An Acceptable Sacrifice (3 page)

Díaz
added, “Always collateral damage.”

The American agent shrugged. “Cuchillo doesn’t have a wife. He doesn’t have any children. Lives pretty much alone. Anybody around him is probably as guilty as he is.” Evans tapped a drone picture of the compound. “Anything and anyone inside?” A shrug. “They’re just acceptable sacrifices.”

He liked his nickname.

Alonso María Carillo was actually honored that people thought enough of him to give him a name that sounded like it was attached to some Mafioso out of a movie. Like Joey “The Knife” Vitelli.

“Cuchillo”—like a blade, like a dagger: How he loved that! And it was ironic because he wasn’t a thug, wasn’t like Tony Soprano at all. He was solid physically and he was tough, yes, but in Mexico a businessman must be tough. Still, his voice was soft and, well, inquisitive sounding. Almost innocent. His manner unassuming. His temper even.

He was in the office of his home not far from the upscale Hidalgo Plaza area of the city. Though the compound was surrounded by high walls, and sported a number of trees, from this spacious room he had a view of the city’s grandest mountain, Cerro de la Compana, if a thousand-foot jut of rock can be described thus.

It was quitting time—he’d been working here since six that morning. No breaks. He put his work aside and went online to download some apps for his new iPhone, which he would synchronize to his iPad. He loved gadgets—both in his personal life and in business he always stayed current with the latest technology. (Since his companies had sales reps throughout Mexico and he needed to stay in constant touch with them he used the Cloud and thought it was the best invention of the last ten years.)

Rising from his desk, declaring it the end of the day, he happened to regard himself in a mirror nearby. Not so bad for an old man.

Cuchillo was about five nine and stocky and resembled Fernandez, Mexico’s greatest actor and director, in the businessman’s opinion. Though he was in scores of films, Fernandez was at his peak as Mapache in
The Wild Bunch
, one of the few truly honest films about Mexico.

Looking over his face, thick black hair. Keen brown eyes. Cuchillo thought again, No, not so bad … The women still appreciated him. Sure, he paid some of them—one way or another—but he also had a connection with them. He could converse with them. He listened. He also made love for hours. Not a lot of 57-year-olds could do that.

“You old devil,” he whispered.

Then he gave a wry grin at his own vanity and left the office. He told his maid he’d be staying at home for dinner.

And he walked into his most favorite place on earth, his library. The building was large: sixty feet by forty, and very cool, as well as carefully humidity controlled (which was ironic in Hermosillo, in the heart of the Sonoran desert, where there were two or three rainy days a year). Gauze curtains kept the sun from bleaching the jackets and leather bindings of the books.

The ceilings were thirty feet off the ground and the entire space was open, lined with tall shelves on the ground floor and encircled with levels above, which one could reach by climbing an iron spiral staircase to narrow walkways. In the center were three parallel shelves ten feet high. In the front of the room was a library table, surrounded by comfortable chairs and an overstuffed armchair and a floor lamp with a warm yellow bulb. A small bar featured the best brandy and single-malt scotches. Cuchillo enjoyed Cuban cigars. But never here.

The building was home to 22,000 titles, nearly all of them first editions. Many, the only ones in existence.

On a night like this, after a long day working by himself, Cuchillo would normally have gone out into the relatively cool evening and eaten at Sonora Steak and then gone to Ruby’s bar with his friends and—of course—his security. But the rumors of this impending attack were too real to ignore and he’d have to stay within the compound until more was learned about the threat.

Ah, what a country we live in, he reflected. The most philanthropic businessman, and the most hardworking farmer, and the worst drug baron all are treated equally … treated to fear.

Someday it will be different.

But at least Cuchillo had no problem staying home tonight, in his beloved library. He called his housekeeper and had her prepare dinner, a simple linguine primavera, made with organic vegetables and herbs out of his own garden. A California cabernet, too, and ice water.

He turned on a small high definition TV, the news. There were several stories about the ceremony in the D.F. on Friday, commemorating the latest war against the cartels. The event would include speeches by the country’s president and an American official from the DEA. More drug killings in Chihuahua. He shook his head.

In a half hour the food arrived and he sat down at the table, removed his tie—he dressed for work, even when staying home—and stuffed a napkin into his collar. As he ate, his mind wandered to the Dickens that his book dealer, Señor Davila, would be delivering tomorrow. He was delighted that it had arrived early, but pleased, too, that he was getting it for a lower price than originally agreed. The seller whom Davila had found apparently needed cash and would reduce the price by five thousand if Cuchillo paid in U.S. dollars, which he immediately agreed to do. Davila had said he would reduce his percentage of the finder’s fee accordingly, but Cuchillo had insisted that he receive the full amount. Davila had always been good to him.

There was a knock on the door and his security chief, José, entered.

