He handed her one from the ice bucket.
“It was freaky, Dad. This guy, this stranger with Mom’s face, and I was talking to him, familiarly, like I’d known him as a kid, and the funny thing was, he started talking the same way. He showed me photographs of the family. I noticed there were none of Mom.”
“There’s one. I’ll show it to you.”
“Don Esteban must’ve been a piece of work—I mean, to get that mad that his daughter married without his permission. And in the sixties too.”
“The seventies, actually, but to him it could’ve been the eighteen seventies. It was all about shame. His grandfather, before the revolution, was the absolute monarch of an area the size of a county. Las Palmas Floridas was their hacienda, hence the name of the hotel, the lost golden place, the legend passed down generation to generation, that family pride; they were hidalgos, criollos of the purest blood, that whole pile of shit, and so nothing they ever did would make up for the loss of that status. For a d’Ariés to be reduced to hotelkeeping was shameful enough, but at least he still had absolute rule over his family. Until he didn’t and a gringo ran off with his daughter, a girl he’d already promised to someone. He erased her—well, you know the sad story.”
“Yes, but talking to Angel, I had this—what do you call it? Not déjà vu but spooky in the same way. For a little while I had the sensation of being in an alternate life, as if I had always been Mexican and lived here and had known Angel and his wife and all my cousins, been part of a huge Mexican family. And while I was feeling that, a bunch of drunk guys came in with girls and wanted booze and rooms, and one of them hit on me. It was pretty gross, and Angel, like, totally disappeared—I mean, he became another person in front of my eyes, a really sort of nasty person. So I came back.”
She took a long draft. “And I’ll be here for a while, I guess. I didn’t tell you, but a while ago I emailed Schuemacher and ditched my assistantship. Someone else will have to build the next frontier of engineering.”
“That seems a little radical.”
“I don’t know. No more radical than a book editor setting up as a player in the Mexican drug wars.”
“I’m not a player in the drug wars.”
“Actually, you are. Uncle Angel told me all about the arms-and-heroin deal. And since I seem to have committed my life to this enterprise, could you just promise me one thing? Could you for once tell me the fucking truth?”
“I’m sorry, Carmelita. I will endeavor to be more forthcoming in the future.”
“Why am I not convinced?” she said, but under her breath. Then she asked, “Is Skelly back too?”
“No, he remains as a guest of El Gordo against the arrival of the package we promised him.”
“He’s a hostage?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Then how come they let you go?”
“Well, that’s something I need to talk with you about.” And he told her the Warren Alsop story and what he proposed to do and asked her if it could, in fact, be done.
“Oh, sure. Hacking the backhaul of a cell system is fairly trivial, if you have access to the router and the other hardware, which we do. I can set it up in … well, with testing and all, it’ll take a couple of hours.”
“Wonderful! Could you start now? I haven’t slept in almost forty hours, and I need to collapse after I call our guy.”
They both stood up and she hugged him, the first spontaneous hug he’d had from his girl in a while, and it made up for a good deal. She left and entered the rooftop storeroom where they had housed the cell tower.
Marder took out one of the house’s many prepaid cell phones and called the number Alsop had given him.
“This is Marder. I’ve decided to come clean,” he said when Alsop answered.
“Well, Mr. Marder! I kind of figured you’d be calling.”
“Yeah, you were right. I’m not a retiree at all.”
“No, you’re not. And what have you got to say to me?”
“It’s not something I can discuss on an unsecured line. I need to make some calls and then I’ll be ready to make a full and frank confession. And when you hear what I’ve got to say, I believe you’ll be in a much better professional situation than you are at present. I’ll call you later.”
With that, he hung up on the expostulating voice, went to his room, stripped and showered, and collapsed facedown on his bed like a man shot through the heart.
When he awoke, the setting sun was reddening his windows. He shaved and dressed with particular care, in his only suit, a pale-silk-and-linen number, no socks, worn huaraches—a suitable outfit, he thought, for an international man of mystery.
He went downstairs and found his daughter, who raised her eyebrows.
“Impressive,” she said. “You should dress like that all the time; you’d get a little more respect around here.”
“I get far too much respect around here as it is. So—did you do the thing?”
“The thing is done. Do you have the number the call’s going to be routed to?”
“Yeah, your cell phone, and then you’ll send it off to this one.” He punched a number into his phone and let the call go through.
“Ornstein? Marder. How’re you doing?”
“Wonderfully. I am the envy of every starving lefty in New York and enjoying it immensely. So this is why people sell their souls to capital! And you’re calling to evict me, right?”
“No, not at all. But I do need a small favor.”
“A kidney? Not an issue. Let me get a knife from the kitchen and I’ll have it out in a jiffy.”
Marder laughed and told Ornstein that he wanted him to impersonate a federal official—a serious felony—and Ornstein said it would be his pleasure and who was the bozo, and Marder told him and Ornstein soon found a YouTube of the bozo making a speech, and Ornstein said it would be a piece of cake. Then Marder gave him the scenario and they closed the conversation.
He called Alsop again (the man picked up on the second ring) and in peremptory tones told him to be at Casa Feliz in half an hour, alone, no wires.
