The Face of the Assassin Part 18

"We've been alternating through the same three crossings for six weeks now. The bribes are in, and all of them have been completely reliable. The product never travels with drugs, so there is no chance of an accidental discovery."

Alfredo was waving a rolled harina harina tortilla as he talked. There was nothing in it. He paused and took a big bite of the diminis.h.i.+ng snack, which he held in the stubby dark fingers of one hand. He was sitting on a plastic bucket, his heavy legs spread. Not finished chewing, he went on, talking around the food. tortilla as he talked. There was nothing in it. He paused and took a big bite of the diminis.h.i.+ng snack, which he held in the stubby dark fingers of one hand. He was sitting on a plastic bucket, his heavy legs spread. Not finished chewing, he went on, talking around the food.

"In Chihuahua our cans will be slipped into a s.h.i.+pment of the real product from the maquiladora, maquiladora," he mumbled. "When they reach the warehouse in El Paso, our case will be divided into three groups of four, and our cans will be mixed in with cases of the real thing. Each group will be transported by a wholesale distributor, remaining in plain sight all the way. Eventually each can will reach a different city where it will be picked up by the mentors who will hold them until they receive the signal from Baida."

During the conversation, the language had been a garble of Spanish, English, and Arabic. Sometimes one of the men would throw in a couple of words of French. The bustle behind them had begun to die down. The personal effects of the men who had lived here for just over a month had been carried out to cars in the cool of night, and a few men stood around, looking here and there at what was left, as if making sure they hadn't forgotten something.

"Any problems with the money?" Sabella asked. "Only one more payment, right?"

Alfredo nodded, almost unconcerned. His job was to handle all of the negotiations with the Mexican narcos, whose routes they were paying to use. He was used to lies and violence and pressure. Nature had provided him with a high threshold for excitement. Only imminent death changed his heart rate.

"What about the machine?" the first man asked, looking across the lighted area to the a.s.sembly line of supply tanks, transfer pumps, pressure fillers, a heat exchanger, exhaust system, and hot-water supply, all connected by a network of pipes lying on the concrete floor and suspended by wires and cables from the high trusses.

"Everything goes," Sabella said.

Still looking at the equipment, the man shook his head at the shame of it. The expensive equipment had cost them a fortune, and a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble to acquire. And they had gotten only twelve "items" with it. Still, he knew it was worth it. It just seemed a waste to get rid of it this way.

"They'll be able to reconstruct it," the second man said. "They'll know what it is."

"They could," Sabella said, "if they knew what was here. But n.o.body is looking for anything. And there's all the other stuff stored in here. It will just be a warehouse of stuff. Who will give a s.h.i.+t? Just bulldoze it away." He glanced at the equipment. "Besides, it will all be too late then. It really won't matter what they reconstruct. They'll already know what we had to have to do it."

They all pondered that a moment as Alfredo jammed the last of his tortilla into his mouth.

Sabella looked at each of them. "Anything else?"

They shrugged and shook their heads.

"Ghazi sends his congratulations and sincere grat.i.tude to each of you," Sabella said. "Everyone has been paid?"

Nods all around.

Out of habit and without even arranging it, the men drifted away from the warehouse one at a time over the next half hour. A few more loads of personal items disappeared as well, and soon everyone was gone except Sabella and his driver and bodyguards.

Each of them retreated into the dark reaches of the warehouse and returned with five-gallon plastic containers of diesel fuel. They kept retrieving containers until twenty of them stood around. They did not want an explosion, but they needed a fire that would be very destructive. Because diesel fuel burned hot, this would be guaranteed. They began emptying the fuel over everything under the wash of lights, working quickly to prevent fumes from acc.u.mulating and building to an explosive density.

The fire was burning along a trail headed into the warehouse as they got into the van and sped out of the maze of old buildings. Despite their plans, there was a concussive whump! whump! an almost lazy, m.u.f.fled explosion, as the warehouse was engulfed in flames. They felt the shudder of the concussion even inside the van, which was now many streets away. an almost lazy, m.u.f.fled explosion, as the warehouse was engulfed in flames. They felt the shudder of the concussion even inside the van, which was now many streets away.

As the van rattled back into the heart of the city, Sabella gazed out of the window, the sporadic bursts of secure communication playing softly in the background. His thoughts turned to what he had to do next.

Jude had been a puzzle to him from the beginning, when he first met him in Ciudad del Este. At first, Sabella had been sure that Jude was somehow connected to U.S. intelligence. He had come within a hair of having him killed, along with that impetuous idiot Ahmad, who had brought Jude into the picture. But something had made him hold off.

