“She is well, señor. Distressed, of course, but not maltreated. She is retained in Brooklyn, where conditions are comfortable. In fact, she is on suicide watch . . .”
He held up his hand as Cárdenas threatened to come roaring out of his chair.
“But only as a ruse. It means she has her own room in the hospital annex. She does not need to mix with other prisoners, the riffraff, so to speak.”
The man who had risen from the gutters of the barrio to key member of the Brotherhood, the controlling cartel of the world’s cocaine industry, stared at Dexter, still unable to make him out.
“You are a fool, gringo. This is my city. I could take you here. With ease. A few hours with me, and you would be begging to make the call. My daughter for you.”
“Very true. You could, and I would. The trouble is, the people at the other end would not agree. They have their orders. You of all people understand the rules of absolute obedience. I am too small a pawn. There would be no swap. All that would happen is that Letizia would go north.”
The black-eyed, hate-filled stare did not flicker, but the message went home.
The idea that the slim, gray-haired American was not a pawn but a main player, he discounted. He himself would never have gone into enemy territor
y alone and unarmed, so why should the Yanqui? A snatch would not work—either way. He would not be snatched, and there was no point in taking the American.
Cárdenas thought back to the report from Luz on the advice of Barrow. Twenty years, an exemplary sentence. No viable defense, an open-and-shut case, no Domingo de Vega to say it was all his idea.
While Cárdenas was thinking, Cal Dexter reached with his right hand to scratch his chest. For a second, his fingers went behind his jacket lapel. Cárdenas came forward, ready to draw his hidden Glock. Mr. Smith smiled apologetically.
“Mosquitoes,” he said. “They will not leave me alone.”
Cárdenas was not interested. He relaxed as the right hand came out. He would have been less relaxed had he known the fingertips had touched a sensitive Go button on a wafer-thin transmitter clipped to the inside pocket.
“What do you want, gringo?”
“Well,” said Dexter, impervious to the rudeness of the address.
“Unless there is an intervention, the people behind me cannot stop the justice machine. Not in New York. It cannot be bought and it cannot be diverted. Soon, even the mercy of keeping Letizia out of harm’s way in Brooklyn will have to be terminated.”
“She is innocent. You know that, I know that. You want money? I will make you rich for life. Get her out of there. I want her back.”
“Of course. But, as I say, I am but a pawn. Perhaps there is a way.”
“Tell me.”
“If the UDYCO in Madrid were to discover a corrupt baggage handler and he were to give a full and witnessed confession that he chose a suitcase at random after the usual security checks and inserted the cocaine to be retrieved by a colleague in New York, then your lawyer could ask for an emergency hearing. It would be hard for a New York judge not to drop the case. To go on would be to refuse to believe our Spanish friends across the Atlantic. I honestly believe that is the only way.”
There was a low rumble, as if storm clouds were gathering out of a blue sky.
“This . . . baggage handler. He could be discovered and forced to confess?”
“He might. It depends on you, Señor Cárdenas.”
The rumble grew louder. It separated into a rhythmic whump-whump. Cárdenas repeated his demand.
“What do you want, gringo?”
“I think we both know that. You want a swap? That is it. What you have in return for Letizia.”
He rose, tossed a small pasteboard card to the carpet, walked through the patio doors and turned left. The snaking steel-cord ladder came around the corner of the hotel roof, flailing in the downdraft.
He jumped to the balustrade, thought, I’m too goddamn old for this, and leapt at the rungs. He could sense above the roar of the rotors that Cárdenas was coming out onto the terrace behind him. He waited for the bullet in the back, but it never came. At any rate, not in time. If Cárdenas fired, Dexter would not have heard it. He felt the rungs bite into his palms, and the man above leaned back hard and the Black Hawk went up like a rocket.
Seconds later, he was lowered to the sandy beach just beyond the walls of the Santa Clara. The Black Hawk settled as two or three dog walkers gawped; he ducked into the crew door, and the helicopter rose again. Twenty minutes later, he was back inside the base.
DON DIEGO ESTEBAN prided himself on running the Hermandad , the supreme cocaine cartel, like one of the most successful corporations on the planet. He even indulged in the conceit that the governing authority was the board of directors rather than himself alone, even though that was palpably not true. Despite the huge inconvenience to his colleagues of spending two days dodging the tailing agents of Colonel Dos Santos, he insisted on quarterly meetings.