"Muy bien, senor," said the chief customs officer.
They nodded their heads politely and, their duty fulfilled, left the hangar.
El Padrino clapped his bejeweled fingers, bringing his personal guard.
They came carrying weapons and looking fierce.
"Guard the plane. No one comes in or out. You cannot trust these Mexicans, no matter how much you pay them."
His men deployed around the hangar with military precision, as well they should. They had been trained by Israeli mercenaries.
El Padrino turned on his heel and reentered the cabin. In his private cabin he worked the phone.
El Padrino played the telephone like a master musician, his voice smooth almost to the point of unctuousness. He never overdid it. And so received quick polite answers.
But they were not answers he liked. Comandante Odio was dead, the DFS told him. It was most regrettable. No, there were no further details available at this time.
"This is unfortunate," said El Padrino to the primer comandante of the DFS. "Comandante Odio was a very valuable man. I fear I cannot replace a man so valuable as he."
"Perhaps we could work something out," suggested the primer comandante.
"Ah, I was hoping you would say that," said El Padrino, who understood that in Mexico, at least, money did not talk. It beguiled.
"If you would like to discuss this further, you may come to my office," the primer comandante was saying.
"I would much prefer that you experience the hospitality of my fine aircraft. The wines are French and the food is Andalusian."
"I shall join you directly," said the primer comandante. The phone went click.
Yes, thought El Padrino. These Mexicans were so very easy to do business with. Perhaps in a few years, if business continued to expand, he would move his operation to Mexico City. Colombia was more refined, but the government very, very entrenched. In Mexico they were more flexible. They even had a saying that governed their code of behavior: "Money does not stink."
El Padrino snapped his fingers and a steward entered the cabin.
"Prepare on excellent meal," El Padrino instructed. "We are having important guests. And see how the presidente's quarters are coming. I wish him to enjoy every civilized comfort during his journey to Colombia."
"Si," Padrino."
Chapter 23
Remo Williams noticed the missing videotape as he reached for the phone. It rang before he could ask Chiun about it. Frowning, he brought the receiver to his mouth.
It was Smith. "Remo!" he said tensely. "I've been trying to get you for hours!"
"We've been out working, remember?" Remo reminded him.
"Did you get any of my messages?"
"What messages?" Remo demanded.
" I left nearly a dozen. My God, didn't the front desk give them to you?"
"Smitty, you have a lot to learn about the way they do things down here," Remo said. "Look, we've got bad news. I hope you're sitting down."
"It's Gordons, isn't it?" Smith asked.
"How'd you know that!" Remo blurted.
"His voice was recorded by Air Force One's flight data recorder," Smith said testily, "but never mind that. Time is of the essence. Give me your report."
"The short version is: the guy running around pretending to be the Vice-President is Gordons," Remo said.
"You encountered him?"
"Yeah, but he slipped away. Last seen resembling Josip Broz Tito dipped in bronze."
"Beg pardon?"
"Read about it in my memoirs," Remo said glumly. "Let's stay on track here. We have only two hours. Gordons has set up a meet. He has some crazy idea that the President's survival is linked to his. He's willing to hand him over in return for certain guarantees."
"We cannot trust that man-I mean, machine."
"I know what you mean, but Chiun has him thinking we don't know who he is. If Chiun is right-"
"I am," Chiun said loudly enough for Smith to hear. "I never fail. When I have been sent to the proper place at the proper time. Unlike this mission."
"If Chiun's right," Remo went on, "Gordons may come along peacefully. Maybe we can make this work. Once we have the President, dealing with Gordons will be another matter."
"What does Gordons want?"
"Hard to say," Remo said. "Safe passage to the U. S. Diplomatic immunity. Fifty cases of Three-in-one oil. With that ambulatory junk pile, who the hell knows? I say we give him what he wants and sort out the casualties after the President is safe."
"Yes. Absolutely. Do what you have to, Remo. Offer him anything. Just bring the President back alive. "
"Just call me Frank Buck," Remo said. "You know," he added, "I can't believe this. How the hell did Gordons get involved in this?"
