Law of the Lion

by Nick Carter

  Chepe Munoz was apparently another kettle of fish altogether, and Carter was looking forward to meeting him. Nominally tied in with the opposition, Munoz was supposed to be a bright, quick man who always put human concerns and ideals above political jargon.

  Margo Huerta was immediately responsive to Carter's call, but told him she was working on a large piece — a mural — and couldn't see him until later in the evening. Rachel's jealousy had served to give the Killmaster advance notice. He was certain he caught a strong impression of the artist's sensuality even over the phone.

  Carter decided to try Norman Sasner. Sasner ran his business on Isobel la Católica, a bit of a walk, but one that would literally help Carter get his Mexico City legs and lungs by helping him adjust to exercise at the higher altitude. A rare book shop made a perfect blind for processing information, investigating local activities, and allowing other informants to appear without fear of creating suspicion. A rare book store could be closed for long hours or days on end without creating suspicion.

  The Killmaster strolled leisurely along Juarez until it turned into Francisco Madero. Then he turned right for a block on Bolivar and found what he was looking for just below the intersection of 16 de Septiembre and Isobel la Católica.

  In a concrete building from the 1920s, Norman Sasner, Rare Books, was on the second floor, above a watch repair and a small cafeteria where the customers were given large flour tortillas instead of trays, and were charged by the serving ladle of food plopped on that large expanse of edible container. The odors of fish, chiles, onions, and grilling marinated meats made Carter wish he hadn't eaten so well at Tupinamba.

  The stairway was hewn from dark mahogany planks that had done well over the years. Mounting the steep incline, Carter was passed by three men, one of whom hesitated for a moment, as though in recognition.

  Through the smells of middle-class cooking, Carter got another odor and suddenly the picture became complete for him.

  These guys were pros and something had just gone down.

  Carter caught a whiff of burning cordite.

  A gun had been discharged recently.

  The man who'd hesitated very probably had recognized Carter — or suspected him of being someone on the other side.

  Carter spun around and tripped the second of the three men, a nondescript sort in a three-piece suit. The one who had hesitated turned, but before he could free his Ruger Mini-14, Carter had Hugo out, aimed, and thrown. The man smiled benignly as Hugo dug into him with a pocking sound. Only then did Carter realize the man wore a bulletproof vest. Hugo may have drawn blood, but any real damage was negligible.

  The Ruger was leveled right at Carter, who had no option now but to push off the stairway and dive at his attacker. A roar of discharging gun tore a furrow in the skin of Carter's shoulder as the two men collided on the stairway.

  The Killmaster's momentum carried him into the man with the Ruger and also caused a massive collision with the nondescript confederate. A raking kick to the man's shin had him doubled up with pain. The gun was leveled at Carter again. He rolled to get into position, used both hands to push himself off a stair, and with his right foot knocked the gun from his assailant's hand. It went skittering down the stairs.

  The assailant let out a yell more in frustration than pain, and the one whose shin Carter had scored was yelling in frustration of his own to the third man, "Get him, dammit!"

  The third man came at Carter with the butt of his palm. Carter found a quick stance of balance, caught the man's slicing palm, used the descending arm as a fulcrum, and caused him to go reeling, off-balance, tumbling down the rest of the stairs.

  The largest of the group, the one who'd had the gun, came at Carter and shot a kick at his knee.

  Carter knew he'd have to take it, but he also knew he could minimize the effects by dropping into a roll.

  He got a hand on his attacker's handmade shoe and yanked.

  The big guy swore again, went over backward, and landed on his advancing confederate.

  They pushed away from each other, the frustration starting to get to them.

  Carter made a lunge for Hugo and used an underhanded toss as the big guy reached for his Ruger. Hugo pinned him and he let out a yowl. "Son of a bitch!" he shouted, yanking Hugo out of his hand. "I'll get you!"

  Carter motioned him on with a come-hither gesture of both hands. The big man said to his confederates, "Come on, let's get him!"

  They looked at him uneasily.

