land off to his right. He saw nothing but open ocean. He wondered how long before they would get to Panama. His mind began to search for methods to slip away, to make his phone call to Maricela, and perhaps to escape. But first he had to know that his daughter was safe. He would tell her to run, to get away from her house. She had relatives in Limón, on the Caribbean coast. He would tell her to go there and hide out. If he survived, he would try to find her.

  He passed crewmen going about their chores but Nitikin didn’t recognize any of them. The men glanced at him. None of them seemed particularly concerned by the fact that the man walking behind Yakov was carrying an automatic weapon. Since the crewmen weren’t being guarded themselves, Nitikin had to assume that somehow the ship’s company had been bought off or co-opted by Alim.

  As they approached the superstructure at the front of the ship, the guard pushed Yakov with his rifle toward a set of stairs. They climbed up four decks and arrived on the wing of the bridge, where the guard pushed him toward an open door and the wheelhouse.

  Inside, Alim and his interpreter were talking to another man. They were studying the screen of a small monitor mounted on the console next to the ship’s wheel. Another crew member was steering the ship.

  Nitikin couldn’t understand what Alim was saying. But as the translator repeated it in Spanish, Yakov realized that the men were trying to fix the precise position of the ship on the vessel’s GPS navigational system.

  The captain was a Latino, but from the Spanish vernacular he used, Yakov could tell he was not Colombian or Costa Rican. He couldn’t quite place the accent, but he might be Mexican.

  The answer to Nitikin’s burning question, the distance from Panama, came a second later when the captain looked at the screen and told the interpreter that they were less than twenty-four hours from their destination.

  When he heard it, this seemed to please Alim. Afundi then turned his attention to Yakov. He asked him how he was feeling. Yakov said he would feel much better if his men stopped pointing their guns at him. Except for that, he was fine, although he was hungry.

  Alim said something to the interpreter, who told the captain to contact the galley to prepare some food and something to drink for Yakov.

  Afundi turned back to the Russian, said something to the interpreter, who asked Nitikin whether he’d had a chance to check the bomb. Though Yakov had no recollection of it, according to Alim the container had been handled very roughly as it was loaded onto the ship. The fact that Alim was willing to talk openly about the cargo in front of the captain and the other crew member told Yakov all he needed to know about the ship’s company. No doubt they had been well paid.

  “How could I possibly check the device? I’ve been locked up all night.”

  Alim told him to check it and to report back if there was any problem.

  “How long before we arrive in Panama?” asked Nitikin.

  As soon as it was translated, Alim looked at him through snake eyes, then offered a sinister smile and spoke.

  “He wants to know why you think we’re going to Panama.”

  “Tell him I am informed by intuition because of my Gypsy blood,” said Yakov.

  Alim laughed.

  Apparently the Russian still had a sense of humor.

  But that wasn’t why Afundi was laughing. Nitikin didn’t know it but thanks to the extended fuel tanks on the helicopter and the fact that Yakov had been maintained in an unconscious state in his cabin for almost four days, they were now nearly three thousand miles north of Panama City, a few hundred miles beyond Cabo San Lucas and just forty-two miles off the coast of Mexico’s Baja peninsula. By midafternoon tomorrow they would be tied up at the dock of the international cargo terminal at Ensenada, Mexico, just sixty miles south of the U.S. border.

  “Tell him to check the bomb. If there is no damage, I want him to arm the device now, everything except the cordite charge, which I will load, and timer, which I will set myself. The device should be safe from here on out.” He wanted Yakov to remove the safety.

  Nitikin waited for the interpretation and then replied, “Not until I know the target.”

  “The target is not your concern.” Alim was getting angry.

  “It is if you wish to deliver the bomb in one piece. Tell me, do you intend to transport it beyond the ship?”

  Following the translation, Alim looked at him with a stern expression, but didn’t answer.

  “Tell him I will not arm it until I know how it is being transported and where,” Yakov said.

  Afundi ignored him for the moment and talked to the interpreter in Farsi. “What time do we expect the phone call?”

  The interpreter checked his watch. “Any minute now. In fact, he is late.”

  “I don’t want him on the bridge.” Alim dismissed Yakov with his eyes. “Tell him to go check the device to make sure there is no damage. And I want a report back.” Alim turned to his man with the assault rifle. “Watch him closely. And when he’s finished, lock him back in his cabin. I am holding you personally responsible.”

