Angel Eyes (18 page)

Bernard Godwin grabbed hold of the younger man. "Listen to me, Russell. You'll do it, and you'll be a good sport about it. Because if you aren't, where you and Tori are headed, I'll guarantee you'll be dead inside of thirty-six hours. There's nobody who's better in the field than Tori Nunn. Nobody. She's asked for you as part of her negotiations for returning home, and I've given you to her.''

"What else has she negotiated for?"

"Leave that to me, will you? They're just details. Now I want you to take charge of this Japanese situation. I've got more than enough on my plate with White Star.''

"I can't believe you're still on that, Bernard," Russell said.

"White Star is our first real link to a coordinated Soviet nationalist underground,'' Bernard said. ''Of course I 'm not going to let it go."

"But how can you do otherwise? Even you can't get a dime in appropriations, not when everyone believes you're walking into a similar situation to what happened years ago. What a fiasco for the Mall. That 'underground movement' turned out to be the KGB's Operation Boomerang."

' 'Must you continually remind me of that debacle?'' Bernard said testily.

"I'm trying to protect you," Russell said. "The KGB's predecessors tried the same thing in the twenties, creating the Trust. They made believe the Trust's goal was the overthrow of Lenin. They did it so well, in fact, that they took in a load of Soviet emigres, who were lured back to the motherland, only to fall into the hands of Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the OGPU, who had created the bogus counterrevolutionary organization. This is a pattern, Bernard, and me KGB is known for repeating patterns. White Star-"

"This time I believe White Star is for real," Bernard said. ''It wants nothing less than a union of independent but centrally linked republics-much like our own states."

"A true Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?" Russell almost laughed.

"No, no. Not socialist-and that's the point. Imagine, Russell! White Star envisions a democratic republic; the true death of socialism in Russia. I am convinced this is the only way Russia can become a viable, prosperous nation in the twenty-first century. Their very survival depends on change. Russia wants-and desperately needs-to compete with the likes of Japan, Korea, Taiwan for export dollars, but socialism is tying its hands and feet. It needs a free-market economy just as surely as it needs to free its nationalist republics from their slavery to Moscow. The leadership of White Star understands this. But now the temptation is to move too fast. When one does that, one gains unwanted attention." He waved a hand in dismissal. "But enough of White Star. We have more pressing matters to discuss."

Bernard had appeared to gain strength during their walk. He said now, "You may think I'm overly sentimental about Tori Nunn, but you'll soon change your mind, believe me. Reviewing the files, I see now that you rarely utilized her to her full potential."

"Your opinion."

"It's the only one that matters." Godwin softened his tone. "In this instance, I happen to be more objective than you. No matter how often you may deny it, Russell, you hate Tori Nunn's guts. And I know why. You know that if she had 'matured,' as you so inaccurately put it, she would have been made director instead of you. And she's right, you know. You're atrophying sitting behind your desk. All too soon you'll be no good to me or the Mall. Neither of us wants that, do we?"

The two men resumed their walk. They were approximately in the same place where Tori and Bernard had spoken. But now it was later in the day, and the horses were gone. The hills seemed bare without them.

"Oh, don't look so downtrodden," Bernard said. "You've a chance to rectify your past mistakes. That's far more than most men are given."

"Still," Russell persisted, "I want some assurance. The possibility does exist that you are wrong about her. She may break the rules again and, in so doing, endanger us all."

"True enough," Bernard said. "And that's another sound reason for you to take the mission on with her. Who better to detect a false word or move than you, Russell?"

"And if you are wrong?''

"Oh, that's simple," Bernard Godwin said, heading back toward Central. "You're authorized to terminate her."

"Since our first stop will be Japan," Russell said on the way to the airport, "I'll need a crash briefing on customs, current style, idioms, so forth."

"We're not going to Japan," Tori said. "At least not right away."

"But it's the Japanese who-"

"We've got to start at the beginning if we're going to get anywhere," Tori said. "It's no good us sticking our heads in at the middle because we'll never know which way to go, upstream or downstream."

"But the Japanese are the source. They're the logical choice to begin.''

