Hector shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I was against it.”
“Capitan Cruz, I know this is hard to swallow. But it’s already done. We are telling you, taking you into our confidence, because you need to understand that there is no El Rey anymore – the King of Swords is now officially dead. In his place is a CISEN asset who is not wanted for any crime – who whether you agree or not, or like it or not, is cleared of any prior wrongdoing and is as free as you or I, with all the same rights. There will be no more task force focusing on him, no more clandestine, unofficial investigations, no back door inquiries. That is just the way it is. Do you understand?” Benicio asked, his question an obvious warning.
Cruz frowned, but said nothing. The world had lost its mind.
“As of right now, El Rey will cease to exist. For your purposes, he’s gone forever. There’s nothing to see, nobody to hunt. That’s not an option. It is a presidential directive, and by signing that document, you agreed to keep what we have shared with you confidential. Nobody can know about any of this. Ever. Am I clear?” Hector warned.
Cruz exhaled, only afterwards realizing that he had stopped breathing during the chief of staff’s monologue, his stomach muscles bunched up, tight from tension. He needed a few minutes to process the information. El Rey on the government payroll? It was unthinkable.
“Tell me something, gentlemen. I’m really actually curious. I presume you both have children.” He took in their wedding rings. “What I’d like to know is, how do you live with yourselves?”
Benicio stood. “Doing what I do is not for everyone. Very difficult decisions have to be made on a daily basis that many people wouldn’t understand. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone – certainly not you, Capitan. But I will say this, out of respect for the work you’ve done, and for your station. All of us have impossible jobs, and do things that others probably wouldn’t like. That’s what we do. It’s our role.” He moved to the door. “I’ll leave you with Hector here, but this conversation is over. You are bound by the secrets act from this point on. Not a word about any of this or you will be in prison for the rest of your life. And that would be tragic, and a waste, because you are very good at what you do.” Benicio inclined his head in a parting salute and then stalked out, his business concluded, his message delivered: stay silent, or else.
Cruz glared at Hector. “This will come back to haunt you. Mark my words,” he said.
Hector nodded. “You’re probably right. I have the same feeling. But there’s nothing I can do about it. I work on behalf of the president, and his wishes are my orders.”
“And he signed the pardon, so he’s in the loop on everything,” Cruz stated.
“Correct.”
“Then we have nothing more to discuss.”
Cruz rose.
“I’m sorry we had to bring you in on this. Some things are best left unknown,” Hector commiserated.
“Yes. Some things are.”
~
Hector watched as Cruz trudged back to security, his shoulders hunched, the weight of the information almost too much for him to carry. He knew the feeling.
His assistant arrived at his elbow and reminded him of his next meeting. The Americans. Some days just didn’t let up. He would be glad when this one was over. He had no idea what they wanted, but had been assured that it was urgent, so he’d made space in his agenda.
He returned to his office, where two men were seated. They stopped their hushed conversation when he entered.
Hector greeted them in perfect English, as he moved through the office to his desk. “Gentlemen. I’m sorry to be in such a rush today, but it’s been a whirlwind. How can I help you?”
“We are here with good news. The U.S. government has decided to pledge additional funds to the ongoing battle against the drug cartels. Hundreds of millions more,” the first American, Richard Evans, said.
“That’s wonderful! I’ll be sure to let the president know the good news,” Hector said, hearing nothing but a hollow promise that would be filled with conditions. As had been the $1.6 billion pledged under the Merida Initiative, which later became an embarrassment, as the U.S. was grossly late in delivering most of the promised equipment and withheld pledged money due to human rights concerns.
“Yes, and this will be in direct financial aid, not helicopters,” the second man, Louis Samuels, said. Both were stationed at the embassy, with loosely defined roles in the state department.
“Spectacular. And when will we begin to see this largess?” Hector inquired.
“Shortly. Within the month.”
“But there is one area of concern to us,” Evans said.
