by Nick Carter
Carter did a quick scan of the leads he had. "Circumstantially, at least, it appears that Piet Bezeidenhout has defected from the security police and he may have burned them for several million in diamonds. He is probably a key player in the Lex Talionis organization."
Even as he spoke, an additional connection came through to him. "It also seems that Piet Bezeidenhout was having the same kind of meetings here in Mexico City that Hector Cardenas was having in Covington, Kentucky. He was making presentations and trying to interest potential backers."
Margo Huerta's eyes lit with admiration. "You are, as they say, a heavy hitter, Carter. Okay. We go on from here. I think we are going to get you somewhere and once we get there, not have to stop and check in with Daddy every time you need to make a decision." She rose, looking triumphant, moved to a small closet, and disappeared into it. Carter could hear the sounds of clothes hangers moving over a rack. Moments later, Margo emerged, looking a bit more formal from the top up. The cut-off sweatshirt had been replaced by a bright red silk blouse, a matching scarf, and a well-worn denim jacket. Margo looked as if she were off to a gallery opening or an evening of pub crawling. Carter began to get a suspicious prickly feeling about her.
"Come on, Carter. We're off. I'll bet your people didn't give you anything about Chepe Munoz, eh? Well, he's someone your boy, Prentiss, was in contact with. Knows his way around the CIA and the Cubans."
Carter, of course, had been briefed on Munoz, but he saw no reason to tell Margo Huerta that, since his suspicions of her were beginning to mount.
"We'll take my car," she said.
Margo locked up carefully, made sure the dead bolt on the large door to her studio engaged, then pulled a small chain security door into position and locked it.
As they started down the steps toward the rear garage, Carter began to realize why he'd been suspicious. There were five of them, arranged in two groups so that on first look it would appear to be a group of garage mechanics talking or, even more innocently, a bunch of teenagers. They were all relatively short and wiry.
Carter assessed them quickly.
They were good with feet, hands, or weapons.
They were lethal and ready.
Six
Carter knew that in Mexico you get great clues about people by the shoes they wear. The affluent wore handmade shoes or high-fashion brands. A large number of Mexican youths wore running or sports shoes; in some cases, a pair of cheap soccer shoes was the only pair the individual owned.
All five of the crew that waited for them wore new, expensive Nikes. Their trousers, although khakis, had the unmistakable look of being professionally pressed.
They dispersed and moved with strategic expertise, like dancers in some deadly ballet.
Carter saw immediately that what he'd mistaken for youth in the attackers was more a case of good conditioning and probably eating well. He reached immediately for Wilhelmina, but another Luger smashed it from his hand and a short, hardwood baton, half the length and half the weight of a riot stick, hit him across the right bicep, a stinging blow from an expert toss.
Positioning himself to use his feet, Carter got off one well-placed kick to the shoulder of one of the five. Working on instinct, he chopped at another attacker with his still numb right. His target went down, but Carter felt the impact roar through his arm. Turning to take a flying kick from a third attacker, he caught a leg in both hands, yanked upward, and converted the kicker's momentum into a continued upward thrust. The kicker came down hard and vulnerable on his tail bone, letting out a yowl of pain, his eyes filled with the fury of frustration.
Now Carter fended off a looping right from a fourth attacker, but the one who'd thrown the baton had come up into position and blind-sided him, driving him down, where a 9mm Luger was thrust in his face.
"Hold, Killmaster!" a voice said in a now familiar accent. Carter smiled and extended his hands. As he did, he saw one of the attackers holding a Luger on Margo Huerta. Carter could not tell if she were being held for cosmetic purposes or not. The attacker who held the gun on her nudged her toward a row of parked cars. "It would be amusing to turn the tables on this one and hold an auction for her," he said. "I wonder how many of her liberal friends would bid anything."
"Depends on what they'd be bidding for," another said, and they all laughed.
