When Bern finally roused himself the next morning, he felt stiff and hungover from a dearth of sleep. He looked at the window and saw that the morning was still overcast and rainy. He found everyone already back at their posts, getting ready for Bern’s meeting with Baida. He poured a cup of coffee for himself from the pot on a hot plate in the corner of the room where they were working, then walked down the hall to the bathroom, where he washed his face, scrubbed his teeth with his index finger, and washed out his mouth. He did the best he could with his hair. He looked like hell.
When he got back to the offices, Kevern motioned him over to where he was sitting on the edge of one of the folding tables, which were laden with computers, radio receivers, and other kinds of electronics whose usefulness was lost on Bern.
“Give me your belt,” he said.
Bern handed it over and Kevern gave it to Lupe, who began gluing a tracer bug on the underside.
“It ain’t sophisticated,” Kevern said, “but it’ll get the job done. Now listen. Sabella and Baida have set up this meeting the way they want it to go, to give themselves maximum protection. I’m guessing Sabella’s going to jump with him.”
Kevern sipped his coffee. His eyes were pinched from only a couple of hours’ sleep, but Bern noticed that he was closely shaven. Military discipline. He was running on caffeine.
“The thing is,” Kevern said, groaning softly as he paused, “as soon as these two guys jump ship, their lives won’t be worth a nun’s fart. They’ll instantly become traitors, and their own men will kill them in a heartbeat. So you can bet they’ve gone to a lot of trouble to isolate this meeting from their guys. It’s just Baida and Sabella. Which means they aren’t going to have their usual protection. But they’ll have something going, and they’ll be as touchy as hell. They could call it off in an instant. If that happens, don’t sweat it. They’ll reconnect.”
Lupe Nervo came over to him, pushing buttons on a cell phone.
“They might take this away from you immediately,” she said, handing the phone to him, “but until they do, you can connect to Lex instantly by punching four, seven, star. Just slide your finger down the last three buttons on the left side. Don’t even have to look at it.”
After a few more words of caution and instruction, Kevern stopped and studied Bern carefully.
“Now listen,” he said, speaking more slowly and in a less operational tone, “when defectors decide to come over, they always have aces in their pockets, something juicy to sweeten their arrival. Sometimes these guys have time- critical information, some imminent action that they can tell us about that’ll make them heroes.
“I’m guessing Baida’s in this category. When Sabella came to you at the Palomari Hotel, he mentioned that he could spare us ten thousand lives. He was getting at something. And all that talk about the American heartland…” He nodded at Bern. “Okay? See where I’m going here?”
Kevern shifted his weight on the edge of the table, causing it to creak.
“As soon as you can,” he went on, “you get to that. You ask him if he’s bringing us time-critical information.”
Bern walked out of the building on the corner of Plaza Rio de Janeiro. The rain had stopped, leaving wet sidewalks and fresh air, the usual smoggy shroud having been washed away by the night rains.
Bern half-believed that none of this was going to work. But he didn’t say so. He just went along with everything as if he bought into it, just as if he believed. An atheist among the faithful, keeping his doubts to himself.
He walked up Calle Orizaba, and at Avenida Alvaro Obregon, he picked up the first taxi he saw and directed the driver to head south on Insurgentes. Colonia Santa Luisa was just off of Insurgentes, nearly to the artsy colonia of San Angel.
Insurgentes itself was a busy thoroughfare. Though not a wide street, it was densely packed with buildings and pedestrians and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Progress was slow and halting, but Bern was oblivious. Block after block, he watched the traffic and the teeming sidewalks without seeing them, his mind’s eye obliterating his physical vision.
He didn’t give a damn what Kevern said; Susana was in a hell of a spot. Kevern’s reassurances meant nothing to him. In fact, he was furious that Kevern had even tried to downplay the serious risk in Susana’s situation.
At the major intersections, newspaper vendors threaded their way through the lanes of stalled vehicles to sell the latest edition of Reforma or El Universal or the left-leaning La Jornada. Lottery vendors did the same, as did an occasional seller of bright plastic toys that dangled from sticks and fluttered in the wind.
Suddenly, a little boy was at Bern’s window, holding up a newspaper with screaming headlines, his urgent pleas growing faster as the traffic in front of them began to move. The boy rested the newspaper on the window frame so that the paper filled the whole space, and he moved with the taxi as it started up.