Alsop came—somewhat late, to show who was in charge—and he had a couple of heavies in the car with him but entered the house by himself. Marder took him out to the pool deck and sat him at a chair under an umbrella. The sun was just touching its rim to the cobalt line of the sea.
Marder said, “I hope you aren’t wired, Alsop, but I’m not going to determine whether you are or not. It’ll be on your head if any of this gets out.”
“If any of what gets out?”
“Tell me, did you ever hear of an operation called Southern Gadget?”
“No. What’s it supposed to be?”
“I’ll give you a little background. Approximately five months ago, a convoy of three trucks left a research reactor outside of Perm, Russia, carrying twenty-three hundred canisters of plutonium reactor fuel in the form of metallic buttons, for transport to the Russian Nuclear Center at Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The trucks arrived safely, but there were only twenty-two hundred and twelve canisters aboard when they arrived. Eighty-eight canisters, each about the size of a coffee can, each containing about 10.25 kilograms of plutonium, were in the wind. The Russians kept this very, very quiet.”
“Then how come you know?”
“National technical means,” Marder replied. “Later it was found that one of the workers at Perm had been suborned by Ilyas Musadov. Do you know who he is?”
“No. Why should I? What does this have to do with you, anyway?”
“Be patient, I’ll get to that. Musadov is a Chechen terrorist. He has wide contacts in central Asia and via Afghanistan with the drug trade in the western hemisphere. In any case, we believe the material was transported via Kazakhstan and Afghanistan to Karachi, where it was apparently put aboard a ship, although at the time we had no idea which ship. About six weeks ago, we received reliable intel that the shipment had reached the hemisphere and had been off-loaded at t
he port of Lázaro Cárdenas and into the possession of Melchor Cuello, of the La Familia cartel. That’s when my team and I were mobilized. The operation to locate and secure the plutonium is called Southern Gadget. It is now the single highest priority of the U.S. intelligence community.”
Alsop stared at him for a moment and then laughed. “You must think I’m fucking stupid.”
“Not at all. You spotted right away that I was not what I said I was. Now I’m telling you the full story, because I can’t have you interfering with my operations or movements.”
“And you expect me to believe that you’re a, what, a CIA agent?”
“I don’t expect you to believe anything. I want you to call Carleton Everett. I assume you’re familiar with the name.” Marder took out his cell phone. “Here, I’ll dial his number.”
“It’s after eight in D.C. There won’t be anyone there.”
“Yes, there will. No one at the top of U.S. intel is going home until we have the cans. There are eighty-eight of them. Just one of them surrounded by explosives and detonated would render a city center uninhabitable for decades. It might not kill a lot of people, but the economic costs would be devastating. It’s a perfect terror weapon. Everett is obviously one of the people involved, because it looks like a drug gang is getting into the contract terrorism business. You know what they say—the best way to smuggle a terror weapon into the United States is to hide it in a shipment of cocaine or heroin. What are you people catching now? Ten, fifteen percent? And these are the boys who know how to ship major weight. Or maybe—best case—they’re going to try to make the Mexican Army back off by threatening to use them in Mexico City. It doesn’t matter. We have to get control of that material. So? You want me to call him, or would you rather use your phone?”
For the first time, Marder saw the man drop his confident mien. Alsop pulled out his own cell phone and dialed a familiar number, that of the deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
* * *
Up in the little room on the roof, Carmel Marder’s cell phone vibrated. She took the call and said, “Drug Enforcement Administration, Deputy Administrator Everett’s office.”
“I’d like … I mean, this is Warren Alsop, the head of the Rabbit Punch operation in Michoacán. In Mexico? I’d like to speak with Deputy Administrator Everett, please.”
“Yes, sir. May I ask what this is in reference to?”
“Ah, well, it’s in reference to an operation called Southern Gadget. I have this man here who claims he’s—”
“Please, sir! This is an unsecured line,” said Statch in a shocked tone. “Hold please for the deputy administrator.”
She waited for half a minute, then worked her computer keys and heard the sound of ringing.
“Everett,” said a voice.
“Sir, this is Warren Alsop. I’m sorry to trouble you this late, but—”
“Shut up, Alsop! What the fuck possessed you to blurt out the name of that operation on an unsecured line?” The voice was deep and rich and had the twangy East Texas drawl familiar to all the minions of the DEA.
“I’m sorry, sir. I have this man named Ma—”
“I told you to shut up! Listen to me carefully now. One, you will forget you ever heard of the operation in question. Erase it from your mind, speak to no one about it, especially to no Mexican national. Two, you will immediately sever all connection with the gentleman in question. I mean the editorial gentleman and any of his associates. You will not watch him or interfere with him in any way. Three, if this gentleman or his associates ask you for any help whatever, you will give it to the fullest extent of your power, asking no questions. Four, you will not refer these orders to your chain of command; you will communicate only with me, at my discretion. Five, you are never to call here again for any reason. Now, those are five orders, and while I can’t write them down, I expect you to remember every one of them and comply. Can you do that, Alsop?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. If you don’t, my friend, I will drop more shit on your head than you knew existed in the world. And we never had this conversation. Are we clear on this?”
