Chapter Fifteen

Calli slipped into Nick’s office unnoticed as General Blanco spread his hands. “But it should be you, Señor, who represents us,” Blanco said in Spanish.

The big man in the formal dress uniform towered over Nick’s desk, for he stood at nearly six feet and weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds. At one time most of that weight had been muscle. He was still strong despite the iron-gray hair and the seamed face, but he was troubled.

Nick shook his head. “It’s not the time for me to take such a public role. I’m neither a soldier nor an elected official. It must be you, Blanco.”

“The men are expecting you. Everyone is expecting you. Even the Mexican officials are expecting you. It is a social event, Señor. No one will be discussing politics.”

Nick shook his head and stood up. “Politics will be the most popular topic, especially if I go.”

Blanco sighed heavily. “Your name is on the invitation. You will insult them if you do not go.”

Calli sensed this was Blanco’s last defense and even he knew it was a shaky one at best.

Nick smiled. “When I send the official head of the army in my place? If they do feel insulted, they have a warped sense of priorities. I’ve made my decision, Alonzo. I’m sorry, but now is not the time for me to publicly represent Vistaria. It must be you.”

Blanco sighed again.

“Did I upset your personal plans, old friend?” Nick asked.

“Not at all, Señor. How could you? My life is here in this house and will be until we can once again call Vistaria home. Only, I am a general, not a politician. I will do Vistaria a disservice by trying to fill your boots.”

Nick came around the desk and patted Blanco’s arm. “We are both leaders of men, no?”

“Yes, of course, Señor.”

“That is what they will see—that you are a leader of men—and they will be honored by your presence.”

Blanco nodded slowly. “Thank you, Señor.” He swiveled to face Calli. “Señora Calli.” He gave the short Vistarian bow.

Calli gave him a warm smile as he left the room, his shoulders square.

“How do you do that?” she asked Nick. “I watch you do it all the time and I still can’t see how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Change people’s minds like that. Make them see things your way and like it.”

“I don’t make people do anything,” Nick answered, settling himself in his chair once more. “I just...explain things.”

Calli shrugged and gave up. The truth was that Nick had a gift for dealing with people, one that he could not explain and others could not imitate. She dropped the DVD of Serrano’s goodwill tour onto Nick’s desk. “I think you were right. I think someone was trying to send us a message.”

Nick sat back in his chair. “And good afternoon to you too, mi esposa.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry.” She moved around the desk and leaned over to kiss him. Nick pulled her down onto his lap and took control of the kiss, making it a thorough one and when Calli came up for air, she clutched at his shoulder. “Maybe I’m not sorry enough,” she said.

Nick tackled the buttons on her shirt, one-handed. “You’re sorry enough,” he said with a growl. “You were saying...?”

“I was?” she asked, watching his hand work.

“About the DVD. It was a message?”

“The DVD...” His hand slid inside the shirt and settled on her bare breast and she caught her breath.

Nick’s gaze settled on her face. “Concentrate,” he crooned. “The DVD. Tell me.”

Calli battled to pull her thoughts together. “The DVD...” She swallowed hard. “It was sent to the network’s corporate office. Anonymously.”

“Post? Courier?”

“Hand delivered.” She gasped.

“And...?” he coaxed.

The window overlooking the sea exploded inward with a blast of hot, roaring air.

Nick’s reaction was instant. He pulled Calli tight against him and turned the big, high-backed chair away from the window. He held on to her as the blast battered at them, hunched over her to protect her from the worst of it.

The deafening blast lasted only a few seconds. Then came the tinkle of glass pattering on the desk, the carpet. It was a deadly rain of shards, plaster and dust. Hot air that throbbed around them.

Nick carefully lifted his head and Calli looked up at him, blinking. His dark hair with the deep red highlights was almost white on top where the dust had settled.

He swiveled the chair around to face the window.

The window was gone. In its place was a gaping hole in the wall. Even the frame had been ripped from its moorings, exposing the old stone building blocks.

Nick said something. Calli could see his lips moving and even the low rumble in his chest, where it rested against her arm.

“What?” she said. She couldn’t hear her own voice either. “I can’t hear!”

Nick brought his lips close to her ear. “Help the others! There will be injuries!”

“What happened?” she shouted back.

“Bomb.” Nick shook his head sharply, clearing it. “Car bomb. I think...I fear Blanco is dead.” He got to his feet and settled her on her own. “Go. They will need someone calm to direct them.” He pushed her toward the door.