Having dangled the carrot, now would come the stick. Hector waited with raised eyebrows.
“The DEA has alerted us that Los Zetas cartel is now the greatest threat to American national security in the war on drugs. We want to emphasize our interest in ensuring that it is the focus of any initiatives moving forward. Our concern is that the cartel seems to be somehow eluding your country’s rigorous efforts to battle the criminal plague that threatens us all.”
So the Americans wanted to see Los Zetas cartel crushed.
“With all due respect, there are many nuances to the internal situation here. Other cartels, such as Sinaloa, are huge traffickers, and as such have been an emphasis – and we are making considerable progress against them,” Hector said.
“Which we don’t dispute. But now, in this new era, Los Zetas have grown to be a larger threat, and they are certainly far more violent. This savagery has become a political hot potato in Washington, and the sentiment is universally that they are the biggest problem Mexico has. Sinaloa and the rest are like lambs compared to Los Zetas,” Evans countered.
“Without question, they are a menace,” Hector agreed.
“All we are asking is that your administration put pressure on them, through vigorous initiatives. If there is only one group you could eradicate, Los Zetas should be the one. That message, underscored by action, would send the right signals to Washington, and funding would be much more generous in the future.”
“So would it be fair to convey to the president that Los Zetas cartel is your biggest issue in terms of funding?” Hector asked, wanting to make no mistake.
“Absolutely. While all the cartels are criminal enterprises and must be condemned, Los Zetas has aroused considerable attention as the public face of cartel brutality. Striking boldly against the cartel, early and often, would be viewed extremely favorably and would encourage policy makers to free up further funding.”
“How many millions did you say would be in this first round?”
~
Three black Chevrolet Suburbans roared into the presidential compound as the American visitors were on their way out, pulling to a halt at the presidential residence’s rear private entrance. A host of bodyguards emerged from the building, joining the group that emptied out of the vehicles.
The president stood in the courtyard inside the entrance, waiting with his wife, his arm around her shoulder. Maria stepped down from the middle SUV, assisted by one of the brawny security men, who pointed in the direction of the courtyard and whispered in her ear. She walked tentatively through the entrance doors, tears streaming down her face as she spotted her parents rushing towards her.
Motes of dust played in the sunbeams that slanted through the flock of clouds looking over the family as they embraced, the emotion filling the area with tangible intensity. Maria clung to them both, for a second no longer a rebellious young woman intent on staking out her independence. Her father stroked her hair, briefly not the leader of a country, but only a relieved parent whose worst fears had been avoided.
In that moment, it was possible to forget the imperfection and brutality that characterized the world, the constant compromises required to operate a government, and instead focus on the tiny ecosystem that their family represented.
For a moment, everything was good.
<<<<>>>><
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Excerpt from The Voynich Cypher
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:
John 11:25, 26 – King James Bible
Prologue
2:38 a.m.. Two Weeks Ago – Dorset, England, The Abbey of St. Peter at Abbotsbury
Moonlight bathed the Abbey in an otherworldly glow as serpentine tendrils of foggy mist blanketed the countryside. The medieval buildings in the compound were blue-gray in the eerie lunar luminescence, and the encroaching vegetation appeared black instead of green. The Abbey was silent, with many hours remaining until activity on the grounds would begin, and only the dim illumination from a single incandescent bulb housed in an ancient rusted lamp above the massive stone entry hinted that the structures were occupied.
A dog barked in the distance, its throaty voice muffled by the thick haze.
The scarred brick well at the edge of the Abbey grounds, worn by the centuries and long since obsolete, blended with the landscape. But the guard who leaned against it, armed with a SIG Sauer 228 pistol, seemed out of place.
The crumbling aperture was surrounded by overgrown shrubs and weeds, rendering it virtually invisible. The sentry was dressed in dark army surplus camouflage pants and jacket, doing his lonesome duty on the latest of thousands of uneventful nights. He’d grown lax over the years, but in his defense, there was little to be actively vigilant against, save for an errant fox or badger that occasionally strayed into the vicinity. Even then the man didn’t bother to shoo the furry intruders away.
