by Dick Stivers
"What is going on!" Powell raved.
"This is Mexico City," Blancanales said, laughing.
The signal changed and traffic moved again. Drivers and passengers threw pesos to the fire breather. Blancanales tossed out a Lebanese five-pound note he'd kept.
The panel truck ahead of them veered to the right, swerving across two lanes of traffic. A diesel truck blocked Powell.
"Straight ahead! We're on them," Gadgets shouted through the hand radio. "Make a right turn at the next street. We'll give you directions. They say anything about spotting you?"
As Blancanales pressed the transit key, he saw the catering truck make a right turn. Powell leaned on the horn and switched lanes, daring a motorcyclist to hit him. He spoke into the hand radio, "If he's Iranian, that's the way they drive. Get closer and stay there."
"We're not in an unmarked vehicle, you know," the Wizard replied.
"Risk it. Otherwise, Akbar's gone." Powell whipped the car through a skidding right-hand turn and raced up the block. A double-parked truck slowed him. Sounding the horn, he swerved to the left, almost crashing head-on into another truck and accelerated again. "Which way? Which way!" he shouted.
"Wizard! Did they turn?" Blancanales asked.
"Straight ahead. Or..."
Powell floored the accelerator. The engine stalled. "God dammit! Move car, move it!" Grinding the starter, he raced the engine, then shifted into drive. The car hurtled across a boulevard full of traffic. Brakes screamed, and the car flashed past the bumper of a cattle truck, then they raced up the next block. Skidding through a right turn, then an illegal left, Powell merged with the boulevard's traffic.
Two cars separated them from the panel truck. Powell slowed. He let a car swerve in front of him. Finally, a light brought traffic to a stop.
As at all the other intersections, the vendors left the curbs en masse, waving their goods. Blancanales saw boys and women around the car.
Metal tapped the windows, and Blancanales looked into the cylinder of a suppressor pointed at his face. He looked to the other window, saw another hand holding another suppressed pistol. The gunmen stood close against the car, their bodies screening the sight of the pistols from the other cars.
"Open the door, Mr. Powell," an accented voice said.
"They've got the pistols," Blancanales said loudly, knowing that the miniature electronics in his pockets would transmit the information to Gadgets. "There's nothing we can do..."
"Very intelligent," the voice commented.
Blancanales opened a back door. A squat gray-haired man in an overcoat slid into the back seat. His pistol touched Blancanales's gut.
"Buenos dias, my American friends. I am Senor Illovich, cultural attache of the Soviet Embassy. It is a pleasure to welcome you to Mexico City."
14
"I'm going to kill that Soviet shit," Lyons muttered as he snapped back the slide of his auto-Colt. With a hollowpoint in the chamber, he set the safety. "Have your man pull up close. First chance I get, Cultural Secretary Illovich of the KGB is dead meat."
Captain Soto shook his head. "You cannot kill a diplomat."
"Why? Political problems? He's got a pistol. Say he shot himself."
"Ease off, Ironman." Gadgets switched from channel to channel on his receiver, monitoring first the Arabic conversation in the panel truck, then the talk in the rented car.
The Soviet's voice droned on, calmly reassuring the Americans. "It is for the best that we join you. This Iranian driver seems to be an excellent operative. I see that you have a gun, American. Allow me to take it, for the sake of safety. We do not want a misunderstanding. Thank you. You do realize, that if you continued in your pursuit, that Iranian driver would have noticed your car..."
"He doesn't know about us," Lyons commented.
"Unless he knows and wants to trick us," Gadgets countered. "Listen..."
"We have several vehicles, Mr. Powell," the Russian continued. "Let the truck go ahead, my men will follow."
"I can't let that truck out of sight! My friend's in there," Powell shot back.
"I will maintain contact with my radio... and with whom do you maintain contact? Senor... I do not know your name."
"Damn, he's got the Pol's Beretta and now he's got the radio!" Lyons cursed. "He knows there's someone else out here."
In the rental car, Blancanales touched the hand radio in his coat pocket. "This radio?"