Calli walked stiffly, glancing at the gaping wound in the wall as she went. She was stunned, her senses all wrapped in cotton wadding. Nick expected her to be the calm director?

She buttoned her shirt and stepped out into the main rooms and was hit with panicked, hysterical Spanish as dazed people covered in dust instantly coalesced around her. Already, her hearing was returning.

She held up a hand. “Slowly, slowly,” she said in Spanish. “Who is hurt? Tell me.”

* * * * *

Forty minutes later, Nick appeared at her side as she scratched off names on one list and added them to another. He crouched down next to her as she bent over the woman on the makeshift pallet on the second-floor landing to ask her name.

Nick was covered in dust, splattered with blood and looked as tired as a man who had gone a week without sleep.

He picked up her hand that held the pen and kissed the knuckles. “Mi esposa,” he murmured.

Calli looked up as Josh moved beside Nick. Her uncle looked around the landing, shaking his head.

“Tell me what you need, Josh,” Calli said. “Triage is in the kitchen. There’s also filtered water there and food. Just sandwiches, but the carbs will get you over the shock quickly. Or do you need communications?” She pulled Nick’s cell phone off her belt. “I just traded batteries, so it’s fully charged. The land line is out, but we have email—I set up my laptop on the next landing.”

Josh just stared at her.

“Something else then,” she guessed. “I thought I had covered everything.”

Nick gave a low chuckle and got to his feet.

“You did,” Josh said, his voice hoarse. “Jesus Maria, all this in ten minutes?”

“Forty,” she corrected, glancing at her watch. “You know what Nick’s like. He tends to give impossible-to-meet demands and expects you to meet them, so you just somehow do it.”

Nick tried to shrug it off. Josh, though, shook his head. “He knows exactly what everyone is capable of,” he told Calli. He turned slowly around the room. “Sweet Maria,” he breathed. “They wanted to make sure, didn’t they?”

“What happened?” Calli asked Nick. “Was it...?”

He nodded. “Blanco’s dead. So are the two officers who were in the car with him. Plus three others who were too close.”

“Insurrectos?” Calli asked.

“It could be no one else,” Josh said. He rested his hand on Nick’s shoulder. “You keep trying to pass the baton, Nick, but you can’t. Not anymore. The rest of the world thinks it’s yours anyway.”

Nick nodded, his expression grim.

That was when the real facts assembled in her mind. Blanco had been in Nick’s place. Nick’s boots.

It was Nick they had been trying to kill.

* * * * *

Minnie tried to pretend she was sleeping. Despite her weariness, sleep was an absent friend. She kept her eyes shut and let her thoughts drift, instead.

In the middle of the afternoon there was a soft knock on the bedroom door. Minnie sat up, staring at it. The knock was repeated.

“Who is it?” she called out.

“Excúse me por favor. I am not permitted...” The young, high voice trailed off, muffled by the closed door.

Minnie crept to the door and edged it open. Through the crack she could see a young man in army boots and green fatigues, topped with a dirty black T-shirt. He seemed as skittish as she felt.

She pushed the door open wider. The chain hanging from her wrist knocked against it.

The boy’s eyes widened as his gaze took in her appearance and the chain. He swallowed and tried to shake himself out of his shock, looking like a puppy shaking off water. He pointed to the doorway. “I am not permitted...” he repeated and pointed to himself and then into the bedroom.

“You’re not allowed in the room?” she guessed.

“Sí.” He turned around and lifted from the desk a heavy tray, loaded with more plates of food and a thermos flask. “For you.” He put it on the corner of the desk and then deliberately took three steps back and waved at it. “Por favor.”

She understood. He had been warned about getting anywhere near her and knew enough about the security cameras to obey the injunction to the letter. Zalaya must have given him those orders.

“Gracias,” she told him and picked up the tray. She backed up carefully so she did not trip over the chain and carried the tray to the bedside table where the previous tray had sat.

The boy cleared his throat. “Señorita?”

She moved back toward the door until she could see him again.

He pointed at the shards of china on the floor at her feet. “I will have,” he said, using his fingers to beckon.

“Sure,” she agreed. She flipped the tray over with her foot, bent down and gathered up the fragments and dumped them on the tray. She spent longer minutes picking up the pieces of glass a few feet farther away, conscientiously clearing the carpet of every piece she could find. She was the barefoot one, after all. Then she carried the tray over to the boy. He backed up quickly, staying out of reach. He waved toward the desk.

