She stared at him, wondering how seriously to take what he was saying. He was known to toy with his victims before killing them. She put her arm over the back of the pew, turning to look at him more directly in an attempt to appear confident. “In that case, I’m listening.”
He became very serious, and she saw genuine concern on his face. “First, I’m going to need certain guarantees.”
She almost didn’t believe her eyes or her ears. Castañeda wasn’t just concerned, he was afraid of something, and he was coming to the CIA for help — coming to her, the woman who’d been hunting him all across the state of Chihuahua. “Guarantees? You’re the leader of a drug cartel, and your people have done horrible things on both sides of the border. I’m not sure what kinds of guarantees you think anyone would be willing to give you.”
He sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees and keeping his voice low. “Listen to me. I am prepared to tell you precisely what kind of device was detonated, exactly how many kilotons, who made it, who detonated it, and exactly where he was when he detonated it… but not without guarantees.”
Mariana was hard pressed to conceal the excitement that began to simmer in her blood. She suddenly saw herself halfway to having her own office in Langley, the white Range Rover she’d been dreaming about, a house in Georgetown, out of the field and into the upper echelon — all for the price of a few guarantees. “What guarantees?” she asked, trying to appear doubtful.
“I had nothing to do with the bomb,” he said. “I’m a business man, not a terrorist.” She made a pssh sound at that. “I don’t want to be blamed for this explosion just because it happened in my territory in one of my tunnels. Do you understand?”
Did that slip about the tunnel? she wondered. Or was he throwing me a bone?
“Okay,” she said, “I don’t see a problem with that. If you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it.”
He looked at her, his half-lidded eyes taking on a menacing air for the first time. “What I am telling you is that I do not want to be hunted.”
“Excuse me, but you’re a drug lord; you’re already hunted. Nobody on either side of the Rio Grande is going to just forget about you.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I am not hunted the way you think I am hunted. I have friends who protect me: friends among the army and the police who warn me not to be in certain places when it is dangerous for me to be there. Do you understand?”
She drew a breath and sighed. “Of course. This is Mexico, after all.”
“So,” he continued, “these friends, these people who protect me, would be forced to turn their backs on me if I were labeled a nuclear terrorist. Some of them might even find it advantageous to betray certain of my secrets, which would undoubtedly lead to my capture. Is this making sense to you? Are you located high enough in your agency to guarantee that I will not be associated with this bomb; that I will not be labeled a nuclear terrorist?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Most of what you’re offering sounds to me like information we’d uncover on our own in due course.”
He sat back, extending his arms across the back of the pew. “Has your army isolated the isotopes yet? If they have, then you know it was a uranium bomb and not plutonium… and in time you will discover that it was probably enriched at the Soviet enrichment facility in the Urals.”
For Castañeda to know this level of detail meant the rest of his information might be reliable, because she herself had only been made privy to the isotope results a few hours earlier, and as yet there had been no public disclosure. If he was correct about the bomb being made with Russian uranium — which the army would not be able to determine right away — that was absolutely going to set a cat among the pigeons. Castañeda had already given her enough intel to ensure her superiors’ ongoing confidence — provided she was able to get out of the cathedral alive — but she really wanted that office in Langley, so she began to angle. “What I can guarantee is this,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re not blamed or associated with the bomb. It wouldn’t be advantageous for my government to blame the wrong person anyhow.”
“In other words, you have the authority to guarantee me nothing.”
“Look,” she said, “nobody would in a situation like this. Clearances have to be obtained. You were military. You know how it works.”
He leaned forward again, very close to her this time because there were people passing behind them. “What kinds of guarantees would your government have given for information that could have prevented 9/11?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sat back and smiled. “Use your imagination.”
“The bomb already went off.”
“Did it?” he asked, the smile lingering as he got to his feet. “You can contact me at the usual email address if and when you are able to make the necessary guarantees.”
“Wait!” she said, experiencing a burst of inspiration. “If you really do have the kind of information that you’ve just implied, then… for a little extra, I can give you the guarantees you’re looking for.”
He sat back down. “Extra? What extra?”
“In exchange for being left alone — which is what you’re really asking for here, let’s be honest — you’re going to have to cool it with the violence on both sides of the border. Stop killing cops and civilians. Stick to battling your rival cartels. If you’ll make me that guarantee now, then I’m sure I can get the guarantees you’re asking for.”
He stared at her, a dubious frown creasing his face.
“Think about it,” she said. “If you offer this… oh, I don’t know, call it a cease-fire; cartels have offered that kind of treaty before — that would motivate my government to not only grant the guarantees you want, but to keep their word. And that should matter to you, Tony, because a guarantee isn’t any good unless there’s an incentive to stand behind it.”
Castañeda didn’t like to be called Tony, and he was sure she knew it. He sat looking at her, thinking that he’d like to fuck her; that she was very lucky he needed her help. Because under normal circumstances, a CIA operative as pretty as this one would have looked very good to him down on all fours with a leash around her neck.
“Chechenos,” he said. “The bombs were smuggled into Mexico by stinking, lying Chechen dogs.”
14
General William Couture stalked into a heavily guarded conference room at the Pentagon dressed in his starched universal camouflage ACU, flanked by his aide-de-camp, an equally towering army major who looked as though he’d been chiseled from a block of granite and who wore a .45 caliber Glock 21 pistol slung beneath each arm. Rumor had it that he carried two weapons so he could toss one to the general in the event there was ever a need to defend themselves. Couture stood at the head of a long mahogany table lined with generals and admirals from all branches of the United States military. All seven of the Joint Chiefs were present, as were several other uniformed service chiefs.
Couture’s expression was stern, his merciless gaze set firmly.
“Gentlemen,” he said in a sonorous voice, “the secretary of defense has ordered us to Fast Pace.” This was the code phrase for DEFCON 2. “The president is aboard Air Force One, and the vice president has already been taken to a hardened location belowground. In addition, the United States Congress is being evacuated from the District of Columbia as we speak. Each member of Congress will return to his or her home state, where they will remain until we are back to at least DEFCON 4.” DEFCON 5, code named Fade Out, was the most relaxed of the defense conditions.