The Execution (20 page)

Her eyes had gone dark again, her expression hard. He could tell she was picturing the image of Chuparosa in her head, visualizing him. Wondering where he was at that very moment, what he was doing, what he was thinking.

She stood, and so did Fisk.

“To be continued,” she said.

No handshake, no good-bye. He watched her walk out of the lounge and into the hotel lobby.

CHAPTER 51

D
ubin called him into his office at Intel first thing in the morning.

He did not look happy. He stood immediately as Fisk entered. “You’re dropping the ball on UN Week.”

“I’m not,” said Fisk. “I’m doing my best—”

“I hear from Secret Service you’ve been running down this threat to the Mexican president, which is all well and good, but we’ve got other potential targets out there, and that’s the Secret Service’s brief. Your job is to protect the city of New York. Not one of its visiting dignitaries.”

“This is a serious threat, and it may—I say, may—involve our president. The background we have on the potential assailant is that he is a potential suicide risk. This could involve a crowded event, something public . . .”

“Who is this Comandante Garza?”

Fisk put his hands on his hips. “I think you probably know who she is.”

Dubin said, “Did you forget that there were something on the order of a dozen eyes on you last night? While you were getting gooey eyed and wine-drunk with Miss Mexico in a bar at the Sheraton?”

Fisk pulled back on his anger. Gooey eyed? If anything, it was the opposite. But he understood how their talk, her confessional, might have looked. Then his anger came out anyway. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“First there’s an imminent threat in New York. Then there’s a wine date at a hotel bar.”

Fisk boiled. “The Mexican president was tucked away safely. We went there to eat and instead . . . we had a talk. Did your tattlers tell you we went our separate ways after?”

Dubin waved that away as though it did not matter—though, if he had gone up to her room, it would certainly have mattered. “You’ve been off your desk escorting this Garza around—”

“Escorting! Jesus, Barry.”

“You’ve been AWOL chasing an alleged cartel hit man who many people think is a legend, not an actual person. A cartel fiction, a bogeyman—”

“This is total bullshit.”

“You’re getting caught up in one woman’s personal crusade instead of doing your job here. Now, I don’t know if this has anything to do with the other thing, but for appearance’s sake alone—”

“What other thing?” said Fisk.

“The other thing,” said Dubin, adopting a softer tone, stepping forward. “Gersten.”

“God,” said Fisk. “Is that the talk? Nobody has any time to do any police work around here?”

“It’s in your after-action file from Dr. Flaherty. A caution about repeating patterns, trying to replay the past. About saving this Garza from a similar fate as Gersten.”

Fisk laughed out loud. In that moment, he was embarrassed for Dubin. “I’m working a case here,” said Fisk.

“Exactly. When you are supposed to be liaising with UN security and making sure everything in this city that employs us is running smooth.”

“You know what?” said Fisk. “I’ve got an employment file with quite a few victories in there, and now suddenly this therapy report is the number one thing about me.”

“You are a pipeline between the NYPD and the United Nations. You are not to be gumshoeing around the five boroughs with the head of security for another country’s president.”

Fisk tried one more time. “This involves New York. This is New York. There is an assassin here now. He’s killed three people in the last forty-eight hours. Dumped thirteen bodies in Rockaway, none of them with heads.”

“Believe me, I know all that.” He held up the
New York Post
. The headline screamed, in the
Post
’s usual fashion,
CARNAGE
. Then, below that,
MEX DRUG WAR HORROR COMES TO NYC
.

Fisk said, “You see?”

“I see it. We have people on this. I got a call from a supervisor in Rockaway saying that you authorized one of his homicide detectives working the headless thirteen to share evidence with the Mexican
federales
?”

“It’s how they made these guys!”

“Chain of command, Fisk. Not the first time I’ve uttered those words to you. Now listen up. You’re just back on full active duty. You want to stay that way? Distance yourself from Comandante Hottie. Okay? I don’t care how nice her ass is. Do your job. Show up at the UN briefings you are supposed to go to, and let the Secret Service do their duty.”

“Dukes, right?” said Fisk. “He call you direct, or have someone else do it for him?”

“Stay out of the way.”

CHAPTER 52

F
isk sat at his desk for a while, waiting for the usual thoughts of resigning to subside, so he could focus on the task at hand.

A couple of days ago, Dubin was singing his praises, worried Fisk might leave for another intelligence agency. Today Fisk was a liability, apparently.

He should have followed his gut. He should have quit after the Freedom Tower incident. After catching Jenssen and losing Gersten.

He should have walked away then. This was so obvious to him now.

“Hey, Nicole?”

He called to her from his desk. In a moment, she was in his doorway.

“Will you please get me the Mexican president’s full itinerary for today?”

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She went away, then came right back. “Don’t you want your schedule for the day?”

Fisk said, “Dubin spoke to you, too?”

She shared a pained expression with him. Fisk was not angry with her.

“President Vargas’s itinerary. I know he’s got a stop at the Mexican Cultural Institute sometime this morning, then a stop in El Barrio, then the independence parade and festival and the dinner tonight.”