She grimaced and put the dented tray on the corner and stepped back as deliberately as he had, in order to give him the regulation amount of room to collect it. It put her two steps inside the bedroom once more.

He nodded as he picked it up. “Muchos gracias,” he murmured and scurried from the office.

Minnie shuddered when she saw the machine gun hanging from his shoulder, slapping his back as he walked. The boy looked barely old enough to shave.

A blinking from the console caught her gaze as she stared at the closed door. She studied the long bank of switches and dials and that single blinking light. It was a toggle switch off to the far side, the red LED next to it patiently flashing.

Minnie looked up at the blank, dead squares of the screens on the three walls around her and back at the switch. Curious, she threaded her way past the desk to the corner of the console, which was as far as the chain would let her reach. She stretched out her hand for the switch and found she was about two feet too far away from it.

A glance around the room showed no handy stick or pointing device. A hockey stick in this climate was too much to ask for, but all she needed was two extra feet.

She looked down at her bare feet. “Two extra feet,” she murmured and smiled. She again stretched herself out to the maximum and this time she brought her leg up in a ballet movement, reached out with her toe and delicately rocked the switch to the opposite position.

She was rewarded with an electronic pop and the bank of screens to her right fizzed to life. Silent life. She scanned them all.

The one on the far left, on the bottom, showed an office with someone’s head just peeping over the back of the big leather chair in front of the desk.

There was another man by the window. Minnie frowned. Yes, that was Torrez, the white-haired man. Movement on the other side of the screen pulled her gaze.

Zalaya.

This had to be Serrano’s office then. Did Serrano know his own office was bugged? That was an answer she would give money to know.

She frowned up at the screen, watching Torrez’s lips move. She needed sound. Many of the buttons and dials on the console were unlabeled. The labels that existed were in Spanish and too technical for her to translate. She stared at each dial and sliding control and switch, trying to guess its purpose. Then she found the button in a row of small switches at the back on the console, mounted on the vertical panel behind the slides and dials. It had a tiny speaker symbol, almost identical to the volume symbol on her phone.

She reached over and pushed it in and immediately Torrez’s voice jumped from the speaker set into the panel. She grinned, pleased at her success, but as Torrez’s fast Spanish registered, her grin faded for he was speaking of death and assassination...and of Nicolás Escobedo.

* * * * *

“It was ill-conceived,” Zalaya judged, “and that does not even begin to address the pathetic execution of the plan.”

Serrano smiled. “There was nothing wrong with the execution.”

“Of course not! As long as you overlook the fact that you missed the intended target.”

“Who cares?” Torrez said from his position by the window, where he watched foot traffic along the path between the administrative buildings and the palace. “The bomb achieved everything else. It has them virtually headless. Escobedo cannot control them single-handedly. There is no one of Blanco’s caliber left to pick up the slack. Escobedo will crumble and the whole operation with him.”

Serrano smiled and tried to hide it. It pleased him when his senior officers bickered. It was an excellent way to keep them on their toes and operating at peak efficiency.

Zalaya didn’t seem particularly stirred, though. He raised a single brow at Torrez’s announcement. “Really? That’s your analysis of the whole debacle?”

Torrez’s face hardened. “You have a better one?”

Zalaya gave a hard smile. “For someone who has lived amongst these people, you’ve learned next to nothing about them. Did you spend all your time there prowling the bars and fucking American coeds?”

Torrez’s neck flushed red and the color gradually rose to cover his face. “Are you deliberately trying to piss me off?”

Zalaya spread his hand in a flourish. “All those jocks...no wonder you couldn’t keep your pretty mind on the job at hand.”

Torrez’s jaw rippled. He glanced at Serrano then back to Zalaya. Serrano noted that Torrez’s hand was curled into a fist so tight the color had drained from the knuckles. White bands of fury bracketed his mouth.

“At least I was there doing something useful,” Torrez ground out. “Not lying on my back on a hospital bed.”

Zalaya actually laughed, showing even white teeth. “That’s it?” he asked. “That’s the best insult you can come up with? Torrez, you continually fail to amaze me.” He got to his feet, the cane propping him. “I am not only deliberately making you angry, I am also demonstrating that you have no idea what those two pounds of plastique will do to the people in that house.”

“What is he talking about?” Torrez appealed to Serrano.

Serrano looked to Zalaya, only slightly less baffled.

“I’m talking about simple psychology,” Zalaya said. “It is possible you may not have heard of it, because you clearly have no idea how to apply it.”

“And you do?” Torrez raged back.

