The Convert's Song (4 page)

“You’re Muslim now?”

“Yeah.” Raymond brightened, his tone earnest. “It helped me center myself. I was intense about it for a while.”

“I been studying up about Islam. My boss, he’s a real expert. His family came from Turkey.”

“Does he go to the King Fahd mosque off Libertador?”

Pescatore opened his mouth to explain that Facundo was Jewish. Then he caught himself.

“No,” he said. “That’s real interesting, how you converted and everything. Did you do the hajj?”

Raymond was impressed by his knowledge of the term. He said he had done the minor pilgrimage to Mecca, but not the major one known as the hajj. After leaving Buenos Aires a few years before, he had spent time in the Middle East and Europe. He had invested in businesses and property. Things were good.

Raymond’s phone rang again. He rolled his eyes apologetically. He had a conversation with a woman, calling her
mamita
and
mi amor.
He told her to calm down and promised to call back. His accent in Spanish was pure
porteño;
he sounded born and bred in Buenos Aires.

Pescatore was thinking about the religious conversion. It had startled him. Still, Facundo had told him that Americans needed to calm down about seeing terrorists everywhere. Pescatore had trouble imagining that Raymond believed in much of anything other than himself and his appetites.

Raymond asked: “What was that Spanish brandy your old man drank?”

“Cardenal Mendoza.”

Raymond ordered two snifters of the brandy. He raised his.

“Figli maschi,”
he declaimed. “Male offspring. That was your dad’s toast. I remember dinners with you guys when we were kids; he’d make a big deal about breaking out El Cardenal. I always liked your
viejo
.”

Raymond rendered Pescatore’s father’s Italo-Spanish rumble to perfection. Pescatore savored the strong mellow fumes. When, as a teenager, Pescatore complained that his father was strict, Raymond scowled and said that at least he was a stand-up family man. Raymond hated the fact that his own father chased his secretaries and paralegals—and that his mother put up with it.

“I always make that toast.” Raymond beamed. “It worked: I have two sons.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah, man, they’re cool little guys. Their mom’s North African. A princess, a lioness.” A text message beeped on his phone. He sighed. “But this Argentine
mina
is a mess. Won’t stop calling and texting. She’s
rompiéndome las pelotas.
I should go see her tonight, now that I stayed.”

“Raymond, where do you live now?”

“Oh, I’m bopping around.”

Pescatore’s head spun. He thought:
Bopping around? What the fuck is that? This guy wouldn’t give a straight answer at gunpoint.

“So, Valentín.” Raymond leaned forward. He seemed sloppy with drink, elbows on the table. “This company you work for. What is that, like security contracting for the U.S. government?”

“Public sector, private sector, different clients.”

“I’m just asking, you know. A lot of guys who were in law enforcement go into these companies where they’re still working for the feds. Especially overseas. You and this guy Facundo, you’re pretty wired up with embassies and whatnot, right?”

“More him than me.” Pescatore tried to remember if he had mentioned Facundo by name. “But it’s sensitive, Ray. I can’t talk about work.”

“I know, I know. Just curious.” He held both hands aloft in surrender. Spotting the waitress, he transformed the gesture into a signal for the check. He brooded with his hand over his mouth, eyes down: the Springsteen pose. He looked sad and scared.

“Listen,
cuate.
” Raymond’s tone got husky again. “I need to tell you one thing. About that night.”

“Okay.”

“Wolf, that
maricón,
the doctors hadn’t even dug the bullet out of his butt before he ratted me out. He told the cops you were my partner in the dope business.”

“I wasn’t your partner in the dope business.”

“I know. But your number was in my phone. They had witnesses talking about you sidekicking with me. They wanted me to give you up. My father, he got excited. He said we could build a credible scenario. A guy like me was the follower, a
perejil
. You had the profile of the leader. A tougher background. He said some of your Mexican relatives had criminal records. The more I built up your role, the better off I’d be.”

The story had the ring of truth, Pescatore thought. “And?”

“I told him to fuck off.” Raymond choked up, paused. “I told them I’d testify against anybody else, set up anybody else. I became a cooperator on the condition that they let you alone. I fucked over a lot of people. But when it came to you, I was a stand-up guy. Because you were a stand-up guy.”

Pescatore relived a long-buried dread. He had always wondered why the police hadn’t questioned him. He had tried to convince himself that it was because he wasn’t that involved. Or because his uncle was a cop.

“What can I say, Raymond? I—”

“Nothing. I just wanted you to know.”

Raymond’s phone rang again on the table. He ignored it. He put a business card on the wood. The card had his name, an Argentine phone number, and an e-mail address. Pescatore could see the screen of the phone buzzing near the card. The name on the display looked like
Flo.

