Back on the boulevard, life went on. Women in housekeeping uniforms hurried home with thin plastic bags of groceries. Laborers in dusty T-shirts stood at a minibus stop. Wells expected someone would offer to help. But when they looked at him, their eyes slid to the pistol in his waistband. Then they looked away. No dar papaya.
After a few more steps, Wells was panting, too. The Bogotá air felt insubstantial in his lungs. Not so much thin as diet. He wondered if the golden hour when surgeons could save gunshot victims was half that at this altitude, at least for people who didn’t live here and hadn’t adapted to the air.
A break. The cab waited. Wells grabbed the back door. Locked. The cabbie lowered the window.
“He’s shot?”
No, bad sushi. Wells was ready to pull his pistol, but the lock clicked open. He had no time to be subtle as he stuffed Tony inside. The younger man moaned, and his eyes fluttered open in agony. Wells had no first-aid gear, not even gloves. He put his hands over Tony’s and tried to compress the wound. If Tony had some blood-borne disease, Wells deserved to share it.
“Which hospital?” the driver said.
“Whatever’s closest.” Even the best surgeons couldn’t save a corpse. Anyway, the local hospital probably handled plenty of gunshot cases.
“El Hospital de Kennedy, then. With the traffic, fifteen minutes.”
With one hand still on Tony’s chest, Wells reached for his phone, called Tarnes—
“Julie. Problem.”
As if to prove the point, Wells’s phone slipped from his bloody fingers. He reached for it as the cabbie swerved through traffic.
“You there?”
“The guy you sent me, he’s been shot.” Wells hoped Tony couldn’t understand. “Going to a hospital now.”
To her credit, Tarnes didn’t ask the questions that were irrelevant at this moment: What happened? Where were you? Why was he there? Who shot him? . . . “Which hospital?”
“El Hospital de Kennedy, it’s called.”
“I’ll call the station, we’ll get someone there. You gonna stay with him?”
“Can’t. There were two Kia.” Wells despised himself a little for using the passive voice, made himself say what Tarnes had probably guessed already. “I killed them.”
“Police? Anyone important?”
Important. Wells admired and hated her brutal honesty. “Drug dealers.”
“You injured?”
Tony trembled in Wells’s hands, his body shaking—
He hung up, pressed both hands on Tony’s chest, his only move. The compression seemed to help. Tony stopped shaking, and his breathing stabilized.
“We’re gonna get you there, buddy—”
The driver laid on his horn and accelerated into a gap in oncoming traffic, ran a light—
Under his hands, Wells felt something tear in Tony’s chest, a blood vessel giving way, Wells could only guess at the anatomy, but the effect was immediate. Tony had been dying slowly. Now he was dying fast. His mouth opened, and he grunted, but no words came. His breath sped, and his chest trembled. His blood seeped onto Wells’s hands. Not enough of it, it was getting lost inside him now.
“Nothing to be afraid of, I promise—” Lies, lies, lies.
Tony moaned, helpless, guttural, raised his hands, grabbed Wells’s wrists—
And stilled. Wells waited, counted to ten, knowing he could have counted to infinity and changed nothing.
He pushed down Tony’s eyelids, folded his arms across his broken chest. Tony from Tampa. Wells didn’t even know his last name. “Pull over.”
“Muerto?”
“Sí.”
The driver turned into an empty lot. Wells heard a lone siren in the distance.
“Now, señor?”
Catch the first plane home. Never come back. Tony hadn’t known the risks. Wells could still hear how his voice had trembled in the apartment as he’d said, I deliver bags. He’d been an errand runner, hoping to parlay the work into a full-time agency job. Or not. Wells had killed him as surely as if he’d pulled the trigger—
Enough. He could mourn, beat himself up, send Tony’s parents a sympathy card. He could drown his sorrows with Duto’s expensive bourbon or hug Emmie and hope he felt better. He could do anything or nothing. Later.
Now he had to move. “Take him to the hospital.”
