"It is also the intention of this committee to diligently monitor the activity of pharmaceutical operations across the globe that wish to do business in the United States, to ensure that such abuses, wherever they exist, are brought to an immediate halt."
Chase looked up with a serious expression amid a flurry of camera flashes and an eruption of questions from the press. But before he answered, he led the men on the podium in a silent prayer.
The TV picture cut to Diane Sawyer, looking equally serious.
In her low, rich tone, the TV host said, "An American senator, leading the charge for human rights everywhere. That man has guts."
Casey puckered her lips and shook her head, turning away from the TV just as Jose's cell phone rang. He gave her a look and ducked back into her office.
"What's up?" Stacy asked.
Without replying, Casey followed Jose into her office, gently closing the door. Jose had one hand on the corner of her desk, as if to balance himself. He snapped his phone shut and looked up with a grim face.
"This is it," he said. "We're on."
CHAPTER 74
WHEN THEY PASSED THROUGH THE BORDER, CASEY PULLED over and they got out to make their call. The man put Isodora on the phone. Casey asked her what she had for breakfast, a random question the men couldn't have prerecorded. Then they waited for the text message with the video attached, showing Isodora outside their meeting place, answering the question. They had fed her cornflakes.
As they drove, Casey checked her rearview mirror, nodding at it after a while. "Company."
Jose glanced over his shoulder and said, "The black Suburban, I know. Also, up there."
He twisted his head and pointed up through the windshield. Casey leaned forward and bent her head back, just catching a glimpse of the small black helicopter.
"Can't blame them for making sure," Casey said.
Jose studied the side mirror outside his window and nodded his head. It took only twenty minutes to reach the hill overlooking the motel. They stopped the car and the Suburban shot on past, continuing without them. Jose rested his elbows on the roof of the Mercedes, dialing in his binoculars, scanning the motel and the surrounding area, taking long slow breaths. Behind the motel the sun had begun to sink toward a low line of dung-colored mountains wreathed in smog.
"Look good?" Casey asked, shading her eyes but not seeing anything.
"Perfect," he said with a nod, handing the binoculars over to Casey and studying the empty sky. "Helicopter's gone, too."
Casey looked through the binoculars. The star-shaped red neon sign for the Motel de Libertad blinked on and off along with the word VACANCY, letting people know that it was open for business despite its condition. In front of the long, low concrete building sat an old filling station with a grocery store add-on. In the adjacent lot, five sagging cows stood, flicking their ears at the clouds of bluebottle flies, in a wired-off mud lot riddled with hoofprints. Beside the pen stood a shack where chickens ran beneath a line of hanging laundry.
The unfinished motel building itself looked to have run out of money three-quarters of the way through. Concrete pilings in the ground projected clusters of rusty rebar. Beyond the foundation, the giant hole of an unfinished swimming pool gaped open with mud the color of coffee. Candy wrappers, plastic soda bottles, and broken concrete blocks littered the barren and rocky landscape. Out back, on the high ground, a rickety water tower stood with its back to the setting sun.
"Where?" Casey asked, her eyes still pressed to the binoculars.
"On the end by the pool," Jose said, "in the doorway of that last room."
Casey zeroed in on the figure of Isodora cradling her baby. Directly behind her in the shadows stood the shape of a man. She handed back the binoculars and watched the small shape of the black Suburban that had followed them pull into the dusty parking lot. Two men got out and went into the room where Isodora waited.
Casey took a deep breath and said, "Okay. Here we go."
Jose cleared his throat and asked, "You think it was worth it?"
Casey handed back the binoculars and said, "You don't?"
"I'm not saying that at all."
"You're the one who said the FBI couldn't shut that factory down, or the State Department," she said.
"I know. It's a different country down here."
"'An act of Congress,' your words," she said. "How many people have that kind of power?"
She looked hard at him, and he glanced down.
"I'm sorry," she said in a soft voice. "Yes, it was worth it. That place is shut down. You're cleared. And now we're going to get Isodora and the baby. That's what Elijandro would have wanted, too, more than anything. Any lawyer worth a shit knows that sometimes the best deals aren't always fair. You work with what you got."
Casey climbed in behind the wheel. Jose got in next to her and she started the engine and drove off.
"I saw your face when Diane Sawyer said that nice stuff about him," Jose said. "And the way that motherfucker bowed his head in prayer. That's a special type of evil.''
"I know," she said, following the road as it wound down toward the motel. "I think it was the smugness, the look of knowing he was above the law."
"Money and power can buy that," Jose said. "Or are you new to the program?"
Casey didn't answer.
After a few minutes Jose said, "Sometimes there's other kinds of justice."
"I don't want to talk about karma," she said as they rounded the corner of the service station and pulled into the lot of the unfinished motel. "Karma is bullshit. If karma was real, my ex-husband would live under a bridge and suffer from an incurable venereal disease."
Jose said, "My mother had a saying: Fate may be slow but it's always sweet. It sounds much better in Spanish. Most things do.''
They pulled into the cool shadow of the motel and came to a stop. Except for the black Suburban that had followed them from the border, the rest of the parking lot was empty. Casey nodded and studied the black rectangle of the open door on the end unit.
There was no sign of life.
CHAPTER 75
CASEY WAITED FOR JOSe TO GET OUT FIRST, THEN SHE FOLLOWED.
Casey wrinkled her nose, smelling the cows, and noticing that the numbers on the row of unpainted metal doors had been added as an afterthought in black Magic Marker. Quiet filled the air except for the wretched drone of the window-mounted air conditioner on the end unit. The air conditioner dripped down the wall beneath the window and left a damp moldy spot on the fresh concrete stoop.
Casey touched the back of Jose's elbow as they approached the open door. With no more than fifteen feet to go, Jose suddenly stopped and put up his hand.
Without warning, six men wearing black bulletproof vests piled out of the room, the last of them dragging Isodora along by the collar of her white cotton dress. She cringed and clasped her crying child to her chest with both arms. The men quickly circled Jose and Casey with handguns by their sides. Dressed in black with close-cropped hair, not one wore an expression on his face behind his sunglasses.
One of them, a man with a red crew cut and the apparent leader, stepped forward and nodded at the men behind Jose and Casey. Two of them grabbed Jose by the arms, kicked his legs out from under him, frisked him, and removed both the Glock from under his arm and the smaller snub-nosed.38 from the back of his pants.
The men tossed the guns to the leader, who caught them smoothly and quickly emptied the Glock of its bullets before tossing it aside. He dangled the nickel-plated.38 by the trigger guard and said, "I used the other one just like this to put a bullet in that old lady's head. They said she was your aunt."