"Up on your feet, Killmaster," the tallest of the group said, and began nudging Carter toward a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Margo was loaded into a Blazer where a driver already waited, the engine at idle. They pulled out into the late-afternoon traffic first.
Carter was nudged into a Toyota Landcruiser, a vehicle that had seen some extensive use but was obviously in a good state of repair. It accelerated smoothly, was tuned quietly, and did not emit huge billows of fumes.
As they angled away from Bucareli toward Reforma, Carter saw that no attempt was made to keep the Blazer in sight. Perhaps they were even being taken to separate destinations. Only when they turned onto Avenida Insurgentes Sur and Carter caught a Meeting glimpse of the Blazer did he realize that both vehicles were going to the same place.
"I don't suppose you're giving any hints about where we're going," Carter said.
His captors did not respond.
"I suspect," Carter said, trying to get a rise out of them, "that if we're away long enough for dinner, we're bound to see some lamb flavored with cumin."
One of them started to speak, but his seatmate nudged him to silence.
Carter asked for a cigarette, giving his Arabic a particularly Palestinian spin. Without thinking, the one who had started to answer him moments before reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a crumpled blue pack of Gitanes. Carter laughed aloud, and once again the sterner of Carter's captors scowled.
"You have all the small victories you want, Killmaster," he said. "We have you. The big victory is ours."
The Toyota lost contact with the Blazer until the merge point where Highway 57 turned into the deluxe toll road, 57D, moving north from Mexico City. The Blazer passed the Toyota and remained about six car lengths in front.
The terrain gradually grew more mountainous and rugged, but the highway was splendid, a series of well-crafted grades, turnouts, and gently elevating straightaways. The only thing that spoke of any difficulties were the road signs, often appearing to give conflicting information.
Highway 57D entered the State of Mexico, left it, and entered it again for a time. The city limits of the capital, also called the Federal District, were alternately straight ahead, to the left, and directly behind them. Carter had no clue as to where they were going. The major destinations within reasonable driving time were the village of San Juan del Rio and, about an hour's fast drive beyond that, the increasingly trendy arts and retirement center of San Miguel de Allende. Even though the drive was smooth, the surgical work on Carter's shoulder began to throb, and the Killmaster decided the best thing to do was settle into a light doze in preparation for what lay ahead.
* * *
Carter felt himself move forward into full alert just at the exit to San Juan del Rio, where the Blazer took a turnoff after failing to heed honked warnings from the Toyota. The driver of the Toyota and the surliest of Carter's captors were visibly and verbally irritated with the Blazer, and attempts at signaling with hands, handkerchiefs, and neck scarves began.
After continued honking and waving of scarves, the Blazer stopped and the captors pulled out a road map and began consulting it.
"I see you have trouble with the Mexican road system," Carter said.
The captor sitting next to him cuffed him. "Laugh all you wish, Mr. Professional. We hold you prisoner. We do not intimidate through your cheap humor."
"Ah, but it isn't my humor," the Killmaster said, "it happens to be your humor. At least, it's humor at your expense. It is my professional attitude and it helps keep me alive. One thing you might remember. Until I'm dead, I'm a professional. If I go, I'll take a lot of you with me."
There
was no rancor in Carter's voice or eyes. He was so matter-of-fact that his message found his mark. His captor offered him a cigarette.
Just north of the city the Toyota drew abreast of the Blazer and the two cars pulled over to the side of a narrow, two-lane road, a maneuver that proved to be imprudent when a large pickup, its bed loaded with chicken cages, careened around a dirt road, began honking at the two parked vehicles, and slammed on its brakes, but not before delivering a sharp crease to the left rear of the Blazer, miraculously avoiding smashing its taillights. A short, feisty man with a Pancho Villa mustache and a faded pair of mechanic's overalls bounded out of the cab, complaining vigorously, actually pounding the back of the Blazer.
Carter was handcuffed to the metal tubing under his seat as all but the driver of the Toyota got out to deal with the driver of the pickup. A number of children from a nearby yard appeared, watching with open-mouthed wonder. Carter was not amused to note that Margo Huerta was nowhere to be seen in the Blazer.
