by Mark Dawson
Milton moved away from the window and leant against a telephone kiosk. He looked up and down the street and across the strip mall but if González had other men here, they were good. Milton could see nothing that made him think that there was any sort of back up. González was on his own. He could feel the reassuring coldness of the Springfield’s barrel pressed against his spine. Thirteen shots in the clip, one in the chamber. He hoped they would be enough.
Beau and González got up.
Milton moved to the entrance. There was a bench next to the door, an advertisement for a law firm on the backrest. He sat down behind a newspaper he found on the floor, the Springfield hidden in his lap. Beau came out first, González behind him. Milton let them pass, folded the newspaper over the arm of the bench and took the gun. He followed. When they reached González’s car Milton pressed the barrel against González’s coccyx.
“Nice and easy,” he said.
González turned his head a little, looking back from the corner of his eyes.
“You again.”
“That’s right.”
“I still don’t know your name.”
“I know.”
“English, then. Why are you always involved in my business, English?”
Milton glanced at Baxter. “You alright?”
“Feel a bit stupid.”
“Get his gun.”
Baxter frisked him quickly, finding a gold-plated Colt .45 in a holster clipped to his belt. He unfastened the holster and removed it.
“Look at this. Gold? You might have money but you can’t buy class.”
González said nothing. He just smiled.
“Beau,” Milton said. “What are you driving?”
“The Jeep,” he said, nodding to the red Cherokee with tinted windows.
“Get it started.”
“You have already taken too long, English,” González said. “My family has eyes everywhere. They are our falcons––waiters, barmen, newspaper vendors, taxi drivers, even the cholos on the street corners. A hundred dollars a week so that we may know everything about the comings and goings of our city. My Padre will know what you are doing before he sits down to dinner. And then he will find you.”
“You’ll be halfway back to New Mexico by then, partner,” Beau said.
Milton prodded González in the back and propelled him towards the Jeep. When they reached the car the Mexican finally turned around to face him. “Every moment in your life is a choice, English. Every moment is a chance to go this way or that. You are making a choice now. You have picked an unwise course and you will have to face the consequences of your decision.”
Milton watched him carefully, a practiced assessment that was so automatic that he rarely realised that he was making it. He watched the dilation in his eyes and the pulse in the artery in his neck. He saw the rate of his breathing. The man was as relaxed as if they were old friends, meeting up by coincidence and engaging in banal small talk about their families. Milton had seen plenty of disconcerting people before but this man––Santa Muerta––this man was something else. A real piece of work.
“The way I’m coming at it,” Beau said, “you ain’t in a position to lecture anyone.”
González kept his eyes on Milton. “Not everyone is suited to this line of work, English. Having a gun pointed at someone can sometimes lead people to exaggerate their own abilities. They tell themselves that they are in control of events where perhaps they are not.”
“Don’t worry yourself on my account,” Milton said. “I’m as used to this as you are. Get in the car.”
Baxter opened the door and, smiling serenely and without another word, González got in.
* * *
38.
EL PATRÓN had a small mansion on the outskirts of Juárez. He had dozens, all around Mexico. This was in the best part of the city, St Mark’s Corner, a gated community approached through a series of arches and set around a pleasant green. It was a quiet retreat of mansions, each more garish than the next. Outside some were vehicles marked with the corporate logos of the owners of the maquiladoras. In other forecourts were SUVs with blacked-out windows and bullet-proof panels; those belonged to the drug barons. The community had a private security detail that Felipe bolstered whenever he was in residence. His men were posted at the gates now, in the grounds of the mansion and in the watchtower that he had constructed at the end of the drive. Twenty of his very best men, most related to him by blood or marriage, vigilant and disposed towards violence. His doctor had advised him that sleep was important for a man of his age and he made sure that he always slept well.
He had bought the place a year ago, persuading the prominent lawyer who had owned it that it was in his best interests to sell. He hadn’t stiffed him on the price––he felt no need to drive a hard bargain––and he had sent three bags with a million dollars in each as a mark of his gratitude. He had visited the house before the lawyer had owned it and he had always been fond of it. It was surrounded on all sides by tall brick walls. It had been built with a small cupola, an architectural shorthand for extravagance in Juárez. Inside, there were baroque tables mixed with minimalist leather couches, red velvet curtains and a disco ball, Oriental rugs and, on the wall above the fireplace, a knockoff of Picasso’s ‘Guernica.’ The décor was not systematic thanks to the fact that it had been purchased, at various times, by several of Felipe’s wives. There was a glass-enclosed pool. A room in the basement held a large pile of stacked banknotes––four feet cubed––a little over twenty million, all told. Another held his armoury, some of the guns plated in gold. There were just a few street-facing windows and, at his insistence, the best security system that money could buy.
Marilyn Monroe had owned the house at one time; the rumour was that the purchase was a drunken extravagance after a night in the Kentucky Bar following her divorce from that American writer. It reminded him of another time in Juárez, so different from how things were today that it was almost another place. Salaciousness and audacity, everything for sale, most of it carnal.
