“He’s a horny son of a bitch.”
“It’s hard to be rich and single, in case you haven’t noticed, junior.”
Jack blinked. Maybe he had that coming. “Okay, but I’ll be damned if I pay for it, and he’s paying a lot.”
“What else?” Wills asked.
“He doesn’t talk a hell of a lot.”
“What’s that tell you?”
Ryan sat back in his swivel chair to think it over. He didn’t talk to his girlfriends much, either, at least not about his new job. As soon as you said “financial management,” most women tended to doze off in self-defense. Did that mean anything? Maybe Sali just wasn’t a talker. Maybe he was sufficiently secure that he didn’t feel the need to impress his lady friends with anything but his cash—he always used cash, not credit cards. And why that? To keep his family from knowing? Well, Jack didn’t talk to Mom and Dad about his love life, either. In fact, he rarely took a girlfriend to the family home. His mom tended to scare girls away. Not his dad, strangely enough. The M.D. Dr. Ryan struck other women as powerful, and while most young women found it admirable, many also found it intimidating as hell. His father dialed all the power stuff way back and came off as a slender and distinguished gray-haired teddy bear to family guests. More than anything else, his dad liked to play catch with his son on the grass overlooking the Chesapeake Bay, maybe harkening back to a simpler time. He had Kyle for that. The littlest Ryan was still in grammar school, at the stage where he asked furtive questions about Santa Claus, but only when Mom and Dad weren’t around. There was probably a kid in class who wanted to let everybody know what he knew—there was always one of those—and Katie had wised up by now. She still liked to play Barbies, but she knew that her mom and dad bought them at the Toys R Us in Glen Burnie, and assembled the accoutrements on Christmas Eve, a process his father truly loved, much as he might bitch about it. When you stopped believing in Santa Claus, the whole damn world just started a downhill slide . . .
“It tells us he’s not a talker. Not much else,” Jack said after a moment’s reflection. “We’re not supposed to convert inference into facts, are we?”
“Correct. A lot of people think otherwise, but not here. Assumption is the mother of all fuckups. That shrink at Langley specializes in spinning. He’s good, but you need to learn to distinguish between speculation and facts. So, tell me about Mr. Sali,” Wills commanded.
“He’s horny, and he doesn’t talk much. He plays very conservatively with the family’s money.”
“Anything that makes him look like a bad guy?”
“No, but he’s worth watching because of his religious—well, extremism’s the wrong word. There are some things missing here. He’s not boisterous, not showy the way rich people his age usually are. Who started the file on him?” Jack asked.
“The Brits did. Something about this guy tweaked the interest of one of their senior analysts. Then Langley took a brief look and started a file of their own. Then he was intercepted talking to a guy who’s also got a file at Langley—the conversation wasn’t about anything important, but there it was,” Wills explained. “And you know, it’s a lot easier to open a file than it is to close one. His cell phone is coded in to the NSA computers, and so they report on him whenever he turns it on. I’ve been through the file, too. He’s worth keeping an eye on, I think—but I’m not sure why. You learn to trust your instincts in this business, Jack. So, I’m nominating you to be the in-house expert on this kid.”
“And I’m looking for how he handles his money . . . ?”
“That’s right. You know, it doesn’t take much to finance a bunch of terrorists—at least not much by his reckoning. A million bucks a year is a lot of money to those people. They live hand-to-mouth, and their maintenance expenses aren’t that high. So, you’re supposed to look at the margins. Chances are he’ll try to hide whatever he does in the shadows of his big transactions.”
“I’m not an accountant,” Jack pointed out. His father had gotten his CPA a long time ago, but never used it, even to do his own taxes. He had a law firm for that.
“Can you do arithmetic?”
“Well, yeah.”
“So, attach a nose to it.”
Oh, great, John Patrick Ryan, Jr., thought. Then he reminded himself that actual intelligence operations weren’t about shoot-the-bad-guy-and-bang-Ursula-Undress while the credits rolled. That was only in the movies. This was the real world.
“OUR FRIEND is in that much of a hurry?” Ernesto asked in considerable surprise.
“So it would seem. The norteamericanos have been hard on them of late. I imagine they want to remind their enemies that they still have fangs. A thing of honor for them, perhaps,” Pablo speculated. His friend would understand that readily enough.
“So, what do we do now?”
“When they are settled in Mexico City, we arrange for transport into America, and, I presume, we arrange for weapons.”
“Complications?”
“If the norteamericanos have our organizations penetrated, they might have some prewarning, plus whispers of our involvement. But we have considered this already.”
They’d considered it briefly, yes, Ernesto reflected, but that had been at a convenient distance. Now the knocker on the door was rattling, and it was time for further reflection. But he couldn’t renege on this deal. That, too, was a matter both of honor and of business. They were preparing an initial shipment of cocaine to the E.U. That promised to be a really sizable market.
“How many people are coming?”
“Fourteen, he says. They have no weapons at all.”
“What will they need, do you suppose?”
“Light automatics should do it, plus pistols, of course,” Pablo said. “We have a supplier in Mexico who can handle it for less than ten thousand dollars. For an additional ten, we can have the weapons delivered to the end users in America, to avoid complications during the crossing.”
“Bueno, make it so. Will you fly to Mexico yourself?”
Pablo nodded. “Tomorrow morning. I will coordinate with them and the coyotes this first time.”
“You will be careful,” Ernesto pointed out. His suggestions had the force of an explosive device. Pablo took some chances, but his services were very important to the Cartel. He would be hard to replace.
“Of course, jefe. I need to evaluate how reliable these people are if they are to assist us in Europe.”
“Yes, that is so,” Ernesto agreed warily. As with most deals, when it came time to take action, there were second thoughts. But he was not an old woman. He had never been afraid to act decisively.
THE AIRBUS pulled up to its gate, the first-class passengers were allowed to deplane first, and they followed the colored arrows on the floor to immigration and customs, where they assured the uniformed bureaucrats that they had nothing to declare, and their passports were duly stamped, and they walked off to collect their luggage.
The leader of the group was named Mustafa. A Saudi by birth, he was clean-shaven, which he didn’t like, though it exposed skin that the women seemed to like. He and a colleague named Abdullah walked together to get their bags, and then out to where their rides were supposed to be waiting. This would be the first test of their newfound friends in the Western Hemisphere. Sure enough, someone was holding a cardboard square with “MIGUEL” printed on it. That was Mustafa’s code name for this mission, and he walked over to shake the man’s hand. The greeter said nothing, but motioned them to follow him. Outside, a brown Plymouth minivan waited. The bags went in back, and the passengers slid into the middle seat. It was warm in Mexico City, and the air was fouler than anything they’d ever experienced. What ought to have been a sunny day was ruined by a gray blanket over the city—air pollution, Mustafa thought.
The driver continued to say nothing as he drove them to their hotel. This actually impressed them. If there was nothing to say, then one should keep quiet.
The hotel was a good one, as expected. Mustafa checked in using the false Visa card that had been faxed ahead, and in five minutes he and his friend were in their spacious room on the fifth floor. They looked around for obvious bugs before speaking.
“I didn’t think that damned flight would ever end,” Abdullah groused, looking in the minibar for bottled water. They’d been briefed to be careful drinking the stuff that came out of the tap.
“Yes, I agree. How did you sleep?”
“Not well. I thought the one good thing about alcohol was that it made you unconscious.”