Smith expelled air into his receiver. "I did some backtracking, Remo," he said wearily. "You remember that Gordons had taken over that California theme park, Larryland."
" I remember it, well," Remo said. "He had the place rigged with that stolen Russian satellite, the one that sterilized people with microwave bursts. He thought he'd sterilize every visitor and eventually wipe out the human race. We'd all die out and he'd survive. Him and the cockroaches."
"The Army Corps of Engineers blew up Larryland."
"I was there too. I thought Gordons was gone for good. "
"As it happens, the previous President had been flying to his California ranch during that operation," Smith said. "Air Force One flew over the detonation site, apparently on orders from the President, who wanted to see the explosion from the air."
"What?"
"This is supposition," Smith went on, "but if Gordons' central processor survived the explosion, it could have been exploded upward, possibly high enough to attach itself to Air Force One."
"Christ!" Remo rasped. "You mean Gordons became Air Force One?"
"It is my best guess," Smith admitted.
"And two presidents have been riding around inside him?"
"It is a sobering thought, I know," Smith admitted.
"Sobering? It makes my blood run cold. What was he up to?"
"Think about it, Remo. Gordons exists to survive, and survives to exist. Air Force One has an excellent maintenance program and relatively light duty cycles. Gordons is a machine. As Air Force Ore, he would be the most pampered machine on earth. No one suspected him. No one molested him. In a way, it's unfortunate that this happened the way it did. The presidential plane is scheduled to be replaced in another year. Gordons would have been retired from service."
"We gotta nail him this time," Remo said fiercely.
"No. The President comes first. Gordons is secondary. "
"What happened to acing the President if he compromises national security?" Remo asked.
There was silence on the line. Remo started to say, "Hello?"
Smith spoke. "If anything goes wrong, that is your option of last resort. Some things are going on in Washington I do not understand, but we have an extremely sensitive political situation developing."
"Tell me about it," Remo sighed, a vision of the Vice-President-the real one-floating through his mind. "Look, one way or another, we should have this wrapped up tonight. Will the lid stay on that long?"
"Barely. The media are getting restive. Report back as soon as the situation is resolved."
"Gotcha. "
Remo hung up. He turned to Chiun. "We're a go for negotiating. But Smith says if it goes bad, the President is better off dead."
The Master of Sinanju's tired eyebrows lifted. "Ah, he is preparing to make his move at last."
"No. It's a last resort."
"Smith is clever," Chiun mused. "Perhaps this entire scheme is his doing."
Remo went to the door and looked out in the hallway. There was no sign of Guadalupe Mazatl. He shut the door.
"You were right," he told Chiun. "Lupe's cut out on us."
"If I was right about one matter, I might be right about another," Chiun said, getting up. He lifted to
his feet like a column of scarlet smoke emerging from a floor heat register.
"Not about that," Remo said flatly. "What do you say we get to Teotihuacan early? Just in case."
"We risk much, the longer we breathe this foul air," Chiun warned.
"I'm feeling better," Remo said, rotating his thick wrists like an arm wrestler warming up.
Chiun nodded. "Now. Here. In this air-conditioned room within our bellies full of rice. But out there, the very air robs us of our strength, our mighty resources. Ordinarily, Gordons is a formidable foe. Under these circumstances, we are as ordinary men."
"So what do you suggest?" Remo wondered.
Chiun raised a lecturing finger. "We avoid combat at all costs. We negotiate, as Smith would have us do."
"Sounds reasonable to me," Remo admitted.
"And then, once back in the pure clean air of America, we will strike, for Gordons has cost us dearly in the past. He murdered the woman you knew as Anna and he robbed me of the seed of the future."
Remo's face grew sad. "Yeah, Anna. Funny, I hadn't thought of her in a long time. And Gordons did sterilize you that last time, didn't he?"
"We have much to repay Gordons for," Chiun said in a cold voice. "But we will do this in the time and place of our own choosing."
