Angel Eyes (21 page)

Russell completed his interrogation, moved back up the line until he was behind the second lieutenant. "This is the mole," he said without hesitation. "Jorge," Tori said. "You see?"

"Lavaperro!" Dogwasher! Cruz screamed, and grabbing the man both Tori and Russell had indicted, slammed him back against the wall. Jorge was babbling his innocence, but Cruz was clearly not listening. Cocaine, whether as an addiction or a product in which to traffic, bred paranoia.

"Knife," Cruz said, holding out his hand. Another lieutenant stepped forward, slipped him a U.S. Marine KA-BAR. Cruz took it, slashed the blade laterally across Jorge's throat. While the blood gushed onto him, Cruz pried open Jorge's jaws, cut out his tongue. The body slid to the floor.

Cruz held up the tongue like a trophy. Tori could see that he felt like the matador in the corrida as he withdrew the killing sword from the bull's heart. He said, "Send this to the Orolas. And make sure you pack it good in dry ice. I want them to get it fresh, like at the best restaurant." He erupted in a savage laugh. "I'm only sorry I won't be there to see their faces when they get it."

He turned to Estilo. "You feel more secure now?" He had begun to strut again, his old bravado returning. He turned to Russell and grinned. "I am grateful for your assistance. What would you consider proper payment? Money? Cocaine? A boat? Helicopter? A plane, perhaps? This is Medellin, gringo. Nothing is impossible here." His grin widened. "You are about to learn, Senor Slade, that here in Machine-Gun City our shopping malls are open twenty-four hours a day. And the price is always right."

"We want none of these things," Russell said, "though we are grateful for the offer. We need, instead, some information."

"Oh?" Cruz's expression showed that he was not pleased with the sudden turn in the conversation. "What kind of information? I am not an informer. I don't deal information."

Before his face darkened too much, Sonia stepped between the two men. She stood very close to Cruz, and reaching between her breasts, she drew out a stone on a gold chain. She took his hand gently in hers, squeezed it into a fist around the stone. "Listen to me, ????zo?," she said. "These people are lucky for us. I can feel it. Can you feel it, too, now? The stench of the Orolas is gone. And the sour taste of business since you sent Rega to Buenos Aires, since he was murdered, is about to end. These people are a sign of that change. Can you feel it, ?????o?? Feel it now. The rich taste of money is coming, coming back."

Tori, who was the only one close enough to Cruz and Sonia to hear this exchange, was both fascinated and repelled. The tone of Sonia's voice, the look in her eyes as they searched his, was so intimate, so blatantly sexual, that Tori could almost imagine they were making love right here in front of everyone.

But now she had one piece of the puzzle. Rega had been working for Cruz. Then why did the Yakuza kill him? What had one of them said? His use was at an end.

"When the Orolas killed Rega," Cruz said, "the war began in earnest. And war is profitable only for the armament suppliers."

"Cruz," Tori said, "the Orolas did not kill Rega." He scowled at her. "What could you know of it?" "I ran into Rega's killers in Buenos Aires. In fact, they almost killed me, as well. They were Japanese gangsters."

"Japanese?" Cruz laughed in her face, then his scowl got deeper. "Are you trying to make a fool of me?"

"I'm sure she isn't," Sonia said, keeping his hand around her amulet. "Think. Rega had a rich source, a buyer flooding us with money. That's why you sent him-a lieutenant, not a mule-to Buenos Aires. She's telling the truth, corazon. Don't you see how it makes sense?"

"But the Japanese?" Cruz said. "Why would they want so much coke?"

"That's what we've come here to find out," Tori said.

"You see, ??razo?," Sonia said excitedly to Cruz, "they are good luck for you.''

Russell said, "The question now is to find out why the Japanese killed Rega. He was their connection."

Cruz considered this. "Only two answers are possible," he said. "One, they don't need supply anymore; two, they found a better connection."

"They still need the cocaine," Russell said. "We're certain of that."

"Could the Orolas be giving the Japanese a better deal?" Tori asked.

"All that product?" Cruz shook his head. "I'd know about it right away. If they have a new connection, it's not the Cali cartel."

"Then who?" Russell asked.

