Leaving the restaurant's patio, Daniel felt a little exposed as they crossed the empty street and stepped onto the sidewalk adjacent to the small coffee shop. A few crowded tables lined the café's windows, but most of the business was conducted indoors.
Mama Gracha's was an iconic coffee shop, famous for high end coffee and amazing French pastries. Normally a favorite of Jessica's, they had opted for a heartier brunch across the street, where they could soak in the sun and ingest some solid food to counter the effects of a mild hangover. They had danced at a nearby disco until two in the morning, and neither one of them had tempered their drink consumption. Jessica had been on a tear with sangria all evening, and Daniel had surrendered to the multiple pitchers brought their way. They had slept until eleven and awoken with splitting headaches, which no doubt added to the tension this morning.
As they walked by the window, Daniel spotted the man that had piqued Jessica's interest. He was definitely European, but he dressed like someone who had been here a while: polo shirt and khaki pants. His outfit wouldn't have garnered a second glance on any of these streets. He was likely one of the multitude of permanent immigrants that had recently flocked to Buenos Aires. He looked Balkan…possibly Serbian, but that wasn't unusual in this city. Buenos Aires was home to one of the fastest growing Serbian immigrant populations in the world, which was another reason for them to leave. The Serbian community was tight, and fewer worlds were more closely connected. Add that to the surprisingly small percentage of former Serbian paramilitary members still in custody, and they were always watching their backs in Buenos Aires. Daniel risked another glance.
The man in the coffee shop fiddled with his phone as they passed the window. He never looked up from the device, even while he sipped coffee. For Daniel, the man didn't raise any alarms.
"Maybe just taking a picture of the square. I don't know. Let's take the long way back, just in case."
"A stroll with my husband…punctuated by a random sprint at some point. Fabulous. Glad I didn't wear sandals with heels," she said.
"You know you love me," he said.
"Am I that easy to read?" she replied, squeezing his arm tighter.
"Hardly."
They turned down a side road taking them away from their high-rise three blocks away. Neither of them saw the second man leave an outdoor table on the other side of the plaza and walk in their direction.
Enrique Melendez sighed in the back seat of their rental car. Parked on Nicaragua Street, the off-white, four-door sedan sported a few random dents and scratches, which placed the car right at home on the tight streets, where fitting into a parking space often relied on a driver's willingness to accept collateral damage. Munoz sat in the driver's seat, sipping tepid coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Melendez was sure of this because his own cup had long ago reached room temperature. He had jammed it into one of the cup holders to resist any further temptation to sip the disgusting liquid that their hotel claimed was coffee.
"So, what do you have?" Munoz said.
"They're drinking better coffee than we are…that's for sure," Melendez said, huddled low and staring through a portable hand spotting scope.
"Jesus Christ. We've been off the compound for three days, and you're a food connoisseur," Munoz said.
"I drank good coffee before Argentina. The hotel shit is worse than Sanderson's coffee. You'd think the coffee would be better…at least better than what we have back at camp," he said.
"All the coffee down here is shit," Munoz said.
"No, I'm pretty sure it's just our hotel," Melendez said, snapping a picture through the camera he had been staring through for nearly an hour and a half.
"Actually, it's shit almost everywhere. Right now, it's very likely that Jessica and Daniel are drinking shitty coffee. You see the café across the street? Mama Gracha's? That place has good coffee, because they import the expensive stuff from somewhere else. Argentinian coffee is notoriously bitter and watery because most of their beans are sugar roasted."
"Why would they sugar roast the beans?"
"Most of their beans come from Brazil, which produces nearly two thirds of the world's coffee, but sells the lower quality beans to Argentina and Chile. The rest is consumed by Brazilians or exported to the big operations like Starbucks, Lavazza and Illy. The beans are sugar roasted to conceal the bad quality, and in some cases, to cut the expensive stuff they're forced to buy. Sugar can account for about a quarter of the weight of a batch," Munoz said.
"They cut it like coke?"
"More or less. In this city, if a coffee shop isn't using Lavazza or Illy, it'll taste worse than Sanderson's shit. I make sure he imports the proper coffee for each group. Be glad you're assigned to the South American team…you can imagine the kind of mud the Russian team is pouring down their throats," Munoz said.
"Maybe I shouldn't complain. How do you know so much about coffee?"
"I owned a string of coffee shops in Hartford before all of this started," Munoz said, and Melendez sensed a hesitation.
"Do you miss it?"
"Miss what?" Munoz said, taking another sip of his cold coffee.
"The coffee shops. That kind of life," he said.
"I didn't really have much of a choice in the matter," he said.
Melendez could see that he didn't want to discuss it any further, so he focused on Jessica and Daniel, neither of whom frowned with every sip of the terrible coffee Munoz had convinced him they must be drinking. Three days of stale bagels, takeout sandwiches and bottled water was starting to wear thin on Melendez, though he knew he really had nothing to complain about. He'd allowed himself to get excited about the prospect of hanging out in Buenos Aires. Savory local foods, good coffee, exotic women, nightclubs, swank bistros…he’d let his imagination get the best of him and had instead spent the past few days watching the Petroviches enjoy the fruits of his limitless imagination.
Stakeout work had turned out to be grueling in terms of boredom and vigilance. The biggest rush so far had been carrying a compact concealed handgun at all times and Munoz's insistence that he bring his RPA "Rangemaster Standby" sniper rifle to the car when they were mobile.
The Rangemaster was a British-designed, compact urban system, measuring twenty-eight inches with the stock folded, and easily stowed in a gym bag. The barrel was significantly shorter than a standard sniper rifle, trading longer range accuracy for urban maneuverability, but remaining extremely lethal in the right hands. Melendez possessed a pair of those hands. If their rental car had been equipped with tinted rear windows, he could practice sighting and dry-firing from inside the vehicle. That might make things a little more interesting for him.
"I think we should use a van if we have to do this again. At least a mini-van with tinted windows. I feel pretty conspicuous staring through this camera in front of people walking by."
"Don't worry about it. It's more normal on these streets than you might think. Nobody knows if we’re cops, PI's or worse. Even better, nobody cares. Everyone just minds their own business, and as long as the scope isn't on them, they don't care. Even the cops don't give it a second glance," he said, and his cell phone started to vibrate.
"Sanderson," Munoz grunted and answered the call.
"Munoz."
He listened for a few seconds.
"I understand. We'll be at the airport in ten minutes."
"That's it?" Melendez said.
"Correctomundo, amigo. Otra vez…hablamos solamente español," Munoz said in a thick dialect.