She told him about Fields’s flight to Mexico City.
“So Doctor Doom is here in Mexico.” Crosswhite did not sound overly impressed. “He gave Mariana the gestapo treatment up in Texas a couple days ago. I don’t know what he and Pope are up to, but I’ve gone off the grid for now. I’ve got some personal shit to handle down here, and the PFM has its hands full with the earthquake.”
“What about the case against Serrano?” Midori asked. “They’re letting him go?”
“Ya know what?” Crosswhite said. “Why don’t you ask Pope what’s going on with Serrano? He’s the one who’s been feeding intel to that fat drug-dealing bastard.”
Midori had no knowledge of any communications between Pope and Lazaro Serrano. “Are you sure? What kind of intel?”
“I have no idea,” Crosswhite said. “Hold on a second …” In the background she heard him giving lengthy instructions to a Tolucan police officer in Spanish before coming back on the phone. “Yeah, so anyway,” he continued, “Fields let that slip while he was playing ‘operation mind crime’ with Mariana. So whatever he’s cooked up with Pope, it sounds like we’ve all been left out of it. All I can tell you for sure is that I’m done steppin’ and fetchin’ for that son of a bitch. He’s playing both ends against the middle, and I won’t tolerate it.”
“How sure are you Fields wasn’t making it up?”
“It doesn’t matter if he was,” Crosswhite said. “Pope put the fucker on the case. He broke the faith, and I will not work for a man who uses me like a pawn.”
Midori needed a friend to confide in, and she knew she could trust Crosswhite. “He’s sick, Dan. I think he’s messed up in the head from being shot last year. He’s not the same man.”
“I’ll bet he is fucked up,” Crosswhite said. “Hell, he’s probably got PTSD, but that’s not my problem. He’s playing games with my life and the lives of my family.”
“Well, I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’m afraid if I say anything, he’ll stop trusting me.”
“Is he getting paranoid?”
“No. Why?”
“Because if he’s really got PTSD, he could easily become paranoid. So, yeah, don’t ask him any questions unless you want him getting suspicious.”
“Shit.”
“Shit just about covers it. Hey, have you heard from Gil?”
“He’s in China,” she said. “He’s in touch with our asset in Beijing. He’ll be out of contact the entire time he’s inside the border. Chinese electronic surveillance is too dangerous.”
“Does Pope know Gil asked you to arrange the asset?”
“He asked me not to say anything.” Midori didn’t mention that she’d been communicating with Gil behind Pope’s back for some weeks now, since the discovery of the Turkish gold.
“Good boy,” Crosswhite muttered to himself. “We’re finally on the same page.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Gil’s not drinkin’ the Kool-Aid anymore — which is good to know.”
“I’m worried about him. What’s he really doing in China?”
Crosswhite laughed. “You tell me, baby, and we’ll both know!”
40
In the dark of night, the first two Ruvalcaba men stole silently, albeit somewhat awkwardly, into the bedroom of PFM Agent Luis Mendoza’s twelve-year-old daughter, clumsily clamping a chloroform-soaked cloth over her mouth and nose. Not until the girl was secured with nylon cable ties and removed from the house did the other men move on Mendoza and his wife.
Agent Mendoza was smacked awake to the sight of his wife sitting on the edge of the bed with the barrel of a nickel-plated revolver stuck into her mouth.
The blood in his veins ran cold with horror. “Take me,” he said calmly to the four men in black ski masks. “There’s no need to involve my family.”
Mendoza and his wife were thrown onto their bellies, secured with cable ties, and put to sleep with chloroform before they, too, were removed from the house.
A half hour later, Mendoza was brought back to consciousness with a bucket of water. He was strapped naked to a metal office chair in a dingy auto repair garage. His wife and daughter were tied naked, also soaking wet, to a support beam in front of him, their arms stretched above their heads, wrists bound with wire. There were eight masked men standing around, two of whom were in the midst of sexually molesting Mendoza’s wife and daughter.
The wife and daughter were sobbing with fear and revulsion, and the sight of the abject terror in the eyes of his daughter — the light of Mendoza’s life — was more than he could endure. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he began to plead.
The largest man, the apparent leader, came forward and sat down backward on an old wooden folding chair, resting his arms along the chair back. “You are going to give me the names of the agents you work with, amigo. Also, the names of your superiors. You will tell me where they are working and where their families live. And for every lie you tell me… every question you refuse to answer… your wife and daughter will suffer.”
Mendoza had broken out in a cold sweat. “I’ll tell you all that I can. Just make them stop.”
But the men did not stop, and the hysterical sobs of his wife and daughter continued.
Mendoza tried in vain to block out the plaintive cries of his little girl as she begged him to help her. He tore his eyes away from her molester’s bloody fingers, gnashing his teeth in anguish. His scrotum contracted, and his penis shriveled. His heart raced with excruciating anxiety, and for one frightening moment, he was so tightly gripped by despair that he was unable to breathe. “Make them stop!” he gasped. “I’ll tell you all that I can! Just make them stop—for the love of God!”
“They will stop when you tell me what I want to know,” the masked man replied. “Now, who do you—”
Mendoza’s daughter squealed in pain as her tormentor’s probing became more invasive, sending Mendoza into a mindless a rage. “Make them stop!” he shrieked, his vocal cords nearly tearing in his throat. “Make them stop! Make them stop! Make them stop!” He continued to shriek his demand over and over like a man coming unhinged, veins bulging as he strained against the leather straps binding him to the chair.
Fearing that Mendoza’s mind might be on the verge of snapping, the leader — who had never personally interrogated anyone — signaled for the tormentors to back away from their victims.
The men did as they were told, and Mendoza fell to weeping, unable to meet the shattered gaze of his wife. His head drooped forward, swaying from side to side as he muttered prayers for God to intervene.
The leader produced a tape recorder from his jacket pocket and switched it on. “Now give me the names, amigo. Give me the names, and this will end.”
Mendoza’s mind reeled with dread. Of course he was willing to give up every deep-cover agent working for the PFM, but there was a major problem: he didn’t know any of them. Deep-cover agents were kept isolated from one another, and on the rare occasions they did meet face-to-face, their real names were never used. He knew only the real names of three direct superiors, and he was horrified because he knew the man in the mask would never be satisfied with just three names.
“I am a deep-cover agent,” he croaked, his voice raw from the force of his shrieking. His daughter was still crying, but his wife had managed to calm herself, and she was attempting to soothe the child in her own trembling voice. “We’re kept separate from one another,” Mendoza went on, “but I can give you the names of three of my superiors.”