Sabella had watched Jude carefully on a video feed from the lobby of the shabby waterfront hotel. Jude had handled being dragged through the maze of his initial vetting with an accepting equanimity. It seemed that he knew what was happening, and he endured it the way a donkey endures a hailstorm, with wincing patience, with resignation and the understanding that it wouldn't last forever. If he was nervous at being put through the scrubbing process, he didn't let it show.

But when he had had enough, when he thought they'd taken it too far, he told them to f.u.c.k off. And he meant it. He had made the judgment that whatever good they might be for each other, it wasn't worth the price of admission. But then when Baida finally arrived, Jude held no grudges and quickly got down to business. That was when the conversations got interesting, and Sabella grew to like the Texan, who kept his own smuggling operation very close to the vest.

And then there was the discovery of commonalities. Sabella remembered having to drag these bits of information out of him when he interviewed him in Ciudad del Este. Jude grudgingly revealed his background, and the behavior that gave Sabella some relief from his suspicions. Often a mole would too readily reveal mutual interests with his target, trying too hard to establish a common ground in an effort to make the target identify with him and feel comfortable.

Not Jude. His world was his world, and he wanted to keep it that way. If Sabella didn't ask, Jude didn't tell, and even when he did, he didn't tell very much. Jude never volunteered anything. He was more interested in how he could make money moving anything they wanted him to move. Anything but drugs, that is. No drugs. Which was okay with Sabella, who already had that covered anyway.

So eventually they had gotten around to their pasts, and Sabella finally managed to get Jude to reveal that he had attended the University of Texas, too. One thing led to another, and as time pa.s.sed, Sabella found himself liking the guy. Which was a mistake. You could trust people (up to a point, of course, never absolutely), you could rely on them and give them responsibility, but you could never allow yourself to like them.

And maybe that was the only problem with Jude, and nothing more than that. Sabella just liked the guy, and that in itself set off the infinitesimal tremors of suspicion. Maybe, after all these years, it had come down to that: Circ.u.mstances were more meaningful than the people who populated them. Situation overrode character and personality. The extraordinary efforts that Sabella had to employ simply to stay alive had become what it meant to be alive. He had become the process to the extent that he was now little more than the process.

But now he had to move on to the next phase of his plan. And Jude was either exactly the right man to make it work for him or exactly the wrong man. It was time to find out which of the two he was.

Chapter 33.

From her place at the edge of the light, Susana called Kevern on her encrypted cell phone. Bern gathered from her side of the conversation that they were in a safe house, and that Kevern was as stunned as they were that Bern's impersonation had actually worked. Susana also pa.s.sed on the name of Estele de Leon Pheres, and then she explained the situation with Baida and said he was waiting for a response from Bern. There was some conversation about that, during which Susana said very little.

Bern watched her profile as she listened; she was s.h.i.+fting her weight, her movement nearly imperceptible at the edge of the shadow. He sensed that she was weighing her options. She must do that a thousand times a day, he thought, weighing the consequences of speaking or not speaking, of revealing or not revealing, of finessing a phrase this way or that. It was a life of calculation, of factoring in, of making choices.

It was, he guessed, a life of never really knowing if you had done the right thing or not, because the ramifications of having made a different choice were too complex to play out to a logical end. He wasn't even sure there were any logical ends in the life she lived.

Finally, the conversation ended, and she snapped the phone closed.

"Okay," she said, "Mondragon's boys are at Mingo's place now. Kevern's going to pa.s.s on the information about Estele de Leon.

"In the meantime, we need to come up with a plan for you to meet with Baida again, something to drag this out a little. There's a possibility that Quito's people will come up with something useful from Mingo's girls. Or if they find Estele de Leon in time, maybe she'll come up with some information that will help us in arranging this next meeting. If they do, that could change things. But for right now, we have to play this as if those possibilities don't exist. Kevern and his team are going to put their heads together, and then we'll get back in touch and see what we've got."

The rain continued off and on.

"Every hour, a quarter past the hour," Susana said, confirming Baida's instructions.

"Yeah," Bern said. All he could think of was that this was impossible. How were the two of them going to contrive a convincing plan? And what in the h.e.l.l was he going to do when the meeting actually took place? Like so much else about this madness, it seemed to be over-the-top. He couldn't believe that people actually did these sorts of things, and that whether they lived or died depended upon success or failure in these endeavors.

The rainy night was breathless now, and the curtains hung as limp as old promises.

Bern turned on the bed and bent over and pulled off his shoes and socks. Then he shed his s.h.i.+rt, draping it over his suit coat on the chair.