The driver of the Toyota had a 9mm Luger trained on Carter.
"You'd better not let the federates see you waving that," Carter said conversationally. "They don't take kindly to guns being waved in their country unless they're doing the waving. And you can be sure they'll be along if someone doesn't deal properly with the driver of that pickup. They or the Green Angels. You can be sure of it."
The driver coaxed a cigarette out of a package and thumbed a wooden match. "You'd better not try anything, Carter."
"You're doing well enough without me," the Killmaster said, noting with unconcealed amusement that another vehicle, a white-and-green-striped repair truck with wide-track heavy-treaded wheels pulled up to join the congregation.
"Speak of the devil," Carter said. "I do believe the Green Angels have come to someone's rescue."
Carter noted that his captors were completely intimidated by the appearance of the Green Angel truck and by the two men riding in it, one of whom, a tall, robust man with an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap, emerged and advanced on the group.
The Green Angels are the Mexican equivalent of an auto club, an emergency road repair service, but even more, they are occasional arbitrators in disputes between motorists and local garages, rescuers of tourists who were stranded or thought they were.
Large quantities of Mexican money appeared to be changing hands as the Green Angels and Carter's captors gesticulated and the owner of the pickup truck began yowling in a plaintive voice.
The Green Angel in the baseball cap approached the truck-driver with the money he'd extracted from the captors.
The truck driver looked at the money, turned from it with disdain, strode purposefully over to the Toyota, and kicked the side panel.
"Be honest, now," Carter told his driver. "Do your companions understand Spanish very well? You appear to be in a problem that can only worsen."
"Two of them speak it well enough."
"Ask him what he considers appropriate damages — and pay him," Carter said. "If the police come and you are found not to have Mexican liability insurance, you will be in a situation far worse than Senorita Huerta and I are in."
Still holding the Luger at the level of Carter's navel, the driver of the Toyota called out to his companions in a guttural, colloquial Arabic.
At length, two of them approached and Carter heard the driver working to convince his colleagues to offer more money and get out of this mess.
When an acceptable amount was finally offered, the driver of the pickup truck got back inside the cab of his vehicle, revved his engine a few times and drove off. The Green Angels followed, and the procession began again, this time with the Toyota taking the lead.
They continued north, following signs indicating San Miguel de Allende, but after a few more miles in that direction, the area surrounding the roadbed began to give way to occasional fences, a few gutted shells of adobe sheds, and the beginnings of abundant pastureland where small, leathery-looking cows grazed.
At an unmarked road, the Toyota turned right, which Carter reckoned was close to due north. With the Blazer behind, they remained on a narrow, well-graded but unpaved road, running toward the nearby range of mountains.
The terrain began to increase in rockiness and now, on either side of them, the fields of short, clumpy grass were still suitable for grazing — indeed, an occasional cow pushed her nose into the choicer morsels and munched — but the boulders increased in size and number. What had started as a gentle afternoon breeze began to gain strength, pushing waves and ripples across the longer grass and filling the air with seeds, pollen, and chaff. The driver of the Toyota sneezed and cursed his allergy.
After another several miles of driving in low gear, they came to a large watering hole, and the road curved away from it, moving now toward a distant clump of the distinctive agave cactus and trees that Carter supposed had been planted years back as a windbreak.
As they approached the trees, a scraggly stand of cottonwood, juniper, and gums, the terrain took an even more pronounced upward thrust. Dust devils danced as the wind began to intensify. Looking back, Carter could see how they had gradually climbed to the point where the mountains were close at hand.
Their destination became immediately clear as they rounded another bend. A large, low-slung building, probably some kind of line camp, was positioned to catch the afternoon shade cast by the trees. It was large enough to have a number of rooms. A chimney and vents suggested the interior had ample heating and cooking facilities. This far out in the country, there were no traces of power lines, but any of the three or four outbuildings could house a generator. Essentially made from adobe brick, the building had shuttered windows and a thatched willow rod roof. A small fresh stream ran nearby, and a large well, with masonry made from the nearby rocks, attested to the strategic position.
