Requiem for the Assassin - 06

by Russell Blake

  A young single actor with a taste for the wild life and the time and contacts to move tonnage of drugs wasn’t a stretch, but a priest whose most controversial feature was arguing for a more reasoned stance on difficult topics of interest to his congregation? El Rey didn’t see it. That was the genius of hiding in plain sight, he supposed. Who would suspect him? And more importantly, who would dare prosecute him without ironclad proof?

  The actor lived in Malibu, in a twelve-million-dollar beach house with its own gym, security system, maid, and groundskeeper. He was routinely photographed on the beach with a steady stream of eligible bachelorettes in various stages of undress, and several of the tabloids had enjoyed record sales due to his DUI offenses and scrapes with the law. Apparently young Perry wasn’t shy about his chemical fortification, nor was he one to back down from a fight, which ensured that when he wasn’t on the set, lavishing the camera with his brooding pout and monotone delivery, he was in the papers or on the news, growling ‘no comment’ or offering a middle finger to an adoring media that found his every utterance as fascinating as the discovery of a new gospel.

  Freeing him from his mortal coil would be tricky but ultimately satisfying for El Rey, in that the world would be no poorer for the actor’s departure, but the priest made him hesitate and question his mission. He’d contacted Tovar twice more since receiving the access codes to verify CISEN’s intel on Bolivar, and Tovar had been irritable but adamant. Bolivar was the right man and was to be eliminated as soon as possible.

  El Rey had long ago purged any moral or ethical concerns from his lexicon upon embarking on his career, and had executed enough miscreants to lose count. He’d learned long ago that there were no true innocents, and that when a professional of his stature was brought in, the target had earned his end, one way or another. Politicians were inevitably corrupt, cartel members were brutal animals, and all tended to drink at the same polluted watering holes from the same toxic sluice. If CISEN insisted that the admiral was dirty, he had no difficulty believing it, and even less imagining the American as bent; but the priest seemed a genuinely blameless man. The hit didn’t sit well with him, but in the end, his job wasn’t to play judge, simply executioner, and if CISEN wanted the archbishop terminated, it was out of El Rey’s hands to question it.

  After an afternoon studying the archbishop’s schedule and the layout of the rectory where he spent his nights, El Rey had developed a plan that would ensure the church stifled any in-depth investigation of his untimely death. He made a mental list of the items he would need and, after showering and affixing a goatee, went in search of the materials that would condemn the priest upon their discovery in his possession. Finding them was child’s play for El Rey, who knew the seedy underbelly of Mexico City like the lines on his own hands, and by nightfall he was back and packing a bag.

  He’d carry out the first assassination within the next forty-eight hours and then, with any luck, make his way into the U.S., where he’d have a date with Hollywood in a week’s time in as unlikely a location as any he could imagine.

  Chapter 10

  Beatriz smiled at the two security guards in the lobby of CISEN headquarters, a nondescript building in downtown Mexico City with nothing to alert the casual observer that the nation’s intelligence agency was located there other than an array of microwave transmitters on the roof. There were no signs, no external indications of the edifice’s importance in the government framework, only steel and glass entry doors that a close inspection would have revealed as unusually thick, and a dearth of windows ascribable to poor design by an architect unconcerned with aesthetics or sensible ventilation.

  The stouter of the pair held one of the twin doors open for her, and she offered demure thanks as she stepped onto the sidewalk, the quiet tree-lined side street still after the lunch rush had died. Beatriz took her time as she ambled to the corner and looked around as if uncertain of her destination and then darted across the larger boulevard during a lull in the steady procession of vehicles.

  She wandered to the middle of the block and stopped abruptly in front of a shoe store featuring a big sale. She peered from behind her sunglasses at her reflection in the display window to ensure she wasn’t being tailed while she appeared to consider the shop’s selection. Satisfied she was clean, she continued down the block and disappeared around the far corner, picking up her pace as she did so, and hailed a passing taxi once she was out of sight.

  Beatriz kept her eye on the side mirror as the driver negotiated the busy streets and regaled her with acerbic commentary about the mental deficiencies of the other motorists. She pressed a few folded peso notes into his hand when he rolled to a stop outside her destination and was out of the car before he had a chance to thank her for her generous tip.

  As a senior aide at CISEN she had top security clearances, but her activity was confined to clerical functions. The agency, like all Mexican bureaucracies, was a patriarchy, where all the meaningful positions went to men, usually from prominent families, while the women got coffee or fetched documents. She’d been employed there for a decade and was used to it, practically invisible now, her once-remarkable looks faded from the years and her clothing demure, as befitted a serious woman of maturity.

  She watched the taxi pull away into traffic before she continued past the restaurant and entered one of the countless small internet cafés that lined the downtown streets. She walked to the rear of the shop, where an ancient pay phone hung from the wall, deposited a coin into the slot, and dialed a number from memory.

  “Hola,” Carla Vega answered, her voice musical even over the telephone.

  “Carla. Hi. What number should I call you at?”

  Carla’s voice quieted to a whisper. “Just a second.” Beatriz heard muffled rustling, and then Carla returned and gave her a number. “In three minutes, okay?”