  As he said it the satellite phone lying on top of the console rang. “Get him out of here.”

  Larry Goudaz huddled over the desktop computer in his apar
tment as he cradled the phone against his shoulder and spoke into the mouthpiece.

  “That’s right, he failed both times. If I were you, I’d get my money back, unless you haven’t paid him yet.”

  Goudaz waited for the reply.

  “Ah, your man is smarter than I thought,” Goudaz said. “How do I know? Because I had lunch yesterday afternoon with the mother, Maricela, the one who blew up and burned in her house the day before. She was here with the lawyer for her daughter—that would be Katia, Nitikin’s granddaughter, the woman he missed at Pike’s house and killed on the bus. She’s in the hospital in San Diego and recovering nicely, thank you. Listen, when this is all over, tell him I’ll send him a DVD. It’s a Road Runner cartoon. There’s a character in it you’ll recognize, he’s called Wile E. Coyote. I think he’s related to the Mexican you hired.

  “Yeah, never mind, you’d have to see it to appreciate it.

  “Listen, don’t no, don’t worry, you can tell him that I took care of everything. Right now I have them running errands. And when they come back, I’m going to give them some urgent news and send them off on a vacation to Panama for a few days. How much time do you need?”

  He waited and listened.

  “No problem. I can give you more if you need it. Yeah, let me get paper and a pencil. I don’t want to put that kind of stuff in my computer. Just a second.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  He stepped away for a moment.” The interpreter looked at Alim as he held the satellite phone away from his ear.

  “Are you still in contact with the Mexican?” said Alim, talking about Liquida.

  “Yes, by e-mail, to different addresses each time.”

  “Good. Then send him an e-mail and tell him that if he wants his money, he’s going to have to meet us in Tijuana, just south of the American border. That’s his home. He should feel safe there. Tell him we are going to pay him in gold and narcotics, which will explain why we are not wiring the funds. Because it is not in cash, we will be giving him a significant increase over the market value of these commodities. Tell him you are surprised because we have never offered this to anyone before. Give him the location of the warehouse and say the meeting will be tomorrow afternoon. We are scheduled to arrive in the port about noon, so tell him we will meet at four o’clock sharp. Tell him not to be late.”

  “He’s back.” The interpreter put the phone to his ear again. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said to the person at the other end. “We are sending a fax from the bridge in just a few minutes. We have the fax number for your cargo-container broker at Puntarenas. You have arranged everything with him, correct?” The interpreter waited.

  “Good. Then in our fax we will give him the name of the ship, the registered number on the cargo container, and our estimated time of arrival at Ensenada. The contents of the container will be listed as machine parts. The broker will prepare the necessary customs documents and transmit them to Mexican customs at Ensenada. Here’s the information. Write it down. We want you to have it so you can follow up. And make sure he does it today. Immediately. It is critical.” The interpreter read the information over the phone and waited while it was read back to him.

  “That’s correct.”

  Alim whispered to the interpreter, “Tell him we are going to send him a separate copy of the fax, that way he will have a reminder. We can afford to take no chances on this.”

  If the documents did not arrive on time, Mexican customs would throw a blanket over the cargo and do a thorough search of the container, including the shielded warhead case inside. If that happened, Alim’s mission would be over, and the gamma radiation shriveling the testicles of the customs officers would assure that they would have no more children.

  “Listen, the extra service at this end, cleaning up your Mexican’s mess, is going to cost quite a bit more,” said Goudaz. He had already figured in the thirty-thousand-dollar kickback he would be getting from the cargo broker at Puntarenas.

  “Since you’re stopping payment on his services, you should have no difficulty paying the surcharge on mine.” He quoted them an additional seventy-five thousand dollars. After all it was only money, and who knew when an opportunity like this would come again. What he got was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “Tell you what, let’s round up and make it an even hundred thousand,” said Goudaz. “By the way, I thought you’d like to know, I heard the lawyer and his friend talking. They were wondering just how big your bomb is, how much radioactive fallout something like that might produce. Given that I’m going to have to keep the lid on this until you’re done, I would think my fee is worth it.”

  Ordinarily the nature of the cargo would be beyond the purview of the mayor. His business was simply providing municipal services. But in this case, Maricela and the lawyer had given him some extra leverage, and Goudaz was never one to ignore a gift.