Cruz shrugged. "It may be nothing, you know how rumors are, especially here. But . . . over the last several months there has been talk of a major new cocaine factory establishing itself in the llanos of Meta Province, east of here, just past the Manacacias River. It's very wild there, difficult to track even rumors. Like I said, we had all dismissed the stories."

"Whose territory is that?" Russell asked. Cruz shrugged. "Not Orola's, not mine. The Colombian army is in and out of there all the time. So is the DAS." He meant the Colombian Department of Administrative Security, charged with keeping the cartels and the shipments from the Bolivian cocaleros under control. "They do a shit job, but they can be dangerous nonetheless."

"No-man's-land," Estilo said.

"Llano negro. "Black jungle. Cruz nodded. "A land of only shadows. One of the stories, more persistent than most, says that the army and the DAS patrol this area not to find this factory, but to protect it." He shrugged again. "But these rumors have a way of growing out of all proportion. There is no way to tell the truth from the fiction."

But, of course, there was one way. Tori, Russell, Estilo, and Sonia all looked at one another. Without saying a word, they had communicated everything they needed to know. It was to this llano negro they would have to go to find the beginning of the bizarre Yakuza cocaine trail.

Less than twenty-four hours later the three of them were lifting off from Machine-Gun City in one of Cruz's Bell JetRanger III helicopters.

Just before they left, Sonia took Tori aside without anyone seeing and said, "Remember your promise to me. You must help me destroy Cruz."

"I won't forget," Tori said. "When we get back."

"When you get back." Sonia nodded.

Sonia said something else, but the wind was already in Tori's ears. Was it her imagination or did Sonia have a doubtful look on her face?

They were all dressed in tropical paramilitary camouflage suits. Among the armament each carried was a machete, a Marine KA-BAR knife, a .45 handgun, and an Uzi machine pistol with three extra loads.

It was dark inside the helicopter, and the heavy vibrations penetrated to their bones. Russell was up front, quizzing Cruz's pilot, who was set to pick them up twenty-four hours after he set them down. If they didn't make the first rendezvous, he'd return the same time the day after. Estilo was stretched out, asleep, on the bench on the opposite side of the cabin. Tori put her head back against cold steel and closed her eyes.

''Don't look so worried, Senor Slade,'' Estilo said some hours later. "We Argentines have a saying, 'When Satan tries to walk on ice, he falls on his face. Ice is not his milieu.' "

Who is he kidding? Tori thought, as the JetRanger set them down in a minuscule clearing in the llanos of Meta Province. She had a clear sense of foreboding.

Llano negro. The black jungle, where only shadows dwelled, where maybe the good guys rode shotgun for the bad guys. She thought, This territory isn't controlled by Cruz, or by the Orolas. So who does it belong to?

FOUR

MOSCOW/TOKYO

Mars called Irina at work and asked her to go to No. 1 Gastronome on Gorky Street during her lunch hour to pick up some provisions for his parents, which he planned to take to them on the following Saturday. He was in meetings all day, could not go himself, and he was afraid if he waited until tomorrow, the fresh sturgeon would all be gone.

Irina readily agreed. She loved Gorky Street, with its rush of sumptuously dressed tourists, its myriad shops and huge hotels, but she loved No. 1 Gastronome most of all. She felt like a child in a storybook, allowed to wander through a wonderland of magical displays. Food stuffs from all over the Soviet Union, as well as from foreign lands, were stacked on shelves and behind glass cases. There were always lines here, but Irina never minded standing in them, because it gave her more time to soak up the atmosphere.

As Mars had asked, she purchased fresh smoked sturgeon, several tins of caviar, and on impulse, a half-pound of smoked salmon all the way from Nova Scotia. It was an extravagant purchase, but she thought the exotic salmon would make Mars happy.

Afterward she strolled down Gorky Street in the wan sunshine, happy merely to be out of her dim, cramped office and in the fresh air. Of course, one had to discount the traffic fumes, but like all city dwellers, Irina was barely aware of the clouds of exhaust.

She was perhaps fifty yards from the Druzhba bookstore when she saw Valeri emerge from the entrance. She raised her arm, about to call out to him, but he had already turned away. Irina hurried after him, excited to extend her lunch hour; anything to keep her from returning to her stultifying job.

