Cartel (16 page)

"Why would the CIA want a deal with the Sinaloa?"

"Sinaloa and Los Zetas are the two biggest dogs in the pit," Scott said. "And the war they've been fighting with each other and with the Mexican government is what knocked the National Action Party out of power and put the PRI back into the Presidential Palace."

"Why not let them all keep fighting each other?"

"Because what the CIA wants is control, and the fewer things you have to control, the more time you can devote to controlling each one. One is easier than two, two is easier than three, three is easier than four, and so on and so on. Every time you divide your focus, you divide your effective-ness. One political party in Mexico City and one cartel on the border gives the CIA exactly what it wants."

"Which is?"

"Stabilized instability."

"What does that mean?" Benny asked.

"For governments the CIA can't control, like Nicaragua, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, they want instability, everybody at each other's throats. But for governments they can control, they want stability, but not too much. Not enough so they lose their control but enough so that the government doesn't change hands. Stabilized instability."

"How do you know all this?"

"I majored in political science and history," Scott said. "And I learned to read between the lines."

She nodded.

He gave her a long look. "Now I have a question for you."

"What?" She looked nervous.

"How did Mike Cassidy get that video?"

"He got it from-"

A light knock interrupted her. Scott turned and saw Fa-ther Rodrigo standing in the open doorway. "I didn't mean to intrude," he said. "I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to bed. If I'm lucky, someone will show up for early Mass."

Scott checked his watch and saw it was almost 2:00 a.m. "I'm sorry we kept you up so late, father. And thank you again, for everything."

"I was glad for the company."

"I need to email someone," Scott said. "Can I use your Internet connection?"

"I'm sorry," Father Rodrigo said. "We don't have that here. We're a poor parish." He looked at Benny. "Donde esta Rosalita?"

Benny sprang to her feet. "Dios mio!"

"What?" Scott said.

She turned to him. "My neighbor is watching my daugh-ter. I told her I'd be back before midnight. I've got to call her." She turned to Rodrigo. "Tío, necesito su telefono?" Uncle, can I use your phone?

"Of course," he said and stepped out of the way as she rushed past him toward the kitchen.

Scott bent under the desk and pulled the flash drive from the USB port at the back of the computer. When he straightened up, Father Rodrigo was staring at him. "You're both welcome to stay the night." A look of embarrassment crossed his face. "But I only have the one spare bedroom."

"The sofa is fine for me."

Rodrigo nodded.

Murphy's Law states: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. And at the worst possible time.

The man who was now calling himself Mr. Jones be-lieved in Murphy's Law. He believed it down to his very core because he had seen it proved many times: in Bosnia, in Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Colombia, in Bolivia, and certainly in Mexico.

While the Ivy Leaguers at Langley played Pin the Tail on the Dictator and spent their time on table-top exercises and writing classified white papers about ridiculous "What if?" scenarios, papers that were never read, he was out here in the real world trying to find practical solutions to existen-tial geopolitical problems. Problems like how the U.S. gov-ernment could turn the daily tidal wave of illegal drugs com-ing across the border from Mexico to its advantage.

And it was Mr. Jones who had found the solution. Him. Mr. Jones. Not the latte and cappuccino crowd at Langley. Mr. Jones knew history. He had studied the management styles of history's greatest rulers: Xerxes, Alexander, Julius Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Suleiman, Lenin, Stalin, Hit-ler, and Mao. He had learned from their triumphs and their failures. And he had studied, like clerics studied their holy books, what he considered the single most important treatise ever written on the philosophy of politics, particularly with regard to the acquisition and maintenance of power-The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli.

Jones knew that you could turn a chaotic situation to your advantage by analyzing all the players and making a deal with one who was at or near the top of the pyramid and whom you could best control. Then you helped that player eliminate his competition, or at least reduce his competitors' power so that the most they could do was fight each other for table scraps.

Jones had done that by forging what he privately called his Unholy Trinity, a cabal comprising the ruthless and bloodthirsty Sinaloa cartel, the inept and hopelessly corrupt Mexican government, and the naive and self-righteously hypocritical United States government.