The fleshpot and the dope-den.
Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen.
Matadors and baseball heroes and movie stars.
The Fiesta Club, The Chinese Palace, The Kentucky.
Not an innocent time, because Juárez could never be innocent, but innocent compared to what had followed in the wake of the narco wars. He was old enough to remember all of it, the town’s history as evident to him as the rings on a split tree trunk.
The house was busy tonight. He was hosting a party for the gringos. Plenty of his lieutenants were present, together with a significant delegation from the city. The deputy mayor, representatives from the federales, senior officers from the army. They had erected a wrestling ring in the garden and a tag team of luchadores were putting on an athletic display; wiry, masked wrestlers who grappled and fought, climbing the turnbuckles to perform ever more impressive dives and twists. The best cueros from the brothels that Felipe owned had been brought to the house to provide their own kind of entertainment. Drink and drugs were unlimited.
He and Isaac were enjoying a bottle of very expensive wine. Isaac’s colleagues were partying with the women. They were gross Americanos. Both were drunk. No style or class. Que te den por el culo, he thought. He had no respect for them, none at all, but he put on a wide smile and played the generous host. Business was business, after all, and they stood to make him a lot of money.
“Are you happy, Isaac?” Felipe asked.
“Yes, El Patrón.”
“Our arrangement is satisfactory to you?”
“Are you kidding? It’s perfect.”
They had discussed the arrangement for a couple of hours. Felipe would deliver his product across the border in a number of different ways: by truck and car through Juárez, by ultralight into the fields of New Mexico and Texas, and through the tunnel that he was in the process of building. Isaac owned several commercial ranches across the south-west and had a fleet of t
rucks to deliver the slaughtered cows and sheep to market. The product would be hidden inside the carcasses of the animals and distributed to a network of dealers that the two would arrange together.
Yes, he thought. It was satisfactory. Business came first, but there would come a time when another means of distribution was available to him and, when that happened, he would not forget the way that Isaac had spoken to him in the desert. The impudence. The unspoken threat: we will return north without speaking to you if you do not give us the reassurances that we want. Felipe had a long memory and he bore a grudge. There would be an accounting.
“I’m looking forward to seeing your new facility,” Isaac said.
“Ah, yes. The lab. It is nearly finished.”
“When will it be ready?”
“By the end of the week. Twenty pounds of meth every day. Excellent quality, too. I will show you.”
“Who is your cook?”
“An American. He used to work for a pharmaceutical company. Blue chip.”
“How’d you find him?”
“I keep my eyes open, Isaac.”
The man grinned at him. “When can we go see it?”
“Tomorrow. We will fly.”
He was interrupted by Pablo. The man was scared. “El Patrón,” he said, his face bleached of colour. “Please––may I have a word with you?”
“What is it?” he said mildly.
The man looked agonised. “In private, El Patrón, por favor.”
“Excuse me,” he said with an easy smile even as his temper was bubbling. He moved to the side, out of earshot, and glared at Pablo. “What is it?”
“Your son. It is Adolfo. He has been abducted.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“There is a gringo bounty hunter in town.”
“Working for who?”
“The Lucianos. There is a price on your son’s head––the killings in the desert.”
“And this man––he has him?”
“Yes––him and another. Adolfo had surprised the bounty hunter. We were going to take him out into the desert and kill him but, as they left the place where they had met, he was stopped by a second man. We think he was the man at the restaurant on Monday night.”
“And who is he?”
“We don’t know, El Patrón.”
His temper flared. “Do we know anything?”
“He’s been protecting the journalist from the restaurant. Adolfo visited her this morning to finish her off and this man was there. He is English. There is some connection between them.”
“Then if we cannot find him, we must find her and then we will find him.” He put down his glass of wine. Isaac was looking at him quizzically; he replaced the angry mask that had fallen across his face with a warm and reassuring smile. “Call the police,” he said quietly to Pablo. “They are to put roadblocks on every road out of Juárez. No-one leaves without the car being checked. And put the word out: a million dollars to whoever can bring me her. A million dollars if anyone can bring me him. Tell all our falcons. I want them found.”
* * *
39.
ANNA HAD been picked up from her two-bedroom flat in Cheltenham High Street at four in the morning. The car was a black BMW with tinted windows and a uniformed driver. She wasn’t used to being chauffeured and she felt a little out of place, her grubby Doc Martins against the spotless cream carpet inside the car. The man said very little as they headed west, following the A40 until it became the M40. That suited her well. She slept for the first half hour and then, roused as the sun rose into a sky of wispy low clouds, she took out her laptop and reviewed––for the hundredth time––the report she had made on John Milton.
She was excited. It wasn’t unheard of for an analyst to be sent out into the field, but it was the first time that it had happened to her. The rationale was obvious and made sense: if Milton slipped beneath the surface again, it was best to have an expert in situ to help track him down again.