“And when the nurses want to know why I have a dead man in my back seat?”
“He got in by himself, you don’t know—”
“You don’t think anyone saw? This man, he’s American, I see that. The police won’t let this go. Even our police.”
“Give me your phone number.”
“Why?”
Wells had walked out of his hotel carrying five thousand dollars. After what he’d given Elena, he had four thousand. He pulled the cash from his pocket, peeled off two hundred-dollar bills with his bloodied fingers, handed the cabbie the rest. The guy held the money between his fingertips like it was tainted.
“Give me your number, keep your mouth shut, you’ll get more.”
The cabbie scribbled a phone number on a scrap, handed it over.
“Stick to the story, you’ll be fine.”
Wells pulled off his bloodied sweatshirt, turned it inside out, wrapped it around his waist so the stains would be less noticeable. The reason he wore black shirts and dark blue jeans on these missions. He took off his hat, too. He couldn’t do anything about his height, but at least on first glance he wasn’t exactly the man who’d been carrying a dying man on Carrera 81L.
He reached into Tony’s jacket, found the ring of keys he needed. Get a man killed and steal his motorcycle. He looked once more at Tony, tried to think of a prayer in English or Arabic. Couldn’t.
“Go,” the cabbie said.
Wells hustled back toward the building. He’d seen Tony’s motorcycle outside Carrera 81L on the way to the cab, a thick, plastic-coated chain looped through its front wheel. His phone buzzed again and he grabbed it and leaned over, trying to hide his bloodied hands.
“You all right?” Tarnes.
“Fine.” Wells ducked into a doorway and watched as a police car pulled up outside Carrera 81L, its wan blue lights flashing. No dar papaya might work in his favor now. The locals would want no part of helping the police find the man who’d killed two drug dealers. Wells would bet that Elena hadn’t hung around either. “Tony’s dead. The driver’s taking him to the hospital, but he’s dead.”
“That guy was American, John—” She caught herself. “Want to tell me what happened?” Her voice soft, and yet heavy, as if she had only now realized the risks of involving herself with Wells.
“Not particularly.” The cops were still in their sedan. Probably waiting for backup. He hoped they’d move soon. Tough for him to grab the motorcycle with them watching.
“Okay. Later.” She emphasized the second word, making sure Wells knew he would have to give her at least some explanation. “I’m going to tell the station not to send anyone to the hospital, then. Let the cops notify us. It’ll look weird if someone just shows up there.”
Wells wanted to argue. He didn’t like the idea of Tony’s body going unclaimed for even a few minutes. But Tarnes was right. The police would call the embassy as soon as they realized Tony was American.
“What about you?” James said.
“If I can make it to my hotel clean, I’ll grab my stuff, get on the first flight out. Doesn’t matter where.”
“I’ll find flights while you’re getting back to the hotel.”
“And I have a name for you to run. Hector Frietas. An Ecuadorian banker. Lives in Quito. He’s the one who asked Martinez to set the meeting. No idea where he is. His girlfriend says he isn’t answering his phone.”
Another police car approached, sirens blaring. A crowd had begun to gather.
Wells was a couple hundred meters away. Not far enough.
“I’ll let you know what we get,” Tarnes said.
She was his cousin in mission-at-any-cost efficiency, and, at this moment, Wells hated her nearly as much as he hated himself. “I have to go.”
The second police car pulled up, and Wells knew he would have to leave the motorcycle, find another way back to the Hotel de la Opera. Wells had deliberately hailed the cab far from the hotel so the driver wouldn’t know where he was staying. And the cab didn’t have a camera. And the cabbie might not talk, in any case.
Still, if the police looked hard enough, they’d find him. Even a casual witness would have noticed Wells was eight inches taller than the average Colombian. And that he didn’t speak Spanish. Hotels were the obvious place to start. Wells was registered at the Hotel de la Opera under a fake name, with a passport with a photo that had been altered to make him look five years older and twenty pounds heavier. But if the cops found his room before he cleared it, they’d find two passports and twenty thousand dollars in the safe, plus a backpack with a combat knife. The agency would have no chance to contain the story. Instead of a random drug killing in El Amparo, it would turn into an international mystery, with two Colombians and one American dead, another American suspected.