Chapter 24
Behind the pond-scum-brown smog that hung over the Valley of Mexico, the sun set like a smoky brazier. The stagnant air, fed by unregulated car exhausts and industrial smokestacks, stank of carbon dioxide. Millions of pairs of sore human lungs sucked in the unhealthy air. It scoured sinus passages and caused spontaneous nosebleeds. Scarlet tanagers, one moment winging past the Pemex Towers, simply folded their wings and plummeted to their deaths, their immune systems succumbing to toxic chromium levels.
It was just another afternoon in Mexico City.
Except for a series of seemingly unrelated events.
First, the President of the United States woke up to total darkness. He thought he was dreaming. Then he wondered if he were dead. He was not lying down, not standing, but somehow suspended in the dark. His questing fingers brushed an abrasive surface like raw plaster. He found that he could move his arms, but not much. He couldn't move his legs at all. And something was digging into his crotch, on which he was somehow balanced.
His legs tingled with pins and needles. And he smelled something odd. It reminded him of the stuffed-animal section of the Smithsonian Institution-formaldehyde and dead fur.
He called for help. There was no answer.
The Museum of Anthropology on the Paseo de la Reforma was closed on Mondays. Today was Monday. And so the spacious museum was deserted except for a single guard named Umberto Zamora.
Zamora was making his rounds when he heard the sudden awful grinding sound. Like a million giant pestles grinding maize. He ran to the sound, or where he thought the sound emanated. It changed from the grinding and sparking of stone to a slow, ponderous tread.
Zamora stopped so swiftly he skidded on the polished marble floor. He listened fearfully. The ponderous tread was coming in his direction. Slowly, methodically, unstoppably.
Umberto Zamora felt the floor tremble under his feet, and his courage deserted him. He dived behind a Mayan stela.
There he huddled, trembling as the terrible tread lumbered past him. It was like an earthquake on legs. He waited until it was gone, presumably from the museum-if the terrible rending of wood and metal meant what Zamora thought it meant.
Gingerly Umberto Zamora emerged from hiding. He followed the scuffed floor prints. They led to a hole in one wall. A very big hole. And out on the grass, giant footprints led away.
Off in the grass, an olive helicopter lifted off with difficulty.
Zamora retraced the footprints back into the museum. They ended at the open spot where the statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue-She of the Serpent Skirts-had stood for many years. She stood there no longer.
Umberto Zamora was of mostly Mixtec blood. He believed in the old ways. He believed that Quetzalcoad would one day return to Mexico. Still, he was quite astonished that Coatlicue had stridden away. She was over eight feet tall and made entirely of rude, immobile stone. He noticed the tiny rocky fragments littering the floor, as if Coatlicue had simply shrugged them off.
Then he fell to his knees and began praying to his gods. The old gods. The true gods of Mexico.
Federal Judicial Police Officer Guadalupe Mazatl left the Hotel Krystal in a huff, muttering, "Pock all gringos!"
She was fed up with all gringos. She was sick of the lazy FJP and the corrupt DFS, of every criollo and mestizo who gave in with fatalistic surrender to life's many indignities.
When Officer Mazatl had first joined the FJP, she was determined to be different, not to take bribes or to grovel before the white Mexicans, but to live as an Aztec woman, proud and unbending of spirit.
She had never bent. And as a consequence, she had never been accepted by the mestizo men who complimented her body but secretly yearned for that ultimate Mexican status symbol, a blond woman. In four years with the FJP, she had never advanced beyond officer, and she knew she never would.
But she had retained her self-respect. It was victory enough.
She entered her official vehicle, pride like a mask of her wide brown face, and started the engine.
There was no point in taking this matter to her primer comandante, that cabron. The DFS would be of no help either. She had virtually been an accomplice to the death of Comandante Odio and his men. How could she have been so stupid as to get mixed up with gringos? she wondered.
Officer Guadalupe Mazatl decided that if she was to protect Mexico-the Mexico she both loved and despised-she must go to Teotihuacan.
She pulled out onto Liverpool, turned right on Florencia, past the ridiculous Banana boutique with its King Kong roof diorama which symbolized how far Mexico had sunk into carnival absurdity, and sent the car speeding along the Paseo de la Reforma.
