Guardian of Lies: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  “Yeah, but right now we got nothing,” says Herman. “Think about this. If the feds bag Nitikin, Alim, and his followers, say they catch ’em with the goods, unless we’re standing right there to witness it all, we still have nothing. They’ll stamp ‘classified’ on the bomb and throw the national security blanket over everything they find. They’ll cart it all up in boxes and bury it in some vault.

  “That means if you and Katia end up getting strapped to gurneys for a ride to the death house, I wouldn’t be holdin’ my breath waiting for somebody in the federal government to step up and raise his hand just ’cause they got a Dumpster full of evidence showing somebody else did it. As far as the government’s concerned, their only downside is one less sheep to shear come tax time. Katia’s a foreign national. The prisons are full of people who didn’t do the crimes. Every time they do a new DNA test, they empty another cell block. It’s the problem we got, the justice system has absolutely nothin’ to do with justice.”

  Herman takes a deep breath.

  “Don’t sugarcoat it,” I say. “Tell me how you really feel.”

  “Okay, I shot my wad.” He laughs.

  “I thought African Americans were supposed to like government?”

  “That’s why you never wanna get hooked on stereotypes,” he says. “We better get back inside.”

  “Who is this Rhytag?” As soon as we sit down again, Maricela wants to know.

  “Later,” says Herman.

  So far we have avoided telling her anything about the FBI or the fact that I am charged as a codefendant in Pike’s murder. Herman and I haven’t talked about this, but we seem to have come to a mutual understanding. Neither of us can be sure whether her cooperation will continue once she realizes I’ve been charged along with her daughter.

  “Problem is, we’re missing the same piece to the puzzle he is, the location, where it is. So where do we go from here?”

  “It sounds to me like we’re going to Panama,” says Herman.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you.” Goudaz comes in behind us holding a notepad in one hand, twirling a pen in the other. He’s picked up only the last bit of the conversation.

  It turns out his friend at the docks at Puntarenas is a storehouse of information.

  “He has a line on containerized shipping from all over the world,” says Goudaz. “According to him, any container cargo coming out of that area, southwest Colombia on the Pacific side, would ship from a place called Tumaco. His computer shows only one vessel leaving Tumaco bound for Balboa within the next four days, a ship called the Mariah. It left Tumaco this morning and is scheduled to make port in Balboa day after tomorrow.”

  “Then that’s it,” says Herman. “That’s gotta be it.”

  “There’s one problem,” says the mayor. “The Mariah left Tumaco empty. No cargo. It’s supposed to be taking on cargo in Balboa. It’s not showing any ports of call between Tumaco and Balboa. But here’s the interesting part. The records at the other end in Balboa show preliminary arrangements for transshipment of one cargo container from the Mariah to another vessel. So far, the other vessel is unidentified.”

  Maricela is shaking her head, a perplexed look on her face. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re wondering how the Mariah could leave Tumaco empty and arrive in Panama with a container?” says Goudaz.

  “Yes.”

  “Colombian magic,” he says. “According to the man in Puntarenas, anything is possible in Colombia. A mystery container gets put on at sea, or they make an uncharted stop in some cove along the coast. He tells me it’s also possible the Mariah may never show up in Balboa at all.”

  “How is that?” I say.

  “He says smugglers often fog the shipping records. They’ll show one destination and sail to another, create false bills of lading for cargo. Sometimes they’ll even change the name of the ship en route. They identify a registered container ship, same size as the one they’re sailing. The other ship could be in dry dock somewhere or in another port halfway around the world. They borrow the ship’s name for a few days. If they plan ahead and create a paper trail and a new destination for the new ship, nobody is going to ask any questions when it arrives on time. And if the paperwork shows the port of origin as a place that’s not known for smuggling, officials at the port of destination probably won’t check the cargo that closely. Customs will collect any duty, and before you know it the container is on the back of a truck headed someplace else.”

  “So what you’re tellin’ us,” says Herman, “is we don’t know where Nitikin is or the container?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say somewhere out on the big blue. That’s the bad news,” says Goudaz. “The good news is, we may know more by tomorrow. If by then the computer shows the name of the other ship, the one that’s supposed to receive the container, and the Mariah actually shows up at Balboa the next day, then the transfer is likely to take place, in which case we should get a final destination.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?” says Herman.

  “I’d sit tight, have another beer if I were you,” says Goudaz.

  “A man after my own heart.” Herman laughs and gets up out of the chair, the whole hulking six foot four of him. He puts his arm around Goudaz’s shoulder, dwarfing the man.

  “Just one more thing. I hate to even ask, but we don’t know who else to turn to. And you’re such a helpful guy.” This is Herman in full bullshit mode.

  Goudaz laughs. “What do you want?”

  “Paul and I are afraid the prosecutor in Katia’s case may have attached a couple of investigators to us when we traveled down here. If we’re going to find information we can use at trial, we need to lose them. We’re not going to be able to do that traveling under our own passports. I’m betting you might know someone in town who could produce a couple of good passports on short notice.”

  “U.S. or foreign?” Goudaz doesn’t even miss a beat.