He could tell at once: bad news.

“I heard from a contact in the
Federales
, sir. There is intelligence about this bus attack on Friday? The tourist bus? The reports are linking you to it.”

“No!”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Dammit,” he muttered. Cuchillo had uttered only a few obscenities in his life; this was usually the worst his language got. “Me? This is absurd. This is completely wrong! They blame me for everything!”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

Cuchillo calmed and considered the problem. “Call the bus lines, call the security people, call whoever you have to. Do what you can to make sure passengers are safe in Sonora. You understand, I want to be certain that no one is hurt here. They will blame me if anything happens.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir, but—”

His boss said patiently, “I understand you can’t control the entire state. But use our resources to do whatever you can.”

“Yessir, I will.”

The man hurried off.

Cuchillo finally shrugged off the anger, finished dinner and, sipping his wine, walked up and down the aisles enjoying the sight of his many titles.

22,000
…

He returned to his den and worked some more on the project that had obsessed him for the past few months: opening another auto parts fabrication plant outside of town. There was a huge U.S. automobile manufacturer here in Hermosillo and Cuchillo had made much of his fortune by supplying parts to the company. It would employ another 400 local workers. Though he benefitted from their foolishness, he couldn’t understand the Americans’ sending manufacturing
away
from their country. He would never do that. Business—no, all of life—was about loyalty.

At ten p.m., he decided to retire early. He washed and walked into his large bedroom, thinking again of
The Old Curiosity Shop
he would receive tomorrow. This buoyed his spirits. He dressed in pajamas and glanced at his bedside table.

What should he read now, he wondered, to lull him to sleep?

He decided he would continue with
War and Peace
, a title that, he thought wryly, perfectly described a businessman’s life in Mexico.

In the living room of the apartment with the complicated ownership, P.Z. Evans was hunched over his improvised workbench, carefully constructing the bomb.

The care wasn’t necessary because he risked getting turned into red vapor, not yet, in any event; it was simply that the circuits and wiring were very small and he had big hands. In the old days he would have been soldering the connections. But now improvised explosive devices were plug and play. He was pressing the circuits into sheets of especially powerful plastic explosive, which he’d packed into the leather cover after slicing it open with a surgeon’s scalpel.

It was eleven p.m. and the agents had not had a moment’s respite today. They’d spent the past twelve hours acquiring the key items to the project, like the surgeon’s instruments, electronics and a leather-bound edition of the play
The Robbers
by Friedrich Schiller, which their new partner—book dealer Señor Davila—had suggested because Cuchillo liked the German author.

Through a jeweler’s loupe over his right eye, Evans examined his handiwork and made some small adjustments.

Outside their door they could hear infectious
norteño
in a nearby square. An accordion was prominent. The windows were open because the evening air teased that it was heading toward the bearable, and the A.C. was off. Evans had convinced himself he had a moldinduced cough.

Alejo Díaz sat nearby, not saying anything and seemingly uneasy. This was not because of the bomb, but because he’d apparently found the task of becoming an expert on book collecting and Charles Dickens daunting, to say the least.

Still, Díaz would occasionally look up from Joseph Connolly’s
Collecting Modern First Editions
, his eyes on the bomb. Evans thought about diving to the floor, shouting, “Oh, shit! Five … four … three …” But while the Mexican agent had a sense of humor, that might be over the line.

A half hour later he was gluing the leather into place. “Okay, that’s it. Done.”

Díaz eyed his handicraft. “Is small.”

“Bombs are, yes. That’s what makes them so nice.”

“It will get the job done?”

A brief laugh. “Oh, yeah.”

“Nice,” Díaz repeated uneasily.

Evans’s phone buzzed with an encrypted text. He read it.

“Bait’s here.”

A moment later there was a knock on the door and, even though the text he’d just received had included all the proper codes, both men drew their weapons.

But the delivery man was just who he purported to be—a man attached to the Economic Development Council for the U.S. consulate in northern Mexico. Evans had worked with him before. With a nod the man handed Evans a small package and turned and left.

Evans opened it and extracted the copy of Charles Dickens’s
The Old Curiosity Shop
. Six hours ago it had been sitting in a famed book dealer’s store on Warren Street in New York City. It had been bought with cash by the man who had just delivered it, and its journey to Sonora had been via chartered jet.

Killing bad guys is not only dangerous, it’s expensive.

The American wrapped the book back up.

Díaz asked, “So, what are the next steps?”

“Well, you—you just keep on reading.” A nod toward the book in his hands. “And when you’re through with that, you might want to brush up on the history of English literature in general. You never know what subject might come up.”

Díaz rolled his eyes and shifted in his chair, stretching. “And while I’m stuck in school, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going out and getting drunk.”

“That is not so fair,” Díaz pointed out.