She said, “I will contact Duke. And I will demand a face-to-face meeting to explain myself.”
“You won’t get it.”
“You really think I won’t? Let’s see. I bet I could get a meeting with him in his wife’s bed if that’s what I wanted.”
She saw the muscles in Riley’s jaw tense and then release. His eyes narrowed to slits.
He stood and started for the door, and she followed, yelling after him, “You are famous for blaming others for your mistakes, and for letting your ambition cloud your judgment. It happened in Italy, and it led to your downfall.”
He had reached the door and put his hand on the latch, but he turned back to face her.
She continued, “You think the North Koreans will trust you over Sharps? You think Roblas will? Sharps isn’t in charge of the operation. He is a figurehead. They know that. I am not in charge of the operation, either. Blame me for Las Vegas if you must. But whatever happened in Vietnam and New York had nothing to do with me. You are in charge. You will take the fall for that.”
She smiled now. She saw indecision on his angry face. “I might not keep my job, but you will go down with me, Riley.”
He squared his body to hers, his breathing deepened, and his eyes widened out of the angry slits. His indecision receded, and he seemed ready to act.
“What?” she asked.
He took a step closer, and his hands raised toward her face.
Veronika thought he was going to pull her to him, to kiss her. She’d seen this look many times in her life, it was always the same. In the throes of an argument came the throes of passion. “This turns you on? You think I want you? Are you insane?”
But he didn’t pull her close. Instead, he laced his fingers around her feminine throat and tightened his grip.
She tried to push away. “What are you—”
Her voice left her, replaced by a scream, and then a frightened shriek.
Riley threw his body on her, knocked her to the floor. He squeezed with all his might, her legs kicked and her arms flailed, but he’d positioned himself out of the way of the brunt of the blows.
While he choked the life from her, he leaned into her ear, so close her hair tickled his nose. “Silly, Veronika. So tight and proper and cold. I told you why I was here. I can still use you. I didn’t come to get you to join up with me. I came because I need someone to take the fall. The North Koreans are angry… so somebody has to die.”
Thirty seconds later she went limp in his hands, but he kept talking to her softly. “This was your mistake. This was Sharps’s mistake. But they know me. They appreciate my resolve. They see I’m not like Sharps.” He recognized she was dead now, so he let go slowly, and lowered her head onto the hardwood floor.
He rose. “I’m a man who gets things done.”
56
Adel Zarif woke at first light, rolled out his prayer rug, and knelt facing Mecca. He said his prayers and then sat around waiting for Emilio to wake up. When the young Mexican finally did stir, it was another twenty minutes before he rose and knocked on the door to Zarif’s room.
They ate breakfast in silence, and then watched some television. By ten a.m. a local news station was already covering the impending arrival of Jack Ryan. Zarif could not understand the reporter, but he watched the pictures of the National Palace and the airport, and Emilio did his best to provide running translations. From the reporter Zarif learned several things he already knew, like the time the President would arrive and his planned agenda for the official visit. Zarif also heard talk of a lot of things that he knew were never going to happen.
No matter how much the reporter gushed about the spread of the meal that would be served tonight, there would not be a dinner thrown in Jack Ryan’s honor. And no matter how big and beautiful the Plaza de la Constitución was, Ryan was not going to go on a walking tour with the Mexican president there, because he would die before he got there.
But the Iranian did pick up one interesting tidbit. This was the first Zarif had heard that the First Lady of the United States was not accompanying her husband today, but would instead fly down the next afternoon. The woman was apparently some sort of a doctor, Emilio didn’t hear what sort, and according to the pieces Emilio translated into English that Zarif understood, she had important work to do in Maryland and would come down when she was finished.
Zarif told himself this woman would not be working all day today and tomorrow as she had planned. When she learned that her husband had been blown to a thousand pieces, she would probably never work again.
At eleven a.m. the two men were picked up by two more Maldonado operators from Guerrero who didn’t know the city as well as they should, and they made a few wrong turns on their way to their destination. Emilio yelled at them from the back and the men yelled at him. Zarif was unnerved by the two men’s disheveled appearance and their utter lack of knowledge of the city, and he worried his entire plan to make a new life for himself in the safety of North Korea could be derailed by these uncouth cowboys getting pulled over by a cop on the way to the assassination.
Zarif had nothing on his person that would incriminate him. He just carried his mobile phone, the long-range cordless phone he’d use to trigger the bomb, and the rechargeable batteries that went into it, which he kept outside the unit so that it did not accidentally send a signal and detonate the bomb too early. But he knew he might get questioned by the police if these fools drew attention to themselves, and the police would quickly find he was foreign and detain him.
Despite Zarif’s concern, they made it to their destination without incident. At the scene, crowd-control barriers had already been erected, and at the street market on José J. Herrera, enough of a crowd had formed close to the barricades that Zarif decided he didn’t want to get any closer. The police were already in place at the barricades, and although the Iranian didn’t think he looked much different from the Mexicans around here — he was dark-complexioned and he wore a dark beard and mustache — he did not want to put this belief to the test and ruin his chance at a comfortable retirement on a beach full of beautiful Asian girls.
So Adel Zarif and Emilio stayed back and out of sight, but this was no threat to their plan, because they did not have to get any closer to detonate the bomb.
Another Maldonado man, Emilio said his name was Gordo, was already positioned across the street, close to the barricades at the other side of the intersection. He had a near-perfect position and line of sight on several blocks of Vidal Alcocer because there was a large parking lot to the north that gave him unobstructed views. He also had an iPad with which he would film the arrival of the presidential motorcade, and transmit it instantly to Emilio’s iPhone.
Once the two presidential limousines were in front of the stone façade of the parking garage, Zarif would call the phone attached to the IED.
Gordo was going to die in the blast; Zarif had calculated this fact the second he saw the image on Emilio’s phone, but he said nothing to Emilio.
While they were strolling around the market killing time, Emilio said, “The others will wait for the explosion to attack.”
Zarif did not understand. He cocked his head to the side. “What others?”
“Twelve men from Guerrero are taking part in the attack. They are waiting in the area. They all have cuernos de chivo.”
“What is that?”
Emilio thought for a moment. “Goat horns.”
The Iranian still had no idea what the Mexican was talking about.
“You know… AK-47s. A couple of guys have RPGs, too. Once the bomb goes off they will come out of the crowd and start shooting.” Emilio grinned. “It’s gonna be crazy.”