Nicole nodded. “And you have a field briefing at the UN at eleven thirty this morning . . .”

“No,” said Fisk. “I won’t be going to that.”

“You won’t be . . . ?” She waited for further instructions. “So I should cancel you.”

“No, you can keep it on the books. I just won’t be there.”

“Okay,” she said, looking a little sick.

“Don’t worry, Nicole,” said Fisk. “You tell me what I’m supposed to be doing, and if I don’t do it, it falls on me, not you.”

CHAPTER 53

P
resident Umberto Vargas’s motorcade exited from the garage beneath the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel and rolled south down Seventh Avenue. Cecilia Garza was in the first SUV with General de Aguilar and two EMP agents. President Vargas rode in the middle car with a reporter for
The New Yorker
who was doing a long-range article on the bold new Mexican administration. More support rode in the third SUV, and an NYPD motorcycle cop led the way.

The streets were busy that morning, faces turning toward the dark-windowed motorcade of shiny black and silver SUVs but nobody reacting with anything more than a passing curiosity. The motorcycle cop up ahead bleated his siren at traffic lights and slow crossings so that the SUVs did not get held up. At the Fortieth Street intersection, Secret Service agents had shut down traffic so the motorcade could turn left without stopping. The SUVs drove to Park Avenue, where they turned right, then right again onto Thirty-ninth.

The Mexican Cultural Institute was located at the Mexican consulate, just off Park Avenue, across the street from a row of low-rise brick buildings and brownstones. The institute had been founded in the early 1990s as part of a “Program for Mexican Communities Abroad,” in order to nurture a sense of national identity among people of Mexican origin living in the New York metro area. They ran programs to strengthen awareness of Mexico’s history and rich traditions “as a democratic, plural, and creative nation,” read the press release in her hand.

A press release. She crumpled it. Why was the consulate publicizing Señor Presidente’s visit? Were they not aware of the security threat? Or were they just so overly confident of security in and around the consulate?

Blue wooden NYPD sawhorse barricades had been set up at Park Avenue, but sidewalk traffic was allowed to pass across the street from the consulate, behind a barricade fence. The barricades had evidently been up for some time, because a small crowd had gathered across the street from the consulate, drawn by the promise of an event of some sort.

Garza reviewed on her iPad a surveillance video taken from the second floor of the consulate, panning the faces in the crowd they were about to encounter. Garza went over it once very quickly, looking for Yankees caps, then admonished herself for looking for the obvious, the expected. She went back through each face, looking for anyone who might resemble the Chuparosa from the Montreal airport and Queens traffic cameras. She spotted a cluster of photographers wearing press credentials camped behind some TV news cameras on tripods, and saw that the headlines in the morning newspapers were going to dog them all day long—exactly as President Vargas feared. The antitrafficking-treaty signing might be overshadowed by the usual narrative of Mexico’s drug cartel violence.

Garza checked her phone one last time. No contact from Fisk. She had expected to see him with the security contingent as they left the hotel, but he was nowhere to be found.

She accepted this. Upon further reflection after a night’s sleep, perhaps he realized that her past marked her as too complicated. She had to admit that, upon waking, the night before in the hotel lounge seemed to her like a dream, in which a different version of herself unburdened her personal side to a man she had only recently met.

She needed to get back to Mexico. To get out of New York. She wanted to return to the familiar confines of the PF, to go about her business and leave the concerns of presidential politics and security behind.

But first she wanted to get Chuparosa.

Her lead car pulled just past the limestone front of the five-story consulate building. There were two entrances. One faced the sidewalk, beneath a giant black globe housing the consulate’s security cameras. The other was inside a very small, gated courtyard, not much larger than a limousine. That was the public entrance, reserved for consulate business, such as visas, passports, immigration paperwork, and the like.

They idled and waited for the second and third vehicles to fall in behind them. An EMP agent in the backseat was monitoring the radio.

Garza grew anxious, watching more bystanders arrive, drawn by the police presence and the idling motorcade. What was taking so long?

“Visto bueno,”
said the EMP agent.

Garza was out of the vehicle quickly, striding around to the rear, ready to escort President Vargas over the few yards to the entrance, which was controlled by security from inside the consulate. A small knot of consulate employees, including Consul General Francisca Metron, awaited him near the entrance.

Vargas exited through the door to the sidewalk, as planned, buttoning his jacket once he emerged and turning to wave blindly at the gathered crowd. Voices were raised, questions being shouted by reporters across Thirty-ninth Street, a one-way street with two traffic lanes and a parking lane. A number of Mexicans in the crowd cheered, and Vargas slowed to further acknowledge them, flashing the smile.

The gathered media misconstrued this action as an opportunity to shout more questions, which frankly neither Garza nor Vargas could hear above the din. Garza was sweeping her eyes over the crowd on the other side when she heard a voice yelling.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

A man wearing a heavy black backpack had hopped the barricade fence and begun striding quickly across the street toward the president. The perimeter EMP agents were the ones yelling at him to halt.

The man wore a dark ball cap with no insignia on the crest. As he came, he readied a Nikon camera strung around his neck, as though to get a picture.