Near the Maria Isabel Sheraton, a DFA vehicle pulled in front of her. It slowed down, forcing her to do likewise. Another DFS car appeared on her left. And a third on her right. They drove in formation until they reached a red light.
There, DFS agents piled out and demanded she surrender her weapon. Officer Guadalupe Mazatl knew better than to refuse.
"What is this about?" she asked as she handed over her sidearm, holster and all.
"You are under arrest for suspicion of complicity in the murder of DFS Comandante Oscar Odio," one agent said. "You will come with us, Officer."
As obligingly as any meek mestizo, Officer Mazatl allowed herself to be bundled into one of the DFS cars.
"DFS headquarters is not this way," she said when the cars turned onto Viaducto.
"We are going to the airport," the driver informed her.
Puzzled, Officer Mazatl folded her strong arms, wondering why. She decided not to ask. Her Indian fatalism had completely reasserted itself. She despised the feeling.
Remo Williams got lost in the congested Mexico City traffic. He stopped in an area of run-down buildings. He kept every window sealed tight. Still, carbon dioxide was coming up through the VW Beetle's leaky floorboards.
"Damn this rental car," he told Chiun. "Remind me to slaughter that desk clerk who arranged this."
"I will leave you what still quivers," the Master of Sinanju said. He breathed through a scarlet kimono sleeve held over his nose.
Remo spotted a Mexico City traffic cop astride a motorcycle parked in a no-parking zone. As much as he hated to roll down the window, he did. Being lost in Mexican traffic hell was infinitely worse.
"Hey!" he called over. "Point me to Teotihuacan?"
The traffic cop put a hand to his ear. "Que?"
"Teotihuacan," Remo repeated. "Comprende?"
"Ah, come closer, senor."
Remo sent his car closer to the white-lined zone where the officer was parked.
"Closer, senor," the cop repeated.
"Teotihuacan," Remo s
aid.
"Closer," the cop said, wiggling his fingers invitingly.
And when Remo had the car nose-to-nose with the motorcycle, the officer dismounted, pulled out a ticket pad, and said, "Oh, senor, you have crossed the white line. Now I must give you a ticket."
Remo looked down. His front tire barely touched the white no-parking line.
"But you told me to come closer!" he protested.
"But I did not give permission to cross the white line, senor."
Remo got out of the car. He ripped the ticket pad from the man's hands, tore his gunbelt free, and as a final expression of displeasure, stomped the motorcycle into an agony of spare parts.
"Teotihuacan, senor?" the cop said quickly. "Go norte."
"Point," Remo said. "I forgot my compass."
The suddenly smiling traffic cop obliged. Remo said gracias in a metallic voice and got back into the car.
Twenty minutes later, they were driving past a cemetery set in the foothills of one of Mexico City's towering sentinel mountains. One side of the mountain was a beehive of tar-paper and cardboard shacks, set cheek by jowl.
"I can't believe people live like this," Remo muttered.
Past the mountains, the terrain flattened and was dotted with feathery trees and the occasional rosepink chapel. The air became cleaner. But not clean enough to induce Chiun to breathe it directly. Remo's head was pounding now. It was still like breathing unadulterated car exhaust. The pit of his stomach felt cold, like a spent coal.
"How do you feel, Little Father?" he asked.
"Ill," Chiun croaked through his sleeve.
"Wonderful," he muttered, noticing the sign that said SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACAN. "We're walking into one on the worst situations in our lives and we're freaking basket cases."
"We are Sinanju," Chiun said wearily. "And we will prevail." Then he coughed. Remo had never heard his mentor cough before, and it frightened him.
Chapter 25
The question was put to Officer Guadalupe Mazatl by the fat man the others called, with slimy deference, "El Padrino."
"Que quieres? Plata, o plomo?" In English: "What do you want? Silver, or lead?"
DFS Primer Comandante Embutes held a Glock pistol to Guadalupe's smooth brown forehead. She knelt before El Padrino, her eyes more shamed than frightened. It was the question she had dreaded back in Tampico. The narcotraficantes would give other FJP officers the same choice: accept bribes and look the other way, or die.
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