Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

“You’re talking about one of my grandmothers,” Grace said. “When the Magonistas lost, she went north with federales hot on her heels.”

“Well, that explains it,” Faroe said with a sideways glance and a smile.

Grace knew better than to ask what had been explained.

“Mexico City finally got its act together in the summer of 1911 and counterattacked,” Faroe continued for Steele’s benefit. “The federales sent the Wobblies scampering north to San Diego. The Magon brothers and some of their followers went south, into the Baja mountains. Their descendants are still around, still preaching revolution and social change to the mountain peasants and the Indians.”

“Thank you,” Steele said, and meant it. “I sometimes forget that beneath your relentlessly shit-kicking persona, there lives a serious student of history.”

Faroe swung the Mercedes around a slow-moving freight truck that was laboring up a grade, spewing black diesel smoke from its chrome stacks.

“History is a slippery slope,” Faroe said. “Things change day to day, sometimes faster. The Magonistas gambled on the support of the international workers’ movement. They guessed wrong and they’ve been hiding in the mountains ever since. Maybe this new MagOn has finally capitulated and thrown in his lot with the crooks, using his robes as cover.”

“I wondered about that myself,” Steele said. “Do you remember Umberto Meinhof?”

Faroe grunted. “The captain in the Swiss Guards? Is he still in charge of the Vatican’s diplomatic security detail?”

“He is. I spoke with him at great length an hour ago. He confirmed that Magon was, and probably still is, a very bright light in the church’s diplomatic corps. But when I started to quiz him ever so gently about why such a star was stationed in the backwaters of northern Mexico, he acted as if I’d asked him to procure little girls for the pope.”

Faroe whistled softly through his teeth. “And this very bright light is hanging around with traffickers? Interesting.”

“I thought so,” Steele said gently.

“Maybe the Vatican has decided to bring the Magonistas into the fold,” Grace said. “Not to mention the Indians who never really converted.”

“Possible,” Steele said, “but that still leaves some things searching for an explanation. For instance, I got the impression that the Vatican had gone to some lengths to conceal Father Rafael’s connections to the church hierarchy.”

Grace looked thoughtful.

Faroe frowned out the window, trying to order the new piece with the rest of the puzzle in his mind. After a moment, he smiled ironically. “Okay, Steele, I concede your point.”

“That being?”

“Maybe there’s a reason to spend a buttload of money on researchers.”

Steele’s laugh was as brief as it was genuine.

“Let’s push a little harder,” Faroe said. “Call Captain Meinhof back. Tell him we’ll keep our mouths zipped, but in return we need a favor.”

“And that favor would be?”

“Hold on for a bit.” Faroe covered the receiver of the phone and talked only to Grace. “I assume the kids at a Catholic school all have to go to church.”

“Of course. There’s a regular sanctuary on the campus, plus a small chapel on the bluff overlooking the ocean.”

Faroe removed his hand from the receiver. “Tell Meinhof we’ll keep his secrets and Father Magon’s. But in return the good father has to be in the chapel confessional in exactly”-Faroe checked his watch-“seventy minutes. I feel the need for an honest and complete confession.”

“But of course,” Steele said dryly. “I’ll call you if there’s any problem.”

The connection went dead.

“I didn’t know you were a Catholic,” Grace said.

“I have plenty of things to confess. I hope the same goes for Father Magon.”

BAJA CALIFORNIA

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

SILENTLY GRACE WATCHED FAROE from the corner of her eye. He looked calm and determined, doing what he was very good at doing. She kept forgetting how focused he could be, intelligence like a laser illuminating everything in its path.

Once she’d been the object of Faroe’s focus; his strength and intelligence had almost overwhelmed her. Yet it had been electrifying. Erotic beyond anything she’d ever known. When Faroe slipped the leash on his control, he was like riding a storm.

That’s why she was frightened of what would happen if he focused on her in rage and betrayal.

I can’t tell him the truth until Lane is safe. Otherwise Lane might not be safe at all.

And every moment she didn’t tell Faroe piled up guilt on her side and rage on his.

“Joe,” she said softly, “do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

He glanced quickly at her. “Why should I mind? There are some downright personal things between us.”

Grace pushed back the memories of just how personal they’d been. After a moment she asked, “Are you ever frightened?”

“Hell, yes. Every day. Sometimes a lot more often. Why?”

“Right now, I’m so scared I feel like hurling. Yet you sit there like someone taking a Sunday drive. So I ask again. Have you ever been afraid, like I’m afraid right now, a sickening certainty of things spinning out of control?”

“I looked down the barrel of a revolver once,” Faroe said. “The barrel was short and the sun was just right. I could see the crosshatching on the blunt end of the round that was about to come under the firing pin. The thirteen-year-old holding the gun was scared, too. I could see his finger so tight on the trigger that his black skin was white.”

“What did you do?” she asked in a low voice.

“Same thing you’re doing. I swallowed hard. Then I reached out real slow, real careful, and moved the muzzle to one side. I got it through about twenty degrees of arc before the kid flinched.” Faroe reached up and touched the hair above his right ear. “The crosshatched round literally gave me a buzz cut. I was deaf in this ear for a week.”

“Did you-kill him?”

Faroe laughed roughly. “What for? I helped him clean out his britches. Then he helped me clean out mine.”

Grace shuddered and shook her head, wondering how he could laugh about an experience like that.

