Shattered Bone

by Chris Stewart

  “Salinas, are you awake?” the guard whispered.

  “Yes, what is it? What do you want?”

  For a moment Salinas thought it might be Juan, a guard who favored Salinas when it came to sharing a game of chess, but as he studied the figure in the doorway he realized it wasn’t. Instead, it was a guard he had never seen before. He immediately became suspicious.

  “Quickly sir, come with me. There is someone here to see you.”

  The guard had already turned and was standing aside, waiting for Salinas to get up. Salinas peered through the darkness and into the hall. He could see that the guard was alone. Usually the prisoners were escorted by at least two guards. And he had never been allowed to leave his cell or see a visitor at night. What was going on?

  “Who is it? I am not expecting anyone. Perhaps you have the wrong cell.” Salinas replied. He didn’t move from his bunk.

  “Oh, no Mr. Salinas, I am sure it is you that I need. Please, come quickly. We don’t have much time. And be quiet. We don’t want to disturb the other prisoners.” The guard then stepped back into the cell and pulled out his night stick, beckoning to the open door.

  Salinas got up from his bunk and slipped on some shoes. He walked through the door and made his way down the hall, followed by the guard. A few minutes later he found himself entering one of the prisoner conference rooms. It was a dimly lit cubicle of unpainted gray cinder block, the only furniture a small table in the middle of the floor with two wooden chairs beside it.

  The guard left him alone, and several minutes passed before the door opened again. In walked a man Salinas had never seen before. He was dressed in a tailored suit, and as he entered the room, he extended his hand to Salinas.

  “Señor Salinas, it is a pleasure to meet you,” the stranger spoke in English. “My name is Ivan Morozov. You’ll have to forgive me, my Spanish is very poor.”

  Salinas remained seated, and didn’t extend his hand to shake. He studied the stranger for a moment, trying to place him. He looked about forty-five. Medium build. Short hair, dark skin, and eyes like a sickly cat, yellow and mean. Salinas studied the eyes and face. He knew he had never seen this man before. If they had ever met, he would have remembered. And he wasn’t an American. He spoke with an odd accent that Salinas couldn’t place.

  “What do you want?” Salinas asked, shifting his eyes away from his visitor to look at the door. He could see through the small glass window, and he noticed that the guard had left them unattended. Never before had he been allowed to talk to anyone, not even his private attorneys, without a guard standing inside the room.

  “Señor Salinas, I will ask the questions for now. And please, don’t be offended, but I must be brief and get straight to the point.”

  Morozov pulled back a chair and sat down across from Salinas before he continued. “I have come to make you an offer. It will involve a great deal of money. More than you could imagine, and unfortunately, all of it will come from your accounts.

  “But,” he continued, “if you agree, then I am offering you something that only we can give you.”

  “And what is that?” asked Salinas, as he impatiently thumped the table.

  “Your freedom,” Morozov replied. “You will walk out of this prison with me. Right now. Tonight. And we will provide certain guarantees to ensure your freedom in the future. You will never fear being hunted down and captured by either your government or the Americans. You will be free to go about your business, including your trade in cocaine.”

  Salinas didn’t change his expression. Morozov leaned forward across the tiny table and lowered his voice. “How much would that be worth to you, Señor Salinas? How much would you pay to get back your life? One million, five million, maybe even ten?

  “How much is it worth to you not to spend the rest of your life bathing in your sweat? How much would you pay to eat a meal that wasn’t prepared by a prisoner with a contagious disease? How much to enjoy the beautiful things of this world?

  “Can a man put a price on his freedom? Tell me, Señor Salinas. How much would that be worth?”

  COLÓN, PANAMA

  Two days later, Salinas walked into the central office of the Banco de las Americas He was dressed in a business suit with a wide-brimmed straw hat. The only piece of clothing he wore that wasn’t glaring white was a smooth yellow silk tie that hung below his belt. In tow was his assistant, Mr. Ivan Morozov, carrying his leather briefcase. Salinas walked across the marble floor to a small reception area tucked away in the back of the enormous lobby. Although he had never been here before, he knew this was the office of a Señor Gorge Arellano.