Live and let live.
If a more boring or uneventful posting existed, he’d never heard of it. Still, a lifetime of indoctrination had molded him for guarding the Abbey’s forbidden secrets, and that’s what he would do, even if he privately thought it was pointless.
His instructions were simple: stand ready throughout the night at this hidden entrance to the Abbey’s subterranean chambers. While part of him questioned why it needed to be guarded, and what, if anything, it required to be guarded against, he knew that if he was remiss in his simple function he would be punished in a brutal and medieval manner – some things hadn’t changed over the eons. His first duty was to God, and after God, to the Order. And the Order had wisdom in its directives, even if he didn’t fully apprehend them. His role was to do as he was told, which is why he was posted in the middle of nowhere, waiting for nothing to happen, just as it hadn’t happened for centuries.
The edict to watch and wait came from the very top, so every night for almost a decade he’d maintained his vigil, performing his duty at the eleventh-century Benedictine monastery without question, just as his many predecessors had done before him.
~
Wearing black cargo pants, rubber-soled paratrooper boots and a light black windbreaker, the intruder moved silently through the shrubbery – virtually invisible in the darkness. The perimeter motion detectors had been easily de-activated; the intruder had known where they were hidden, as well as their operating frequency.
The guard had finally settled into his usual sitting position on a weathered stone bench facing the brick opening and was surreptitiously listening to music on an iPod, tapping his fingers in time to the rhythm. He registered nothing as the intruder stealthily approached from the rear, a hypodermic syringe clenched in a gloved hand. At the final moment, sensing a presence, he attempted to spin around, but it was too late – the needle had penetrated his neck, its payload delivered with an abrupt depression of the plunger.
The man’s pupils lost focus and took on a glassy stare as he slipped painlessly into unconsciousness, his head almost tenderly supported by the intruder as he slumped to the ground. After glancing around to ensure the scuffle hadn’t alerted anyone from the Abbey, the intruder closed the guard’s lids, ensuring his eyes wouldn’t dry out during the hour he’d be in dreamland. Even after the surprise attack the man appeared at peace, other than having a faint expression of astonishment.
The intruder considered his inert form. I don’t envy you the headache you’ll have when you wake up.
Satisfied the guard was out cold, the intruder extracted a bundle from a form-fitted nylon backpack and clipped an anodized black rappelling wire to the well’s sturdy iron cross-post, and after ducking into the brush to retrieve a rucksack with equipment in it, crawled over the crumbling lip and dropped sixty feet into the inky darkness below.
~
The intruder dropped down the shaft and swung into a passageway that punctuated the end of the sheer descent, alighting soundlessly on the worn stone floor of the subterranean passageway before quickly scanning the area.
Hundreds of skeletons held silent vigil in cavities along the narrow crypt, all facing the spot where the new arrival stood; a phalanx of mute sentries to voicelessly witness the actions of anyone foolhardy enough to breach the stillness of the sacred burial space. The specters of the thousand-year-old remains generated no reaction in the masked figure, who was more than passingly familiar with the many faces of death. While the grim reaper wasn’t exactly a friend, he certainly wasn’t a stranger to the black-clad prowler, who’d ended the lives of enough miscreants to defy recollection.
The intruder stepped carefully past the groups of long-dead clergy, compelled forward by a more pressing mission than sightseeing in one of purgatory’s antechambers.
Tracker 1x24 NV night-vision goggles rendered the darkness of the clammy chamber irrelevant; now the blackness was bathed in a greenish glow, with the level of detail similar to when having the lights on – had there been any lights – the only illumination would have come from the row of wall-mounted iron torch holders, with black smudges of gritty soot marring the stone ceiling above them. The departed had little use for modern conveniences such as electricity, and the old ways were still the best in the hall of the dead.