Susana didn't say anything. In the dusky light, he couldn't see the finer points of her features-the little wrinkle between her eyebrows that showed she was worried or thoughtful, the pull at the corner of her mouth that foretold a change of mind. She was staring toward the window again.

With a sigh, she turned to the window, unb.u.t.toned her dress all the way down to her stomach, and then fanned the sides for air. After a little while, she turned and came back to the bed and sat down, leaning against the headboard like Bern. She seemed oddly reluctant to begin the planning.

"What happened to Mondragon's face?" Bern asked.

"Somebody took it off for him," she said. "No one knows the real story. There are only outrageous rumors, everything from brujo brujo curses to a s.e.xual fantasy gone wrong. I don't think anyone really knows. No one's talking anyway." curses to a s.e.xual fantasy gone wrong. I don't think anyone really knows. No one's talking anyway."

"When did it happen?"

"A couple of years ago. Maybe a little more."

"Here in Mexico City?"

"Who knows." Susana pulled her legs up, her feet flat on the bed, the skirt of her dress pooling into her lap. She rammed the fingers of both hands into the front of her thick hair and held them there as she leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees. She stared into the mirror on the armoire.

Bern couldn't tell if she was staring at herself or at him, but in the blue haze he could see the white crotch of her panties between her raised thighs.

"It was Jude," she said, "who was supposed to kill Ghazi Baida."

There it was, baldly stated. What Bern had suspected all along, but had never been told, was now laid out in front of him like a corpse on a slab. No more euphemism of silence. No more implication. There it was, without apology.

For the past few days, Bern had been unable to escape the slightly out-of-focus feeling that he was constantly accompanied by a doppleganger. Jude was always there-in front of him, behind him, looking over his shoulder. Everyone he met spoke to him from within a context occupied by his double. Bern was constantly at a loss, struggling to read the hidden meanings, the implications, and the nuances in their remarks. But now, the doppleganger-his brother-acquired an altogether different dimension.

"Jesus Christ," he said, "Jude was . . . he-" He stopped himself. He wanted to get it straight. "He'd done this before?" he asked.

Now Bern was sure that she was looking at him in the gloomy reflection of the old speckled mirror, using it as an intermediary, as if it would make the truth less shocking, or maybe make it somehow more comprehensible.

"Yes," she said simply.

"That was . . . that was what he did?"

"He had done it before," she said; "that's all I know."

"He told you that?"

"Yes."

Bern was stunned, and he knew that she could sense that, even in the gloomy obscurity of the rainy light. He knew that she was well aware that suddenly he was nearly overcome with questions.

Still staring at him from between the wrists of her hands planted in her hair, she said, "Look, I know you've got to be . . . just . . . boiling over with questions, but we don't have the time to do that right now." She took her hands out of her hair and wrapped her arms around her knees. "I want you to understand the situation here, the situation Jude was in. It'll help you understand what we're up against. Just . . . just bear with me here. I promise you we'll talk about it all you want later. I'll tell you everything I know. But not now."

Bern couldn't bring himself to say a word. He nodded. It was all he could do.

"Okay," she said.

He heard her take a little breath before going on.

"But this job, Baida, it couldn't be, you know, a targeted killing," she said. "No bomb, no b.o.o.by trap, no missile from a chopper. It couldn't be seen to be a political a.s.sa.s.sination. Remember the clandestine aspect to this. Jude had to make it look like a drug hit. Plant a false ID on him. Better yet, just make him disappear. Baida lived in secrecy; he would die in secrecy. As if it never happened. Jude knew it wasn't going to be an easy thing to do."

Bern tried to concentrate on the logistics of it. He tried to ignore what was really making him light-headed-the genetic factor: What were the implications here for him?

"He couldn't do it down in Ciudad del Este," she went on, still using the mirror as an intermediary. "It would've been suicidal. Baida was well protected down there. By this time we had pretty good intelligence that he was moving into Mexico, and we thought it would be easier to do here, where our resources were better.

"And then Jude was killed. The a.s.sa.s.sination was s.h.i.+fted to Mondragon, and you were recruited to set up Baida."

She hesitated, then said, "Before we get on with this, I want you to know something else." Hesitation again. "Your first meeting with Baida tonight-we didn't know what he might've learned during that month or so after the killings in Tepito. There was no way we could know. Jude was our man inside. There was no other access. If Baida had . . . somehow learned the truth, that Jude had in fact been killed in Tepito . . . they would've killed you tonight."

She was as still as the curtains.

"That's the part that Mondragon-that none of us told you. There was always that little bit of possibility-well, that's not right, because we didn't know, had no idea, what the degree of possibility was-that you wouldn't make it back from your first meeting with Baida."

