by Mark Dawson
She filed the selectors for approval, took another slug of coffee, applied for capacity to run a historic search of last month’s buffer––she guessed it would take a half day, even with the petaflops of processing power that could be applied to the search––and then leant back in her chair, lacing her fingers behind her head and staring at the screens.
Control was right. Milton was a ghost and finding him through a digital footprint was going to be a very long shot. GCHQ was collecting a vast haystack of data and she was looking for the tiniest, most insignificant needle. Control must have known that. If Milton was as good as he seemed to be, he would know how to stay off the grid. The only way that he would surface was if he chose to, or if he slipped up.
She stood, eyes closed, stretched out her arms and rolled her shoulders.
Anna doubted John Milton was the kind of man who was prone to mistakes.
She started to wonder if this job was a poisoned chalice.
The sort of job that could only ever make her look bad.
* * *
20.
FIVE IN the morning. Plato looked at the icon of Jesus Christ that he had fixed to the dashboard of his Dodge. Feeling a little self-conscious, he touched it and closed his eyes. Four days, he prayed. Please God, keep me safe for four days. Plato was not usually a prayerful man, but today he felt that it was worth a try. He had been unable to sleep all night, the worry running around in his mind, lurid dreams of what the cartel would do to him and his family impossible to quash. In the end, with the red digits on the clock radio by his bed showing three, he had risen quietly from bed so as not to disturb Emelia and had gone to check on each of his children. They were all sleeping peacefully. He had paused in each room, just listening to the sound of their breathing. Satisfied that they were safe, he had gone downstairs and sat in the lounge for an hour with a cup of strong black coffee. His service-issue revolver was laid on the table in front of him. It was loaded and the safety was off.
The kitchen light flicked on and Emelia’s worried face appeared at the window. Plato waved at his wife, forcing a broad smile onto his face. She knew something had happened last night but she had not pressed him on it and he had not said; he didn’t want to cause her any more anxiety than he could avoid. What was the point? She had enough on her plate without worrying about him. He might have been able to unburden himself but it would have been selfish. Far better to keep his own counsel and focus on the light at the end of the tunnel.
Four days.
He started the engine and flicked on the headlights. He backed the car down the drive, putting it into first and setting off in the direction of Avenue 16 de Septiembre and the Hospital San José. He turned off the road and rolled into the underground car park. As he reversed into a space he found himself thinking of the Englishman. It was out of character for him to break the rules, and he was quite clear about one thing: giving a man he did not know the details of where the witness in a murder enquiry was being taken was most definitely against the rules. The man wasn’t a relation and he had no obvious connection to her. He was also, very patently, a dangerous man who knew how to kill and had done so before. Plato had wondered about him during his night’s vigil. Who was he? What was he? What kind of ex-soldier. Special Forces? Or something else entirely? He had no reason to trust the man apart from a feeling in his gut that they were on the same side. Plato had long since learnt that it was wise to listen to his instincts. They often turned out to be right.
Plato rode the elevator to the sixth floor. The girl was being kept in her own room; they would be better able to guard her that way. Sanchez was outside the door. He had drawn the first watch and his eyes were red rimmed from lack of sleep.
“About time,” he grumbled.
“How is she?”
“Sleeping. The shoulder is nothing to worry about––just a flesh wound, they’ve cleaned it and tidied it up.”
“But?”
“But nothing. They shot her up to help her sleep and she’s been out ever since.”
“Has anyone told her about the others?”
“No. I didn’t have the chance.”
Plato sighed. It would fall to him to do it. He hated it, bringing the worst kind of news, but it was something that he had almost become inured to over the course of the years. How many times had he told relatives that their husband, son, wife or daughter had been murdered over the last decade? Hundreds of times. These two would just be the latest. He hoped, maybe, that they would be the last.
“Alright,” he said. “I’ll take over. Have you spoken to Alameda?”
Sanchez nodded. “He called.”
“Alright?”
“Seemed to be.”
“He’s still relieving me? I’ve got to start looking into what happened, for what it’s worth. I can’t stay here all day.”
“He said he was.”
Sanchez clapped him on the shoulder and left him.
The room was at the end of the corridor. There was a chair outside it and, on the floor, a copy of El Diario that Sanchez had found from somewhere. The front page had a number as its headline, capitalized and emboldened––SEVEN HUNDRED––and below it was a colour picture of a body laid out in the street, blood pooling around the head. It would be seven hundred and eight once they had processed the victims from last night. Plato tossed the newspaper back down onto the ground, quietly turned the handle to the door and stepped inside. The girl was sleeping peacefully. She had been dressed in hospital issue pyjamas and her right shoulder was swaddled in bandages. He stepped a little closer. She was pretty, with a delicate face and thick, black hair. The silver crucifix she wore around her neck stood out against her golden-brown skin. He wondered if it had helped her last night. She had been very, very lucky. Lucky that the cook had been there, for a start. And lucky that the sicarios had, somehow, failed to complete their orders. That was unusual. The penalty for a sicario’s failure would be his own death, often much more protracted and unpleasant than the quick and easy ending that he planned for his victims. It was a useful incentive to get the job done and it meant that they very rarely made mistakes.