"Logic is only successful in a laboratory maze," Tori said. "Out in the world, intuition bridges the gaps logic can't cross." From Central she had phoned Estilo, the Argentine businessman who had befriended her, asking him to meet them. She had spoken to him for quite a while. Estilo talked about Ariel Solares. He never broke down, never actually said how much he missed Solares, but then he didn't have to. Tori understood, just as Estilo knew she would. He had always said that she had the soul of a true porteno.

"All right," Russell said. "Where are we headed?"

"To Machine-Gun City," Tori told him.

"Medellin?" Russell said incredulously. "Colombia?"

"That's right," Tori said as they climbed aboard the private 727. The driver was stowing their luggage in the belly of the steel beast.

"D'you know that where you're taking us is off limits even for American diplomatic personnel? D'you know that down there it costs about eighty dollars to hire a mariachi band for the evening but only ten to buy a sicario for a hit?" Russell was talking about the local teenage assassins. "That hellhole has the highest murder rate of any city not at war."

"Medellin is at war," Tori said. She turned to him. "Look, Russ, Japanese or no Japanese, down to bare bones it's a cocaine pipeline we're after, so we've got to go right to the source."

"Yeah," Russell said, taking a last look at Washington. He was already feeling nostalgic for his comfortable surroundings, his daily routine. "Right down the barrel of a semiautomatic."

Medellin was in the west-central area of Colombia, not far from the Pacific Ocean. It was nestled into a deep valley within the lush pined ridges of the Andes. The 727 was obliged to circle for what seemed an eternity as it came closer and closer to the tops of those formidable peaks and then, breathtakingly, dropped below them.

Before landing, Tori and Russell had a good look at the scenery, as sun-drenched and gorgeous as anything out of a travel agent's brochure. They saw the spectacular terraced orchid farms, whose product was Machine-Gun City's other export.

They waited on the runway while the flight crew shut down the engines. Tori went forward to speak to the pilot. Everyone on board was a trained Mall operative.

Fifteen minutes went by; Russell began to chafe. He got up, began to walk around the cabin. "Let's for God's sake get out of here," he finally said.

Tori said, "You don't want to go into the terminal. The sicarios who hang out there will spot your gringo face instantly, and attach themselves like leeches."

"So what are we going to do?"

"For the moment, we're going to do nothing," Tori said, pointing out the window.

Russell bent over, saw two uniformed paisas-natives-striding officiously across the tarmac. They clip-clopped smartly up the rolling stairway, entered the cabin.

"Let me have your passport," she said to Russell, and he handed it over.

Tori went to meet the paisas, and Russell could hear her softly spoken Spanish mingling with theirs. She did not sound like a gringo-he knew he did, even though he was fluent in Spanish, as well as several other languages. Tori had a peculiar facility for idiom and nuance that was beyond him. She spoke like a native wherever she went.

Russell saw packets of bills-U.S. currency-pass from Tori to the uniformed paisas. She handed them a stack of passports, hers, Russell's, those of the flight crew. All were stamped. A moment later they had left, without even having glanced Russell's way.

Tori nodded to him, and they went down the moving stairs. The uniformed paisas had already disappeared. Russell sucked in the air, clean and crisp, deliciously scented, and without any of the usual oppressive humidity found in the cities at a lower altitude.

Tori had a satchel of parachute cloth with her. While they stood there in the shadow of the jet, the flight crew was already in the process of refueling, going through the myriad maintenance checks necessary between flights.

A blue four-door Renault drew up. She had asked for it, because it had a larger engine and was heavier than either the Mazda or the Toyota that were available. "Are you armed?" Tori asked.

Russell shook his head.

Tori said, "Go back into the plane and requisition something from the pilot. He's also an armorer." She climbed into the backseat of the car.

Russell did as she suggested, but he was annoyed. He hadn't taken a good look at the pilot; he'd needed her to tell him who his men were. He was beginning to regret his acquiescence to this madness. But what choice had he been given? None, he told himself glumly. Bernard had seen neatly to that.

Tori was already in the back of the Renault when he returned, huddling with the driver in front. As soon as he sat down beside her, the Renault took off. The driver, a fit-looking man with silver hair and mustache, wore wraparound dark glasses, an open-weave cotton shirt, and linen trousers.

