by Layton Green
After regaining his strength, he put his skills to good use. Training for a clandestine officer could have doubled for training as a world-class thief. Over the next few months, he clawed his way out of the gutter by stealing and conning and bribing his way to a respectable position in the criminal underworld. Specializing at first in petty theft and break-ins, moving to more complex robberies and cons, he learned he had even more of a talent for crime than for espionage.
And it paid far, far better.
After accumulating enough funds to rent a fortified house in one of the suburbs, he contemplated his next steps. He knew he could never go back to his old life, nor did he want to. Not only was he a target, but a normal life had never been his goal. It was why he had chosen the CIA in the first place.
He was young, and Jonestown had been his first overseas posting. Guyana, with its tropical languor and miles of lawless streets, was like the Wild West set in the Garden of Eden. It suited him well. But he yearned to explore the rest of the continent, the stories of which had always fascinated him. The lost cities in the jungle, unearthly beaches, Nazi hideaways, cloud forests and deserts and jungles, rumors of mystics and shamans, the Latina beauties who could steal your soul with a shake of their hips and a twirl of their lustrous black hair.
There were a few things to do before he embarked on his journey. The first was to fake his own death, so he could officially disappear. After paying the right people a handsome sum of money, he had a reporter take pictures of him coated in pig’s blood and lying in an alley, and then in the morgue at the police station. There was an official press report and a death certificate. Though the corpse was under an alias, he made sure the report made it to the right media outlets. The people he was trying to reach would see it, he was certain.
Now he had two life insurance policies.
His petty scams and robberies were adequate, but he was ready for something more lucrative, and that traveled better. A few weeks later, he was approached at a nightclub by a deputy of Rabbi Washington, the leader of a religious community in Guyana that was eerily similar to Jonestown. Rabbi Washington was a fugitive from Cleveland who had managed to convince thousands of Guyanese and American blacks they were part of the Lost Tribe of Israel, and he had wormed his way into a thuggish sort of political power in Guyana.
Truly, John Wolverton thought, one couldn’t make these things up.
A few months before, he had purchased and refurbished a few dilapidated warehouses on the wharf. As it was off the grid, shockingly poor, and chaotic, Georgetown was a smuggling hotspot, and the warehouses had already turned a nice profit.
Rabbi Washington’s chief deputy got word of him and wanted to know if he was interested in using his warehouses in a more profitable industry. This industry, the deputy said, had become a burgeoning one in the capital, especially since Georgetown was less regulated than some of the region’s other ports—which was saying something.
John Wolverton had put his elbows on the table and asked, “What industry are we talking about?”
“Drugs,” answered the deputy, who John Wolverton knew was a convicted murderer from Harlem who had skipped the country on parole.
“Coming from where? Bolivia?”
“That’s right.”
“Who’s buying?”
“Ah, that’s the kicker, man. You’re gonna like this one. They’re using a front, of course, but you know who the brothers are driving this thing? I almost fell out of my chair when the Rabbi told me.”
John Wolverton knew, but he asked anyway. “Who?”
“The Company, man. The CIA. You believe that smack?”
John Wolverton just smiled.
SOUTH MIAMI
PRESENT DAY
Grey was crouched in the hallway in a state of hyperawareness, pores flooded with adrenaline. He had felt the chi of the two assassins in the hallway, not just thugs with guns and an order to kill, but two people to whom violence came naturally, a second skin that fit snug and warm.
If the assassins decided to come down the hallway or double back through the front or rear entrances, there would be a swift and violent clash, and someone would die.
But Grey liked his position. He had a clear view in all directions, and felt secure he could take out at least one of them. And high-priced, basilisk-eyed killers like those did not step lightly into the great beyond. They did not deal in fifty-fifty odds.
That said, Grey had seen their faces, and they wouldn’t like that. They might decide the risk of exposure was too great.
Still no sounds from the hallway. Were they creeping towards him, perhaps slipping onto the patio? He kept his fingers tight against the trigger, eyes on constant patrol.
Finally the sirens came, and Grey heard the sound of shattered glass. As the uniforms burst through the door, Grey’s adrenaline faded, and he finally took in the contents of the room: a flat-screen TV and a brown sectional sofa, bags of coke and drug paraphernalia on a table, a slew of incense candles, a vintage poster of Varadero Beach, an array of potted herbs, two crossed scythes on a wall, and a long cane with a serpent’s head leaning against the couch.
An open shopping bag rested on the floor inches from Grey. Inside were more candles, chalk, and what looked like a replica bull horn with a mirror attached to the base. Printed on the side of the bag was the name Botánica Caldez.
The cops approached him warily, guns trained on his chest. The lead one asked, “Who the hell are you?”
“I called 911. Check my cell, it’s in my pocket. My ID’s there, too. I’m a private investigator.”
One of the cops checked Grey’s cell for the 911 call, then flipped open his wallet. His eyebrows lifted. “Interpol?”
“We consult for them sometimes,” Grey said.