At the same time, he swung his backpack forward off one shoulder, as though he were about to throw it.

Garza perceived all of this as happening in extreme slow motion.

Both items—the camera and the backpack—were potential weapons.

Her reaction time lagged just a second. Because to her eyes, this man did not match the video image of Chuparosa she had been playing and replaying in her mind since yesterday evening.

A Secret Service agent broke from the rear SUV of the idling motorcade and drew his weapon, a SIG Sauer P229. Into his suit jacket cuff, he shouted, “Breach! Breach!”

Garza was also drawing, her Beretta coming out of her shoulder holster as she jumped in front of President Vargas. She shouted,
“Amenaza! Amenaza!”
Threat! Threat!

A third individual sprang from the crowd behind the side barricade, wearing a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and dark pants. He was aiming a Glock at the man and shouting, “Get to the ground! Get on the ground!”

The man with the camera stopped, momentarily mystified by the triumvirate of armed people yelling at him. Then he recognized the weapons in their hands. He went down to one knee, then the next, half collapsing, half complying.

The Secret Service agent was on him first, grabbing a free hand and driving his knee into the photographer’s back.

The gunman from the crowd was a close second. The Secret Service agent, not knowing this man, pointed his gun at him.

Fisk’s hands went up quickly. “Fisk! NYPD Intel!”

“Jesus!” said the agent.

Garza kept her grip on Vargas, watching the photographer grunt and try to explain himself on the ground. When the Secret Service agent rolled him over, there was a wet spot on the pavement where the photographer’s groin had been.

Garza did not remain to watch any more. She turned and pushed President Vargas’s head down and ran him to the consulate entrance, past the stunned greeting party, getting him inside as fast as possible.

Once safely inside, she scanned the interior of the consulate entrance. She began to relinquish her grip on the president’s suit jacket when she felt it pull away from her.

“It was only a goddamn photographer!” he said behind her.

Garza turned. She saw the flash of anger cross the president’s face as he fixed his jacket. It stunned her.

“Have we not had enough bad press!” he said. “A photographer. Not an assassin!”

Garza was stunned. It was all she could do to walk away from him, quickly, before she said something back to him. She left him to the watchful eyes of her EMP compatriots, striding back out through the door to the sidewalk.

The photographer was being led to a police car by two uniformed officers. Every photographer in the media throng was still snapping away.

Fisk had turned his face away in an attempt to avoid them, but it was much too late. The Secret Service agent was huddling with his compatriots. One of them held an M4 carbine.

Garza went to Fisk, pulling him behind the president’s SUV, blocking them from view.

“What are you doing here in disguise?” she said.

He billowed out his shirt, trying to air out his sweat. “It’s not much of a disguise. I left my jacket in the car and rolled up my sleeves.”

“Why weren’t you at the hotel this morning?” she asked.

Fisk frowned. “I’m not supposed to be here at all. Dubin—my boss—thinks I’m spending too much time on one visiting dignitary. I think he got a complaint from Dukes about us. And if I’d gone to the hotel first, I would have had to check in with them.”

Garza said, “They know you’re here now.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not good. Thanks to that idiot with the camera.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Fisk. “Got any openings in Mexico?”

Garza smiled. “Depends. Can you be corrupted?”

“Only by red wine,” he said.

Garza grinned, then backed off.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Vargas. He didn’t like the way that looked.”

Fisk sighed. “Believe me, he would have loved it had that idiot had an explosive device in his backpack.”

Garza was steamed.

“Interesting start to the day,” said Fisk.

“Was that urine I saw on the road?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said Fisk. “Looking into the business end of a handgun does that to people.”

Garza took a moment to scan the crowd. They were starting to disperse now that the show was over.

“I was feeling good about having an image of Chuparosa,” she said. “But now suddenly I feel we are no closer to him. No how, or where, or when.”

“He’s killed off everybody who could answer those questions.”

“He couldn’t have killed everybody,” said Garza. “He is staying somewhere. Someone is helping him.”

Fisk said, “I had a look at the seating plan for the dinner tonight. Obama and Vargas are seated at separate tables, which I guess is a power hosting thing. It gives the gathering two prime tables for guests to sit at, and by guests I mean donors.”

Garza nodded. “So?”

“Obama’s seatmates were all named on the diagram. As were Vargas’s seatmates . . . except for one. One was left empty.”

“Why?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Garza shook her head. “I haven’t seen the chart.”

“Well, then two other things came to mind. One was the mysterious presence of a U.S. marshal at the security review. I recognized her on the way out. She gave me a very vague nonanswer about what she was doing there. As you may know, they handle fugitives and federal witness relocation. And where was the restaurant owner? Two heads of state are coming to your establishment for an important dinner, and you’re not present at the security review? You’re not overseeing every little detail?”

“Fair point,” she said. “Who is the owner?”

“A limited partnership. Some shell corporation. But even shell corporations have to file legal papers and tax forms.” Fisk crossed his arms, looking down at her over his sunglasses. “I think we need to go pay this fellow a visit, Comandante.”

Garza nodded. “I think we do, too.”