It also meant that they often visited hospitals to finish off the victims that they had only been able to wound first time around.
Plato was staring at her face when the girl’s eyes slid open. It gave him a start. “Hello,” he said.
She looked at him, a moment of muddied confusion before alarm washed across her face. Her feet scrambled against the mattress as she pushed herself away, her back up against the headboard.
“It’s alright,” Plato said, holding his hands up, palms facing her. “I’m a policeman.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I know I’d say this even if I wasn’t, but I’m one of the good ones.”
She regarded him warily, but, as he took no further step towards her, smiling what he hoped was his most winning and reassuring smile, she gradually relaxed. Her legs slid down the bed a little and she arranged herself so that she was more comfortable. The movement evidently caused her pain; she winced sharply.
“How’s the shoulder?”
“Sore.” The pain recalled what had happened last night and her face fell. “Leon––where is he?”
Plato guessed that she meant the man she was with. “I’m sorry, ma’am” he said.
Her face dissolved, the steeliness subsumed by a sudden wave of grief. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she closed her eyes, her breathing ragged until, after a moment, she mastered it again. She buried her head in her forearms with her hands clasped against the top of her head, her breathing sighing in and out. Plato stood there helplessly, his fingers looped into his belt to stop them fidgeting. He never knew what to do after he had delivered the news.
“Caterina,” he said.
She moved her arms away. Her eyes were wet when she opened them again and they shined with angry fire. “The girl?”
Plato shook his head.
; “Oh God.”
“I’m very sorry.”
She clenched her teeth so hard that the line of her jaw was strong and firm.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, not knowing what else he could say.
“When can I get out of here?”
“The doctors will want to see you. It’s early, though. I don’t think they’ll be here until morning. A few hours.”
“What time is it?”
“Half five. Why don’t you try and get a little extra sleep?”
She gave him a withering look. “I don’t think so,” she said.
“One of my colleagues watched over you through the night and I’m going to stay with you now,” he said. “The men who did this might come back when they find out that you’re still alive.”
“And you can stop them?”
There was the thing; Plato knew he would have no chance at all if they came back, and the girl looked like she was smart enough to know that too. “I’ll do my best,” he told her.
* * *
21.
PLATO SPOKE to the girl for an hour. He got more of the story, wrote it all down. Eventually, her eyelids started to fall and, as dawn broke outside, she was asleep again. Plato covered her with the coarse hospital blanket and picked up her chart from the end of the bed. They had given her a mild dose of secobarbital and he guessed that there was still enough of it in her system to make her drowsy. It was for the best, he thought. She would need all her strength about her when she was discharged. He was not sure how best to go about that. There was no question that she was in a perilous situation. The cartels wanted her dead and his experience suggested that they wouldn’t stop until that had happened, or until she was put out of reach. There was no easy way for him to help her with that. Once she was out of the hospital, she was on her own.
He looked down at his notebook. Her name was Caterina Moreno. She was twenty-five and she was a journalist, writing for the Blog del Borderland. He wasn’t as savvy with computers as some of the others but even he had heard of it; it was generating a lot of interest, and the cartels had already murdered several of its contributors. The dead man was another of the blog’s writers and the dead girl was a source who was to be interviewed for a story she was writing.
He sat down on the chair outside the room, his pistol in his lap. He watched as the hospital switched gears from the night to day: nurses were relieved as they went off shift, the doctors began to do their rounds, porters pushed their trolleys with their changes of linen, medicines and breakfasts. Plato watched all of them, looking for signs of incongruity, his mind prickling with the anticipation of sudden violence, his fingers never more than a few inches from the stippled barrel of his Glock. They might come in disguise, or in force, they might come knowing that the power of their reputation was enough to grant them unhindered passage. The girl was helpless. Plato resolved to do his best to slow them down.
His vigil was uninterrupted until Alameda arrived at nine.
“Capitán,” Plato said.
“How is she?”
“Not so good.”
“How much does she know?”
“I told her enough.”
Alameda scrubbed his eyes. “Stupid kids.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Pretending to be journalists.”
“They’d say they were journalists.”
“Hardly, Jesus.”
“We’re out of touch.”
“Maybe. But writing about the cartels? Por dios, man! How stupid can you get? They got what’s coming to them.”
Plato did not reply. He stood and stretched out his aching muscles.
“How did she take it?” Alameda asked, looking into Caterina’s room.