The only sounds other than the draft wafting through the corridors were the occasional rat scurrying about the bones and the trespasser’s muffled footsteps moving stealthily towards the forbidden destination – the rumored ‘Scroll Chamber’. Preparation for the early morning’s adventure had included memorizing the layout of the surviving Abbey buildings and also the maze of catacombs beneath. The location of the Chamber was exactly one hundred twenty-two yards from where the abandoned water-shaft offered ventilation and egress – a fact that was pivotal now that the sanctity of the hidden recesses had been breached.
The most difficult part of the operation would take place at the Chamber – the advance intelligence had been clear. It would be guarded, both by a man outside its door and another within. A frontal assault was out of the question; the slightest slip and the interior sentry would sound the alarm, even if the exterior guard had been dispatched. No, a better approach would be required to achieve entry into the supposedly impenetrable room, although it too would require no small amount of luck to succeed.
Careful study of the almost impossible-to-locate ancient blueprints had provided the clue for an alternative means of accessing the Chamber – one that the guards and the friars were likely unaware of.
It would be obvious momentarily whether the strategy was a winner, or a dead-end.
~
The Scroll Chamber was a small room, engineered to exacting measurements, and constructed entirely of stone blocks painstakingly hewn from a nearby quarry. Four meters by three, with not a centimeter of variation anywhere, its furnishings were modest, with only a dilapidated stool and a hand-carved stone table cleaved from the wall nearest the access door. Resting on this rustic ledge was a single cylindrical canister, twelve inches in height, resembling nothing so much as a coffee thermos – with the exception that common beverage containers were rarely constructed of medieval amalgams of oak and alabaster, embossed with crude Christian symbols and dire warnings in Latin.
The only occupant of the room was a tall man, also in the camouflage garb favored by the Abbey’s protectors, whose immobile
form was illuminated by a tiny battery-powered camping light he’d positioned on the table’s edge. He was napping; his head drooped on his chest, and occasional rumbling snores disrupted the stillness. He was a young man, no more than twenty-five, heavily-bearded, with a scar on his forehead in the shape of a cross. This guard was also armed with a SIG Sauer automatic pistol – an incongruous anachronism given the nature of the room and the Abbey’s monastic purpose.
A crudely rendered stone grid near the ceiling shifted upwards an inch at a time, six feet away from the slumbering man’s head. It weighed over a hundred pounds, and yet it slid silently into the dark cavity behind it without so much as a scrape against the ancient stones of the Chamber. The slumbering guard hadn’t stirred.
The intruder crawled out of the hand-carved tunnel and dropped lightly to the Chamber floor, pausing in a crouch, studying the cruci fixus on the guard’s forehead before scrutinizing his eyelids, watchful for any sign of awareness.
Satisfied that the man wasn’t an immediate threat, the silent trespasser’s focus turned to the canister on the table, now only four feet away. The container was distinctly unimpressive considering what it purportedly held. It was almost a disappointment that the intelligence on its safeguarding was correct; no complex Indiana Jones-like counterweights to contend with, no medieval combination locks to breach. Nothing, except for the droning guard – the first priority if the mission was to be fruitful.
The intruder approached on catlike feet, another syringe at the ready.
A loose flagstone beneath a delicately-placed boot jarred the silence. The guard jolted awake with a start. The intruder lunged forward with the needle, but this guard was faster than the one by the well; he dodged the attempt at his neck and spun towards his assailant as he shook off the grogginess of sleep. He fumbled for his pistol, but the intruder snap-kicked his hand, audibly breaking the bones. The guard howled in pain and, not as adept in close-quarters combat as his attacker, he swung ineffectually with his good hand. The intruder dodged the awkward assault and delivered three successive blows to the tall man’s solar-plexus, trachea and jaw. It was the throat-blow that stopped the guard mid-stride, and he staggered back against the door with a thud before crumpling to the floor.
Return of the Assassin (Assassin Series 3) Page 24