Then Murphy struck, and those jackasses in Los Zetas had found out about Jones's tripartite alliance-he still was-n't sure how they found out-and had assassinated Oscar Ramirez, the deputy attorney general of Mexico and Jones's conduit to el presidente. Worse still, Jones learned that Ramirez had made a video recording of their meeting in Mexico City, which had landed in the hands of a DEA agent. Ramirez could be replaced and the alliance salvaged, but not if that video went public. So Jones had been forced to do a lot of scrambling and had managed to arrange to have the DEA agent picked up.

Yet once again, Murphy had clocked in with his damn law.

Torture works. That's why it's been in use for the last eight thousand years. Everybody talks, eventually. Unless they die first. But if you put Mexican cartel thugs in charge of a delicate interrogation, they are very likely to botch it. Jones knew that, but he found himself short of an experi-enced interrogator. So he had used the resources at hand. But these cartelistas, whose default response to a threat was to skin their enemies alive, dismember them, and hang their bodies from bridges, were not up to the task and had killed the DEA agent before he told them where the video was.

Now the video was in the hands of a second DEA agent and a Mexican cop who just happened to be the south-of-the-border squeeze of the first DEA agent; and now that second DEA agent, who, hopefully, would also be dead very soon, and the Mexican squeeze were both in the fucking wind.

Which is why the man known as Jones was sitting in his leased Ford Focus a block from Scott Greene's depressingly middle-class house in Laredo, Texas, at three o'clock in the morning.

His BlackBerry vibrated. It was Gavin. Jones stabbed the answer button and said, "Tell me you found him, the video is secure, and all leaks are plugged."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," Gavin answered.

"Why not?"

"They went to ground. But eventually they're going to have to stick their heads up. And when they do we'll get them."

"You said that before," Jones reminded him. "I think it was when they were at the post office."

"This time, I'm sure."

"Let me ask you a question," Jones said. "You have ac-cess to some of the most sophisticated technology in the world. You have a nearly unlimited budget. You have men and weapons. Yet you can't find one non-Spanish-speaking gringo who's on foot, with little or no support, no cell phone, and who at most, if he's armed at all, is carrying a pistol that must surely be running out of goddamned bullets by now." The last part Jones practically shouted into his BlackBerry. Then he took a deep breath and got control of himself. "Why is that?"

"Because he got lucky."

"He got lucky?" Jones said. "Is that what you think hap-pened?"

"That is what happened."

"No, let me tell you what happened," Jones said. "Agent Greene didn't get lucky. He beat you. He beat your whole team. He and that chiquita he's running with. They've been one step ahead of you all night. It's time you caught up."

"I have teams in place on his truck and on the cop's house. As soon as he moves, we'll have him."

"And you'll have the video," Jones prompted.

"And we'll have the video."

"Do not..." Even though both phones were encrypted, Jones did not use certain words during telephone conversa-tions. NSA computers scanned just about every call made in the United States now, cell and landline. "...do anything permanent until you have the video. Is that clear?"

"Roger that."

Jones ended the call.

This situation was slipping away from him, and if he didn't get it back under control soon it was all going to go sideways. It was his face on that video, and if it went public, the Agency would hang a rogue tag on him and drop him in-to a hole, probably a black site somewhere in Eastern Eu-rope. The Bulgarians were particularly cozy with the Agency right now. And if he was turned over to the Bulgarians, he could look forward to spending the rest of his short life bat-tling pneumonia and supplementing his daily ration of gruel with cockroaches and spiders.

Or maybe the Mandarins at the Agency would decide to do the full monty on him, shoot him full of dope and drive him off a cliff or into a river. That was how they got rid of employees who really embarrassed them. That or the old as-sisted suicide trick.

Scott lay on the sofa in the dark, wide awake. Despite his exhaustion, he couldn't sleep. His brain simply wouldn't shut up. He was too worried about Victoria and the kids. The people chasing him, whoever they were, had tracked his cell phone and had probably intercepted the call from Glenn Pe-terson. That was the only way they could have known he was coming across the border to meet Benny.