  Grinning wickedly, Carter did a jump-kick turn, catching the one at the farthest end right at the kneecap. The pain was excruciating.

  Clutching his knee, he went rolling down the steps to yet another kind of pain.

  Suddenly Carter heard the wail of a siren. It was time to get out of there.

  The men looked at each other and swore with disgust. There were three of them and they couldn't take Carter.

  Hugo was tossed scornfully at Carter's feet.

  The three men scurried off, limping, down 16 de Septiembre. Carter decided there was nothing to be gained from chasing them. Chances of getting useful information were better inside.

  Whether the siren was in response to what they'd done up in Sasner's office or not, Carter knew he didn't have much time.

  He headed up the stairs into the rare book dealer's offices, knowing in advance what he would find.

  The interior was one large room, wall-to-wall books with the exception of a small alcove that was dominated by a large colonial-style desk and a Bank of England chair. A small room off to the side had packing and shipping equipment, plus a long worktable with large stacks of catalogues and the life-blood of the rare book business, the magazine Antiquarian Bookman.

  If Sasner's rare book business had been set up as a blind, it had at least been done by someone who had a certain amount of taste and knowledge. There were a number of first editions by Latin American authors and many fine volumes by European and American writers.

  On the far wall were some of the more cosmetic titles in the rare book business, old atlases, eighteenth-century maritime charts, and a number of beautiful leather-bound sets on colonial Mexico.

  Sasner was clearly a man who had thrived on an image of himself. A dapper little man with a double-breasted blazer sporting a large crest, an RAF necktie, and brown suede wing tips, he'd sat at his large desk, his corpse now driven back, arms splayed by the muzzle velocity of the two bullets he'd taken. One shot had blasted him in the throat, another in the heart.

  Carter took in the cruel reality of death. He'd seen it hundreds of times. A person's dignity gone in that last moment, leaving a picture that was actually a parody of the image the victim had tried to maintain in life. Here. Norman Sasner, in death, had his secret revealed. The force of the bullets that had killed him had also dislodged a rather complex toupee. Nevertheless, Sasner had managed to do what Carter had expected. By dipping his neatly manicured index finger into a large silver ink pot, Norman Sasner had managed to leave a clue: LT.

  Carter looked quickly about the desk for anything that looked like a note or dispatch Sasner might have thought to pass on to his CIA people. There was no time for a comprehensive search.

  He glanced around the desk area, trying to look for anomalies. There was a stack of the Manchester Guardian, but it quickly became apparent to Carter that Sasner's interest in this rather political newspaper was the reporting of English soccer league scores. The Killmaster also noticed an invitation to a poetry reading at the university and a tiny stack of Soldier of Fortune magazines, but nothing that seemed an obvious piece of what was growing to be a vexing puzzle.

  He decided to get out of there and take care of his shoulder.

  He removed his sports jacket, draped it over the shoulder with the wound, and quickly found a taxi on Isobel la Católica, giving directions for a small, discreet emergency hospital not far away on Calle Mesones.

  Whoever they were. Lex Talionis certainly had some organizational claws and were
now trying to cover their tracks. Even more important, Carter realized, they were on to him and his interest in them.

  * * *

  "Always intriguing problems you bring me, Carter." Dr. Hakluyt, a resident of Mexico for more than forty years, still retained the speech patterns and metallic pronunciation of his native Europe.

  A shaggy, Falstaffian man with curly graying hair, he regarded the Killmaster now as Carter lay, facedown, on a padded table, bathed in powerful mercury vapor light. "Last time you were here, you bring me the interesting problem of sutureless procedure. Now I think there is no way we are going to avoid some stitches."

  Carter lay quietly, watching Hakluyt's assistant, a tall, striking woman with wide, high cheekbones and the dark hair and eyes that spoke so eloquently of her Indian ancestry. She seemed aware of Carter's interest, and as Hakluyt stitched the crease on Carter's shoulder, she let her gaze, shadowy with obsidian mystery, dance across his face. Her gaze was direct and filled with challenge — until she suddenly gave way to a grin.