“You’ll need to come with us when we’re done.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
Fred entered the conference room talking loudly on his cell, discussing the Braves game with a buddy from Atlanta. The CIA agent sitting at the table in the snappy dark gray pantsuit, one Lana Valenciano according to the email, shot him a disdainful look that said get off that phone, you uncouth ape.
Exactly the effect he was going for.
Fred ended the call, took a seat across the table, and tipped his head. “Agent Valenciano.”
A smirk of acknowledgment creased her lips, and he sized her up. Light brown hair, patrician Spanish face, athletic, nose too large and wrists too thick to be beautiful, driven enough to resent the fact that she was merely very pretty.
When Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971 in response to the growing heroin problem among servicemen in Vietnam, the conflict had begun with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, forerunner of the DEA. At last count, more than fifty government entities were engaged in the drug conflict in some manner.
Of those agencies, Fred liked the CIA the least.
“We need your assistance,” Lana said.
He leaned back and folded his arms. “So I was told.”
Fred’s email had contained no information other than the time, place, participants, and general purpose of the meeting, which was that it involved the Frankie García murder.
“I assume you’ve put everything you know about the García murder in the report,” she said.
She spoke English with the slight lilt distinctive to Miami-born Cubans, and her voice was no-nonsense and high class, as if she had ordered maids around as a child.
“You assume correctly.”
“If there was anything you held back that you thought unimportant or didn’t, for whatever reason, see fit to include, I need to know. Rest assured I’m not concerned in the least with protocol.”
Fred rose and walked to the coffee pot in the corner. “Maybe you need to tell me what this is about. Or, let me guess: you can’t tell me what I don’t need to know, and what I need to know is jack.”
“Fair enough,” she said. To her credit, she didn’t bother trying to massage the natu
re of their relationship. He supposed those days were over.
“I’ll tell you what I can,” she continued. “You might want to sit down.”
He stirred in cream. “Really? You know I’m DEA, right? Not much I haven’t seen.”
“Have you heard of El General?”
Fred blinked, recalling a conversation with an informant a lifetime ago, in a rum bar in Key West. He had also heard the rumor tossed about once or twice at the DEA watercooler. “Surely you don’t mean the General? The mythical crime lord who flits around South America like a ghost, pulling the strings on half the cartels, unable to pose for a single photo over the last few decades?”
“He’s not a myth.”
Fred laughed, but his laughter died as Lana continued looking him in the eye.
“We don’t know his identity or the extent of his activities,” she said, “but we’re certain he exists and is an active player.”
Fred sat, coffee unsipped. Lana did not look like a woman who was joking. Or who had ever joked.
“Whoa,” he said. “There’s a major power broker in play in the Southern Cone whose name we don’t even know? How do you know he exists?”
“As you know, our monitoring abilities have increased dramatically since 9/11. The chatter is unequivocal. We’re no longer in doubt that El General is an actual person.”
“There’s got to be more than just chatter. Chatter doesn’t warrant an in-person visit from the CIA.”
She gave a slow nod to acknowledge the point. “Two things. The first I’m not at liberty to discuss at the moment.”
Fred snorted. The games had begun.
“The second,” she continued, crossing her legs and draping one forearm on the table, the other resting in the contours of her lap, “is why I’m here. In the three and a half decades since El General has been on our radar—an extraordinarily long period for a criminal—there’s been one common thread.”
Fred thought about the García crime scene. “The cauldron?”
“No.”
“Must be the slingshot, then,” he said, though he couldn’t fathom why it might be important.
“More importantly, the wielder.”
“The blue Indian?” Fred laughed again, running a hand across a hairline that looked more like twigs in winter than a spring thicket. “Jesus, you’re still not joking. He’s used her before?”
“Three times that we know of. About once a decade, someone with the description of a ‘blue Indian’ has murdered a drug dealer, either with a slingshot, a knife, or an atlatl.”
“A what?”
“It’s an ancient throwing spear, used by various indigenous Indian communities.”
“Oh, those old things. I keep one around the house.”
Lana didn’t smile, instead rising for a cup of coffee. Fred stared at her ass as she walked across the room, admiring its buoyant dimensions. He imagined his hands cupping it.
She turned, and he let her catch him staring. She smirked again. “You wouldn’t know this, because there was no official report, but last month a similar murder occurred in Ciudad Juarez.”
His eyes widened. “A blue Indian?
“It was an apparent response to the incidental murder of two American tourists who were boating on a lake just across the border.”
“So let me get this straight: this General guy—I’ll assume his existence for the sake of conversation—has twice, in the last month, murdered drug dealers who were responsible for the accidental deaths of U.S. citizens?”
“Two U.S. citizens and six exchange students on U.S. soil,” Lana corrected.
“Whatever—shouldn’t we be giving this guy a medal?”
“We think the reasons for the retaliations are more nefarious. The past appearances of this . . . assassin . . . have involved similar circumstances. Mistakes by criminals—almost always drug dealers—involving American or Western European casualties, which had the potential to lead to uncomfortable scrutiny by the press. Our guess is that the Mexicans have gotten out of control—”
“No shit,” Fred interrupted.