And if they were up on his cell phone, there was a good chance they were up on his home phone too. So he hadn't called Victoria. She would be worried, but she was used to it after having been a DEA wife for ten years. There had been a lot of nights when he didn't make it home and couldn't call.

"Are you awake?" Benny's voice came out of the dark.

Scott sat up. He could barely make out her silhouette in the doorway. "Yeah."

"I couldn't sleep." Benny crossed the den and sat on the sofa beside him. "I'm worried about Rosalita."

"I'm worried about my kids too."

"How many do you have?"

"Two," Scott said. "A boy, nine, and a girl, six."

Benny smiled but it didn't last. "I don't know what I would do if something happened to Rosalita. Besides tío, she's all I have left."

"Did you talk to her?"

"She was already asleep when I called."

"But she's all right, though?"

Benny nodded. "My friend Maria will take her to school in the morning."

"That's good."

For a while they said nothing. He could feel her leg pressed against his. Scott cleared his throat, suddenly even more awake than he had been. "Your uncle seems nice," he said.

"He's a good man."

"I can tell."

"You saw his tattoos?"

"I did," Scott said, "but they looked old. Like they were from another life."

"He's been a priest for a long time," Benny said. "Since I was a little girl."

"And before that?"

"He was a...what you would call a gangster."

"With a cartel?"

Benny nodded. "When I was little I loved those tattoos. Then I got older and realized why he had them...I tried to talk him into getting them removed, but he said he wanted to keep them because they remind him of what he used to be."

"I'm glad he was here," Scott said. "I don't think we could have made it much further."

"The Church has wanted to close this parish for years, but tío has been fighting them. Most of the decent people have moved away from this neighborhood, but there are still a few of the old ones left. He says if the diocese closes the church, the old people won't have anywhere else to go, and everybody has the right to hear Mass and to receive the sac-raments."

"Is he going to keep fighting them?"

"Yes," she said. "He's very stubborn."

"So he loves his job and he's good at it."

Benny smiled. "Yes."

"And what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Do you like being a cop?"

Benny was quiet for a moment, then said, "I used to."

"Not anymore?"

She shook her head.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I'm responsible for my daughter. I'm all she has. If anything happens to me...That's why I want to take her away from here, away from all this."

"Away from Nuevo Laredo?"

"Away from Mexico," Benny said. "I love my country, but it's too dangerous to stay here."

"Where do you want to go?"

"My sister lives in Ohio, Cincinnati."

Scott smiled. "Cincinnati, Ohio."

Benny smiled back. "Yes, Cincinnati, Ohio."

"Was Mike trying to help you?"

"I didn't tell him. I wasn't sure then. But after he died...I made up my mind. You remember what they said in the video, plata o plomo?"

Scott nodded. "Silver or lead, right?"

"Here it's not just a phrase," Benny said. "It's a way of life. If you are policía, those are the only two choices the cartels give you."

"There must be other options."

She laughed but there was no humor in it. "The cartels keep files on us. They know where we live, who our parents are, wives, husbands, even where our children go to school. They tell you all that. They tell you exactly what they know." There was a catch in her voice as she said, "Then they ask you, which do you want, our money or our bullets?"

He saw tears forming in her eyes. "Which did you choose?"

She looked at him for a long time, the tears spilling over and running down her cheeks. Then she stood and walked away.

Father Rodrigo's pickup truck belonged in a junkyard. Or in a museum. Other than knowing it was circa 1950s, Scott could hardly tell a thing about it. Not even the make.

The steering wheel had long ago been changed out, so there was no logo. The door to the glove compartment, where manufacturers sometimes also put their name or logo, was missing, although the glove compartment itself was still there, stuffed with wadded and yellowed oil-stained papers, and an assortment of rusted tools. There was no glass in the side windows, and years of tropical sun and rain had rotted the bench seat. The only mirror was on the driver's door, but the glass was cracked.