  "Interesting man," she said in Spanish to the doctor. "He brings us bullet wounds and hickeys."

  "I assure you I favor the hickeys," Carter said in the musical Spanish of the capital city.

  The nurse blushed, but her gaze remained steady.

  Half an hour later, bandaged, given a handful of pills for pain and antibiotics, Carter was paying his tab.

  "It is I who should pay you," Hakluyt said. "Such challenging problems you bring me, Carter. Far be it for me to wish you ill, but I do look forward to your visits. Last time it was the abdominal wall. This time the bullet is creasing your upper muscle sheath."

  The old doctor's gruffness had a layer of paternalistic concern in it, reminding Carter of David Hawk. "You are in good condition. Your wound will knit very well and you will have full use of the shoulder, that is if you do not aggravate it for some weeks."

  Carter nodded thoughtfully. "Tell me, Doctor, how completely is it possible to surgically change the human appearance?"

  "Ah, a most intriguing question for one of your apparent profession. I tell you, Carter, if you could check in here and give me six weeks — even as few as four weeks — I could do things with your nose, literally lower your ears, perhaps even give you higher cheekbones like those you admire on my surgical nurse."

  "I didn't mean for me," Carter said. "I mean in general."

  "There are some gifted reconstructive surgeons, especially in your country." Hakluyt seemed to be sorting through a mental list. "One of the best at cosmetic reconstruction is Charles Smith. Truly gifted, but equally eccentric. I have seen him repair radial blowouts and maxillofacial traumas that would make you wince when you saw pictures of the original state. Very good with birth defects and traumas. You know, burns, explosions, violent impact."

  Dr. Hakluyt spread his knobby hands. "Yes, Carter, if I grasp your meaning, it is possible to take an individual and in the hands of a gifted plastic surgeon, render him or her all but unrecognizable even to intimates."

  Carter caught a cab and directed it to the Zona Rosa, where he made for the Palacio de Hierro on Durango, one of the best department stores in the city. He studied the rack of sports jackets, settled on a muted silk weave with flecks of blue and green, then found a blue cotton shirt. At the toiletries counter, he splashed himself with Jean-Marie Farina from Roger & Gallet, and set out to walk the six blocks to Bucareli, where Margo Huerta had her studio and living quarters.

  * * *

  "I apologize for running late," Margo Huerta said, standing back to regard a long panel of Masonite board, largely covered with a bright, angular, and forceful mural of entire families sleeping at a railroad station. "But as you can see, I work big, and when I get involved with something, I lose track of the time."

  Watching her, Carter sipped the strong Mexican coffee she'd given him. Her studio was a large, narrow arrangement, running nearly a hundred and fifty feet. Walls had once divided her work area into two, perhaps three smaller studios. A large bank of custom windows caught a diamond-hard northern light. Sketches, unframed larger works, and several more conventional paintings were hung from the walls or leaned haphazardly against any handy surface. From two large speakers, strategically mounted to provide maximum stereophonic effect, came the clean, precise lines of one of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos, and as the selection came to an end, the distinctive, low-key voice of one of the XELA-FM announcers.

  Herself a large, dark, flamboyant woman with an expressive face and as yet no need for a bra, Margo Huerta favored the bright colors of acrylic, drippings of which spattered the floors and her Levi's. There were several places on the unfinished wooden floor where there appeared to be violent cross-hatchings made by a knife. Carter realized that Margo Huerta took a direct approach to cutting canvas or mounting her work, preferring the floor to a worktable.

  "If you can handle my working and not fawning all over you, we can talk," Margo said. "Some men find that very threatening, especially you guys. We call you norteños. You call yourself Americans. That's a lot of snobbery, you know. We're all Americans."

  "What I'm trying to figure is where that accent of yours comes from," Carter ventured.

  "Oh, I make no bones about it," Margo said, beginning work on a large, menacing figure. "I got some good education in your country. A few of your so-called liberal arts colleges in the South want to prove they're right for government grants, so they put on the big search for what they like to call minority women."