She followed him up Gorky Street, past No. 1 Gastronome, through the Soviet Square, with its monument to Prince Dol-goruky, Moscow's founder. A few streets on he turned left, disappeared into a small building with a green facade, the old Moscow Arts Theater, where, years ago, Stanislavsky had taught the Method to Soviet actors, and thereby changed the face of modern theater forever.

Chekhov's Three Sisters was playing, and photos of the actors were posted just above the schedule of times. Irina went inside. The interior was cool, musty, filled with hushed voices, but she saw no one, the lobby deserted.

She pushed through the door into the theater proper. On stage, a series of spotlights shone down on actors rehearsing a scene. Irina looked around, saw Valeri sitting near the back of the semidark theater. She took two steps toward him, then froze.

There was a stunning woman with him. She had blond hair, blue eyes, and a nose Irina would have killed for. Irina recognized her as one of the stars of the current production, Natasha Mayakova.

Irina could not move, hearing in her mind Valeri saying to her, The joke is that it is you, Irina, who has seduced me. Do you think that you are the latest in a long line of conquests for me? No. But what was she thinking? Of course, this must be a business meeting, or a visit with a friend. But in the back of her mind a perverse voice kept saying no, no, no. He's lied to you. It is something else, not business, not friendship. It is an assignation.

They were sitting very close, their heads together. She could hear Valeri saying, "Time is difficult to come by, but not for you, koshka," and Natasha Mayakova's answering silvery laughter.

He called her koshka. Darling. Irina wanted to turn away, to run, but she could not. She felt like someone watching an accident, unable to avert her gaze, caught by a perverse fascination, observing their intimacy, an outsider. And all the while, Valeri's lie felt like a slap across her face.

It was not until she was back in her office, surrounded by the drudgery of her work, that she realized how angry she was with Valeri. But why should I expect anything different from him? she thought. He lives a life unlike mine. His coinage is intimidation, coercion, and deceit.

But this bit of psychological illumination failed to make her feel any better, in fact it unaccountably depressed her all the more. She tried to throw herself into her work for the rest of the afternoon, but it was useless. She was finished for the day.

"Nova Scotia salmon!" Mars exclaimed. "What a treat!" He impulsively gave her a kiss. ''I should save this for my folks, but it looks so scrumptious, why don't you and I pull apart some black bread and dig in." They were in the kitchen of Mars's apartment. The lights were on, although it was only just twilight outside.

"You go ahead," Irina said without much enthusiasm. "I'm not feeling hungry."

''But of course you must be hungry,'' Mars said, taking down some plates from his cupboard. "It's after eight, and if I know Number One Gastronome, the lines must have prevented you from having time for a proper lunch.''

"Actually, they weren't so bad," Irina said. "I had time to get these."

Mars took the small envelope from her, opened it. "Tickets to Three Sisters'." He grinned. "Well, you certainly are full of surprises tonight."

You don't know the half of it, Irina thought unhappily.

Mars put the tickets down. "But why so sad, Irina? Did you have a bad day at the office? No, no, don't tell me if you don't want to. I know you like your privacy. But come, I see dinner at home holds no interest for you. Let's go out!"

This was Mars's solution to all things: eat, be with people, get drunk, feel life in all its diversity flow like a powerful stream all around you, until it began to seep through you then into you, until the roof of your despair was made leaky and, whether you liked it or not, life began again to wash over you.

He took her to a tiny Georgian restaurant he had discovered, where they were happy to serve him even when it was near to nine at night and other, larger, restaurants had stopped serving hot meals. It was a boisterous place, filled with good smells, the combined heat of the nearby kitchen and its cheery denizens. They ate chicken tabaka, drank pepper vodka, and most important, Mars kept her talking.

"Tell me about your family," he said. "What was your home life like?"

"Lousy," Irina said. "My father was a secret drunkard, you know, weekends, days off. But he never missed a day's work. He's been dead now a long time. He worked in nuclear engineering, but he never brought his work home, never talked about it. I suspect he drank because he had watched his parents die in the Siberian winter, and I think he could never forgive himself.''

"For what?"

"For living when they had died. He took the coat off his mother's body, the shoes off his father's feet. He remembered the feet so clearly, he said. They were blue, bloated, and cold as ice. It took him a half hour to get the shoes off. He told me once that those items of clothing saved him from freezing to death, but they couldn't stop him from remembering. He was eleven years old when that happened."