“That’s how you can reach me, bro. Anytime, anywhere. Got a card?”

“I don’t,” Pescatore lied, avoiding his gaze. “Sorry.”

“Here.” Raymond put a notepad and a pen on the table.

Pescatore didn’t want to give Raymond contact information related to the investigation agency. He wrote down a personal e-mail address and the number of a local cell phone that he didn’t use for work.

“What the hell is this?” Raymond tapped the notepad accusingly.

“What?”

“This Valen
tine
shit.” He raised his eyebrows in consternation.

Pescatore chuckled nervously. He explained that when he joined the Border Patrol, a clerical error had added the
e
to his first name. The federal bureaucracy had stuck to the wrong version, so he’d accepted it.

“That’s on my passport now too: Valentine. My birth certificate, my school transcripts, they still say Valentín. It’s a problem.”

“Qué quilombo.”
Raymond laughed harshly. He drained his brandy. “That’s what happens. Governments fuck you around. People fuck you around. By the time they’re done, you don’t know who you are. Especially if you weren’t sure to begin with.”

D
uring the next week, uneasiness gnawed at Pescatore about the strange encounter with Raymond.

Although he wasn’t enthusiastic about discussing his past, he wanted to tell Facundo about the incident. But he didn’t get a chance. He spent most of the week in the city of Rosario setting up security for an Italian client, an executive who had evaded a kidnapping attempt.

Pescatore returned to Buenos Aires Thursday. On Friday morning, he worked on his laptop at his dining room table, bathed in sunlight. He sent a bank transfer to the widow of a California Highway Patrol officer in San Diego. The officer had died in a shootout while Pescatore was in the Border Patrol. Pescatore had been riding undercover at the time with a corrupt Patrol supervisor who opened fire when the CHP officer stopped them en route to Tijuana. Eventually, Pescatore had paid his respects to the widow. She was gracious, but he felt guilty. Despite her protests, he insisted on sending her money for her three children: a hundred dollars a month.

Pescatore spent an hour finishing the latest book Facundo had given him:
Understanding Terror Networks
by Marc Sageman. When Facundo learned of Pescatore’s effort to read seriously for the first time in his life, he had taken it upon himself to guide his improvised program of intellectual self-improvement. It had become a ritual: one Friday a month, Facundo helped him pick out a book.

At eleven thirty, Pescatore walked to the bookstore. He ran into Facundo getting out of Fabián’s Renault on Santa Fe Avenue. Facundo had his cell phone to his ear, a burning cigarette in his left hand, and a frown on his face. He was natty in a topcoat, pin-striped suit, and pointy black shoes. His neck bulged over the knot of a red tie. He looked like a cross between a bandleader and a bouncer. Neckties caused Facundo to squirm and grimace as if he were in a hangman’s noose. He wore ties only for important meetings and on Fridays for temple.

“They dismantled a cell in La Paz yesterday,” he said after hanging up. “Three individuals with guns and explosives.”

“An Islamic plot in Bolivia?”

“It has become a permissive environment.”

“Maybe this plot is what the chatter was about.”

“Maybe.” Facundo dropped and stomped the cigarette. “The Bolivians aren’t talking. But I’m told it was a precise tip.”

The bookstore had been a movie theater. The palatial interior retained the cupola, neoclassical murals, statuary, and curving balconies.

“Any target?” Pescatore asked.

“No details yet. What did you think of the Sageman?”

“It was great. Nice concrete examples. His theory makes sense to me: Becoming a terrorist is kind of like joining a gang. It’s about hooking up with a bunch of guys who make you feel like a badass.”

“Exactly. Religion is important, but not necessarily the driving force. People have trouble understanding that.” Facundo shambled among the shelves, hands clasped behind him. “We’ll get something in Spanish this time. Let’s see…There’s a good one by Irujo about the Madrid attacks. Here.”

Pescatore heard sirens go by in the street.

Facundo stooped to pull the book from a low shelf, grunting.

“Are you coming to Shabbat?” he asked. “The wife is in Miami, so Esther has taken over the kitchen. Either way, I do what I am told.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

Friday dinner at Facundo’s was part of the monthly book ritual. They were often joined by his divorced daughter, Esther, and her five-year-old, David. Pescatore had hit it off with the boy, and usually ended up reading aloud to him or sitting through demonstrations of his toys.

“I should get David something,” Pescatore said. “Would he like
The Cricket in Times Square
?”

“If it’s from you, he’ll like it.” Facundo raised a finger. “I am impressed at how that little ruffian sits still and behaves with you. I think Miss Puente, with all respect, calculated badly: you’d make a good father.”

