"If you agree to these terms, the ground rules for meeting with De Leon are as follows: You will be searched by my aide for weapons and listening devices. He will then drive you to a place outside the city.
There you will finalize your agreement with Senor De Leon in person and receive your first payment."
"Why all the hoops?" Perry asked.
"Senor De Leon is a cautious man who wishes to make sure that I am thoroughly embedded in the transaction. Since you are unknown to him personally, and he is accepting you on the basis of my recommendation, my complicity in the operation is required."
"Let's get on with it," Perry said.
Applewhite sat up front with the general's aide. They rolled south past the Juarez Airport, through a couple of ugly shanty towns, and into the desert-a vast, dusty, windblown expanse that made Charlie yearn for the Beltway, traffic congestion, and mobs of people.
On a dirt road they pulled up next to a black Lincoln limo. A driver got out and opened the rear door. The general's aide got out and stood at attention. De Leon emerged from the backseat. Perry half expected the young officer to salute.
Thej'e/e's brown curly hair stayed put in the wind. The lips below his narrow nose carried a smirk that widened as Applewhite stepped out of the car.
"I want particulars of how you plan to proceed," De Leon said to Perry, dismissing Applewhite with a look.
Applewhite shot him in the face, wheeled, pumped two quick rounds into the driver, and delivered a coup de grace to the back of De Leon head.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Perry said.
The aide stepped to the Lincoln, fetched a suitcase, and took the semiautomatic from Applewhite's outstretched hand.
"We must leave now," the young officer said.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Perry moaned.
"Get in the car, Charlie," Applewhite said, leading Perry to the aide's vehicle, "and I'll bring you up to speed."
She got in the backseat with him. Perry leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his heart thumping in his chest. The car made a U-turn and accelerated.
"Here's the way it plays," Applewhite said.
"By midnight some very factual reports from a variety of reliable intelligence sources will be sanitized, assembled, and analyzed at the Department of Defense. Those reports will prove beyond a doubt that you and you alone entered into a contract with De Leon to assassinate Kevin Kerney, and that you murdered De Leon to ensure his silence after accepting a quarter-million-dollar advance to do the job, which by the way will be deposited shortly in an offshore account you recently opened. Should you ever decide to purge your guts to the Bureau about what really happened, both the general and his aide will be called upon to give statements corroborating what I've just told you. I guarantee that should you decide to try to disprove these accusations, you'll spend the rest of your life in a federal prison."
"Why kill De Leon Perry asked, his eyes still shut.
"Because the opportunity might not have presented itself again, and it makes some important people on both sides of the border very happy."
"Kerney's next, isn't he? No matter what he does or doesn't know."
Applewhite patted Charlie's knee. It made him recoil and open his eyes.
"Don't concern yourself about that."
"When do you ice me?"
"Not to worry, Charlie. You get to go back to the Beltway after all.
There's a nice desk job waiting for you at the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
Your new bosses are looking forward to working with you."
Charlie didn't believe her.
"You're a lying bitch."
Applewhite jammed a thumb into a pressure point on Perry's neck and his chin hit his chest. She punched a syringe through Perry's trousers into his thigh and emptied the contents. The fast acting drug would keep him knocked out for hours.
The aide handed her the semiautomatic. She put on plastic gloves, ejected the magazine, emptied the clip, cleaned everything with a rag, and pressed Charlie's fingers against the cold metal surfaces, including the unspent rounds. She bagged the evidence and tossed it on the front seat next to the briefcase that held De Leon quarter-million-dollar up-front payment.
The car swung through a military gate at the Juarez Airport and drove into a Mexican Air Force hangar, where the general waited. Two uniformed soldiers pulled Perry from the car, carried him to a small fixed-wing airplane, and pushed his rag-doll body inside.
The aide got out and handed the briefcase to his general. The general hefted it to gauge the weight of its contents and smiled at Applewhite.
Applewhite stared him down until the smile vanished. She handed the aide a slip of paper.
"These are the clearance codes the pilot will need to enter restricted airspace and land at White Sands Missile Range."
In an hour Perry would be back in the States under guard in a safe location at a high-security testing facility.
The aide nodded and stepped off to the ready room to find the pilot.
"You are not happy with the success of your mission, senora?" the general asked, oozing false charm.
"I've got a message for you from Langley," Applewhite said.
"The quarter million dollars in that briefcase better be the last drug money you ever take. If you sell your services to the jefe who steps in to take De Leon place the CIA will kill you, your family, and your aged mother. Where's my car and driver?"
The general's eyes turned pinpoint murderous.
"Behind the hangar."
From a pay phone at the El Paso Airport, Ingram booked a room at a bed-and-breakfast in Charlie Perry's name. He used the credit card number from Perry's Santa Fe hotel bill to guarantee the reservation and said he was sending his luggage over by taxi because he had meetings that would keep him from checking in until very late.
The woman said they locked the front door at seven. She gave him a room number and told him she'd leave a guest key under a chair cushion on the front porch.
Outside the terminal Ingram hailed a cab, paid the driver in advance to deliver the bags to the B amp; B, added a nice tip, and went looking for the bar. He had hours to kill before he needed to get to the B amp; B, make the room look slept in, pick up Charlie's luggage, and leave a cash payment for the room on the dresser.
He ordered a single malt. The bar TV showed a taped Hawaiian triathlon.
The drink came and Ingram raised the glass in a mock toast to Charlie Perry. Deluded by feelings of self-importance, blinded by a faith that the Bureau could do no wrong, eager to think he'd been tapped for a fast-track promotion assignment, Charlie was without a doubt the perfect patsy.
What a fall Perry was about to take. Tim slugged down the whiskey and thought he'd been spending too much time drinking over the past six months.
City Manager Demora, the rah-rah proponent of open-door management, made Kerney sit outside his closed office door and wait well past normal office hours.
Kerney used the time to review the discussion notes he'd taken after briefing Andy, Detective Sloan, and Lieutenant Molina about SWAMI.
Question: What covert information-gathering need would SWAMI serve?
From what Kerney had read about Carnivore, the FBI Internet wiretap system, its capacity was limited to gathering on-line messages. Did Swami duplicate or go beyond Carnivore's capacity to acquire information?
Question: Was the government using Trade Venture, APT Per forma, and Touch Link as corporate shields? If so, why was it important for SWAMI not to be a bona-fide intelligence tool?
Question: What did money have to do with it? The Mitchellterrell murders occurred after the priest had started looking into the trade mission's economic agenda, drug-money laundering, and financial crimes.
Question: What, if any, was Ambassador Terrell's role in SWAMI? *** Kerney put his notes away. Bobby Sloan believed SWAMI might well be the mother of all computer-based covert technological snooping devices.