  Margo daubed fiercely at the mural, the figure taking on the identity of a federate, a Mexican federal cop, waving a riot stick. Just short of six feet tall, she nevertheless chose to work in high heels. The top of her torso was barely covered with a paint-stained sleeveless sweatshirt, a souvenir of a long-forgotten Grateful Dead concert. Her long, ebony hair was tied in a complex knot, held in place with a bright pink scarf, giving a sensual accent to her café-au-lait skin.

  "What they meant by minority women was anyone who didn't have blond hair, blue eyes, and creamy white skin," Margo Huerta said with a hoot of disdain.

  Carter let her tell her own story, which she did directly enough. The child of a well-to-do family, Margo Huerta had been polite and mannered until her school experiences in the U.S. Her drawings, technically brilliant, were largely of flowers, seascapes, animals. "All the safe stuff, you know. But none of that was making me happy."

  At length she'd begun doing larger works, commemorating events of Mexican history. "Would you believe it, Carter? All of a sudden that made me controversial. A lot of people don't want to see their own history. Suddenly I had a purpose, and I've been at it ever since. I get top prices for this stuff, Carter. Can you believe it?"

  "No question about it," Carter said, pouring himself more coffee. "Your work is museum quality."

  "Hah!" she said, spinning around, challenging him. "What do you know of museums? What was the last one you were in?"

  "As a matter of fact, the Pompidou in Paris was the last one, earlier this week. And a short while before that, the Topkapi in Istanbul."

  Margo Huerta was impressed. "Pretty good for a CIA man."

  "I think that is what is meant as a backhanded compliment," Carter said, "but I'm not CIA. Nothing like that."

  "State Department? You aren't one of those little Ivy League career pantywaists?"

  Smiling, Carter shook his head.

  "And Rachel has sent you to me. You must be something in the profession."

  Carter lit one of his cigarettes. "Let's stop trying to qualify each other and see what you can tell me about Lex Talionis."

  "If you know about that, Carter, you are no mere art lover." She laughed at her own irony, plunked the three brushes she'd been using into a pot of solvent, and approached Carter, reminding him of a stately flamenco dancer. "What did Rachel tell you about me?"

  "She told me she was jealous of your beauty."

  "So that's how you got where you are. You made her fall in love with you."

/>   "Only for a day," Carter said. "We're all too grown up for the other."

  Still circling him. Margo Huerta moved closer, watching him with renewed interest and challenge. She took the remains of Carter's cigarette from him and smoked it for a moment. "Tell me, Carter, do you think I will fall in love with you for a day?"

  Carter smiled. "I think I would be very pleased if you did. But whether that happens or not, I still need to talk about Lex Talionis." He decided to risk telling her about Norman Sasner.

  "He was a great fool," Margo said, leading Carter over to an antique horsehair sofa, a classic analyst's couch. "I am not an official member of the intelligence community. My interests are in causes and I know activist sorts, so when I tell you it was open knowledge that he passed information to the CIA. you will get my point. If I knew, imagine what the professionals know. No discretion."

  "Apparently he was well regarded at one time, and had good connections," Carter ventured.

  "But he became caught up in the game and lost all sense of discretion."

  Nick Carter went on to fill her in on the background of Prentiss, then sketched in his knowledge of Hector Cardenas and the mission Rachel Porat was on, resolving that he would tell no more unless he got a significant lead from Margo.

  She sensed his caution.

  "I tell you, Carter, I'm beginning to respect the way you work." She sighed as if clearing away any last-minute doubts about him. "Even if I were foolish enough to ask you for some identification, you would probably produce something that would look official and convincing and be completely worthless."

  Carter smiled, and reached for his wallet.

  "All right," she said. "I'll go for the big casino. If you qualify, we proceed. If not, well, perhaps we have dinner and fall in love for a day, and I finish my mural and you go back to school."

  She asked for and lit another of Carter's cigarettes. "Does it mean anything to you that Bezeidenhout is at this very moment in Mexico? Only this week, he was here in the city, hosting a group of associates."