All three had been plainclothes law enforcement agents prior to hiring up with Sword, and were thoroughly versed in the ins and outs of surveillance.
As they passed under lushly crowned trees and wound through flourishing gardens, they strode casually side by side, one sipping bottled spring water, one unwrapping a stick of chewing gum, another pausing briefly to tie a shoelace. While attempting to remain quiet and keep out of direct light, they avoided letting it become an elaborate production. They did not walk on their tiptoes, dart between lampposts, peek around corners, or freeze in place like window mannequins whenever a head turned in their direction. The idea was to do their damnedest to stay out of view but act as natural as possible if they were sighted.
On tonight’s job, their experience yielded valuable dividends. The four Quiros soldiers they had been hastily assigned to follow had exited the breakaway Lincoln behind the Marston House at the far western end of El Prado, advanced across the gardens and meadows to the thoroughfare’s north, and then finally taken positions of hiding on either side of a thickly hedged walkway without displaying the slightest awareness that they were being tailed.
Although they couldn’t have known they were watching a trap being set for Lucio Salazar, the Sword ops did realize they had stumbled onto something important and quickly radioed Ricci and Glenn with word of their observations and position.
What would soon throw their situation into confusion, however, was the fact that they weren’t the only ones doing the watching.
In the Town and Country, the small man at the monitoring station saw Quiros’s men slip into the hedges through his optical relay with the shooter on the museum’s rooftop, who had noticed their movement while surveying the area through his long-range scope… a stroke of good fortune for Lucio Salazar.
Had it not been for that observation, he might well be walking to his death.
Little was said between Quiros and Salazar as they left the parking area, walking south past the Spanish Village toward the green dominated by the Moreton Bay fig tree, their bodyguards following like unspeaking golems, near enough for their presence to be felt, far enough away for it to be unobtrusive. The few words they did exchange were inconsequentiaclass="underline" Beautiful night, air’s nice and fresh, been too long, don’t see each other much these days, business, you know. Even without the duplicitous secrets they concealed, their planned or contemplated treacheries, they would have been disinclined to hurry their conversation toward matters of substance. There was a timing, a restraint, an almost formalized ritual of overtures and preambles to which they were both accustomed and that for men such as themselves was essential to the politics of survival. Talk too soon, and one could look weak or anxious. Too late, and deception or indecision was assumed.
Timing.
At the eastern border of the green, Quiros paused a beat, glanced around as if to gain his bearings, then started briskly onto a path that would take them past the side of the Natural History Museum and into the Plaza de Balboa at the east end of El Prado.
Salazar touched his shoulder, noting his quickened pace.
“Lawn’s shorter,” he said and waved a hand to indicate the area behind the museum between the big Aussie tree and the village. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to cut across it instead.”
Quiros appraised him quietly. He’d heard the mistrust in his tone, seen his reluctance to take the path. “Why not?” he said, inserting a note of hesitancy into his own voice as he moved off the path. “I picked the spot, you pick the route.”
Salazar gave him a thin smile. “I hadn’t looked at it that way, but it sounds good to me,” he said and turned right toward the green.
That was exactly where Quiros had meant to steer him all along, knowing his men were in position at its western side, hidden there in the shrubs that bordered on the walkway leading toward the reflecting pond, lying in wait, ready to spring their ambush.
The squawks came almost back to back, one from the surveillance team that had stayed on Quiros and his walking pal since they’d appeared from behind the Spanish Village, a second from the spotters who’d watched Quiros’s soldiers move into hiding in the garden near the reflecting pond. Ricci and Glenn were jogging briskly toward the latter from the park entrance over by the Marston House at Balboa’s western extremity, not far from where Quiros’s breakaway car had been left.
“What’s your take on those sluggers that crawled into the bushes?” Glenn said.
“Same as yours,” Ricci said. “Looks like Quiros has something rotten cooking for whoever met him here…. What’s his name again?”
“Salazar,” Glenn said. “Lucio Salazar. At least that’s who my people think it is. He and his brothers in Mexico are old-time, all-purpose smugglers and racketeers. Got into dealing dope, hit the mother lode. He’s Quiros’s chief local competition.”
“Maybe not for much longer,” Ricci said.
Glenn nodded and ran on in silence a moment.
“At this pace, it’ll be a quick shot to that garden.”
“You positive we have a vehicle at every car exit?” Ricci said.
“Yeah.”
Ricci grunted, hustling along. “Be good to make the action,” he said. “Main thing for us, though, is that Quiros doesn’t slip away. Because that E-mail we got is looking righter and righter. And I’ve got a feeling that if we lose him now, we’re done.”
As soon as they got halfway across the green, Salazar slowed to halt and stood gazing at the Moreton Bay fig. “All those twists and turns, one grows out of the other, you never know which way they’re gonna go,” he said and indicated the outspread branches and root system intricately silhouetted in the partial moonlight. “I figure it’s what life’s about.”
Quiros made a meaningless sound and waited, concealing his impatience.
Salazar kept staring at the tree. “We should talk about Felix,” he said.
Quiros looked at him. This was not how it was supposed to happen. He wanted to get to the damned garden walkway.
“Let’s hold off,” he said. “The pond is a better place. We can sit there and—”
Salazar raised a hand abortively and faced him. “Now, Enrique,” he said. “I want to talk about him right now.”
Quiros studied his expression. It left no room for argument. So be it.
“You had a problem with my nephew, you should have come to me,” he said after a minute.
“For what? The problem, like you said… it was never him. He wouldn’t have done that job at the tunnel if you didn’t authorize it.”
Quiros shook his head. “He was on his own.”
“No.” Salazar’s voice was at once weary and bitter. “We came all the way here, might as well be straight.”
Quiros inhaled, exhaled. “That’s what’s been wrong from the start, Lucio. You answering your own questions. Making up your mind before you know the facts. I told you the truth, and you can believe it or not. It doesn’t make a difference to me. It isn’t even the real issue between us anymore. If you’d given me a chance, I’d have put Felix on the rack, made amends. But you chose otherwise. You took things into your own hands. What you did, how could you think it would resolve anything?”
“What I did—?”
“Killing my nephew. My sister’s only son. What were you thinking?”
Salazar glared with anger. “Even here, between us, you’re trying to pass off that bullshit—”
He never got to finish his sentence.