"I do not mean my radio." With his free hand, Illovich touched the earphone plugged into his left ear, then pointed at the hand radio in Blancanales's coat pocket. Blancanales did not move. The Soviet applied pressure to Blancanales's ribs with the suppressor. "I promise to return it also."
Blancanales laughed softly as he passed the radio to the Soviet. Illovich smiled, showing off a set of perfect white false teeth.
"You laugh at the promise of a Soviet diplomat? You Americans..." Illovich studied the hand radio. He pressed the transmit key again and again. "And, for your information, I will also return your pistol. Does that surprise you? You do not yet understand..."
Gadgets's faint voice answered the clicks, static pops and scratches almost drowning his words. "This is center unit. Come in unit three. Report position. Speak loudly, you are at extreme radio range." Only a few car lengths behind Illovich, Gadgets rubbed his hand radio's microphone against his beard stubble as he whispered again. "Report position. Speak distinctly..." He crumpled a piece of paper. "Extreme range..."
Illovich passed the radio back to Blancanales. "So you are not alone. I return the radio, as I promised, but I also promise to shoot you if you attempt to prematurely contact your CIA pals."
"CIA? Me?" Blancanales asked, incredulous. "Why do you accuse me of that?"
"Do not deny it, Senor American. It would not be amusing. And you, miss. Are you also an operative of the Central Intelligence Agency?"
"No!" She spat out the denial. "I am a citizen of Quebec and an independent journalist. I am researching the CIA, but I would never associate with those..."
Powell laughed. "Unless you could get a story."
"...that gang of international criminals."
"What's your opinion of the KGB?" Powell demanded.
"Of course you are CIA. All American journalists are spies."
"I am not American! I am Quebecois!"
"So you speak bad French? American, Canadian, what is the difference? All foreign journalists spy for the CIA. Have you not read the great newspaper of my country, Pravda? 'Pravda' means 'truth.' " The Soviet laughed at his own irony. "And you, Mr. Powell. You were an operative, but you are not now, correct?"
"News gets around, don't it?"
"Think of your sudden liberty as an opportunity. I know of you, I know your talents. A man of your skills and experience would not suffer if he worked for the security agencies of my country. Put the political conflicts of our countries aside, consider the benefits. You would work with other professionals, at the command of professional leaders in the government. No more impossible directives from senile movie actors attempting to win votes with television spectacles. Instead of racing from place to place, attempting to correct problems that have no solutions, you could work to preserve world order, a world without war, where the Party leads a joyous humanity into the..."
"Gulag. The Siberian concentration camps. The firing squads and the unending march of the living dead into the pits."
Illovich shrugged. "Severe measures regrettably must sometimes be taken. But those are only for criminal elements. Here, Mr. Powell. I brought an application with me. Take it, it is yours. Study it."
Without taking his eyes from the traffic ahead, Powell slapped away the paper. "Who are you? Some kind of commie comedian? Never heard such shit."
"Ah, yes. It is wrong of me to make the offer in front of others. It was my way of putting you all at ease. It was perhaps a joke. But consider it. When you go back to the United States, you return to a very uncertain future. And that is the truth, if I..."
Illovich went quiet, listening to a report through the earphone he wore.
"Mr. Powell, accelerate. The truck is stopping. They appear to be transferring him to another vehicle."
"What's going on?"
"Make a right turn at this boulevard. This may be a very perilous moment. Mr. Powell, you must be ready. If there is a difficulty, you must identify my men as friends, or there may be a very unfortunate misunderstanding with your Lebanese friend. There, you see the truck? It is stopping..."
On a quiet side street lined by evergreens and flowers, the panel truck slowed to a stop behind another truck. The driver threw open the door and ran to the second truck. He pointed back to Akbar.
Two Iranians stepped from the truck, pulling pistols from under their coats. They aimed at Akbar and fired.
Powell floored the accelerator. He sped past the first truck, then whipped the car to the right, hitting the contact man and a gunman, tearing away the truck's driver-side door, the three impacts coming in one crash, the men and the door flying into the street.