  “May I help you?” he was asked by the secretary who guarded the office door. She was a large woman who sat behind an imposing teak desk. She didn’t smile as she examined her unwanted guest.

  “I would like to wire some money,” Salinas replied.

  “And the name on the account?”

  “Señor Juan Analla Cormona. You’ll find it in file eighteen.”

  The woman keyed the information into the computer. Salinas watched the computer screen as it momentarily went blank. Within a few seconds a single line displayed across the screen: “File eighteen access denied. Dorado account. Return to main menu.” was all it said.

  The secretary hesitated only a moment, then reached over to her multilined telephone and dialed a two-digit number. Without speaking into the receiver, she replaced the hand piece back onto its cradle and turned again to face Salinas.

  “Señor, please come with me,” she said as she got up and led the two men back through the office door. There Gorge Arellano was waiting to receive them.

  “What can we do for you, Señor Cormona?” he asked as he walked across the office to meet them. He was a short, fat man who looked remarkably like his secretary. They must be brother and sister, Morozov observed.

  “As I told your receptionist, I would like to transfer some money,” Salinas answered cooly.

  “Certainly, sir. Do you have the access number of the required account?”

  Without speaking, Salinas passed a folded sheet of paper to Arellano, who unfolded the paper as he walked back to his desk and sat at his own computer. It took him several minutes of typing before he looked up again at the waiting men.

  “And the daily code?” he asked with just a hint of suspicion in his voice.

  “Dial three two—four five six—three two—two seven eight. Ask for Mr. Dante. Tell him Cormona authenticates Bravo Bravo. He will reply with two seven eight four and today’s date.”

  Arellano scribbled furiously as Salinas gave him the instructions. He dialed the international number and waited for the call to go through.

  Nearly four thousand miles away, the phone rang in a small office of the Western Union Telegraph Company. It wasn’t answered until the tenth ring. It took several more minutes to locate Mr. Dante. Finally he picked up the phone.

  “Mr. Dante speaking. How may I help you?”

  “Mr. Dante, I have a Señor Cormona here. His instructions are Bravo Bravo.”

  Without hesitating Dante answered. “Two seven eight four. Today’s date is three September.” Then just as quickly he hung up.

  Arellano listened to the disconnect tone for a few moments before he lay down his receiver. He then turned to face the two men who were waiting. Suddenly he wanted very much to complete their business and escort them out of his office, wishing all the time he had been more polite.

  “What are your instructions, Señor Cormona?” he asked as he picked up a pen to write.

  “We are going to transfer money from three accounts in Zurich into one account in Brussels. Don’t write any of this down. I will step you through the account numbers and give you all the necessary PINs. It should only take a minute.”

  Morozov couldn’t help but be impressed as he watched Salinas work. It was apparent that Salinas had set up each account so that only he could have access to them. He repeated each account and access code from memory and
never hesitated with the required response. In only a matter of minutes exactly fifty million dollars had been transferred into a previously dormant account in Brussels. Salinas had already provided Morozov with the access numbers to the Brussels account. It was now only a matter of waiting to confirm the transfer. That would take some time.

  “We will call you in an hour to confirm the transfer,” Salinas said as he turned toward the door. “Please don’t keep us waiting.”

  As Gorge Arellano escorted his visitors out, he couldn’t help but notice Morozov. The man had not spoken the entire time, which wasn’t surprising. But there was something unusual about him. Perhaps it was the way he touched his boss’s shoulders to steer him out of the room. Perhaps it was the way he seemed to observe everything, without ever really moving his eyes. Whatever it was, Arellano knew that Salinas wasn’t the one to fear.

  Salinas declined Arellano’s offer to call them a cab. Instead, he and Morozov walked the three blocks back to their hotel. After taking the elevator to the third floor, they entered their sparsely decorated room. They watched television for half an hour, then Morozov picked up the phone. He called the bank and received a transaction confirmation number. Then he dialed an international code and talked to the bank in Brussels. They confirmed the account had been activated, but refused to reveal the new account balance. Morozov smiled in satisfaction.