  “I knew you’d understand,” said Goudaz. “Yes, yes, you can send it by wire transfer to the same numbered account. I wouldn’t wait. I’d do it now, this afternoon. That will give me something to think about so I don’t forget to follow up with the broker. Good. Excellent. Well, listen, good luck. And take care now.” He hung up the phone, clapped his hands, and laughed as he did a little jig around his desk chair.

  He carried the dance into the kitchen where he punched the button on the electric hot water kettle on the countertop and got out the French press for a cup of coffee. Goudaz was turning toward the small pantry to grab the bottle of amaretto from the top shelf when he came face-to-face with a man he didn’t know.

  Before the mayor could even think, Liquida went in through the stomach, piercing the diaphragm. He wiggled the needle-sharp point of the dagger up inside the right-lower chamber of Larry’s heart.

  “So you cleaned up the Mexican’s mess,” whispered Liquida.

  Goudaz stared back through bulging eyes.

  “Wile E. Coyote, huh? Well, beep beep, asshole!” Liquida pushed hard on the handle of the knife and moved it around until he found what he wanted. Blood gushed from the severed aorta as the mayor flopped to the ground.

  “The only mess I see is the one on your kitchen floor.” Liquida’s brain bristled with thoughts of revenge, a growing list that started with the Arab for his arrogance and ended with the lawyer who had interfered to save the woman from the fiery house. He remembered the black man, the big one at the door to the house, and the other one, the shadowy figure at the corner, the one he had tried to find on the street that night.

  “So that’s who it was.” Liquida spoke out loud to himself.

  He remembered sitting on the broad avenue outside the lawyer’s office and seeing his name in the papers—Madriani. He remembered it as something almost musical. But now emotions of fury consumed him, especially the thought that perhaps he had also meddled in the bus ambush to save the woman’s daughter.

  Liquida leaned over and picked through Goudaz’s pockets until he found his apartment key. Then he stepped around the body, quickly washed the blood off his hands, and cleaned the dagger at the sink. He dried his hands before he picked up the note with the shipping information that the mayor had laid by the kettle on the countertop. Liquida was still reading the note when he heard the metal gate rattle downstairs.

  Herman uses Goudaz’s spare key to let us in. We have decided to pack up, grab Maricela, and find other accommodations until we can decide where we’re going. With the new passports we can start staying in hotels again as long as we use cash. We climb the steps to the apartment. Herman uses the other key to open Goudaz’s door.

  “It’s just us,” Herman shouts as I close the door behind us.

  “We need to go up and get our stuff together,” I tell him.

  “You think we ought to tell Maricela so she can get ready?” Herman and I are whispering in the entry area.

  “We’ll tell her just before we go. I don’t want her talking to Goudaz about it. He may try and convince her not to go with us.”

  Herman nods. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Probably in his study.” I head down th
e hall to tell the mayor that everything went well with the passports, but nobody is there.

  “Paul! Get out here.” Herman’s voice from the other room tells me something is wrong.

  By the time I get to the kitchen, all I see is Herman’s hulking frame standing there looking down at something on the floor. I don’t see the blood or Goudaz’s body until I come through the door.

  “Ain’t no sense checking for a pulse,” says Herman. “Look at his eyes.” Herman slowly backs away from the body and edges over toward one of the drawers near the sink. He slides the drawer open and reaches in, his eyes constantly scanning the two doors leading into the kitchen. He takes a quick glance down at the open drawer and grabs a large butcher knife. He hands me another sharp blade.

  “Let’s check the rooms,” he says. “Stay together. If he jumps me, use the knife, put it in him deep, as many times as you can—and don’t hesitate. Can you do it?”

  I nod.

  It takes us several minutes, moving cautiously from room to room, to clear the apartment. Whoever killed Goudaz is gone, and so is Maricela. There is no sign of her, and no note.

  “You think he might have taken her?” says Herman.

  “Why would he take her now if he tried to kill her before? It doesn’t make sense. He could have dumped her body someplace else.”

  The thought hits us both at the same moment. We break for the door.

  I stop to grab the key from the hook as Herman runs ahead of me up the steps to the other apartment. With blood and a dead body on the floor, I lock the door from the outside so no neighbors wander in.

  I am hoping that Maricela is hiding upstairs in the other apartment, praying that whoever killed Goudaz didn’t find her and dump her body there.

  By the time I get up the steps to the open apartment door, Herman has already used the key in his pocket and raced through the rooms. He is standing in the living room shaking his head. “She ain’t here,” he says.