Standing on the brake, Powell slammed the car into reverse and shrieked rubber. A shot from the second gunman banged off the hood, Desmarais screamed, then the panel truck blocked the gunman's aim. Powell jammed the brakes again, skidding the rental car to a stop.
Converging on the scene from opposite directions, two sedans braked to a tire-smoking stop. Men in dark suits — Soviet gunmen — ran from the cars shouting in Spanish. "Policia! Policia! Alto!"
The surviving Iranian turned. As he raised his pistol to aim, the dark suits fired. The gunman staggered back, his pistol falling from his hand, his legs spurting blood. He fell against a wrought-iron fence.
Akbar came out the back of the panel truck. Powell shouted at him. "Overhere!"
In the back seat of the rented car, Blancanales shoved the suppressor against the seat. He felt the pistol jar as Illovich fired a round into the upholstery.
Desmarais turned and sprayed Illovich with tear gas. She held down the button of the purse-size canister with one hand as she opened the door with the other. "Americans, get out! We must run!" Akbar shouted.
As Powell and Desmarais abandoned the car, Blancanales and Illovich, both choking, coughing, with watering eyes, fought for the pistol. Finally, Blancanales twisted the autopistol out of the Soviet's hands.
A Soviet gunman leaned into the car and pointed a gun at Blancanales's face. Breathing hard, his eyes streaming tears, Illovich took the silent pistol from Blancanales.
"Thank you." Illovich gave a command in Russian, and the Soviet ran after Powell and Desmarais. "A waste of time. They will not get far," Illovich said as two Soviets dragged the leg-shot Iranian gunman to a car.
At the corner, another car screeched to a stop, and a Soviet enforcer pointed a submachine gun at the running couple. Powell and Desmarais sprinted across the street, trying to make the safety of the boulevard. The Soviet fired a burst in front of them, the slugs pocking a rough-stone wall. They stopped. The Soviet motioned them back to where Illovich waited.
At the rented car, another Soviet agent quickly and expertly searched both Powell and Desmarais. He took the tear-gas sprayer from the woman and handed it to Illovich. Then Powell was ordered to start the car and follow the other cars away.
His eyes still filled with tears, Illovich examined the tear-gas sprayer. "Do all American girls carry these?"
"I am not..." Anne Desmarais began.
Illovich silenced the woman's denial with a spray of tear gas.
* * *
"Is that an official residence?" Lyons asked as they watched the last car turn through the gates of the walled and guarded grounds of a city estate.
"I know it is not their embassy," Soto answered. "I will get the information later, but first we change this truck for cars."
"What else can you get?" Gadgets asked.
"We must decide at what level this operation will proceed," Soto answered. "We can keep all this within my unit, which will unfortunately limit what we can do. Or we can go to my superiors and explain the threat to your President. If we do that, we will have all the resources of the security forces. However, that may take time."
"That's not the only trade-off." Lyons took a last glance at the estate as the catering truck passed. "We go official, it takes time. It also takes it away from us. Your people won't let us operate. Then if the Iranians get across the border, we've got to go official up there, too. More time. More limitations. I say we only need a few cars. Once we get Powell and the Politician loose from those commies, we're ready to go. Wizard?"
"Get a mobile home. With a shower. A bullet-proof mobile home. With a color tv. And a video machine and some videos and some movies on tape. And..."
"Kill the wish list," Lyons said, laughing. "You ain't a senator yet!"
"You asked."
"There's a limit."
"Then come up with a panel truck. I want to park outside the people's palace back there and monitor the place."
* * *
Screams echoed from the basement. As if he had not heard, Illovich poured tequila into a tumbler. The screams continued. The two Americans glanced to one another. Illovich watched the Hispanic as he passed the tumbler of clear liquor to the American agent.
