Minnie looked up at the blank, dead squares of the screens on the three walls around her and back at the switch. Curious, she threaded her way past the desk to the corner of the console, which was as far as the chain would let her reach. She stretched out her hand for the switch and found she was about two feet too far away from it.
A glance around the room showed no handy stick or pointing device. A hockey stick in this climate was too much to ask for, but all she needed was two extra feet.
She looked down at her bare feet. “Two extra feet,” she murmured and smiled. She again stretched herself out to the maximum and this time she brought her leg up in a ballet movement, reached out with her toe and delicately rocked the switch to the opposite position.
She was rewarded with an electronic pop and the bank of screens to her right fizzed to life. Silent life. She scanned them all.
The one on the far left, on the bottom, showed an office with someone’s head just peeping over the back of the big leather chair in front of the desk. By the window.... Minnie frowned. Yes, that was Torrez, the white-haired man. Movement on the other side of the screen pulled her gaze.
Zalaya.
This had to be Serrano’s office then. Did Serrano know his own office was bugged? That was an answer she would give money to know.
She frowned up at the screen, watching Torrez’s lips move. She needed sound. But the buttons and dials on the console were mostly unlabeled. The labels that existed were in Spanish and too technical for her to translate. She stared at each dial and sliding control and switch anyway, trying to guess its purpose. Then she found the button in a row of small switches at the very back on the console, mounted on the vertical panel behind the slides and dials. It had a tiny speaker symbol, almost identical to the volume symbol on her MP3 player.
She reached over and pushed it in and immediately Torrez’s voice jumped from the speaker set into the panel. She grinned, pleased at her success, but as Torrez’s fast Spanish registered, her grin faded for he was speaking of death and assassination...and of Nicolás Escobedo.
* * * * *
“It was ill-conceived,” Zalaya judged. “And that does not even begin to address the pathetic execution of the plan.”
Serrano smiled. “There was nothing wrong with the execution.”
“Of course not! As long as you overlook the fact that you missed the intended target.”
“Who cares?” Torrez said from his position by the window, where he watched foot traffic along the path between the administrative buildings and the palace. “The bomb achieved everything else. It has them virtually headless. Escobedo cannot control them single-handed and I can assure you there is no one of Blanco’s caliber there to pick up the slack. Escobedo will crumble and the whole operation with him.”
Serrano smiled and tried to hide it. It pleased him when his senior officers bickered. It was an excellent way to keep them on their toes and operating at peak efficiency.
Zalaya didn’t seem particularly stirred, however. He raised a single brow at Torrez’s announcement. “Really? That’s your analysis of the whole debacle?”
Torrez’s face hardened. “You have a better one?”
Zalaya gave a hard smile. “For someone who has lived amongst these people, you’ve learned very little about them. Did you spend all your time there prowling the bars and fucking American coeds?”
Torrez’s neck flushed red and the color gradually rose to cover his face. “Are you deliberately trying to piss me off?” he asked stiffly.
Zalaya spread his hand in a flourish. “All those jocks...no wonder you couldn’t keep your pretty mind on the job at hand.”
Torrez’s jaw rippled. He glanced at Serrano then back to Zalaya. Serrano noted that Torrez’s hand was curled into a fist so tight the color had drained from the knuckles. White bands of fury bracketed his mouth.
“At least I was there doing something useful,” Torrez ground out. “Not lying on my back on a hospital bed.”
Zalaya actually laughed, showing even white teeth. “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s the best insult you can come up with? Torrez, you continually fail to amaze me.” Zalaya got to his feet, the cane propping him. “I am not only deliberately making you angry, I am also demonstrating that you have no idea what those two pounds of plastique will do to the people in that house.”
“What is he talking about?” Torrez appealed to Serrano.
Serrano looked to Zalaya, only slightly less baffled.
“I’m talking about simple psychology,” Zalaya said. “It is possible you may not have heard of it, because you clearly have no idea how to apply it.”