“—and that he’s tightening the reins.”
“Okay, that’s chilling, if true. So who’s this blue Indian lady?”
“We’ve no idea.”
“I suppose it could be the General himself,” Fred mused, “or I suppose herself—nah, that’s ridiculous. This is South America we’re talking about.”
Lana bristled. “The chatter points to El General being a male, and Griselda Blanco wasn’t a man. Neither was Sonia Atala.”
Fred inclined his head towards the ceiling camera in mock surprise. “Wow, I’m surprised they let you say her name. You know, that whole deal about the CIA propping up the Cocaine Coup?”
“Drugs are a small piece of the political puzzle,” she said evenly.
Fred chortled. “It takes a big person to see the big picture, eh? Someone able to ignore the collateral damage, all those innocent people tortured and murdered and hooked on crack? How do you all justify it over there at Langley, anyway?”
“The same way you justified shooting a drug dealer in the face?”
“That’s different,” he muttered. “Look, what do you need me for, anyway? Everything I know is in the report.”
“Spotty as your ethical record may be, you’re the most experienced field agent down here right now.” Lana’s tone had softened ever so slightly, letting Fred know they were both on the same side. Fred didn’t trust the switch in the slightest.
She continued, “An appearance of the General’s favored assassin on U.S. soil—this is the best lead we’ve had on this mark, ever. You’re DEA, you know this world, the mules and informants. I need you to be my eyes and ears on the ground. Langley wants a lead.”
“I’ve only been here a year. Why not someone local?”
“Like I said, we need someone who understands the bigger picture,” she said. “And I need someone I can trust.”
He guffawed. God, the venom these people spewed.
“If there’s one thing you proved in Atlanta, it’s that you’re not on the take. You’re a true believer, Fred. And that makes me trust you. I’ve already requisitioned you for the next week.”
Whatever. Even if there wasn’t any truth to this—and he had serious doubts—it would be better than cruising up and down Biscayne Boulevard.
He finished his Danish, took a long sip of coffee, and extracted a toothpick from the case he kept in the pocket of his short-sleeved, white dress shirt. “Million dollar question,” he said, inserting the toothpick between his front teeth. “Why the hell does the CIA care about this? Drugs are passé politically, except to a few Arizona senators and lifers like me. Or let me guess: too many white kids are dying from meth, and the government has finally decided to get serious?”
She ignored the wisecrack and cupped her mug in her hands. “What’s the number one concern of our government today, besides the economy?”
“The Canadian military threat?”
Still no laugh. Damn, she’s tough.
“Terrorism,” he said.
“And what are top priorities when it comes to terrorism and national security?”
“Borders and nukes.”
“That’s right,” she said, watching him with shrewd blue eyes, waiting for him to piece it together.
“The General has nukes?”
“Not that we know of. But he dabbles in far more than drugs—human trafficking, arms manufacturing and smuggling, all the high-dollar operations. Someone like him has access to nukes, bio, and chem weapons.”
Fred drummed his fingers on the table. “South American cartels and Islamic terrorists don’t mix much, despite what you hear. Hell, the cartels need the U.S. But someone like El General . . . he could destabilize the border. And he’s open to the highest bidder.”
“He’s become a threat that needs to be eliminated,” she said.
“So fractious drug cartels decapitating Mexicans by the busload and pois
oning our kids are tolerable to the CIA, as long as they don’t open any mosques in Tijuana.”
“Like it or not,” Lana said coldly, “there is a bigger picture. Hard decisions have to be made by someone.”
Fred matched her stare. “Then I guess in this case, our interests coincide.”
“They better, since it’s your job.”
Fred snorted and looked away. He had long ago made his peace with how the U.S. government operated, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. In his mind, he worked for the American people, suits and politicians and duplicitous CIA operatives be damned. Fred’s belief system was his children and their future. “So what do we know about him?”
“Not much. We have no idea where he operates from except that it’s within the Southern Cone. According to the chatter, he’s got a hand in half the major cartels, and we suspect he played a part in enabling the power shift from Colombia to Mexico. Also, the cartels over which he holds sway appear terrified of him.”
“That’s not very comforting,” Fred said.
“No.”
“How?” Fred asked.
“Excuse me?”
“What kind of hold does he have?”
Lana took another sip of coffee. “Fear or protection, I assume. Probably both.”
“Protection as in connections?”
“A man like this, the only way he could have existed is with help from above.”
“Maybe he’s above your pay grade, if you know what I mean,” Fred said.
Instead of the retort he expected, she said, “That would put him in a very small club. And I doubt I’d be here right now.”
Thoughtful, Fred extracted the toothpick and twirled it in his fingers. She continued, “This is our first and only lead on U.S. soil. We might not get another chance.”
“Then I suppose I’ll get started. Anything else?”
“I assume you’re aware of the Manny Lopez hit last night?”
“I glanced at the briefing before we met. Manny supplied Frankie, so it’s obviously part of the same message. I’ll start tracing it back.”