Facundo had said this before; Pescatore was not sure how to respond. He was distracted by more sirens outside. Through a window, he saw police cars speeding west on Santa Fe Avenue. Then an ambulance. Then fire trucks. More police cars, lights flashing, raced by.

Facundo’s phone rang. After listening a moment, he exclaimed, “My God. Where?”

He broke into a run, still on the phone, narrowly avoiding a collision with a table of art books. Pescatore followed him out and into Fabián’s car.

“El Almacén,” Facundo barked. “As fast as you can. And turn up the radio!”

It appeared that all the police and emergency vehicles in the city were swarming in the same direction. Chomping down on his toothpick, Fabián slid into the slipstream of an ambulance and floored it. The radio reported explosions and gunfire at El Almacén, a shopping mall near the garment district. A newscaster described gunmen shooting shoppers, possible suicide bombers, multiple casualties, stampedes. An agitated reporter arriving at the scene shouted over a scratchy phone line about gunmen in police uniforms. She was interrupted by an explosion, followed by screams.

“It’s a mixed salad,” Facundo bellowed over the noise of the radio, sirens and horns. “A mixed salad!”

“What?” Pescatore asked.

“Gunmen and bombers at the same time.” Facundo thumb-punched buttons on his phone. “Complex attack modality…Hello, Dario? Where are you? What is this damned madness? I’ll call you from there.”

The streets narrowed. Traffic snarled. Emergency vehicles bulled forward. Facundo had a brief phone conversation in Hebrew. Pescatore knew El Almacén was in a traditionally Jewish neighborhood, and the developers of the mall were a wealthy Jewish family. The Israeli embassy advised the community on security matters.

The traffic got so bad that they jumped out. With remarkable agility for his size, Facundo hurtled through a crowd that had two currents: people fleeing the attack, and people rushing toward it. Pescatore kept his hand on his holstered gun in his jacket as he ran. They rounded a corner into bedlam. The street was full of police and fire vehicles. Officers with metal barriers and yellow tape were establishing a haphazard perimeter. Civilians watched, took cover, aided casualties, wandered in a daze.

The mall was an early-twentieth-century behemoth of a building, a former textile warehouse with glass and steel walls set in a design of brick archways. Police holding guns—uniformed, plainclothes, tactical officers in helmets and body armor—crouched behind vehicles and on either side of the main entrance. No shots were audible over the sirens and screams. A contingent of officers from the GEOF—the SWAT team of the federal police—rushed through the entrance into the mall, weapons at the ready. People streamed out in the other direction. A young woman hobbled on one high-heeled shoe. She had sunglasses propped in her hair and clutched shopping bags. Her toreador jacket was streaked with blood.

Pescatore went into crime-scene mode, counting the visible casualties: two dozen corpses on the steps and in the lobby, twice as many wounded. Paramedics, firemen and police tended to the fallen outside but kept back from the entrance. As far as he could tell, the attackers had used guns and grenades. The suicide bombings must have happened inside.

“What a butchery, sons of whores,” Facundo snarled, his breath coming in heaves.

It was the worst bloodshed Pescatore had ever seen. As had happened at dangerous moments at the border, a strange calm came over him. A disheveled, hatless police officer intercepted them, saying it was a restricted area and they were going to get killed. Facundo waved some kind of badge.

“Special Investigations!” he exclaimed. “Where’s the command post, son?”

The officer stepped back, startled and apologetic, and pointed at police vehicles parked in a sloppy triangle. Pescatore wondered if Facundo had an official credential or had just overwhelmed the cop with bluster. The command post was a scrum. There were chiefs in police uniform and in a kind of plainclothes uniform: scarves, sunglasses, bushy mustaches, slicked-back hair, big-shouldered overcoats spreading around pugilistic necks. The chiefs shouted into radios and telephones and at one another; they huddled around a floor plan spread on the hood of a car. Facundo accosted a plainclothesman who wore a protective vest and a holster strapped to his jean-clad leg. He was tall and hard-faced with shaggy hair like a soccer player’s. More a street warrior than a deskbound boss.

“
Che,
Biondani,” Facundo hissed. “I’m Facundo the Russian. Dario’s pal, remember? How bad is it?”

The mention of Dario D’Ambrosio, the former intelligence chief who hung out at La Biela, meant that Biondani was not a cop but a spy. He greeted Facundo with instant and respectful warmth.

“Very bad,” Biondani said quietly, turning his back on the other chiefs. “A hundred dead, easy. They stormed the front and back with assault rifles and grenades. Apparently suicide bombers too. A massacre.”

“Arabs?”