Evidence of corrals and pens were plentiful, but at the moment, neither horse nor cow seemed much in evidence. On the other hand, two other four-wheel-drive vehicles were parked in front of the building, not far from the main door.
Carter was freed from his handcuffs and nudged out into the early evening. The sound of the nearby stream reminded him how thirsty he was. He noted with some interest that Margo had been in the Blazer all along and reasoned that she'd been hidden under some lap robes after the run-in with the pickup truck had taken place. Perhaps he'd been wrong to suspect her of complicity in this, but with the same kind of instinct that he'd used to suspect there had been something not entirely right about Rachel Porat, he decided he needed to find out more about Margo Huerta before he could trust her. His life might depend on it.
Margo was pushed, cramped from the long ride, into the lengthening shadows of the afternoon. The wind tossed her hair and caused her to blink her eyes. She began a steady stream of invective as she was nudged toward the front porch of the house, telling her captors they'd picked the wrong one to mess with, and trying to incite them to some kind of anger.
Those among her captors who could understand her chose to ignore her words. Even those who had limited Spanish could probably have divined her intent, but they remained impassive, pushing her toward the building.
One of the captors reached the door with a few bounding steps, opened it, and nudged Margo inside. Carter was brought along directly behind.
The door opened into a rather large, comfortable room with a stone fireplace, a well-designed cooking area, and a long plank table as well as several sturdy chairs made out of willow rods over which rawhide had been stretched and soaked to the point of tautness.
Two other men awaited them, wearing nondescript khakis and denim work shirts. A pot of coffee boiled over a charcoal fire. Yet another man stood, using a large, handcarved wooden spoon to stir a large copper pan from which a piquant stew gave off the pungent aroma of cumin and cilantro. A large stack of plastic bowls were nested nearby.
"What now?" Margo said.
"Looks like we're going to get some lamb after all," Carter replied, allowing himself to be guid
ed to a seat.
The door to an adjoining room burst open and a man with a sharp, angular face, bushy brows, a cleft chin, and pale blue eyes appeared.
"Sorry to have missed you in Paris, Carter."
"Who is this guy?" Margo asked.
"Tell her, Carter," the man with the cleft chin said. "I'm certain you know."
"Margo, meet Abdul Samadhi. I suspect that's his real name. He probably has a much more imaginative street name."
"It's going to be a great pleasure questioning you both," the PLO man said.
Seven
Carter and Margo were separated, Carter being moved into a side room with small high windows and several layers of whitewash covering the adobe surface. In addition to a plank table and a few primitive chairs, there was a cot, a table covered with old magazines, and a wooden crate serving as a base for a portable shortwave radio.
Abdul Samadhi, working on a two-day growth of beard, motioned Carter to a seat at the plank table, produced cigarettes, and leveled his strange blue eyes at Carter. "What were you doing in Paris?"
"Vacationing."
"Yes, and your experiences there were so taxing that you had to come to Mexico to get away from everything," Samadhi said, standing and beginning to pace about the room, tapping a willow switch against his palm. "What do you know of Lex Talionis, Killmaster?"
"The law of the lion," Carter said. "A concept in early jurisprudence that finds a perfect expression in the Old Testament. Basically, it's the concept of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Samadhi swiped at the tabletop with the willow switch. "Don't play games with me."
Carter spread his palms. "Obviously, you don't know what it is yet."
"Perhaps I am checking to see if you are innocent enough to be allowed to remain free." Samadhi fingered the cleft in his chin.
"Perhaps you're trying to cash in on what you think is a big thing, Samadhi, the biggest thing you've ever had thrown your way. I know some of you PLO fellows are reasonable in your dedication and conviction. But even among the best of a group of idealists, the scent of a big score becomes more than the ideals can stand."