“I just pushed all your buttons, didn’t I?” Zalaya asked coolly.

Torrez’s mouth opened, but nothing emerged. He shut his mouth with a snap.

Serrano laughed, his belly jiggling. It had been a long while since Zalaya had dismantled someone so thoroughly.

Zalaya was not finished with Torrez yet. He moved restlessly, shifting the weaker leg. “I never met Nicolás Escobedo personally, yet from a distance I still learned enough about him to know the man would never reach out and grasp visible power for himself. He was perfectly conditioned by his brother’s blinding presidency into thinking his place could only ever be in the shadows. He’d have to be pushed into being a formal leader—and pushed hard.

“If you had just left him alone, Torrez, he would have procrastinated himself into a standstill. There is no one else in that house with the ability to lead them into anything more complicated than a picnic. Not even Blanco. By killing Blanco, you’ve given Escobedo the push he needed. Now he’s going to come after us. Not tomorrow, not the next day. But soon. Because you’ve given him all the reason he needs.”

“Me?” Torrez shot back. “I didn’t have anything to do with this!”

Zalaya grew still. “Is that so?” he said quietly, glancing at Serrano.

Serrano sighed. It was too late to recover from this now. He mentally cursed Torrez’s flaring temper and big mouth. Usually the man was far more stable, but usually he didn’t have Zalaya needling him with the precision of a surgeon. “You can go,” he told Torrez shortly.

Torrez nodded, unable to hide his relief. He headed for the door, skirting Zalaya carefully.

When the door shut, Zalaya tapped his fingertips on the top of the cane, a quiet thrumming. “Just how many men do you have embedded in that house?”

Serrano shrugged. “That’s a need-to-know figure.”

Zalaya rammed his fist onto the desk, making the ormolu clock bounce. “And I need to know these things! This assassination was the wrong move and I could have spared you the error if you’d come to me first.”

“If we’d hit Escobedo, you wouldn’t be saying that.”

“You were never going to hit him that way! I could have told you he wouldn’t personally accept an invitation that involved a public appearance. The man has holed himself up in that barricaded house and nothing short of a disaster will bring him out.” Zalaya’s mouth turned down. “Well, you’ve given him the disaster.”

“Remember your place,” Serrano said, trying to keep his voice as cool as possible. He was startled by the change in Zalaya—the sudden flare of temper was something he had never witnessed before.

Zalaya straightened up. “I know why I am here,” he said, just as abruptly the cool schemer once more. “I am your intelligence director. I cannot do my job in a vacuum. I must have information. Data.” He smiled briefly. “Facts. If I do not have all the facts, I cannot assess and interpret correctly.”

“It’s also your job to uncover the facts,” Serrano pointed out. “I’m not here to do that for you.”

“You’re not supposed to be withholding them either.” Zalaya changed direction. “Tell me who worked the job on Blanco. I’ll arrange to have him pulled out. Damage control—we need to get him back before they sniff him out, for Escobedo will find him now you’ve kicked him into gear.”

Serrano picked up his pen and pretended to get back to work. “That’s not something you need to concern yourself with. I have it under control.”

Zalaya’s answer was a long time coming. “I see,” he said at last.

When Serrano looked up, Zalaya was reaching for the door handle. “Where do you think you’re going?” Serrano asked, astonished.

Zalaya smiled. “I’ve been around you long enough to know when I’ve been dismissed.”

After the door had shut softly behind Zalaya, Serrano sat for a long time staring out the window at the cloudless blue sky that was all he could see from here. The featureless sky was a comfort. As long as he could see no buildings, he knew that no potential snipers could get a sight line on this window, or him sitting behind it.

The comfort was a background emotion. He was busy turning thoughts and impressions over in his head.

Although Zalaya was the expert at manipulating and reading men, Serrano had acquired a degree of skill in it, too. His expertise came via hard experience and it took deep thought and deliberate application for him to arrive at useful conclusions, whereas Zalaya seemed to reach inside a man’s mind and pluck his thoughts wholesale. That was why Serrano employed Zalaya, so he did not have to strain himself outguessing his opponents.

Therefore, the long moments he sat thinking now were challenging ones, but the results were well worth the effort.

At the end of twenty minutes he opened the top drawer of his desk and pulled out a cell phone, ignoring the two telephones sitting on his desk. The delicate cell phone was too small for his big hands and he was forced to tap out the text message at turtle speed. He sent it, turned off the cell phone and threw it back into the drawer.

It was time to do his own prodding.