“She’s tough. If I were a betting man, I’d say it’s made her more determined.”
“To do what?”
“This––it won’t shut her up.”
“You ask me, she should get over the border as fast as she can. She won’t last five minutes if she stays here.” Alameda sighed. Plato thought he suddenly looked old, as if he had aged ten years overnight. “Diablo, Jesus. What are we going to do?”
Plato holstered his pistol. “We’re gonna stand guard here until she’s discharged, which I guess will be when the doctor comes to see her this morning. We’ll make sure she’s safe getting to where she wants to go. And then it’s up to her.” He put a hand on Alameda’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“Not really. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
“Go on,” he said. “I’m fine. Take a break.”
“Won’t be long. I want to talk to her again when she wakes up.”
He said he would take twenty minutes to get them both some breakfast from the canteen and, when Alameda lowered himself into the chair, his hand on the butt of his pistol, he quickly made for the elevator.
He did not mean to be very long.
* * *
22.
MILTON CHANGED INTO his jeans and a reasonably clean shirt and walked to the hospital. He stopped in the coffee shop for an espresso and a copy of the morning paper. He scanned it quickly as he waited in line. There’d be nothing about the shooting at the restaurant yet. Instead, he saw a picture of some sort of memorial, a stone cross, with a wreath propped up against it and a notice fixed up with wire. When he got to the checkout he asked the girl what time they got the afternoon edition.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t read it.”
“Can’t say I blame you.”
“Haven’t read it for years.”
“Is that right?”
“Don’t you think it’s all too depressing? When was the last time you read anything good in the newspaper?
Milton shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Probably quite a long while.”
“I’ll say,” she said. “A long while.”
He handed her a ten dollar bill. “I’m looking for a friend,” he said. “Young girl. Brought in last night. Gunshot wound. You know where they would’ve taken her?”
“Try up on the sixth floor,” she advised.
Milton told her to keep the change and followed her directions. There was a triage area and then a corridor with separate rooms running off it. He went down the corridor, looking into each room, looking for the girl. There was an empty chair at the door to the last room from the end. He walked quietly to the door and looked inside: the girl was there, asleep, her chest rising and falling gently beneath a single white bed sheet. A man in a white doctor’s coat was leaning over her. A loose pillow was lying across the girl’s legs. The man reached his right hand, the fingers brushing against the pillow, then closing around it.
Milton opened the door all the way. “Excuse me.”
The man looked up and around.
“Hello.”
“Who are you?”
He had smooth brown skin, black hair, an easy smile. There was nothing remarkable about him. The kind of man you would never see coming. “My name is Martinez,” he said. “I’m a doctor here. Who are you?”
Milton ignored the question. “What are you doing?”
“Checking that she is okay.” He picked up the pillow and tossed it onto the armchair at the side of the bed. “Just making her comfortable.”
Milton tapped a finger to his breast. “You don’t have any credentials.”
The man looked down at his white medical jacket, shrugging with a self-deprecating smile. “I’ve just come on shift. Must’ve left it in my locker. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Do you know her?”
“I’m a friend.”
The doctor looked over Milton’s shoulder and, for a tiny moment, a flicker of something––irritation, perhaps, or frustration––fell across his face. He replaced it with a warm, friendly smile. “Nice to meet you, Señor––?”
“Smith.”
“Señor Smith. I’m sure I’ll see you again.”
The man smiled
again, stepped around him and left the room. Milton turned to watch him go just as the policeman from last night, Lieutenant Plato, came in the other direction. The two met in the corridor, Plato stepping to the side to let the other man pass.
Plato was carrying two wrapped burritos. He didn’t look surprised to see him. “Who was that?”
“Said he was a doctor but there was something about him. Seen him before?”
“No.”
Milton started to move.
“Was there anyone else here?” Plato asked. “There should’ve been––”
“No-one else.”
Plato’s face twisted with anxiety. “Is she alright?”
“You better check.”
Milton walked quickly, and then broke into a jog, passing through the busying triage area to the lobby beyond. The elevator was on the first floor and so he couldn’t have taken that. He pushed the bar to open the door to the stairs and looked up and then down. There was no sign of Martinez anywhere. He quickly climbed to the seventh floor but, as he opened the door onto a paediatrics ward he could not see him. He went back down, then descended further, to the fifth, but he couldn’t see him. The man had disappeared.
* * *
23.
PLATO SAT on the chair and Milton stood with his back to the wall. They ate the breakfast burritos that Plato had purchased in the canteen.
“How many people died last night?”
Plato looked at him evenly. “Two of the three on the table––the girl died at the scene, the guy was DOA by the time they got him here. Apart from them, one woman eating her dinner got shot in the head. Three dead, all told, and that’s not even counting the five sicarios you took out. Caramba, what a world.”
