Her fist pounded against her useless legs. “Here is the result. He didn’t kill me. Why? To this day, I don’t know. Possibly, to him my living as a cripple was a more fitting punishment than death. More likely, it was raw cruelty.”
She lifted a hand, fluttering it back and forth, as if the reason for her continued life was unimportant. “This is a cautionary tale, Mr. Moore, not an attempt to elicit sympathy.” She turned to Rebeka. “But now you see, my dear, how the great wheel of destiny works. It has brought you to me or me to you, and there is a reason for that. Destiny has now combined with my desire for revenge. It has brought me the weapons I need because, Rebeka, I do not for a moment believe that you are Mr. Moore’s wife—” she smiled “—any more than I believe his name is Moore.” Her gaze shifted back to Bourne. “Mr. Moore, you would no more bring your wife to Mexico on such a mission than you would allow her to walk into a tiger’s den.”
She lifted a forefinger. “And make no mistake, going after Maceo Encarnación is walking into tiger territory. There will be no mercy, no second chances, only, if you are lucky, death.” She stubbed out her cigarillo. “But if you are very lucky and extremely clever, you may yet walk out of the tiger’s den with what you and I desire.”
17
TULIO VISTOSO ARRIVED in Washington, DC, with anxiety in his mind and murder in his heart.
How difficult was it, he thought, for Florin Popa to keep safe what he, Don Tulio, had so cleverly stolen on the steep, treacherous trail along the Cañon del Sumidero, outside Tuxtla Guttiérez, replacing the real thirty million with what he had been certain were undetectable counterfeit bills? And yet, Popa had failed, and his life was forfeit if he could not placate Don Maceo and his holy, all-powerful buyers within thirty-six hours.
He was still fulminating about the monumental fuck-up when he arrived at the Dockside Marina and saw the Cobalt in slip 31 crawling with cops. And not just cops, he realized with a jolt. Federales. He could smell them a mile away. They moved with a certain measured gait, like dray horses in their traces. He stared, horrified. The boat was well guarded, cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape.
Christ on the cross, what in the name of all that’s holy has happened? Instinctively, he looked around, as if Popa might be lurking somewhere in the vicinity. Where the hell was Popa? Don Tulio wondered with a sinking heart. Had Popa absconded with the thirty million? Don Tulio’s thirty million. This prospect terrified him. Or, worse, did the federales have it? Was Popa in their custody? With a trembling hand, he began to fire off a series of text messages to his lieutenants in a frenzied endeavor to recoup the thirty million as quickly as possible.
The Aztec felt like pulling his hair out. His crazed brain kept churning out dire possibilities, but a sliver of civilized veneer stopped him cold. Instead, he turned on his heel and stalked away. He swiped a hand across his forehead. Despite the chill, he was sweating like a pig.
Up ahead, a car pulled into a parking space in the lot and, a moment later, a young man leaped out. He pushed by Don Tulio as he hurried down the gangplank, onto the dock, and out to slip 31. Sensing something unusual, the Aztec turned. Sure enough, the federale ants crawling all over the Recursive began kowtowing to the new arrivaclass="underline" el jefe. This interested Don Tulio so, instead of hightailing it, he decided to hang around as unobtrusively as possible. This meant going down the gangplank himself and onto the dock. Choosing a deserted boat as far away as practical from the activity on the Recursive, he climbed aboard and busied himself doing nothing at all while he spied on the new arrival.
Happily for him, the marina’s quiet atmosphere, combined with how the water carried the voices, allowed him to overhear snatches of conversation. In this way, he determined that el jefe’s name was Marks. Turning for a moment, he noted that the vehicle Marks had arrived in was a white Chevy Cruze. He jumped off the boat, then went at an unhurried pace back up the ramp and into the lot, where he jotted down the Cruze’s license plate number. Back on the boat, he returned his attention to Marks himself, his mind already plotting his next several moves.
It had been his experience that meeting with the chief of your enemies was preferable to working your way up the plantain tree. But meeting with federales, especially on their own turf, was a tricky business, one, Don Tulio knew, that needed to be thought out in considerable detail. He also knew that he would get one shot at confronting jefe Marks, so he was obliged to make the best of it. The danger of such a maneuver did not disturb him; he lived with danger every day of his life, had done so from the time he was ten years old and already raging through the streets of Acapulco. He had loved the sea, even before he became a cliff diver, showing off for Gringo money. He jumped from the highest cliff, dove the deepest, stayed down the longest. The churning water was his father and his mother, rocking him into a form of peace he could find nowhere else.
He became king of the divers, taking a cut from all their winnings. That might have continued indefinitely, until the moment a Gringo tourist accused him of fucking his teenage daughter. That the Gringa had initiated the liaison meant nothing in the face of her father’s colossal wealth and the authorities’ desperation to keep Acapulco a world-class tourist destination.
He got out just ahead of the cops, fleeing north, losing himself in the immense urban sprawl of Mexico City. But he never forgot how the Gringo had ruined his life, for he loved the ocean waters, desperately missed his old life. Years passed and a new life began to weave around him. Anarchism first. When he was older, he took out his rage at the institutional corruption with bouts of extreme violence against anyone who held a steady job. Eventually, he got smart and joined a drug cartel, working his way up the power grid by any and all means, which impressed his superiors up until the moment he directed his followers to cut their heads off with machetes.
From that bloody moment on he had been jefe, consolidating his power with the other cartel heads. He was uncomfortable in society. He had no expertise navigating the capital’s deep and treacherous political waters, so he had forged an alliance with Maceo Encarnación, which had served them both well.
The Aztec made himself busy all over again while he leaned his ear to the prevailing wind and discovered that Popa was dead. Jefe Marks had killed him, after which he had inadvertently found the key. The fucking key, Don Tulio thought with a savagery that shook him to his core. He has the fucking key. But then, his mind cooling a single degree, he dredged up this hopeful thought: He has the fucking key, but that doesn’t mean he has the thirty million. Which was followed by a second hopeful thought: If the federales have the money, why are they searching the boat so frantically?
Fuming, the Aztec finished coiling a rope for the seventeenth time. Noting that the federales were breaking up, he went down into the cabin, waiting there patiently while he counted the number of rivets in the deck, perched uncomfortably on a narrow seat. Shadows passed as the federales left the Recursive and went back up the dock to the parking lot. He listened for the car engines starting up. When, like popping corn, they ceased, he knew it was time.
Emerging from the cabin, he looked at the Recursive. It appeared deserted, but he resisted the urge to board it. Even though the clock that now measured his life was ticking mercilessly away, he knew it would be foolish to risk everything by going over there in daylight. Better by far to show patience, to wait for night to fall. He returned to the boat, lay down on the deck, and fell instantly into a deep and untroubled sleep.