  Twenty minutes later, Carlos Manuel Salinas went down to the restaurant for lunch. He ate alone while he read the paper and then returned quickly to his room.

  Five minutes later he was dead.

  That night Morozov was sitting comfortably on an international flight bound for Guatemala City. From there he would use three different passports as he made his way back to Europe. His first stop would be in Madrid. From there he would fly to Prague and then finally on to Kiev.

  While waiting in the Guatemalan airport for his flight to Spain, Morozov secreted himself in an old wooden box of a phone booth. He studied the ancient telephone for a moment, then began to dial. Once the call went through, it only took a few minutes before he had transferred three million dollars out of the account in Brussels into his personal account in Bucharest. He considered the money as a kind of bonus. An extra tip for a job well done. And besides, since he was the conspirators’ bookkeeper, who would be any wiser? Certainly not his fellow Ukrainians. They would never even know it was gone.

  After completing his call, Morozov left the phone booth and stopped by a small airport bar and ordered a bottle of Corona. He sipped the beer in silence while eyeing the beautiful, dark-skinned women that seemed to surround him. Ten minutes later, he was on his flight for Madrid.

  About the time Morozov’s flight was touching down in Spain, a maid entered a hotel room back in Colón. There she found Salinas’ body lying peacefully on his bed, his head cocked awkwardly to one side as a result of the three fractured vertebrae in his neck. Protruding from his ashen lips was a crisp fifty dollar bill, along with a handwritten note from Ivan Morozov that apologized for making a mess.

  MIAMI, FLORIDA

  Less than four hours after the order to transfer money out of the Zurich accounts had been sent from the bank in Colón, Bret Cosner, a senior agent at the Drug Enforcement Agency, had to interrupt his lunch-break game of basketball to answer his phone. He was a huge man, well over six feet five inches and three hundred pounds. His skin was dark, more from his Latino mother than from any time spent in the sun, and his hair was bushy and long. He walked to the sideline, sweating like a pig and swearing under his breath, threw a thick towel over his hairy shoulders, and picked up his cellular phone.

  “Cosner here. If this is Kenneth, it better be good.”

  “Yea, I love you too, babe,” Kenneth Murry, Bret’s partner at the DEA answered back. “Always good to hear your voice. Now if you’re finished playing hopscotch, or miniature golf, or whatever you do during lunch to keep in shape, why don’t you come in to work? I’ve got something you might want to see.”

  Bret immediately began to head for the shower, waving absently to the guys on the basketball floor to go on with the game. Glancing at his watch, he estimated the time.

  “Be there twenty minutes without a shower, thirty with. Which do you want?

  “Twenty. With.” The telephone went dead.

  Bret immediately picked up the pace. He recognized the urgency in his partner’s voice; Kenneth wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to cry wolf.

  Thirty minutes later, Senior Agent Bret Cosner strode into his office at the DEA Regional Center in Miami. He threw his jacket over the back of his chair and sat wearily behind his desk just as agent Murry walked into the room.

  The difference between the two men was striking. Murry, a thin man with balding hair and narrow gray eyes, was young and bookish-looking. He always wore a jacket over his white shirt, even on the hottest and muggiest days. His pants were always pressed. His shoes always shined. He was neat and trim and slightly elfish.

  Agent Murry closed the door behind him and set himself down opposite Cosner’s scratched and worn government desk.

  Cosner leaned back in his chair and placed his feet up on the corner of the desk. Murry frowned in disapproval. Cosner reached down and grabbed one of the two double cheeseburgers he had bought for lunch and began to cram food into his mouth. Murry frowned even further. Cosner took a quick swig at his cola, then belched. Murry nearly came out of his seat.

  “Geez, you’re a pig. You know that, Cosner? Watching you eat makes me want to throw up.”