And they were right: she knew him as well as anyone.
The trip also promised to furnish her with a much better idea of how Group 15 worked. They had always been unable to find out much about them, save the rumour and gossip that occasionally reached the ears of the Federal Security Service; they had certainly never been on actual operations with them. That, she knew, would stand her in excellent stead with Colonel Shcherbakov.
The driver turned into Ickenham and then, after a further few minutes, turned and slowed to a stop outside the armed guards stationed at the entrance of RAF Northolt. He showed his credentials and drove onto the base, following a route that brought him straight onto the main runway. A Gulfstream G280 was being readied for flight. It was painted gleaming white, the sunlight sparking off the fuselage. The driver took her luggage from the boot and added it to the pile of gear that two technicians were loading into the hold. Anna got out and stared at them. A large black fabric bag was open, the contents being checked. Anna saw automatic rifles, the metal glinting black and icy in the early light.
She paused at the steps to the cabin.
The pilot, performing a final external check, smiled at her. “Miss Thackeray?”
“Yes.”
“Good morning, ma’am. Up you go. They’re waiting inside.”
Anna climbed the steps and entered the jet. The cabin was plush. Decadent. Eight handcrafted leather seats, a workstation and a three-person sofa. Large porthole windows. Proper cutlery on the tables. Pewter crockery. Crystal glasses. One of the portholes faced the door and she glimpsed her reflection: the boots, the ripped jeans and the faded and frayed t-shirt looked completely out of place. She swallowed, daunted, her usual confidence knocked just a little. She almost wished that she had worn something more––well, something more appropriate.
Five men and a woman were arranging themselves around the cabin.
She felt self-conscious. “Hello,” she said.
Captain Pope turned to her. “Good morning, Miss Thackeray.”
“Morning.”
He looked at her and frowned. It was quizzical––perhaps even amused––and not disapproving. “Get yourself settled. We’ll be taking off soon.”
“Introductions first?”
He smiled patiently. “You know who I am. Lance-Corporal Hammond’s over there with the headphones. That’s Lance-Corporal Callan. Corporal Spenser and Corporal Blake are playing cards. And Sergeant Underwood is sleeping.”
Anna looked the others over.
The woman, Hammond, looked to be in her early thirties. Five eight, black hair, cut severely. Compact and powerful. Callan was tall and slender. Strikingly handsome. Hair in tight curls, so blond as to almost be white. Skin was white, too, like alabaster. A cruelty to his thin lips and unfeeling eyes that Anna found unsettling. Alien. Spenser was shorter, bald and heavily muscled. Blake was darker skinned. Something about him was a little exotic. Foreign, perhaps. Underwood had a sleeping mask over his face, obscuring his features.
They looked up at her but no-one spoke.
Pope smiled at her. “Take your seat,” he said. “Wheels up in five minutes.”
* * *
40.
THERE WAS a sign on the wall of the room that said that the motel had wifi. Caterina booted up her laptop, located the network, and joined it. She had installed police scanner software and it was then, listening to those disinterested voices, bracketed by static, that she heard about the body of the missing girl who had been found.
The police said that the girl had been identified as Guillermina Marquez.
The body had turned up on scrubland near to the Estadio Olimpico Benito Juárez. The Indios played there, Leon had taken her to see them once. It was close to the motel. A twenty minute walk, maximum. Fifteen if she ran. She thrust her camera and her notepad into her rucksack, scribbled a quick note to Milton explaining where she was going, locked the door behind her and set off towards the river.
It was growing late and the light was leaving t
he city. Caterina crested a shallow hill and looked out across the border to El Paso, the lights twinkling against the spectrum of greys across the desert and the mountains beyond. She wondered what it was like over the border. She had never been. She had an idea, of course, on a superficial level––she was in contact with journalists on the other side of the line, there was television and the movies––but it was more than the superficial things that she wondered about. She wondered what it would be like to live in a city that was safe. Where you were not woken with yet another report of dead bodies dropped on your doorstep. Where the army and the police were not as bad as the criminals. Where children were not abducted, were not tortured, mutilated, bruised, fractured or strangled or violated.
The stadium was across a bleak expanse of scrub. Other girls had been found here: she thought of the map in her room, with the pins that studded this part of town, a bristling little forest of murders. She remembered two of them, left in the dust with their arms arranged so that they formed crucifixes; she remembered those two particularly well.
She walked faster.
Dusk was turning into night. Two police cruisers were parked on the scrub next to a thicket of trees and creosote bushes. Blue and white crime scene tape had been strung around the trunks of three of the trees, fluttering and snapping in the breeze, forming a broad triangular enclosure. Uniformed officers were inside, gathered around a shapeless thing on the floor. Caterina ducked down, pulled the tape over her head and went forwards. She could see the body covered with a blanket, the naked feet visible where the blanket was too short. She took out her camera, shoved in the flash, and started taking pictures.
One of the policemen turned. “Excuse me.”