“Yes, sir.”
The connection was broken. Alsop stared at his phone as if it would of itself make the world what it once was.
Marder said, “Good conversation?”
Alsop gave him a look in which fear, anger, and hatred were equally blended, stood up, and walked out without another word.
* * *
Marder watched him go. When he heard the sound of gravel spraying as the man’s car took off, he went to the landline in the kitchen and called El Gordo.
Someone answered. Marder identified himself, and El Gordo came on the line a few moments later.
“Our problem is resolved,” said Marder.
“That’s good. May I ask how?”
“Through what we call national technical means. But he won’t cause us any trouble. Any word on our business?”
“Yes. I’m informed that our business is where it should be. I am very pleased and will be more so when we have delivery.” He paused. “I’d like you to be there.”
“Not a problem.”
“Good. There will be a car at the head of your road at eleven-thirty tonight. Perhaps we can get together when the delivery has been made, to discuss subjects of mutual interest.”
Marder agreed that this would be nice, hung up the phone, and was about to leave the kitchen when Evangelista, the cook, asked him whether he wanted something to eat. Marder realized that he had not eaten anything solid since the kidnappers’ food the previous night. Thinking thus, he immediately felt weak and ravenous. He sat in a kitchen chair.
“I’ll make you chilaquiles,” she said.
“You don’t have to bother. We could just heat something in the microwave.”
The woman cast a baleful look at that appliance. “You don’t want to eat from that, Señor. It has rays that soften the bones. I’ll make you a nice dish in ten minutes, and meanwhile you can have a beer and I’ll get you some fresh plátanos.” She served these out, clanged a large iron frying pan on the burner, and started to chop garlic. Chilaquiles was a frugal dish, a way to use up stale tortillas and any odd bits you had left over. Marder watched as Evangelista cut up and fried onions, a heel of chorizo, chipotles, and a stack of yesterday’s tortillas; he smelled it too, and he was back in the first apartment they’d lived in up by Columbia, where his wife was making this very dish as he came in after work.
A moment of dizziness then, a disorientation, and for a second or two he wondered whether it was Mr. Thing performing at last. But, no, it was only the false Mexico Chole had created speaking past the years to the true Mexico Marder now inhabited. He sensed a presence behind him and felt a pang of terror, as he had in the degraded hotel, that if he turned around she’d be there, still young.
But it was only Carmel, who said, “That smells great. I’m starving—is there enough?”
Of course there was enough. Evangelista loaded two plates and watched contentedly, her big arms folded, while they ate. “We’re glad to have you back, Don Ricardo,” said the cook. “The place does not go well when you’re gone. You know, the foot of the master is the best manure.”
Statch laughed, rolled her eyes, and smiled at her father. It was funny but also true, like most proverbs. If Marder only knew what crop he was growing.
* * *
He spent the next couple of hours wandering through the colonia, observing, showing himself, letting people buy him drinks at the tiny cantina, solving problems for people or declining to solve them. Sort it out for yourselves, he told them, and sometimes they did. He understood that in any village there were feuds, resentments, but although this was not a hacienda where one man’s word was law, he felt the tug of former times built into the character of the Mexicans. They wanted to make him that sort of man, so they could relax into their traditional helplessness, and blame him when things went badly, and nourish t
hemselves on hate.
He walked down to the beach and was surprised to find a group of men filling sandbags and passing them up the bluff via a human chain. A whole pallet full of the bags, green and made of tough plastic weave, waited to be filled. He went over to one of the men and said, “Rafael, what’s this about? Why do we need sandbags?” Rafael was a big, dark, stone-faced man with a cropped head and arms full of tattoos, a former soldier, Marder recalled, who was one of Skelly’s security subalterns.
The man shrugged. “It’s Don Eskelly’s orders. It’s for our bunkers.”
“Bunkers? Why do we need bunkers?”
The man seemed a little embarrassed to be telling this to Marder, who should know all. “For when the war comes, Señor,” he replied. Marder nodded and walked back up the stairs. Of course there would be a war. How could he have thought otherwise?
* * *
At eleven, Marder proceeded down the causeway for his appointment with El Gordo’s men. He’d told Carmel where he was going and, somewhat to his surprise, she hadn’t tried to talk him out of it. A few days ago she would have, but now she was a little more Mexican. She looked into his face soberly, and gravely, kissed him on the cheek and wished him good fortune.
An SUV waited there with two men he didn’t know. He got in the back as directed, and one of the men sat next to him. They drove off down the coast road toward Cárdenas, then east through the city until they reached the container port. There was a gate around the whole place and a gatehouse, but the guard on duty gave them no problem. They drove slowly through aisles of shipping containers stacked six high.
The man sitting next to Marder took out a cell phone, dialed a number, spoke, listened, and told the driver, “Second right and then left. We should see them.”
He put the phone away and smiled at Marder. He had a teardrop tattoo at the corner of his eye. Marder said, “I don’t see how you can do this. I thought La Familia had the port locked up.”
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