  “Too many holograms and threads running through the paper on U.S.,” says Herman. “Let’s say Canadian.”

  “When do you need them?”

  “Yesterday,” says Herman.

  “It’s gonna cost you.”

  Herman looks my way for approval.

  “Sounds like a business expense to me.”

  FORTY-NINE

  Alim felt the steel sides of the cargo container shudder as the unremitting chop of the rotors suddenly changed. The noise woke him as his stomach told him they were descending. He checked his watch and then jumped to his feet, grabbed his rifle, and reached into the duffel bag where he found a pocket pouch containing four more loaded clips.

  He strapped the pouch over his shoulder and glanced at the bag of grenades in the bottom of the duffel. Alim decided to leave them. He took one last look at Nitikin, on the floor. The Russian hadn’t stirred since they’d checked his eyeballs earlier that day.

  Moving quickly around the wooden crate, he stepped over one of his subordinates who was fast asleep, and kicked the other one who was cowering like a whipped dog.

  He got down in his face and told the man, “Get a rifle and load it. You are to guard the container and the Russian. If anything happens to either one, I will cut off your head and feed your body to the sharks. Do you understand?”

  The man nodded.

  “Move,” said Alim.

  The man scurried on his hands and knees, around him and toward the duffel bag on the floor.

  Alim moved to the two brothers, tapping one of them on the shoulder with the butt of his rifle to wake him. The movement woke the other as well. Afundi gestured for them to stand and join him as he unfolded a sheet of paper and laid it out on top of the wooden crate. He pointed to an area on the drawing and then to one of the two brothers.

  The man nodded. He understood what he was supposed to do.

  Alim gestured to the other one and pointed to another area on the drawing. The man nodded.

  “According to the information there should only be seven targets. But we must get them all. If one of them gets away, there are too many places to hide. If they’re wearing red shirts, don’t shoot. Do yo
u understand?”

  Both men nodded.

  They had spent two days practicing, but now they were shorthanded. They would simply have to move faster to make up the difference. He reached into the pocket pouch and gave each of the brothers an extra thirty-round clip.

  “Use short bursts, and make them count.”

  The descent seemed to take forever. At one point they hovered for several minutes, then climbed again, swung out, and circled. Centrifugal force sent the container in a wide arc as the three men grabbed the sides of the wooden crate and struggled to maintain their footing on the steel floor. It was the reason they were confined in the container. The chopper couldn’t land on board, but the container could be settled on the deck. And once there, their confederates would open the steel door and they could surge out and take control.

  They felt the helicopter move forward slowly and then hover as the heavy cargo container swung back and forth like a pendulum from the steel cables.

  When they finally touched down, it came with a jarring blow. It knocked one of the brothers off his feet and threw Alim, shoulder first, into the thin lead shield bolted to the side wall of the container. The men quickly recovered and moved toward the door.

  They heard the rotors descending as the giant chopper came down close to the roof of the container, men’s voices outside yelling. This was followed by the rasp of metal cables against the outside of the steel container, and a few seconds later the ebbing noise of the rotors as the helicopter pulled skyward.

  Alim pulled the bolt back on the assault rifle and let it slam forward, seating the first round in the chamber. The grinding click of metal was followed two more times as the brothers did the same.

  They listened as the steel bar on the door was lifted. A second later a blast of cool, damp air rushed into the container.

  Alim clicked off the safety and moved the lever down to the middle position, for full automatic fire.

  As he did so, a swarthy thin man in a red T-shirt and ragged worn chinos pulled open the heavy steel door, put his shoulder to it, and pushed it wide and out of the way.

  For a second the ship’s bright deck lights blinded Alim and his followers as they stood in the darkened cave of the container. Then peripheral movement caught the attention of one of the brothers.

  Off to the right a short, stocky man in ragged clothes came running out of the darkness. He was swinging a long-bladed machete high over his head and closing in on the man in the red T-shirt.

  Afundi’s follower swung the muzzle of his rifle and fired from the hip. The first burst went high, sending sparks off a steel railing above the target’s head and twenty feet behind him.

  The man changed his path, charging the open door. Alim lowered the muzzle of his AK and pulled the trigger. The steel-jacketed rounds spun the man like a Raggedy Ann doll. One of them sparked off the blade of the machete, ripping it from his hand as he collapsed on the deck.

  One down, six left.

  “Go,” said Alim.

  The two brothers raced from the open container and out onto the deck.

  Afundi turned to his interpreter. The man was shielding himself behind the device and its wooden crate. Alim pointed to the man in the red T-shirt. “Ask him if they have the bridge under control.”

  The interpreter said something in Spanish, waited for the reply, and translated for Alim. “He says they hold the bridge and the captain. They have temporarily disabled the antenna array.” That meant the ship had no radio or satellite capability, at least until Alim’s confederates reconnected the antennas.

  “Good.” Alim headed out into the night air, running toward the bow of the ship. He felt the sway of the open sea under his feet. Even though everything beyond the railing was black, lost in darkness, Afundi could feel the heavy chop as the vessel bucked a stiff headwind.