“And you do?” Torrez raged back.
“I just pushed all your buttons, didn’t I?” Zalaya asked coolly.
Torrez’s mouth opened, but nothing emerged. Finally he shut his mouth with a snap.
Serrano began to laugh, his belly jiggling. It had been a long while since Zalaya had dismantled someone so completely.
But Zalaya was not finished with Torrez yet. He moved restlessly, shifting the weaker leg. “I never met Nicolás Escobedo personally, but even from a distance I learned enough about him to know the man would never reach out and grasp visible power for himself. He was perfectly conditioned by his brother’s blinding presidency into thinking his place could only ever be in the shadows. He’d have to be pushed into being a formal leader—and pushed hard.
“If you had just left him alone, Torrez, he would have procrastinated himself into a standstill. There is no one else in that house with the ability to lead them into anything more complicated than a picnic—not even Blanco. By killing Blanco, you’ve given Escobedo the push he needed. Now he’s going to come after us. Not tomorrow, not the next day. But soon. Because you’ve given him all the reason he needs.”
“Me?” Torrez shot back. “I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
Zalaya became very still. “Is that so?” he said quietly, glancing at Serrano.
Serrano sighed. It was too late to recover from this now. He mentally cursed Torrez’s flaring temper and big mouth. Usually the man was far more stable, but usually he didn’t have Zalaya needling him with the precision of a surgeon. “You can go,” he told Torrez shortly.
Torrez nodded, unable to hide his relief and headed for the door, skirting Zalaya carefully. When the door shut, Zalaya tapped his fingertips on the top of the cane, a quiet thrumming. “Just how many men do you have embedded in that house, anyway?”
Serrano shrugged. “That’s a need-to-know figure.”
Zalaya rammed his fist onto the desk, making the ormolu clock bounce. “And I need to know these things! This assassination was utterly the wrong move and I could have spared you the error if you’d come to me first.”
“If we had hit Escobedo, you wouldn’t be saying that.”
“You were never going to hit him that way! I could have told you he wouldn’t personally accept an invitation that involved a public appearance. The man has holed himself up in that barricaded house and nothing short of a disaster would bring him out.” Zalaya’s mouth turned down. “Well, you’ve given him the disaster.”
“Remember your place,” Serrano said, trying to keep his voice as cool as possible. But in fact he was startled by the change in Zalaya—the sudden flare of temper was something he had never witnessed before.
Zalaya straightened up. “I know why I am here,” he said, just as abruptly the cool schemer again. “I am your intelligence director. I cannot do my job in a vacuum. I must have information. Data.” He smiled briefly. “Facts. If I do not have all the facts, I cannot assess and interpret correctly.”
“It’s also your job to uncover the facts,” Serrano pointed out. “I’m not here to do that for you.”
“You’re not supposed to be withholding them either.” Zalaya sighed and changed direction. “Tell me who worked the job on Blanco. I’ll arrange to have him pulled out. Damage control—we need to get him back before they sniff him out, fo
r Escobedo will find him now you’ve kicked him into gear.”
Serrano picked up his pen and pretended to get back to work. “That’s not something you need to concern yourself with. I have it under control.”
Zalaya’s answer was a long time coming. “I see,” he said at last.
When Serrano looked up, Zalaya was reaching for the door handle. “Where do you think you’re going?” Serrano asked, astonished.
Zalaya smiled. “I’ve been around you long enough to know when I’ve been dismissed.”
After the door had shut softly behind Zalaya, Serrano sat for a long time staring out the window at the cloudless blue sky that was all he could see from here. The featureless sky was a comfort. As long as he could see no buildings, he knew that no potential snipers could get a sight line on this window, or him sitting behind it.
But the comfort was a background emotion. He was busy turning thoughts and impressions over in his head.