  “Hey, cool. That’d be neat.”

  Murry shook his head in disgust. Cosner belched once again, then shifted in his seat. A noxious fume filled the air. Murry’s eyes narrowed and glazed over, but he didn’t respond. Cosner laughed. He loved yanking Murry’s chain. And after working with him for more than three years, he knew which buttons to push. But it was all just a part of the chemistry—part of what made them a team. Though different as night and day, they liked each other and worked well together. And they liked their work, which was more than Bret could say for most of the other saps that he knew.

  Although most DEA agents wore a gun, neither Cosner nor Murry ever did. They had never actually seen a drug deal go down, for they rarely went out on the street. And to participate in a drug bust would be the last thing either one of them wanted to do. Such things were better left up to “street agents,” one thing they had never pretended to be.

  Cosner and Murry were accountants; specially trained technoweenies who had become invaluable tools in the international war against drugs.

  They worked for a very special and highly secretive office within the DEA. Their job was simple. Track the money. Track the money. Track the money. That was all that they did. From Bermuda to Alaska, from Chile to Moscow, they traced and accounted for the billions of dollars that circled the world as a result of the drug trade.

  And they were good. As a direct result of their efforts, organized crime and the drug cartels had had hundreds of millions of dollars confiscated from foreign accounts. Working on the razor-thin edge of legality, Cosner and Murry, and several others just like them, spent their days tapping into foreign bank records, eavesdropping on cellular-telephone conversations, searching Federal Bank transaction accounts, and monitoring the hundreds of thousands of daily financial transactions that flowed through the intercontinental telephone lines, all in an attempt to hit the cartels in the only place they could really be hurt.

  As Cosner ate, Murry settled back in his seat, then handed his partner the transcript of the intercepted phone message, along with some handwritten notes describing the general conditions in which the message had been intercepted. Cosner read the transcript fairly quickly.

  “You’re certain the Zurich accounts are controlled by Salinas?” he asked.

  “Yep,” was all Murry said.

  “That’s a little unusual. Much more money than he has seen fit to move around, even before he started his little stay down in Harada.”<
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  “Yep. That’s a pretty good hunk of cash. I figure it’s about thirty percent of everything that he’s worth. So, what do you suppose is going on?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Cosner responded between gulps of burger and fries. “It sounds to me like our ol’ man Salinas is about to take a fall. One of his boys must be circling around him, setting himself up for the kill. What else could explain it? Somehow, one of his lieutenants must have gotten hold of a few of his numbered accounts and started to figure, with Salinas safely out of the picture, now might be a good time to grab a piece of the action. You know what they say—while the eat’s away, the mice will play—and judging what I know about Harada, that’s about as ‘away’ as Salinas can get, at least without crossing to the other side of the veil.”

  “Yep. You’re probably right,” Murry replied, then leaned forward in his chair. “Only thing is, based on what we have seen in the past, I don’t think it works out that simple. Salinas was no fool, not by any means, and he was always very careful with his money. Never—and I’ve gone back to check this—never has Salinas manipulated any accounts since he was ordered to prison. The prison won’t let him get near a phone. They want him out of the business. So, from the day he was apprehended, none of his accounts has seen any activity at all. No deposits. No withdrawals. No transfers between accounts. I’ve seen more movement in glaciers. And now suddenly this comes along.”

  Cosner grunted. Murry went on. “As far as one of his lieutenants taking over, it has always been clear that Salinas had set up the security surrounding his accounts so as to avoid just such an endeavor. Now we find that not just one, but three ... three numbered accounts have had rather significant withdrawals, to the tune of fifty million dollars, and all the money was wired to some unknown account somewhere in Brussels. Now, does something seem kind of strange, or is it just me?”

  Cosner dropped his feet to the floor and sat up in his chair. “So, you think Salinas ordered the transfer? But I just don’t see how he could do that, Kenneth. Not while he’s rotting in jail. He must have ordered one of his attorneys to take care of it for him. That seems like a pretty simple thing to do.”