His mother stepped into the kitchen and kissed him on the cheek like she had every single time he had walked in the house since he was a toddler. At fifty-six, his mother was still a beautiful woman, though over the years she had put on a few pounds, mainly as a result of her own skill in the kitchen.
"Where's your guest?" she asked.
"Another commitment. Sorry, Ma. I'll eat enough for both of us."
Frank called from the table, "What happened? Did…"
He was cut off by his brother's glare. Even Frank knew not to push Duarte when he gave a look like that.
His mother said, "No matter, your father and I waited for you. Frankie has work to do, so I let him go ahead and eat."
Duarte plopped into the same chair in which he had sat for nearly thirty years. He looked up to see his father's boney hand on the banister as he came down from his study, which had been his and Frank's room before the elder Duarte had converted it, now that they had moved to the garage.
"Hey, Pop," called both brothers in unison.
César Duarte nodded, having felt he knew enough about the world after watching the NBC news and fifteen minutes of the Jim Lehrer report.
He sat at the end of the table, lowering his narrow body into the chair like a king presiding over his court.
Duarte's mother had the table set, and in a flash put a bowl of steaming shredded beef in the center to go with the rice and plantains that were already sitting there. No one dared ask her if they could help. His mother insisted on preparing the food and setting the table herself, even though he had been taught it was rude not to assist-one of the many confusing lessons he had been taught growing up in a household from Paraguay.
They ate in relative silence as Frank explained to everyone how hard he had worked to sue some ill-prepared small businessman and how the judge was likely to commend him in open court for his efforts.
César Duarte waited the proscribed amount of time before he looked at his younger son and asked, "Did you do good work today?"
"Yes, sir."
"What're you working on, Alex?"
Duarte shrugged, his mind elsewhere.
"Nothing new? I thought you and your friend from the DEA were on something big?"
"We are. I'm sorry, Pop. I'm a little distracted."
Frank chimed in with a grin, "Yeah, Pop. He's got women problems."
Duarte knew the idiot would blab sooner or later, and they were no longer kids, so he couldn't just smack him. But he wanted to.
His mother said, "Alex, you can tell us what's wrong?"
"Nothin', Ma, really. I thought I might bring a young lady by for dinner, that's all."
His mother smiled and sucked in air like she had just witnessed a miracle.
Frank said, "C'mon, Ma. It's not like he's gay. He was bound to meet a woman sooner or later."
Duarte said, "I'll bring her by, Ma."
"When?"
"As soon as I can."
She seemed satisfied with that answer.
His father came to the rescue. "What about the case?"
Duarte relaxed a little and said, "Looks good. Félix is going to take the informant down to Panama and meet the main violator. I'm going to go to New Orleans and wait for the load. Should be interesting."
César Duarte smiled and said, "That sounds like a good day's work." His highest compliment.
The Panamanian looked out the bay window of his modest home, enjoying the vista of the mountains in the distance and the winding river that ran behind the house. It was all a sham, of course, so he could stay under everyone's radar. The house was large, but not a mansion. The wide area behind him looked like another parcel but was, in fact, owned by one of his corporations, so he knew no one would ever build a house on the surrounding forty-two acres. The small guesthouse at the front of his property housed security people in case he ever did have problems, but he didn't think he needed to worry. This house, his front, the quiet neighborhood so close to the capital, no one was smart enough ever to put it all together.
His name, for instance: Ortíz. It had no meaning to anyone but him. Unlike with the Americans, who always gave their military operations or government agents code names that gave away the secret. He had taken his new name from a housekeeper his father had employed during his formative years. She had been his only warm, human contact as a child. His father had been consumed with his government position as a trade negotiator, and the only conversations they had shared had focused on his father's anger for the way the United States dealt with her friends to the south. His father had been so busy he had not even attended Ortíz's graduation from the University of Panama.
His mother's death in childbirth had also added to his father's resentment.
As a result, from the age of seven, he'd started to cling to the lovely María Ortíz. She had seen him to school and fed him a snack every afternoon. The broad-shouldered woman with the ample breasts had never talked about her own life growing up, but he had had the sense this was the first time she had not worried about where her next meal was coming from, and she had doted on him.
When he had turned thirteen, he started to notice that the housekeeper was what many would consider a "handsome woman." He started to learn that the changes in his body were often directly related to María. He wanted to ask her what was happening to him, so one evening, while his father was staying overnight in the capital, he asked María questions a young teenager might have. The thirty-eight-year-old woman decided it might be better to demonstrate some of the interactions between men and women rather than explain them.
This class in lovemaking lasted two years without anyone asking questions. Now, instead of a snack after school, María provided something more exciting. He had felt an attachment to the housekeeper that easily eclipsed his feelings for his father.
Then, after a weeklong school trip to visit the ancient Aztec ruins at Chichén Itzá, he'd returned to find to his shock that his father had similar feelings for María. Hoping to surprise her, the boy had slipped into the house and then to her tiny bedroom off the kitchen. Without knocking, he'd burst through the door only to see his father's bald head and wrinkled bare ass between María's thick, smooth thighs.
That day he learned that women were whores, and that employees were not to be trusted.
Now, as Mr. Ortíz from Colombia, he felt confident he had confused the law enforcement authorities in both his home country and the United States. The DEA was always quick to believe that Colombians ran the rest of Latin America like lackeys. Just because Colombians had routed the Cubans in the Miami drug wars of the 1980s, the DEA believed they were tough, vicious kingpins.
He had made a fortune from his import/export business. A fortune for which he had no use. No real vices, no one to share it with, nothing of interest to spend it on. Except revenge. That had crept into his consciousness over the past dozen years as he considered the indignity after indignity suffered by Panama at the hands of the United States. The invasion in 1989 had been only the most obvious blow. He still remembered the news story about Stealth bombers flying over undetected. The F-117A Nighthawk squadron based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada had been built with the Soviets in mind. Against a small country without even night-vision equipment, the jets were overkill.
He knew all about the base near Route 6 outside the town of Tonopah, Nevada. He had imagined the pilots laughing at the Panamanians' futile attempts to stop their formidable weapons, and he imagined them laughing still. They didn't realize the war was not yet over.
Now he had the means to strike back at the U.S. in a meaningful and terrible way. And using "Ike" Floyd would heighten the Americans' unease. Since 9/11 they had focused their suspicion on Middle Easterners. Having to shift their attention to one of their own citizens would create an atmosphere of distrust that could cripple the country. At least for a while.