The driver yelled at him to get away, and then suddenly something shot out from the newspaper, hit Bern in the side, and fell into the seat beside him. And then the boy disappeared as the taxi sped up with the traffic.
In the next few seconds, Bern’s mind worked in jerky still frames: It was small and black. It was a bomb. Some kind of bomb. He was practically sitting on it. In his mind, the explosion lifted the taxi off the street in a ball of fire. He was grabbing at it. Throw it out.
And then it began to ring, and he slapped at it, and it rang again. He looked down at a cell phone. His heart stopped. Started. Stopped. Started. The cell phone ringing. Ringing. Stunned, he picked it up. He looked at it in his hand as it rang a fourth time. He opened it, lifted it to his ear, and said hello.
“Paul…” It was Susana. “Paul, listen, I’m okay. I’ll be-”
Her voice broke off. He couldn’t believe it… What had happened? Silence, and then: “This is Vicente Mondragon. We are four cars behind you. Tell me what is happening.”
Susana was with Mondragon?
“What the hell’s going on?” Bern asked. “Those were your people who took Susana?”
“Yes. Tell me quickly what is happening,” Mondragon insisted.
Bern’s thoughts swarmed. Kevern said that there would be demands. Whoever kidnapped Susana would contact them and tell them what they wanted in return for her safety.
“For Christ’s sake,” Bern said, “what are you doing? What’s this all about?”
“I want to know where Ghazi Baida is. That’s what we’ve all been doing for over a year.”
“You’re still trying to find Baida?” Bern asked.
“Of course.”
“I was with Kevern when he called you, told you to hold off. I heard him tell you to wait until he got in touch with you again. What’re you doing?”
“Oh, yes, he did tell me that,” Mondragon said, sounding amused that Bern knew this. “And just why did he do that, Paul?”
Bern was tired, confused. He didn’t trust anyone anymore except Susana, and he really believed that there was a good chance that this freak he was talking to was going to kill her.
“What I want to know,” Bern said, growing heated, pissed at Mondragon, pissed at Kevern, pissed at all of it, “is what in the hell is going on here with Susana? What are you up to?”
“It’s not important,” Mondragon said. “It’s a little matter of insurance.”
“Insurance? Insurance against what?”
“I need to be sure you will cooperate with me in whatever way I need,” Mondragon said.
“Well, what do you need?”
“Right now, Paul,” Mondragon said slowly, trying to get past Bern’s confusion and panic, “I need to know what is happening. I need to know where you are going and why. Do you understand that I need to know that? Susana’s life depends on it.”
There was a pause while Bern locked onto this last remark and processed it. For all the gravity of his mission regarding Ghazi Baida’s defection, the foremost concern in his mind was getting Susana away from Mondragon. It happened in an instant.
“Baida wants to defect,” Bern said.
This time, the hesitation came from Mondragon’s end of the line.
“To defect?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“He doesn’t suspect that you are not Jude?”
“No, he doesn’t suspect anything,” Bern said.
“How do you know he doesn’t suspect you?”
“Goddamn it! He doesn’t. I’d sense it. I’d know. He doesn’t!”
“Where are you going now?”
“Colonia Santa Luisa. There’s a little park there, Jardin Morena. I make a phone call from there.”
“And then what?”
“Somebody tells me what to do.”
“To make the arrangements for his defection?”
“That’s my guess. Just make the call, he said, so that’s where I’m going, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Will he be at Jardin Morena?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is he doing it like this?” Mondragon asked, talking to himself as much as to Bern. He sounded suspicious, either of Bern or of Baida. Then he said, “Listen to me carefully, Paul. I will say this only once. I know you must have a way of communicating with Kevern. Do not tell him that we have spoken. Do not tell him that I am still looking for Ghazi. Now that I have found you, I will not let you out of my sight. I have people in front of you, and now I’m going to send others to Jardin Morena. They will be everywhere around you now, all the time.
“Three things you have to remember to stay alive: Do not tell Kevern what I am doing. Do not even mention my name to Ghazi Baida.”
He stopped, waiting for Bern to ask the question.
Bern obliged. “And the third thing?”
“If you are lying to me,” Mondragon said, his voice reflecting a chilling lack of passion, “Susana is fucked.”