Although Zalaya was the expert at manipulating and reading men, Serrano had acquired a degree of skill in it too. His expertise came via hard experience and it took deep thought and deliberate application for him to arrive at useful conclusions, whereas Zalaya seemed to reach inside a man’s mind and pluck his thoughts wholesale. But that was why Serrano employed Zalaya, so that he did not have to strain himself outguessing his opponents.
Therefore, the long moments he sat thinking now were challenging ones, but the results were well worth the effort.
At the end of twenty minutes he opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a cell phone, ignoring the two telephones sitting on his desk. The delicate cell phone was too small for his big hands and he was forced to tap out the text message at turtle speed. He sent it, turned off the cell phone and threw it back into the drawer.
It was time to do his own prodding.
Chapter Sixteen
When Zalaya stepped through the bedroom door two hours later, the sun was setting and the world outside the window was touched by amber. Minnie sat on the side of the bed, wolfing down food. She lowered the tortilla as he appeared, her heart leaping.
She badly wanted to question him about Blanco’s death, but the eye of the camera behind him and the microphone under the bed kept her silent.
He looked irritated. “I told you to be naked and waiting.”
“Then you shouldn’t have sent food,” she said crisply. “Although that wouldn’t have gained you what you wanted either. Shoot me if you want. I’m too starving to care.” She bit into the tortilla, savoring the delicious spices.
“Oh, keep up your strength, by all means,” he returned. He made his way to the bathroom, leaning heavily on the cane, but paused by the head of the bed, opposite her. Then, as quick as a snake, his hand snatched up the chain where it lay on the bed. He hauled on it, dragging her across the bed toward him.
She managed to hold in the startled cry that pushed at her lips but was unable to resist the sheer power exerted on the chain. She slithered over the bedcover like a hooked fish.
He looped the chain around the bedpost, forcing her arm up high. “If you think to move me with your pleas of hunger, you’ve misjudged me,” he told her. He put the cane aside and limped around the bed, bringing the extra length of chain with him, keeping it taut so that her bound wrist could not slip free.
When he reached the other side of the bed, she scrunched up to the post where her arm was anchored, as far from him as possible. He gave an impatient sound and dug into his pocket. She thought he reached for his gun, but what he pulled out was a switchblade knife. He triggered the blade and climbed across the bed toward her.
All Minnie could see was the knife coming toward her. It looked huge. Her breath jammed in her throat as the knife came to rest against her cheek. Zalaya’s gaze was relentless.
“Lift up your other hand. Reach for the other post,” he said very quietly.
The blade was cold against her cheek as she lifted her hand obediently. He looped chain around the wrist and the post, holding it there, before lifting the blade away.
She was bound and helpless again.
Zalaya folded the knife closed with a practiced motion and weighed it in his hand as he considered her. “On second thought,” he murmured, and flicked the knife open again. He brought it up toward her throat and she was helpless to prevent her shudder. She drew herself back, away from the blade.
He slipped the tip beneath the button on her dress and the button flew across the bed to patter against the closet.
She looked down at the tufts of thread that remained as the neckline of the dress sagged apart then up at him. “You asshole, you deliberately let me think you were going to cut my throat.” Her voice was thick with a lethal cocktail of anger, fear and relief.
In the waning light his dark gaze lifted to her face. “Learn the lesson well. Do not presume you know me.” He dropped the knife to the next button and it went flying like the first. “The fact is you will never know what I will do next.” The third button, the one that held the dress closed over her breasts, flipped away at the touch of the tip of the knife. “You will never understand me and should not bother to try.” The fourth button flopped onto the bed by her hip and now the dress gaped open. Only gravity held the fine fabric over her breasts and the next button would take care of that. He rested the knife against the button and looked up at her again. “Your only option is to obey me.”
He gripped the hem of the dress, stretching it taut so that he could shear the threads beneath the button. The button dropped to the cover, the dress slid aside and revealed her breasts and most of her torso. She waited for him to look up again and spoke as evenly and as clearly as she could. “You and whose army?”
