“What happened?” Calli asked Nick. “Was it...?”
He nodded. “Blanco’s dead. So are the two officers who were in the car with him. Plus three others who were too close.”
“Insurrectos?” Calli asked.
“It could be no one else,” Josh said. He rested his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “You keep trying to pass the baton, Nick, but you can’t. Not anymore. The rest of the world thinks it’s yours anyway.”
Nick nodded, his expression grim.
That was when the real facts assembled in her mind. Blanco had been in Nick’s place. Nick’s boots.
It was Nick they had been trying to kill.
* * * * *
Minnie tried to pretend she was sleeping. Despite her weariness, sleep was an absent friend. She kept her eyes shut and let her thoughts drift, instead.
In the middle of the afternoon there was a soft knock on the bedroom door. Minnie sat up, staring at it. The knock was repeated.
“Who is it?” she called out.
“Excúse me por favor. I am not permitted...” The young, high voice trailed off, muffled by the closed door.
Minnie crept to the door and edged it open. Through the crack she could see a young man in army boots and green fatigues, topped with a dirty black T-shirt. He seemed as skittish as she felt.
She pushed the door open wider. The chain hanging from her wrist knocked against it.
The boy’s eyes widened as his gaze took in her appearance and the chain. He swallowed and tried to shake himself out of his shock, looking like a puppy shaking off water. He pointed to the doorway. “I am not permitted...” he repeated and pointed to himself and then into the bedroom.
“You’re not allowed in the room?” she guessed.
“Sí.” He turned around and lifted from the desk a heavy tray, loaded with more plates of food and a thermos flask. “For you.” He put it on the corner of the desk and then deliberately took three steps back and waved at it. “Por favor.”
She understood. He had been warned about getting anywhere near her and knew enough about the security cameras to obey the injunction to the letter. Zalaya must have given him those orders.
“Gracias,” she told him and picked up the tray. She backed up carefully so she did not trip over the chain and carried the tray to the bedside table where the previous tray had sat.
The boy cleared his throat. “Señorita?”
She moved back toward the door until she could see him again.
He pointed at the shards of china on the floor at her feet. “I will have,” he said, using his fingers to beckon.
“Sure,” she agreed. She flipped the tray over with her foot, bent down and gathered up the fragments and dumped them on the tray. She spent longer minutes picking up the pieces of glass a few feet farther away, conscientiously clearing the carpet of every piece she could find. She was the barefoot one, after all. Then she carried the tray over to the boy. He backed up quickly, staying out of reach. He waved toward the desk.
She grimaced and put the dented tray on the corner and stepped back as deliberately as he had, in order to give him the regulation amount of room to collect it. It put her two steps inside the bedroom once more.
He nodded as he picked it up. “Muchos gracias,” he murmured and scurried from the office.
Minnie shuddered when she saw the machine gun hanging from his shoulder, slapping his back as he walked. The boy looked barely old enough to shave.
A blinking from the console caught her gaze as she stared at the closed door. She studied the long bank of switches and dials and that single blinking light. It was a toggle switch off to the far side, the red LED next to it patiently flashing.
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.
There was another man 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. Many of the buttons and dials on the console were 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, trying to guess its purpose. Then she found the button in a row of small switches at the 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 phone.
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-handedly. There is no one of Blanco’s caliber left 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, though. 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 next to nothing 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?”
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.” He 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 pe
ople 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. He shut his mouth with a snap.
Serrano laughed, his belly jiggling. It had been a long while since Zalaya had dismantled someone so thoroughly.
Zalaya was not finished with Torrez yet. He moved restlessly, shifting the weaker leg. “I never met Nicolás Escobedo personally, yet from a distance I still 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 grew 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. He 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?”
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 the wrong move and I could have spared you the error if you’d come to me first.”
“If we’d 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 will 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. 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 once more. “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 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, for 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.
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. That was why Serrano employed Zalaya, so 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. 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. He 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 held 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 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 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 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 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 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 in that way?
Prisoner of War Page 18