No, his best bet was to clean out his room and vanish.
Wells ditched his sweatshirt and pistol in the alley. Tarnes could always get him a new weapon, and he didn’t plan on another gunfight tonight. He walked away from Carrera 81L. The sidewalk had emptied as night settled onto the streets. The bigger stores were now closed, security grates pulled over their windows. Bicycle riders had taken over the sidewalks, their red taillights flashing in the dark.
A bike. A bike would be faster than a cab, the quickest way to the hotel. He had the money to buy one, if his semicoherent Spanish didn’t doom the deal. A man rode slowly by, but the bike looked too nice. Wells needed a junker. He kept moving. A block on, he came to a one-room bodega, still open. Its front shelves were stocked with bags of sugar, flour, cornmeal, the staples of the poor. A bike waited in front, locked to a post. It was black, with oversized bald tires and a few missing spokes.
Wells sidled inside, grabbed an oversized bottle of water, enough to wash his bloody hands. “Cuánto cuesta?”
The man behind the counter was small and dark and hawk-nosed. The boy beside him was half his size, with the same strong Indian features. They stared at Wells’s hands. “Dos mil,” the man finally said.
Wells understood that, anyway. Two thousand. He dropped two coins in the man’s hand. Great. Now we’re doing business. “Ciclo.” He nodded at the bike.
The man’s eyes were half closed against whatever scam Wells was running. The conquistadors have screwed us for five hundred years, nothing new here. “Ciclo.”
“Cuánto cuesta?”
“No se vende.”
Wells fished a hundred-dollar bill and all his pesos from his jeans. Much more than the bike was worth. “Ciclo, por favor.”
The guy looked at the bike, back at Wells, gauging risk and reward.
Finally, he nodded. He swept up the money, handed it to the boy, pushed him toward the door at the back of the store. When the boy was gone, he reached under the counter, handed Wells a key. “Ciclo.”
The potholed sidewalks made pedaling flat-out impossible. Wells picked his way east, tracking his progress against the big white church at the top of Monserrate, the mountain that overlooked the city center.
At last, he reached Carrera 7, a run-down, pedestrians-only street a few blocks from the hotel. He left the bike against a wall, knowing it wouldn’t be there in a few minutes, and walked to the hotel. He heard no sirens, saw no police officers, only the impossibly young-looking soldiers who guarded the Colombian Foreign Ministry, which was across the street from the hotel. They ignored him.
Hotel de la Opera was nice, four stars. Which meant it had a full-time doorman and front desk clerk. Wells wished he’d chosen somewhere less fancy. He’d washed all the blood he could off his hands and face, but he doubted he’d cleaned himself completely. He brushed past the doorman, didn’t break stride.
“Señor?”
Wells kept moving, knowing the doorman knew Wells was a guest and probably wouldn’t stop Wells if Wells didn’t stop on his own.
“Buenas noches,” he said over his shoulder.
“Buenas noches,” the man said uncertainly, and then Wells was gone.
In his bathroom mirror he saw a reddish brown smudge of blood on his neck just over the collar of his shirt. He wiped away the blood as a heavy knock rattled his door.
“Señor?” A woman. Wells made sure the blood was gone, went to the door.
The desk clerk stood in the hall, the doorman behind her. She was round and pretty. And frowning.
“Are you all right, Mr. Walton?”
“I didn’t want to say, but I was mugged.” His best play.
Her mouth opened. “I’m so, so sorry—”
“It’s all right.”
“Would you like us to call the police?”
“No, my fault, I got lost. I was walking around, I didn’t know where I was. Stupid. These two men came out, I hardly even saw them—” the words tumbling out of him as if he was reliving the incident. He stopped abruptly. Okay, enough, don’t gild the lily. “Listen, I think I’m done with Colombia. I’m going to check out, stay by El Dorado”—the fanciful name for Bogotá’s international airport—“tonight. Can you call me a cab?”