"Welcome to Metra-lin, Senor Slade," Estilo said. He was using the only slightly tongue-in-cheek slang that had given Medellin its apocalyptic nickname, Machine-Gun City.

Russell turned to Tori. ''Why not use a helicopter?'' he asked her.

"The last people who tried that," Tori said, "were turned to cinders by sicario hijackers." She shrugged. "It's the gringo alternative. The natives-the paisas-go the way we will go."

The Renault was going very fast, bouncing along a scarifying switchback road that snaked through the forested mountains. Russell sneaked a look at the speedometer. Considering the terrain, he thought they were traveling at least twenty mph too fast. He was about to say so when Estilo said over his shoulder, "We're being followed."

Russell turned so fast his neck cracked. Out the rear window he could see a pair of chrome and black motorcycles gaining on them. "Jesus," he breathed, "so much for your security precautions." He began to recheck the pistol the pilot had given him. It was a large caliber weapon, deadly at medium range, absolutely devastating closer in.

''Try to lose them,'' Tori said to Estilo, and the Renault rocketed forward, hurtling this way and that down the winding road, tires screaming in protest. The world to either side had become a green blur, and the lushly forested mountainsides ahead were coming at them far too fast. In desperation, Russell turned to the rear window. The motorcycles, lagging for a moment, were already gaining back the ground they had lost.

"We'll never outrun them," Russell observed.

"We weren't meant to," Tori said to him. She turned her attention to the driver. "Slow down, Estilo," he heard her say. And then, "You know what to do." Estilo reached down between his legs.

"Are you insane?'' Russell stared at Tori as she unzipped her satchel. "These sicarios will cut us to ribbons."

The motorcycles roared up beside the Renault, and now Russell could see that each held two sicarios, bristling with armament. None of them looked over seventeen. There were schools in the mountains surrounding Medellin that turned out scores of these fearless, punk killers, high on cocaine and the peculiar, frightening power of the killing lust. Russell caught a glimpse of a pair of sawed-off shotguns beginning to swing down, two MAC-10 machine pistols being leveled in the direction of the Renault.

Explosions from the shotguns. At that instant Estilo stepped hard on the brakes and, its rear wheels sluing back and forth, the Renault screeched to a halt. While it was still rocking on its shocks. Tori had opened her curbside door and, using it as a shield, whipped her arms up in the classic marksman's pose.

The motorcycles had meanwhile overshot their prey and were obliged to make sharp U-turns. This maneuver meant that the sicarios riding shotgun could neither aim nor shoot until the motorcycles had swung around and were heading back toward the stopped Renault. They fired.

Tori was holding some kind of long-barreled pistol that Russell was unfamiliar with. She squeezed off two shots, and the sicarios in the leading motorcycle were slammed backward off the bike. It roared erratically, running off the road and smashing into the underbrush. A gush of oily smoke rose into the flower-scented air.

The second motorcycle came on.

Russell could see that their driver, the man Tori had called Estilo, was either unarmed or was making no attempt to draw his weapon. Perhaps he had frozen. Russell was in no such position. He might be a desk jockey, as Tori had said, but he got only firsts on the target range, and he worked out in the unarmed combat dojo three times a week.

He raised his pistol, went to lean out his window. But Estilo whirled in the front seat and, putting his hand over the hammer of the pistol, pushed it down out of sight. "Orders," he said laconically.

"But the sicarios-"

"Paciencia," he said. "Wait and see."

Tori broke from the cover of the Renault and, slamming her door behind her, took off down the verge of the road, back the way they had come.

"What?" Russell twisted in his seat. "Tori, where the hell d'you-" He tried to get the pistol out of Estilo's grip, but failed.

He heard the blast of a shotgun firing. ''Goddamnit, let go, you sonuvabitch! She'll be killed!"

Because now the remaining motorcycle had swerved off the center of the road and was traveling down the right verge in direct line with Tori's flight. The MAC-10 was chattering.

The motorcycle was almost upon them. In a moment it would zip right by their right side, and then it would be too late to do anything to help Tori. Russell redoubled his efforts to free his pistol, but it was like battling an octopus, and he was unused to unarmed combat in such restricted quarters. The intervening back of the seat prevented him from using the throws and holds he had learned.