  Beatriz hung up, eyed her watch as the minutes seemed to take forever to wind around, and then dialed. Carla picked up after one ring.

  “I need to make this fast,” Beatriz said.

  “I understand.” Carla hesitated. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, yes, it’s fine. I just don’t want to be gone too long and arouse suspicion.”

  “Is that really an issue?”

  “Probably not, but I’d rather not take any chances.”

  “Fine. What do you have?”

  “It…it doesn’t make much sense. I was asked to pull a file on the archbishop of Tijuana.”

  “Really? That’s odd. Were you able to piece together why?”

  “No, but it was the same section that’s interested in the admiral and that actor.”

  “And you don’t have anything more on them?”

  “No. I’ve told you all I know.”

  “Which doesn’t add up to a lot.”

  “I’ll keep my eyes open and call if I find out anything more. That’s all I can do.”

  Carla paused. “I appreciate it – I’m just frustrated that I’m not finding any connection so far. I’ll…I’ll see you next month, okay?”

  “Sure. I have to go.”

  “All right. Ciao.”

  “Adios.”

  Carla replaced the handset of the pay phone at the hotel next door to the network building and stared off into space. Her cousin Beatriz had first approached her about irregularities at CISEN a month earlier, when she’d gotten a bad feeling after being asked to pull up data on Admiral Torreon – an unusual request considering his reputation of scrupulous honesty.

  Carla had promised her cousin she’d dig around to see if there were any irregularities surrounding the admiral. When she did, she’d come up empty, which surprised her. Everyone had at least some dirt on them once they ascended to a certain level, and the military was no different.

  Beatriz’s next call had brought Carla the actor. Why would CISEN have any interest in a celebrity whose only connection to Mexico was a Mexican father – Arturo Perez – which the son had anglicized to Perry as soon as he�
��d been of age, and who described his deceased parent as ‘Spanish,’ obviously ashamed of his Mexican heritage? It made no sense.

  And now a priest? Not just any priest, either. One of the more prominent figures in the Mexican Church.

  Perhaps it was all meaningless, but Carla had good instincts, and her alarms had been clamoring ever since the admiral had stonewalled her. Most movers and shakers dreamed of an interview with the charming and beautiful reporter, even the corrupt and the obviously guilty.

  The attack had driven home that there was more going on than was superficially evident, and if there was a connection between the actor and the admiral, she intended to discover what it was.

  Beatriz’s insistence on hyper-security bordering on paranoia would have been funny if she hadn’t known precisely what the intelligence agency was capable of in terms of eavesdropping. She’d hinted that the phones at the network were monitored as a matter of course, and had warned Carla that cell phones were laughably easy to tap. She’d also told Carla after a few too many cocktails several years earlier that the Americans were listening in on everything, everywhere – something that had seemed delusional until the NSA was revealed to be spying on the entire planet.

  Now Carla didn’t know what to think, but she had a good nose for a story, and her gut was telling her there was something here – she just needed to figure out what.

  Chapter 11

  Assistant Director Rodriguez entered the conference room for his weekly staff meeting with a scowl on his face, and moved to the head of the table, obviously preoccupied. His quick eyes scanned the nine men in the room without any trace of good humor, and he began by asking the section heads general questions about their projects. The answers were expected to be short, informational, and on-point: Rodriguez had little tolerance for the typical polite waffling that constituted most governmental meetings.

  As CISEN’s assistant director, Rodriguez effectively ran the intelligence service. The director was, as in many countries, a political appointee, a figurehead with little or no relevant experience. Rodriguez, on the other hand, had spent his entire career with CISEN and had risen from being a field agent to an analyst and then into management. When the last shakeup had occurred, he’d been thrust into his current position, where he’d thrived on the long hours and constant intellectual demands.

  Pedro Ybarra finished his report on several operations that were ongoing in Guatemala, and Rodriguez shifted his attention to Manuel Bernardo, who ran the agency’s clandestine ops division – in charge of offensives that involved violence or assassination.

  “What do we know about the attack on Admiral Torreon?” Rodriguez snapped after the preliminaries were over.

  “We believe that the attempt was a cartel trying to eliminate him. He’s done a remarkably good job in slowing the inflow of cocaine through the Pacific coast ports, and it’s obvious that someone wants him out of the picture.”

  “Which cartel?”

  “Unknown at this time. We have our ear to the ground, but so far nothing definitive.”

  “Keep me informed. I have a meeting tomorrow with the president’s people, and that’s going to be one of the subjects. It would be nice to have something other than a shoulder shrug to offer.”

  Bernardo nodded and made a small note on his pad.

  “What about Hammer?” Rodriguez asked. Hammer was the code name CISEN had given El Rey.

  “Nothing new to report. Up for another booster shot.”

  “He’s been behaving?”

  “As far as we can tell.”

  Rodriguez turned to the next section head. “Gabriel, tell us how we’re going to stop the flow of guns from the U.S.”