“Of course. We can even refund the room—”
“Don’t worry about it. If it’s all the same to you, I’d just like to leave.” The beaten American tourist, trying to keep his dignity. “Tell the cab I want to go to the airport, I’ll figure it from there.”
“Whatever you’d like.” She murmured in Spanish to the doorman, hurried back to the elevator. The doorman didn’t move. He reached out, tapped Wells’s wallet in the front pocket of his jeans.
“Mugged. They don’t take this?”
Wells closed the door in his face. The doorman knew, but he couldn’t prove anything. At a hotel like this, he’d have to defer to the clerk, and she would be more concerned with making sure Mr. Walton didn’t post a one-star review on TripAdvisor.
Wells walked out, his clothes loose in his luggage, his knife and cash and passports zipped into the false bottom in his backpack. He’d have to ditch the knife before the airport. An X-ray machine would pick it up immediately. But he hadn’t wanted to leave it in the room.
A black radio cab waited. The doorman glowered at Wells but held the door open. Wells slipped a hundred dollars into his hand. A big tip might buy goodwill. The guy’s eyes widened as he looked at the bill. “Señor?”
“See you soon, amigo.”
Halfway to El Dorado, his phone rang. “Far as I can tell, you’re still clear,” Tarnes said without preamble. “The cops just called the embassy, said an American had been brought to a hospital dead. Nothing more. You clear the room?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know how long it would take so I put you on two flights, eight-twenty to Quito and ten-fifteen to Lima.”
It was past 7 now, so the 8:20 was a long shot, but Wells appreciated the effort.
“As for Frietas, I was surprised, but we’ve got a file on him. He was in the Defense Ministry until four years ago. Deputy chief of procurement when he left. He wound up at the Central Bank. It’s a pretty”—she hesitated—“nonstandard résumé for a banker. But you know, Ecuador’s on the dollar—”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it doesn’t have its own currency anymore. No pesos. Or anything else. It uses the dollar.”
“Ecuadorians get paid and spend in American dollars? How can that work?”
“I don’t know how it works for your average Ecuadorian
, John, I’m just thinking it must be easier to move money around, launder it—whatever—when everything’s in dollars.”
Maybe Frietas worked as a high-end bagman for Ecuador’s generals and politicians. Maybe he helped the country’s cartels launder money. Wells still didn’t see the connection to the Dallas attack.
“But the girlfriend’s right. That number she gave you for his phone, it’s been off for four days. Nothing incoming or outgoing. The last time it pinged was in Quito. And before you ask, it doesn’t seem like it was his main number. Not too many calls, and they’re mostly with her. Nothing interesting in the others. At least not yet.”
Wells waited for more, but Tarnes seemed to be finished.
“Thanks, Julie.”
“John—”
He wondered if she planned to press him again about what had happened to Tony.
“Good luck.”
Wells slouched in his seat as the cab fought the weeknight traffic. He had to have someone who knew Spanish. Someone he trusted. Someone who could handle a gun. Someone who would come to Quito and chase Hector Frietas on no notice. Otherwise, Wells should just go home. He couldn’t stomach getting another contractor killed.
Winston Coyle.
They’d met near the end of Wells’s last mission. Coyle was a Marine who, at the time, was guarding the American embassy in Paris. Wells liked to call him an embassy Marine, more concerned with keeping his shoes shined than anything else. In reality, Coyle was tough and smart and unafraid. He’d served in Helmand Province. He was watchful and quiet. And he’d grown up south of the 10 in Los Angeles and spoke fluent Spanish.
After the mission, Wells had convinced Coyle to leave the Marines and join the agency. He was in training now. But he was game. Wells didn’t doubt he’d ditch the Farm and take the first plane down.
Coyle picked up after one ring.
“Hello?” His voice deep, sonorous.
“Winston.”
The Deceivers Page 12