“So, yeah, I’ve been scared lots of times,” Faroe said. “Fear of death is a natural reaction closely tied to survival. It’s a universal part of the human experience.”

“You say you’re scared, but you don’t act like it. Every time I think of Lane and Hector and Ted, I-” Her voice broke. She held out her hands. Fine tremors shook them.

Faroe caught one of her hands, kissed it gently, lightly, and released her the same way. “Up north, you live in a nice, neat, lawful world, but even there, gangs and mafias and terrorists use violence or the threat of it to get what they want.”

Grace cupped the hand he’d kissed. “It’s not the same.”

“No, it’s more personal now. A fist in your gut. Breathe, amada. You’re still a long way from being a Hindu holy man.”

She made a sound that could have been a laugh or a throttled cry.

“Just relax and accept what is rather than what you want it to be,” he said. “South of the line, violence isn’t just a fact of life. It’s a way of life. Just like it’s a way of life in most of the rest of the world, all the places you read about in the headlines, failed states and feral cities. Mexico is veering dangerously close to being a failed state. Tijuana is arguably a feral city.”

“It can’t be that bad.” But there was more hope than certainty in her voice.

Faroe barely suppressed a cold smile. “Let me put things in perspective. When I first came to the border, the weapons of choice were a Model 1911A Colt and the M2 carbine. The Colt had the shock power of a sledgehammer but it rode nicely against the hip, even without a holster. The M2 was popular because with a sharp file and a few minutes it could be morphed from a semiautomatic shoulder weapon into a light machine gun.”

Grace looked at him. In profile he looked as hard as the weapons he knew too much about.

“Now the pistolero’s tools are different,” Faroe said. “Glocks are the favorite pistol, and a Glock would cost an honest Mexican cop half his yearly pay. For long guns, Mexicans prefer H amp;Ks or Uzis that can rip through a thirty-round magazine in five seconds. Northern Mexico is the new Dodge City. Shoot first, shoot most, and to hell with the bystanders. They should have stayed out of the streets, anyway.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Am I? There were some contract killings in Texas, north of the border. That’s in the U.S. of A. The murders were carried out by renegade federales. If that’s happening in the U.S., you know it’s worse south of the border. We just don’t hear about it. Or if we do, we don’t listen.”

“You said renegade federales. Not official.”

“In northern Mexico, police badges are as cheap and meaningful as dime-store whistles. Guns are what count. The borderlands are medieval fiefdoms held by the man with the most money, because money means arms. Power. Entire police departments are for sale to the highest bidder. They become militias for competing bands of traffickers. Police fighting police, federales fighting federales, and all variations in between.”

“I just-”

“Yeah,” he cut in. “I know. You just don’t want to believe. Neither does anyone else. Yet it’s all there for anyone who reads Mexican newspapers. The most notorious of the good cop-good cop battles were between Mexican federal drug agents on one side and Mexican army soldiers on the other. The prize was a jetliner loaded with six tons of Colombian cocaine. The federales were outgunned and massacred. People on the inside said the federales were more interested in the resale value of the cargo than in law enforcement.”

“How can that happen?” she demanded. “Mexico is a civilized country with laws, a constitution, elections, paved streets, electricity, highly developed arts, and-”

“Mexican federal or state judicial policemen are paid a thousand dollars a month by the government,” Faroe cut in impatiently. “They can make five to ten thousand a month by riding shotgun for the traffickers. In Mexico, like most of the world, police corruption is common. But here in Baja, the corruption is systemic, institutionalized. Venality is god and there’s no lack of money for the collection plate.”

“Words,” Grace said. “Rumors. Opinions. Prejudices.”

“Facts. A federal comandante’s badge costs a half million dollars. Of course, the average dude can’t come up with five hundred thousand dollars all at once. He has to mortgage his future and use his badge to raise the installment payments. He has to impose his own tax on the criminals in the street, then pass a portion of his earnings up the chain of command. That’s how you get hired in the first place. You always kick back part of your street taxes.”

Reluctantly, Grace looked at Faroe. He was watching the road with the relaxed intensity that was his hallmark.

“Are you listening, amada?” he asked without turning toward her. “Really listening? Despite the crooks that swaggered or tiptoed through your court, you don’t know shit from shoe polish when it comes to living in the Mexico that drug money has made.”

“I’m listening. I’m just not liking anything I’m hearing.”

“Did I ask you to like it?”

“No.”

Faroe checked the mirrors. “In Mexico, bribery used to be called la mordida, the little bite. Now it’s called el sistema and the system reaches all the way up the chain of command to Mexico City. And since the system moves anywhere from a quarter to half a trillion dollars a year-”

“Don’t you mean billion?” she interrupted.

“No, I mean trillion, as in one thousand billion, the kind of number only astronomers and dope dealers work with. Think of it. One. Thousand. Billion. You could count grains of sand on the beach for a thousand lifetimes and still not get to a trillion.”

“It’s-it’s hard to get my mind around it. Impossible, frankly.”

“Yeah. That’s how the traffickers get away with it. When the average citizen hears the facts, his eyes just glaze over and he goes back to the TV remote to find a friendlier world. But that doesn’t change the other world, the shadow world, where the little bites of corruption get bigger, richer, harder to digest as a society. Money pours through the streets like half-digested banquets washed through the gutters of a Roman vomitorium.”