  The meeting continued for another hour, and when it broke up, Rodriguez left without comment, his head pounding from another long night with little sleep. Once in his office, he dry swallowed two painkillers and poured himself his sixth cup of coffee of the day and, after taking a seat behind his desk, reached for the phone.

  ~ ~ ~

  El Rey smiled at the ticket agent behind the Aeroméxico counter at Benito Juárez airport as she glanced at his driver’s license and printed out his boarding pass. He’d been outfitted with several identities by CISEN and now carried both a set of new Mexican papers as well as a passport and American green card identifying him as an El Salvadorian cleared to work in the United States. That ID would come into play after he’d dispatched the archbishop.

  The flight from Mexico City to Tijuana was smooth, and as the plane completed its final approach, he peered through his window at the border city’s gray-brown sprawl. Shantytowns, little more than collections of pallets with tar paper nailed over them, clung to the sides of the hills within shouting distance of the United States’ prosperity and boundless opportunity. The infamous wall stretched to the Pacific Ocean, with green and white Border Patrol trucks cruising along dirt tracks that ran along the no-man’s-land between the state of California’s southernmost reach and Baja California’s northernmost.

  A pall of smog hung over Tijuana as the plane dropped toward the airport, and El Rey contrasted the distant gleam of San Diego’s chrome and glass skyline with the impoverished barrios that comprised most of Tijuana. It wasn’t hard for him to understand the frustration the poor felt gazing at the riches only a few miles away from their shacks, where rudiments like potable water were a luxury and rivulets of sewage coursed down dirt streets, souring the atmosphere as toddlers played in the toxic dirt.

  El Rey exited the terminal and eyed the border fence across the boulevard. Scores of multicolored coffins and crosses mounted to the steel siding commemorated the thousands who’d died attempting crossings. He waited in line for a taxi as vehicles raced by on the frontage artery, junkers that were more Bondo than metal jockeying for position between Mercedes and Audis. The trip to the district where the archdiocese was located took fifteen minutes in traffic, and El Rey had the driver drop him off near the municipal government building a block away from the church.

  He ambled along the avenue, pausing to admire the bronze effigy of Miguel Hidalgo jutting from the roundabout at the junction of Avenida Independencia and Paseo Centenario Tijuana, and then settled in for lunch at a small sidewalk café across from the archdiocese, its tables deserted post-lunch hour. CISEN had provided blueprints of the cathedral and associated buildings, and El Rey had already decided on his preferred method of entry to the bishop’s quarters. He had everything he required in his bag and now wanted to soak up the local environment – often, blueprints didn’t capture important nuances about a target, and he’d learned to spend time at the sites of his missions before taking action.

  His leisurely lunch took over an hour, and once he’d paid and walked around the block to verify the position of the traffic cameras, he walked to a moderately priced hotel a quarter mile from the archdiocese that catered to tourists. After suffering through an elevator ride with three American men in town for a bachelor party, their corpulent forms stinking of beer, tequila, and cigarettes, he made his way to his room, where he spent the late afternoon catching up on his sleep in preparation for a preliminary prowl around the archdiocese that evening.

  Chapter 12

  Mexico City, Mexico

  Cruz rolled over and groped for his screeching cell phone on the night table next to the bed. Dinah groaned as he rose and padded to the bathroom, muted the ring, and answered as he pulled the door closed behind him.

  “Yes?”

  “Capitan, it’s Briones.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. I recognize your number. What can I do for you at…3:47 in the morning?”

  “I’m sorry to call at this hour, but you wanted to be notified if there was another high-profile kidnapping.”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “It’s bad, but could have been worse. This time there was a gun battle between the bodyguards and the kidnappers. The kidnappers were all killed except for the getaway driver, who crashed as he was leaving the scene. The bodyg
uards held him until the metropolitan police arrived, and then we got the call.”

  Cruz was wide awake now. “Where did all this transpire?”

  “Club Vampiro. It’s down on–”

  “I know where it is,” Cruz snapped. “Where are you?”

  “On my way there right now.”

  “Can you pick me up in…ten minutes?”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m calling.”

  “I’ll see you downstairs. Oh, what about the driver? Where was he taken?”

  “The local police turned him over to us. He’s at headquarters in a holding cell. A doctor’s with him right now – apparently he’s got some bruises and contusions, but the airbag and his seat belt saved him from worse.”

  “I’ll see you shortly,” Cruz said and hung up. He dressed quickly and whispered to Dinah as he was opening the bedroom door.

  “I’m sorry, mi amor. I have to go.”

  Dinah grunted, pulled the covers over herself, waved a limp hand, and was asleep again before Cruz made it to the condo entry. He struggled into his shoulder holster, donned a black windbreaker, and slipped his badge and wallet into a pocket before making his way downstairs. Two uniformed Federales sat in the lobby, his round-the-clock security team, a mandatory precaution ever since he’d been kidnapped by the head of the Sinaloa cartel for an impromptu meeting. The men stiffened when Cruz emerged from the elevator, and then scrambled to their feet.

  Cruz exited the building and waited on the deserted sidewalk, framed by his security men, only the distant rumble of a car passing on the main boulevard for company.