“Some descriptions indicate that. Others do not. They are in police uniforms, which is creating insanity. Officers shooting at each other. Reports of many suspects. I think in reality there are only a few. They have retreated to the upper floors with hostages. They are still shooting and tossing grenades now and then.”

“Do they have phones? Someone should check if they are being directed by phone.”

“The GEOF is establishing a secondary command post inside. The negotiators are on their way and—”

“The main reason to negotiate is to get a fix on their phones or a line of fire,” Facundo interrupted. “The hostages are purely a tool for media coverage. They will kill them all. Also, you should have the bomb squad sweep parked cars in the vicinity. Right away, they could hit out here with a secondary strike.”

Facundo’s booming voice had drawn attention. Pescatore heard someone in the huddle nearby ask, “Who’s that big lug with Biondani?”

“From their embassy,” a voice answered knowingly.

It was not the first time Pescatore had seen cops mistakenly presume that Facundo worked for the Israeli embassy. Facundo did not discourage the impression. He had done missions for Israeli and U.S. intelligence in the past, but the relationships now were mostly about access and trading information. The tone of
their embassy
bothered Pescatore. It recalled scenes he had read about after the bombing of the AMIA community center in 1994: emergency personnel looting corpses, commentators differentiating between Jewish victims and “innocent Argentines,” anonymous callers taunting survivors.

“Can you get us to the command post inside?” Facundo was on the move, leaving the enclosure formed by the vehicles.

The intelligence officer grabbed his arm. “Facundo, please, it’s a madhouse. Dario will never forgive me if something happens to you.”

“I don’t have to explain to you that I can be useful,” Facundo replied. “And I speak Arabic. Do you have many Arabic-speaking negotiators on hand?”

They had reached the fire truck closest to the mall. Two paramedics performed CPR on a victim lying on the asphalt. Facundo flattened himself against the cab of the fire truck and advanced his prowlike profile, peering around the front bumper. He extracted his gun, a Bersa nine-millimeter, from the depths of his coat. Pescatore drew his Beretta. He assumed Facundo was sincere about just wanting to get close enough to help. But if Facundo had decided to shoot it out with terrorists, Pescatore intended to do exactly that. He was with Facundo all the way, to the curb, badge or no badge. At the same time, he was worried. And not just about getting shot or blown up. Facundo was flushed, breathing laboriously. He didn’t look like he could withstand much more exertion.

Biondani implored Facundo to come to his senses. He told him he wasn’t authorized. Facundo’s face filled with rage and sorrow.

“Authorized? Son, for twenty years I have dedicated time and effort to prevent this from happening again. Obviously, I failed. So I am not just going to watch and do nothing. Ready, Valentín?”

“A todo dar,
boss.”

“That’s what I want to hear.”

Facundo charged in a crouch up the low wide steps and over a bloody carpet of broken glass. His coat streamed like a cape. Pescatore followed. He found himself hurdling a corpse, a crumpled figure flashing beneath him. Biondani brought up the rear, cursing. They ducked through gaping twisted door frames with the glass blown out of them. The officers flanking the entrance yelled halfhearted orders to stop.

The mall was a four-story atrium. Sunlight streamed into the vault of metal, marble and glass. Biondani took the lead. They careened down a long first-floor hall, staying close to the shops to elude shooters above. They passed more bodies. Scattered bursts of gunfire echoed on the upper levels. The shots were not directed at them. As Biondani had said, the attackers had barricaded themselves in elevated firing positions. In a discussion of tactics, Facundo had once called it “the stronghold option.”

About halfway down the hall, Biondani veered into a music store. The three of them huddled in the doorway. Biondani was trying to get his bearings to find the spot where the police were setting up their interior command post. He whispered into his radio. There was movement inside the shop. Pescatore realized people were hiding in the back. He made eye contact with one of them: a salesclerk with guitar-hero hair who crouched behind a display case. Pescatore gave him a reassuring thumbs-up. The salesclerk waved and mouthed words. He wanted to crawl toward them. Clearly, he was hoping that the newcomers with guns had come to evacuate him and the others. Pescatore made a stay-put gesture. Looking out into the hallway, Pescatore realized that a bomb or grenade had gone off here earlier. The area was covered with glass, blood, debris, shoes.

And then he saw an arm.

It was a male arm. It lay on the gleaming linoleum. Bare, olive-skinned, rather well muscled. Stained, perhaps by soot or dirt. The arm looked like it could be from a man in his twenties or thirties. It was bent at the elbow, cleanly severed below the shoulder. There were no other discernible remains nearby, no indication if the limb had been blown off a victim or an attacker. Just an arm.