"No, don't open it now!"
The Vice-President's smile turned to a frown. "Why not?"
"It's not to be opened until you give it."
"How am I gonna practice it?"
"You can't. The White House gave strict orders that you not read it beforehand. There's a covering letter inside explaining that."
"okay," the Vice-President said, digging at the flap.
"No! You're not supposed to read that until five minutes before the speech."
"This is crazy!"
"The White House chief of staff says it's very, very important. It's a major speech. He says it may be one of the most important of your career."
"This is weird."
"This is politics. And you know how the President is about leaks. Now, come on. We're got a plane to catch."
Chapter 17
Emilio Mordida wore the stony copper face of a mestizo. His expression seldom wavered. It might have belonged on a Mayan rain god. Emilio was of Mayan descent. Also Zapotec, Chichimec, and of course Spanish.
Like most mestizos, he had no concept of time. Not even years of working as a desk clerk in the Japanese-owned Nikko Hotel in Mexico City's Zona Hotelera had inculcated him with a shred of punctuality. A wake-up call for seven sharp might be made at seven-fifteen or even seven-fifty-nine. It did not matter. This was Mexico, where the only god was manana.
It was another desultory afternoon in the massive neo-Aztec lobby of the Nikko. Emilio shifted between the computer terminal and the guests checking in and out, looking very modern in his powder-blue jacket, but wearing the immutable mask of his Mexican forebears, one that betrayed no hint of ego or inferiority. It was the mask many Mexicans wore in a land that did not belong to them anymore.
Nothing, not the drumming of impatient fingers on the marble countertop, nor the half-muttered insults by foreign turistas who thought they too were the lords of Mexico, brought a flicker of reaction as Emilio went about his methodical unhurried day.
The drone of the fountains was his clock. Unlike the Japanese or the Americans, who saw time as a straight line, Emilio saw time as a bubble-a warm amniotic bubble in which a man might float through life. And so patrons waited while Emilio went on his silent, officious way, his face impassive.
Until a man who bore a strong resemblance to the Vice-President of the United States of America entered the spacious lobby.
Emilio Mordida noticed him because he entered carrying a dusty golf bag. Golf was not unknown in Mexico City, but it hardly rivaled soccer or bullfighting.
Emilio studiously ignored a West German couple who were attempting to check out in time to meet their plane and followed the man with the golf bag with his dark eyes.
Yes, those were definitely golf clubs in the bag. And it was certainly the Vice-President. He walked mechanically, looking neither left nor right, his face a mask as stiff as Emilio's own. Only instead of a sullen set to his mouth, the Vice-President wore a smile that might have been carved of ivory and rose marble.
The Vice-President spurned the reception desk and went directly to the elevators.
It was enough to cause one of Emilio Mordida's inflexible eyelids to lift in surprise.
All morning the city had been buzzing with rumors that the American Vice-President had been seen driving around the city. At first it was said he had been driving a bread truck. Then he was seen at a discotheque dancing with Charro. Or that he had lost two fingers fighting over a bullfighter's woman in the affluent Colonia del Valle district, but had emerged victorious.
Emilio had absorbed these rumors with interest, dismissing them as hysteria in the wake of the imminent arrival of the President in Bogota. Many had thought that Mexico City was a better-and safer-location for the drug summit. The President of Mexico himself had prevailed on the U.S. President to consider reconvening in Mexico City, but was politely rebuffed.
But here was the Vice-President, clearly the Vice-President. Although it could have been Robert Redford. They looked very much alike.
Emilio, showing uncharacteristic swiftness, fairly leapt to the reservations terminal and punched up the Vice-President's name. He was not registered, which did not surprise Emilio one bit. Robert Redford was also not listed.
Moving swiftly, Emilio Mordida left the reservations desk and made for the elevator bank.
He was not surprised to see that the Vice-President was still awaiting an elevator. Even the elevators were slow in Mexico.
When one arrived, Emilio followed the Vice-President into the car. The Vice-President pressed sixteen. Emilio then pressed seventeen.
They rode in silence, Emilio watching the Vice-President's boyish, almost ghoulishly smiling profile. He was even younger-looking than he had appeared on television.
The car stopped at the sixteenth floor. The Vice-President stepped off: The doors rolled shut.
Emilio rode to the next floor and slipped back down the stairs.
The Vice-President was still in the corridor, Emilio discovered when he peered around the elevator alcove. He was behaving very strangely. He was going from door to door, putting his ear to each panel. He would listen for a brief instant, then move on.
Until he reached Room 1644. There he paused a bit longer. The Vice-President dropped to his knees with a quick folding of his knee joints and put his eyes to the electronic lock, much as a submarine captain looks through a periscope.
The Nikko's locks required no key, but a magnetized passcard. The lock combinations were changed daily. They could not be breached without the correct card.
Yet, as Emilio watched, the Vice-President proceeded to breach the lock. He accomplished this in a novel, perhaps unique manner. Withdrawing his eyes from the card slot, he lifted his right hand and, retracting his thumb, jammed the remaining four into the slot.
This was an impossibility, Emilio knew. Human fingers are too large for the card-reader slot. But not only did the slot accept them right up to the knuckles, the metal gave no squeal of protest.
Most mysteriously, the red light over the slot turned green, signifying the magnetic card reader recognized the Vice-President's four fingers.
The Vice-President withdrew his remarkable fingers and slipped into the open door. The green light winked out and the red light winked back on. The corridor was silent.
Eyes puzzled, Emilio Mordida passed down the corridor to the door to Room 1644. The lock was as it should be. Undamaged. There was not so much as a scratch around the slot.
Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door.
After a moment a voice demanded, "Who is there?"
"Hotel staff, senor. Is everything satisfactory?"
"Yes. Go away."
"Si, senor."
Emilio Mordida withdrew to the elevator alcove and looked back around the corner. He saw the door suddenly open, and a multilingual "Do Not Disturb" sign was surreptitiously hung on the doorknob. The door clicked shut again.
All the way down to the lobby, Emilio Mordida thought quickly. This was worth money, this information. The news agencies like Notimex would pay many pesos for such a tip. As would, he supposed, the local police and the Federales.
Returning to his counter, where one of his fellow clerks was stolidly enduring the fractured-Spanish abuse of the West German couple Emilio had earlier ignored, he wondered who would pay the most handsomely for such a tip. The Security Police. Perhaps the Federales.