Christian missionaries were not allowed to visit the island, for example, even to bring clothing or medical assistance. The Cuban people deserved better, as did all the people of Central and South America. Having had a mother from Mexico, Alex felt very close to these people. She made a note to include them in her prayers.
The island passed. The jet continued its path southward over the Caribbean. Alex slipped into headphones and dozed. She missed Robert horribly. A wave of sadness remained, but at least she felt she was moving forward, starting to get a grip again on her life. She wondered how Ben was doing as well as her pals at the gym.
Note to self. Work my way back into basketball when and if I get back to Washington. She slipped off into a light nap.
She drifted. She opened her eyes. It had seemed like only a few minutes, but she had fallen asleep for the better part of an hour.
The plane was descending now into Maiquetía, Caracas’s airport. The airport was called that after the village that once stood there, rather than “Simón Bolívar International Airport,” its real name.
The aircraft went into a sharp bank as it angled in from the sea, with mountains on one side. The aisle-seat passenger in Alex’s row was an older woman who gave a nervous glance at her seatmate. She shook her head. “Scary, no?” she asked. She looked to Alex for comfort as well.
Alex smiled.
“And you haven’t flown into La Carlota,” the man in the middle seat said. He spoke with a Spanish accent.
“Where’s La Carlota?” Alex asked.
“The old downtown airport in Caracas. It’s mostly used for general aviation now. Coming in you’re almost kissing the Ávila, the mountain range that forms the southern border of Caracas. As a young man I remember coming in there in fog. You felt the pilots were just sensing where the Ávila was.”
Alex nodded and shook her head. The aircraft eased into a further descent.
“President Chávez often still flies out of there,” the other passenger said. “Hopefully one day his pilot will get it wrong.”
Moments later, they were on the ground, taxiing to the terminal.
Maiquetía airport was astonishingly modern. Alex retrieved her bags and cleared customs easily. Outside the gates, the steamy Venezuelan heat was waiting for her. She was struck by the contrast with Kiev, where everything had been frozen. The clothing she had worn from New York was already uncomfortably heavy.
She scanned a crowd waiting for arriving passengers. There was a well-dressed man with a sign that had her name on it.
Alex approached him in Spanish. “Buenas tardes. Soy Señorita LaDuca.”
“Mucho gusto,” he answered.
They continued in Spanish. Alex slipped into the flow of it with ease.
“I’m José Mardariaga of the Mardariaga limousine service,” he said. “I’ve been sent by Señor Collins to pick you up. Let me take your bags.”
The man took her to a new Lexus with air conditioning that worked. A blessing.
“Is it always this hot this time of year?” she asked, making conversation.
“Down here on the coast, sí, claro!” Señor Mardariaga said. “But not in Caracas, which is up high. The Spaniards usually built their colonial capitals in the mountains away from the coast for this reason. For instance in Chile, I’m a Chilean myself, the port is El Paraíso, but the capital of Santiago de Chile is inland, in the mountains.”
“Nice airport.”
“There’s even a TGI Friday’s,” the driver said, as if that was the height of current civilization. Perhaps it was, Alex reflected.
“Chávez’s doing?” she asked.
“Not a bit of it! The project of replacing the old airport terminal predates him.”
Hearing him, Alex thought back to her phone conversation with her friend Don Tomás, just before leaving. He had discussed attitudes toward Hugo Chávez based on social class.
Venezuelan sociologists traditionally divided society into five classes. A, B, C, D, and E. A were the rich, B were those who could have an American middle-class lifestyle, C were people what the Venezuelans called “middle class” but had an American lower-middle-class lifestyle at best. D’s were working class people with very modest income but steady work, and E’s were the people on the bottom.
Seventy percent of Venezuelans were D’s and E’s. They were Chávez’s unconditional supporters. The C’s were torn, but many were anti-Chávez, if for no other reason than the classic desire of their class to seek to distinguish itself from the classes below. The A’s and B’s loathed Chávez. The B’s were in the toughest position, because this was the country they were stuck with. The A’s, the truly wealthy, already had their bolt-holes in Miami and their assets stashed in American and Swiss banks.
Clearly, Alex thought, her driver with his own limousine service was an anti-Chávez C.
The ride to the city went quickly. Alex came out of her daydream as they went through a tunnel, and then on the other side they were on the expressway that ran the length of the long, narrow city. Before her, Alex saw high-rise office buildings and, on some of the hills, obvious condos. But on other hills there were cinderblock shacks piled one on top of the other.
“Estoy curiosa. ¿Dondé está Petrare?” Alex asked, remembering Don Tomás’s description of the city. Where’s Petrare?
“That hill right in front, in the distance. You won’t want to go there,” the driver said.
“I know,” she said. “A friend warned me.”
The car turned off the elevated freeway onto the parallel street running under it. The driver executed a hair-raising U-turn in the middle of traffic, then turned right up a well-manicured driveway with palms in the center strip.
The Lexus came to a plaza with a white, low-lying building and stopped at the door. “El Tamanaco.” the driver announced. “Su hotel, Señorita.”
Alex checked in. She found a suitcase waiting for her in her room, courtesy of Sam and his operatives. Jungle clothing and a weapon. Shirts, hiking boots, shorts, a rain slicker, and a Beretta. She tried things on. She checked the weapon. She also found a small digital camera and three extra memory cards. A thoughtful addition.
She showered, ordered a light meal from room service, and realized she was exhausted. Toward ten in the evening, she collapsed into bed and slept.
SIXTY-THREE
The meeting at the Justice Ministry in Rome had not gone exactly the way Rizzo had planned. He had excluded his assistant DiPetri, the worthless one, because why should the worthless one be allowed to show up when the laurels were being awarded? The worthless one hadn’t done anything helpful, for example, except possibly just keeping his foolish hands out of the way. So why should he get any credit?
But twenty minutes into the meeting with the minister, Rizzo wished he had brought DiPetri along to take some of the heat. In response to the minister’s questions, Rizzo found himself giving a step-by-step recapitulation of his two investigations, from the commission of the crime, through their linkage, through trips to the obitorio, through the official meddling by the Americans in the custody of the bodies, through his Sailor Moon linkage of the crimes to Ukrainian Mafia.
Unimpressed, the minister sat at a wide desk with his eyes downcast, a secretary recording Rizzo’s explanation.
After several minutes, despite his years of professionalism, Rizzo got as jittery as a dozen scared cats. There had been much in the press recently about CIA agents embedded within the Roman police. The minister had no reason to suspect Rizzo of such collusion, of serving two masters like that, but Rizzo didn’t know whether he might come under accusation, anyway. Things like that happened sometimes.