“I have no complaints,” she answered in the same language.
“Nor do I. You were shaped like a white woman before, but now you’re shaped like a Latina — as you should be.”
“We’re not here to discuss my anatomy.” Mariana was all too aware that Castañeda was a mujeriego — a womanizer — and a dangerous one at that.
He signaled the waiter and ordered himself a tequila on the rocks, taking the liberty to order Mariana a gin and tonic. “That is your drink, is it not?” His gaze was level, penetrating.
“A lot of people drink gin,” she replied with a smile, hiding her discomfort at his knowledge of her personal tastes and wondering what else he might know.
“So,” he said, satisfied to have her guessing, “why are we here? What does the CIA want from me now?”
She set a flash drive on the table. “Everything you’ll need is there. We have a traitor on our hands, and he’s taken refuge in Mexico City. It can’t look like the US government had anything to do with his… expulsion.”
“Su expulsión!” Castañeda said, chortling. “So now the CIA is hiring me to do their assassinations. Oh, the hypocrisy of life seems to have no limitations.”
“We’re not hiring you do anything. Your assistance in this matter is conditional upon your ongoing truce with the US government.”
“And with my own government?”
“The Mexican government is to know nothing about this,” she said, sitting back so the waiter could set her drink on the table, and then switching to English. “Your government asks for favors, mine asks for favors, and everyone gets along. There’s plenty of precedent for such an arrangement. And you’ve done a good job of holding up your end: violence is down, tourism is up, and everyone’s happy — so far.”
He lifted his drink. “La chingada DEA cerró uno de mis túneles la semana pasada.” The fucking DEA closed one of my tunnels last week.
She shrugged. “The truce protects you — not your tunnels and not your drugs.”
He tucked the flash drive into the pocket of his black guayabera shirt. “Do you dance, Mariana?”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m back on a plane in two hours — but I do appreciate the drink.”
23
Ken Peterson sat impatiently on the sofa in Tim Hagen’s hotel suite while Hagen finished up with the prostitute he was shagging in the other room. A pair of Mexican security men sat on the far side of the suite playing cards and drinking Tecate beer. They were big men but not burly looking; professionals with a private Mexican firm who were licensed to carry .380 Walther PPK pistols. Larger-caliber bullets were considered military ammunition and therefore were illegal under Mexican law.
Eventually a bleached-blond Mexican girl came out of the bedroom, casting Peterson a benign look on her way to the door.
Hagen emerged a few minutes after taking a shower. “I didn’t know you were here already.”
“I got that impression,” Peterson said. “Listen, we’ve got a problem.”
A menacing shadow crossed Hagen’s brow. “I’m getting pretty sick of hearing that, Ken.”
Peterson was untouched by Hagen’s displeasure. “The hit on Pope went bad. His marine driver blew Ryder’s brains out.”
“Fuck!” Hagen swore, causing both security men to idly turn their heads in his direction.
“At least this way Ryder can’t talk,” Peterson remarked.
“But we’ll never get to Pope now. The president will surround him with a wall of steel. Does Pope know you sent Ryder?”
“Pope doesn’t know anything about me,” Peterson said, a droll grin spreading across his face. “But he was already suspicious of you.”
Hagen pointed a finger. “You’d better not even think of throwing me under the bus! My bases are covered!”
“Which is the only reason you’re still alive,” Peterson thought to himself.
“Relax,” he said. “It gets a little worse. The president’s going to withdraw Webb’s nomination. He’s naming Pope director of operations.”
Hagen felt suddenly nauseated, realizing it was the perfect move on the president’s part.
“It’s that damn Couture advising him! He knows Congress will have to approve the nomination.” He ran a hand over his head, looking around as if there might be a solution to their problem somewhere in the suite. “We’re fucked.”
“No, not yet,” Peterson said confidently. “Pope took a bullet to the lung, so he won’t be able to take the helm for at least a couple of weeks, and it’ll take him another month to thoroughly clean house. That gives us five or six weeks to bury what little evidence there is and generate whatever false documentation we need to cover our asses. Don’t worry, there are very few direct links to either of us. We’re extremely well insulated, so if the know-it-all-son-of-a-bitch comes after us, we’ll go on the offensive. We could tie up the investigation in congressional hearings for years if we needed to, but I don’t think the old man will let Pope push it that far. Oh — and there is your phone video, which is a very nice ace in the hole to have. Entire governments have been toppled by less.”
Hagen took a chair, reaching for a snubbed-out cigar on the table and relighting it. “What about Shannon?”
“Still on the loose, but still stuck on Sicily. He killed the Malta team we sent after him — along with a couple of Italian cops — and the Italian navy has since blockaded the island, checking all fishing charters, et cetera. It looks like he must have kidnapped an Italian girl when he stole her car, because she managed to contact her parents by cell. The police are searching Corleone now, so I don’t think it’ll be too long before Master Chief Shannon is either dead or in custody. And if he lands in an Italian prison, we can have him killed at our leisure.”
Hagen was long past believing that Gil Shannon could be cornered so easily. He felt his palms begin to sweat and subconsciously began rubbing them together. “I think it’s time for me to disappear.”
“Tim, you’re panicking again. Running will only make you look guilty.”
“How do you think I look hiding out down here?”
“Look, you’re a respected diplomat around Washington.” Peterson realized he needed to calm Hagen down before he did something stupid to put everyone in jeopardy. “You’re independently wealthy, and you’re allowed to take a vacation to Mexico whenever you want. But going completely off the grid is a bad idea.”
“Okay, you’re right,” Hagen agreed, attempting to buck himself up. But the truth was that he was a nervous wreck with Shannon still on the loose. “Maybe I should take a trip up to DC — or to New York for a meeting with Senator Grieves.”
Peterson absolutely didn’t want him meeting with Steve Grieves again before the Gil Shannon issue was resolved. Grieves was too closely linked, and he didn’t need those two cooking up anything behind his back.
“I think you’re fine right here,” he said. “Not too close, not too far away. You might look into some kind of a business deal, though. Real estate, maybe, to make it look like you’re involved in something lucrative down here.”
“That’s a thought,” Hagen said enthusiastically. “There’s a hotel in Cancún looking for American investors. Wouldn’t mean a lot of profit, but it would make my visit appear more legitimate…”
“And you know what? Screw Pope! Let him speculate all he wants. Once Shannon’s dead, he’ll have nothing to threaten me with. He’ll be the head of the CIA, and he’ll have to play by the rules like everybody else.”