Bern looked at her dark eyes in the mirror, and suddenly Susana was transformed into an absolute stranger. In an instant, her nearness to him on the bed was turned into a proximity filled with danger, as if he were lying next to a woman who had walked in off the street. Her manner, her glance, even her pauses and silences emanated a sense that, with her, anything could happen. The next moment with her could bring anything from the ordinary to the fantastic, and all were equally likely. She simply did not distinguish between these vastly different contexts. He had no idea who she was. He knew nothing about her, could not imagine what her life had been like a moment before she walked into the room.

"Remember," she asked, "how upset I was about . . . finding out that Jude had been working with Mingo behind my back?" Her voice took on a reflective tone. "You could tell, I know, that that hurt me."

She hesitated. When she went on, she spoke more slowly, and more softly, as if she was afraid to touch the subject.

"The thing about working with a single partner undercover . . . it's more complex than you might imagine. It's a cliche, I know, but we were close in a special way. No one can ever understand just how that is unless they experience it for themselves. And precious few people qualify for that."

The sound of the rain lent a sense of consecration to the moment. She had lowered her head a little, her chin nearly resting on top of her knees. Her eyes glinted in the mirror, fixed on him from beneath her parted dark hair.

"What Jude and I needed from each other . . . and gave to each other during this last year, was as special in its own way as any personal sacrifice could ever be. We learned to turn loose of all the lifelines that people cling to, and we submitted to a kind of . . . free fall. Against all of our instincts, we . . . committed to the idea that the other person would always be waiting at the end of our fall. We were faithful unto death."

She cleared her throat, still looking at Bern.

"But that kind of trust doesn't come without a price. It changes you, a piece of you, forever."

The rain came hard now, no breeze, just straight down, slapping the leaves of the laurel trees below the window, thundering in the street.

He heard her clear her throat again.

"I needed you to know this," she said. "I told you that you could trust me, and then . . ."

Her voice trailed off. Uncharacteristically, she couldn't bring herself to come right out and say it.

"I wouldn't have done that to Jude," she said. "Ever. I couldn't have. And I shouldn't have done it to you, either."

She was very still, and Bern felt as if he were being lifted off the bed by the sound of the pounding rain.

"I'm . . . I'm telling you this," she said, abandoning their reflections in the mirror and turning to look directly at him, "because . . . this is only going to get rougher. I want you to know . . . that I'll give you the same kind of loyalty that I gave to Jude. I'm willing to go against my instincts . . . to be waiting at the end of the free fall."

She was still looking at him, close enough for him to reach out and touch her face. He didn't know what to say. She had just told him that she had been willing to risk letting him be killed to see if he could pa.s.s as Jude. And then almost within the same breath she had pledged a loyalty to him that superseded her loyalty to the ideas that had enabled her to betray him. The first revelation had been shocking; the second one seemed reckless in its promise.

As suddenly as it had begun, the downpour stopped. Silence. And then dripping, like far-off whispers, a world of whispers.

"What in G.o.d's name do you expect me to say to something like that?" he asked. Oddly, he wasn't furious; he was simply at a loss for framing a response. Despite himself, he believed her. He believed the betrayal, and he believed the pledge of loyalty. It was the staggering simultaneity of them that confused him, and made her seem wildly unstable.

She let go of her knees, leaned away from him, and got off the bed. She stood a moment with her back to him, and then she sat down in the chair near the nightstand, her legs apart, her hands sunk into the skirt gathered between her thighs, the front of her dress still unb.u.t.toned. She was looking toward the window, her profile powder blue in the wet light.

The city had vanished, and the universe was nothing but a dripping darkness as far as the mind could imagine.

Chapter 34.

Sleep was impossible, so Mondragon had reverted to what was becoming a way of life for him-cruising the city's streets in the dead hours of the night. As he stared through darkened windows, his thoughts often drifted into the familiar doldrums of self-pity, and at other times they were sucked into the superheated whirlwind of his loathing. Regardless, it all led to the same theme of his constant meditation: his hatred for Ghazi Baida. It was an ulcerated wound, one that was never allowed to heal.

He was halfway across the city when he got the call from Quito that they had picked up one of Domingo's girls, and immediately he instructed his driver to head toward the colonias colonias near Benito Juarez International. Then on the way, he got the second call about Estele de Leon Pheres, a name that gave him great hope the moment he heard it. He knew that name, and he knew the possibilities it implied. near Benito Juarez International. Then on the way, he got the second call about Estele de Leon Pheres, a name that gave him great hope the moment he heard it. He knew that name, and he knew the possibilities it implied.