Illovich tried to guess the man's ethnic background. Mexican? Puerto Rican? Central American? The man could be one of the three Colonel Gunther had encountered the previous month when the combined force of American operatives and Mexican mercenaries smashed through the structure of Los Guerros Blancos. In a week of smash-and-run attacks, the gang of killers had first destroyed the dope gangsters and Mexican-army units ruling the opium fields of the Sierra Madres, then slashed through the maze of criminal-military-political alliances to attack the headquarters of the Fascist International operations in Mexico.
That attack had very nearly ended Illovich's most ambitious scheme: the penetration and control of the highest offices of the Fascist International by the Soviet Union.
Throughout the previous decade, Soviet KGB officers had succeeded in infiltrating thousands of agents into the security services and death squads of many Latin nations. These agents believed they served the American CIA, or the Salvadoran government, or patriotic Argentine exiles, or any one of many other reactionary groups. At the instructions of their neo-Nazi officers, and with the aid of the KGB, these thousands of agents annihilated the moderate political elements of Central and South America. Teachers, students, labor organizers, priests, progressive politicians, compassionate businessmen, idealists, evangelists — anyone not subscribing to the Stalinist diktat of the Soviet Union, died. Forewarned and sheltered by the KGB, only the cadre of Soviet agitators and manipulators avoided the death-squad assassins. When the oppressed people of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua inevitably rebelled against their feudal overlords, Soviet-trained-and-financed cadres emerged from the universities, slums, and army barracks to lead the revolutionaries.
But the death-squad agents remained in the lower ranks of the Fascist organizations. The Soviet Union needed agents who attended the conferences of the leaders. Through years of patient work, creating identities and arranging "victories" to demonstrate his agent's intelligence and loyalty, Illovich had finally succeeded in placing an East German operative in the highest military-political circles of the Fascist International. Colonel Jon Gunther, supposedly born in Paraguay, supposedly the ambitious son of a German family dedicated to the ideals of the Thousand Year Reich, had attained the coveted position of the International's military-liaison officer to Mexico. Gunther had served to integrate the actions of the Mexicans within the hemispheric strategy of the Fascist International. He had shuttled between the capitals of the Americas, coordinating and often initiating the responses of the Pan-American elite — the wealthy, the oligarchic Families, the transnational corporations — to the rising storm of nationalism and democracy throughout North and South America.
Then the three Americans and their mer
cenaries had almost defeated Illovich's ambitious plot. If Gunther had not escaped...
Yet from the near-disaster, Gunther had wrenched a significant gain: the recruiting of one of the Americans. Gunther had offered the blond leader of the operatives, the one called "Ironman," gold and a leadership role in the Fascist International if the American became an agent in the employ of Gunther. The "Ironman" had accepted and helped Gunther to escape. Though the Ochoa gang had immediately recaptured Gunther, the American had fulfilled his commitment. Or had it only been a trick?
Illovich must know the truth. As he poured drinks for the captured Americans, a thousand plots and countermeasures swirled through his mind. Somehow he must contact and then test the blond American known as "Ironman." Could these American agents lead him to the other man? His long joke with the employment form in the car had been a test. Somehow he must break through their resistance.
Holding the bottle to an empty glass, Illovich glanced to the Lebanese.
"And you, my friend?"
Akbar shook his head.
"Oh, forgive me. I forget. Your faith."
They sat in the library of the house. Shelves of books rose from the floor to the ceiling of the room. Heavy velvet drapes, smelling of dust and age, covered the windows. Desmarais paced the room, studying the framed prints on the walls, the titles of books, the pre-Conquest sculpture displayed on the tables.
"I'll take a refill." Powell put his tumbler on the old desk.
Illovich flashed his startlingly white false teeth. "It is not often you have the opportunity to drink with the opposition."
"Yes, the pleasure of drinking with the opposition," Powell mimicked. "Even if it's this strange cactus vodka, right, Illovich?"
The Soviet laughed. "Cactus vodka! How true. I had not thought of it like that. Is that what tequila is called in Texas?"
"We call it a lot of things. Like, deadly. Like, white lightning..."
A piercing, shuddering wail interrupted Powell. The captured Iranian screamed until he sobbed down a breath and screamed again.
