An Acceptable Sacrifice (2 page)

The weather in Washington, D.C. was pleasant this May evening so he picked a Starbucks with an outdoor patio … because, why not?

This was in a yuppie area of the district, if yuppies still existed. Peter Billings’s father had been a yuppie. Shit, that was a long time ago.

Billings was drinking regular coffee, black, and no extra shots or foamed milk or fancy additives, which he secretly believed that people asked for sometimes simply because they liked the sound of ordering them.

He’d also bought a scone, which was loaded with calories, but he didn’t care. Besides, he’d only eat half of it. At home in Bethesda, his wife would feed him a Lean Cuisine tonight.

Billings liked Starbucks because you could count on being invisible. Business people typing resumes they didn’t want their bosses to see, husbands and wives typing emails to their lovers.

And government operatives meeting about issues that were, shall we say, sensitive.

Starbucks was also good because the steam machine made a shitload of noise and covered up the conversation if you were inside and the traffic covered up the conversation if you were outside. At least here on the streets of the District.

He ate some scone and launched the crumbs off his dark blue suit and light blue tie.

A moment later a man sat down across from him. He had a Starbuck’s coffee, too, but it’d been doctored up big time—almond or hazelnut, whipped cream, sprinkles. The man was weasely, Billings reflected. When you’re in your forties and somebody looks at you and the word weasel is the first thing that comes to mind, you might want to start thinking about image. Gain some weight.

Have a scone.

Billings now said to Harris, “Evening.”

Harris nodded then licked whipped cream from the top of his coffee carton.

Billings found it repulsive, the darting, weasely tongue. “We’re at the go/no-go point.”

“Right.”

“Your man down south.”

“Adam.”

As good a code as any for Harris’s contracting agent in Hermosillo, presently dogging Alonso María Carillo, AKA Cuchillo. Harris, of course, wasn’t going to name him. Loud traffic on the streets of D.C. is like cappuccino machines, only loud. It masks, it doesn’t obliterate, and both Harris and Billings knew there were sound engineers who could extract incriminating words from cacophony with the precision of a hummingbird sipping nectar in a hover.

“Communication is good?” A near whisper by Billings.

No response. Of course communication would be good. Harris and his people were the best. No need for a nod, either.

Billings wanted to take a bite of scone but was, for some reason, reluctant to do so in front of a man who’d killed at least a dozen people, or so the unwritten resume went. Billings had killed a number of people
indirectly
but, one on one? Only a squirrel. Accidentally. His voice now dropped lower yet. “Has he been in contact with the PIQ?”

Person in Question.

Cuchillo.

“No. He’s doing the prep work. From a distance.”

“So he hasn’t seen, for instance, weapons or product at the compound?”

“No. They’re staying clear. Both Adam and his counterpart from the D.F.” Harris continued, “All the surveillance is by drone.”

Which Billings had seen. And it wasn’t helpful.

They fell silent as a couple at a table nearby stood and gathered their shopping bags.

Billings told himself to be a bit subtler with his questions. Harris was on the cusp of becoming curious. And that would not be good. Billings was not prepared to share what had been troubling him for the past several hours, since the new intelligence assessment came in: that he and his department might have subcontracted out a job to assassinate the wrong man.

There was now some doubt that Cuchillo was in fact head of the Hermosillo Cartel.

The intercepts Billings’s people had interpreted as referring to drug shipments by the cartel in fact referred to legitimate products from Cuchillo’s manufacturing factories, destined for U.S. companies. A huge deposit into one of his Cayman accounts was perfectly legal—not a laundering scam, as originally thought—and was from the sale of a ranch he had owned in Texas. And the death of a nearby drug supplier they were sure was a hit ordered by Cuchillo turned out to be a real traffic accident involving a drunk driver. Much of the other data on which they’d based the terminate order remained ambiguous.

Billings had hoped that Adam, on the ground in Sonora, might have seen something to confirm their belief that Cuchillo ran the cartel.

But apparently not.

Harris licked the whipped cream again. Caught a few sprinkles in the process.

Billings looked him over again. Yes, weasely, but this wasn’t necessarily an insult. After all, a sneaky weasel and a noble wolf weren’t a lot different, at least not when they were sniffing after prey.

Harris asked bluntly, “So, do I tell Adam to go forward?”

Billings took a bite of scone. He had the lives of the passengers of the bus to save … and he had his career to think of, too. He considered the question as he brushed crumbs. He’d studied law at the University of Chicago, where the theory of cost-benefit analysis had largely been developed. The theory was this: you balanced the cost of preventing a mishap versus the odds of it occurring and the severity of the consequences if it does.

In the Cuchillo assassination, Billings had considered two options: Scenario One: Adam kills Cuchillo. If he’s not the head of the cartel and is innocent, then the bus attack happens, because somebody else is behind it. If he’s guilty, then the bus incident
doesn’t
happen and there’d be no bus incidents in the future. Scenario Two: Adam stands down. Now, if Cuchillo’s innocent, the bus incident happens. If he’s guilty, the bus incident happens and there’ll be more incidents like it in the future.

In other words, the hard and cold numbers favored going forward, even if Cuchillo was innocent.

But the obvious downside was that Billings could be crucified if that was the case … and if he and Harris and Adam were discovered.