His gaze dropped, his focus suddenly turned inward and his face grew still. She saw his chest lift and lower, as if he had given a subtle, hidden sigh. “Not mine,” he whispered. Then he straightened and folded the knife up with the same practiced flick of the wrist, almost like a man shaking himself back to reality.
Minnie stared at him, her heart hurting as it kicked up to yet a higher speed. It was the first time she had seen Zalaya’s mask slip to reveal Duardo beneath. Had she really seen doubt in his face? For one tiny moment it had seemed like he was troubled. Given the challenges he must have faced every day in this role, what had happened to make him doubt like that?
Serrano? The meeting she had witnessed had been troubling even to her.
A heavy pummeling on the door made them both jump and Minnie gasped. Her heart could not stand much more of this. She was beginning to feel sick from the yo-yo of emotions and the surges of adrenaline.
Zalaya flipped the knife open again, staring at her. “Stay still,” he warned, resting the flat of the blade between her breasts. “Stay very still.”
She froze.
“Who dares to bother me?” he shouted in Spanish.
The pummeling stopped. “Forgive me, Colonel. I would not dream....” came the start of a timid reply, before it was drowned by a louder basso bellow.
“Just open the damn door, you imbecile!”
Minnie caught her breath. It sounded like Serrano. The door swept open and Serrano himself strode into the room.
She nearly jumped. Nearly. But the cold blade against her chest kept her still.
Serrano stood barely five and a half feet tall, yet his girth was that of a much bigger man. He was staring at Zalaya, but when his feet had carried him into the center of the room, he registered what Zalaya was doing and blinked.
“They told me your tastes ran to these sorts of games,” he said. His eyes crawled all over Minnie, taking in her exposed breasts, her belly and the hint of pubic hair. She wanted to grimace her distaste at such ogling but lifted her chin and stared Serrano in the eye. Challenge. Always challenge, she reminded herself.
Zalaya swiveled the knife shut with a snap and stood up. He was taller than Serrano by a good six inches. “And they were right,” he said dryly. “So why interrupt me when you
can clearly see I am occupied?”
Serrano cleared his throat and dragged his gaze away from Minnie. Minnie saw beads of sweat suddenly gather at his temples. Her nudity, her position, the knife at her breast...they had disconcerted Serrano.
She kept her gaze locked on him, her face utterly neutral, knowing the steadiness of her gaze would add to his discomfort.
“Should we go into your office?” he suggested to Zalaya, waving toward her. He kept his gaze on Zalaya, however.
Zalaya shrugged. “Where we speak is immaterial.”
“How much does she understand?” Serrano asked, lowering his voice.
“That is also completely irrelevant.”
Serrano shifted on his feet, growing more uncomfortable with each passing second. He cleared his throat again and looked at the ground, refocusing. Then he confronted Zalaya. “I want to see your ruined eye,” he said.
Zalaya crossed his arms, looking as unruffled as usual. He smiled. “Do you hover around car accidents, too?”
Serrano’s face tightened. “I learned today what lies beneath that patch of yours. You said it was a shooting accident, yes?”
Zalaya studied Serrano, taking his time. “A rifle with a faulty barrel backfired,” he said at last, his voice and expression cool.
Serrano nodded. “That’s right. I want to see it.”
“Why would you need this confirmation? You have been satisfied with my work. I have proved my worth. Why does it matter what lies beneath the patch?”
Serrano’s face darkened with building anger. Minnie could see that he had completely forgotten she was in the room. “Indulge me, Colonel,” he said, his own voice soft. “Call it my little whim.”
Again, Zalaya took his time, assessing Serrano. It seemed he moved with great reluctance, but he finally reached up to the leather patch covering his eye and lifted it. Minnie could not see beneath—it was his right eye, the side furthest from her. It seemed that as he lifted the patch he turned his body slightly, so that she could not possibly see anything.
Serrano looked for only a second or two then dropped his gaze and took a deep breath.
Black Heart Page 20