  As he glanced over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the open container, perched no more than two feet from the ship’s starboard gunwale. One slip and the chopper pilot would have dropped them over the side. They would have gone down, crushed by the pressures of the deep sea, never knowing what happened.

  Alim heard shots coming from the other side of the wheelhouse, short bursts of automatic fire. He ducked through one of the steel doorways leading from the cargo deck into the ship’s superstructure. He moved slowly down the passageway toward the center of the ship, opening the doors, flipping on overhead lights, and checking each compartment.

  He was almost through a large storage area when a sudden burst of shots from the deck above caused something to move in the far corner. Alim aimed the muzzle of his rifle in the general direction of the movement. He flipped the safety lever down one notch to semiauto and fired two single rounds into the steel bulkhead.

  The ear-piercing explosions caused the two men to pop up like jacks-in-the-box from behind a row of fifty-gallon drums, their hands stretched high in the air. The two were slight of build, diminutive, and dark skinned. One of them couldn’t have been five feet tall. He was wearing an oil-stained tank top and had short shocks of black hair that seemed to shoot in every direction from his small round head. The only thing about him that was big was his eyes as they focused on the muzzle of Afundi’s assault rifle. Alim figured the two men were probably Filipino or Southeast Asian. The ship was of Panamanian registry, but the crew came from wherever wages were cheap.

  Alim considered dropping them where they were until he saw the lettering on the fifty-gallon drums the two men were standing behind. He couldn’t read the words, but he knew the international symbol for flammability.

  He gestured with his head and the barrel of his gun for the men to walk toward the door.

  They did as he ordered with their hands in the air. Once out of the compartment, Alim marched them down the passageway toward the cargo deck. As they reached the deck, the taller of the two men looked back to get direction as to which way to go, forward or aft.

  Alim nodded with his head toward the railing as he lifted the safety lever to the middle position.

  The second he heard the click, the man bolted. Afundi pulled the trigger. The burst of bullets caught the Asian before he could take a second step. They ripped through his back and chest before his shocked dead body could hit the deck.

  The little one stood frozen in place with his hands up, his back to Alim. His head was turned and his eyes cast down on the bloody mass that an instant earlier had been his crewmate.

  With all the thought he might employ in reaching for a cup of coffee, Alim swept the muzzle of his rifle back thirty degrees and emptied the clip.

  The man’s knees buckled as his body disintegrated in bits of spattered tissue and sprayed blood.

  With the casual air of a hunter who has just shot a duck, Afundi turned from the riddled corpse before it could even stop moving. He went through the ritual of reloading, scrupulously depositing the empty clip into his pocket pouch. Then he headed back into the interior of the ship looking to bag another bird.

  FIFTY

  This morning as Herman and I step out of the cab downtown, I have donned a floppy canvas jungle hat packed from home, and a pair of dark glasses. I have the brim on my hat pulled low over my eyes.

  It has taken the mayor the better part of a day to find someone who could produce the passports within the time frame we have.

  Just before we left Goudaz’s apartment, I tried to reach Harry at the office using the encrypted cell phone. Harry answered; we got a few words in, but a couple of seconds later the call was dropped. I redialed three more times and each time the same thing happened. Herman thinks it’s the thick concrete walls in the mayor’s apartment building. He calls it the bat cave. I got enough of the message to Harry that he knows we’re all right. I’ll try again later.

  We walk two blocks to Avenida Central, a pedestrians-only avenue that runs half a mile or so through the heart of downtown San José. The mayor has put us on to a small shop where they make document copies and do photographic work. He has called the owner and the man is expectin
g us.

  As we shoulder our way through the crowds walking in the center of the street, I feel as though I’m naked. Templeton has a warrant out for my arrest, but I’m worried that the FBI may have identified Herman, in which case they may have circulated his photograph to the local authorities. Even in a crowd he is big enough that walking next to him is like carrying a signpost.

  Half a block down we find the shop. Herman and I quickly get off the street. We give the girl at the counter Lorenzo Goudaz’s name, and a few seconds later a tall, slender man with a pencil mustache and drooping eyelids motions us to follow him behind the counter. He takes us to a back room where he quickly closes the door the moment we’re inside.

  He turns and looks at me. “What is your name, seńor?”

  “We’re Lorenzo’s friends,” I tell him.

  “I need to see some identification.”

  “Is that necessary?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I show him my driver’s license.

  He takes a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolds it, and checks something written on the paper against the information on my license. “Okay. And you, seńor?”

  Herman does the same.

  “Okay. Mr. Goudaz says you need them today.”

  “Correct,” says Herman.

  “Did he tell you how much?”

  “No.”

  The man smiles a little. “It must be cash. I only take cash.”

  “How much?” says Herman.

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars, each,” he says.

  “Five grand, that’s pretty steep,” says Herman.

  “You need them in a hurry. Of course, you are free to find someone else who will do them for less,” says the man.

  “No, we’ll have them done here,” I say. “But they’ll have to be good.”

  “My work is always good. I have never had any complaints; the pages are all properly stitched; the covers, you cannot tell the difference between the real passport and mine; and the printing and documentation you will see for yourself are excellent.”