An obvious solution occurred to him.

Oh, this was good. He finished the scone. “Yeah, Adam’s green-lighted. But there’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Tell him however he does it, all the evidence has to be obliterated. Completely. Nothing can trace the incident back here. Nothing at all.”

And looking very much like a crossbreed, a weasel-wolf, Harris nodded and sucked up the last of the whipped cream. “I have no problem with that whatsoever.”

Díaz and Evans were back in the apartment in a nice section of Hermosillo, an apartment that was paid for by a company owned by a company owned by a company whose headquarters was a post office box in Northern Virginia. Evans was providing not only the technical expertise but most of the money as well. It was the least he could do, he’d joked, considering that it was America that supplied most of the weapons to the cartels; in Mexico it is virtually impossible to buy or possess weapons legally.

The time was now nearly five p.m. and Evans was reading an encrypted email from the U.S. that he’d just received.

He looked up. “That’s it. We’re green-lighted.”

Díaz smiled. “Good. I want that son of a bitch to go to hell.”

And they got back to work, poring over data-mined information about Cuchillo’s life: his businesses and associates and employees, household staff, his friends and mistresses, the restaurants and bars where he spent many evenings, what he bought, what he downloaded, what computer programs he used, what he enjoyed listening to, what he ate and drank. The information was voluminous; security forces here and in the U.S. had been compiling it for months.

And, yes, much of this information had to do with books.

Weaknesses …

“Listen to this, Al. Last year he bought more than a million dollars’ worth of books.”

“You mean pesos.”

“I mean dollars. Hey, you turn the A.C. down?”

Evans had noticed that the late afternoon heat was flowing into the apartment like a slow, oppressive tide.

“Just little,” Díaz said. “Air conditioning, it’s not so healthy.”

“Cold temperature doesn’t give you a cold,” Evans said pedantically.

“I know that. I mean, the mold.”

“What?”

“Mold in the ducts. Dangerous.
That
is what I meant, unhealthy.”

Oh. Evans conceded the point. He actually had been coughing a lot since he’d arrived. He got another Coke, wiped the neck and sipped. He spit Handi-wipe. He coughed. He turned the A.C. down a little more.

“You get used to the heat.”

“That’s not possible. In Mexico, do you have words for winter, spring and fall?”

“Ha, funny.”

They returned to the data-mined info. Not only was the credit card data available but insurance information about many of the books was often included. Some of the books were one of a kind, worth tens of thousands of dollars. They seemed to all be first editions.

“And look,” Díaz said, looking over the documents. “He never sells them. He only buys.”

It was true, Evans realized. There were no sales documents, no tax declarations of making money by selling capital items described as books. He kept everything he bought.

He’d want them around him all the time. He’d covet them. He’d need them.

Many people in the drug cartels were addicted to their own product; Cuchillo, it seemed, was not. Still, he had an addiction.

But how to exploit it?

Evans considered the list. Ideas were forming, as they always did. “Look at this, Al. Last week he ordered a book inscribed by Dickens,
The Old Curiosity Shop
. The price is sixty thousand. Yeah, dollars.”

“For a book?” the Mexican agent asked, looking astonished.

“And it’s
used
,” Evans pointed out. “It’s supposed to be coming in, in a day or two.” He thought for some moments. Finally he nodded. “Here’s an idea. I think it could work.… We’ll contact this man—” He found a name on the sheet of data-mined printouts. “Señor Davila. He seems to be Cuchillo’s main book dealer. What we’ll do is tell him we suspect him of money laundering.”

“He probably is.”

“And he’d pee his pants, thinking if we announce it, Cuchillo will … “Evans drew his index finger across his throat.

“Do you do that in America?”

“What?”

“You know. That thing, your finger, your throat? I only saw that in bad movies. Laurel and Hardy.”

Evans asked, “Who?”

Alejo Díaz shrugged and seemed disappointed that he’d never heard of them.

Evans continued, “So Davila will do whatever we want.”

“Which will be to call Cuchillo and tell him his Dickens book arrived early. Oh, and the seller wants cash only.”

“Good. I like that. So somebody will have to meet him in person—to collect the cash.”

“And I’ll come to his house to deliver the book. His security man probably won’t want that but Cuchillo will insist to take delivery. Because he’s—”

“Addicted.”

The Mexican agent added, “I’ll have to meet him, not you. Your Spanish, it is terrible. Why did they send you here on assignment?”

The reason for sending P.Z. Evans to a conflict zone was not because of his language skills. “I like the soft drinks.” He opened another Coke. Did the neck cleaning thing. He cleared his throat and tried not to cough.

Díaz said, “We’ll need to get the book, though. That Dickens.” Nodding at the list.

Evans said, “I’ll make some calls to my people in the States, see if they can track one down.”

Díaz asked, “Okay, so it is that I’m inside. What do I do then? If I shoot him, they shoot me.”

“Effective,” Evans pointed out.

“But not the successful plans you’re known for, P.Z.”

“True. No, what you’re going to do is plant a bomb.”

“A bomb?” Díaz said uneasily. “I don’t like them so much.”

Evans gestured to his computer, referring to the email he’d just received. “Instructions are nothing’s supposed to remain. Nothing to trace back to our bosses. Has to be a bomb. And one that produces a big honking fire.”