Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

Faroe had heard all the come-ons since he was fifteen. Once he’d smiled at the grimy tricks. Then he’d become indifferent. Now he was disgusted.

He didn’t know if it was an improvement.

He flagged a passing yellow cab and climbed in the backseat with his parcel. Instantly the driver made eye contact in his rearview mirror and gave him a broad, practiced grin.

“I can find anything for you, senor. Girls, mebbe? I know where the clean ones are.”

“La Linea,” Faroe said. “Go back through the Zona Rio.”

The driver looked at Faroe’s eyes, shut up, and turned north.

In three minutes the taxi left the hustling, squalid streets of Old Town behind. Now Faroe looked out on the broad boulevards of Tijuana’s international district. When he’d first come to Tijuana, this river district had been an open sewer over a marshy land. It had been equal opportunity sewage-some stayed south of the border and some emptied with the Tia Juana River into the ocean at Imperial Beach, U.S. of A.

The river still carried sewage, but it was underground now. On top were streets like the Paseo de los Heroes, whose high-end international shopping rivaled that of any city on earth.

Stores. Discos. Nightclubs. Restaurants.

Banks.

Lots and lots of banks.

Their business towers were modest compared to those in San Diego, but by the one- and two-story scale of the rest of Tijuana, the banks were giant, glistening, new. A mecca for money.

Just shows what thirty billion dollars a year in outside income can do for a city, Faroe thought. Too bad the billions came mostly from ghetto addicts and barrio hypes north of the line.

But that wasn’t his problem anymore. Steele and St. Kilda Consulting be damned, he was through with the crisscross, double-cross, black-is-white and white-is-black world he’d lived in all his adult life.

Let some other fool risk his butt to save a world that doesn’t want to be saved, fuck you very much.

Yet Faroe still felt sorry for the poor citizens in TJ who weren’t in on the money game that was going on all around them. They scrambled for a lousy living while most everyone else fattened on the sugar teat of smuggling.

Too bad, how sad, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’ve retired my broken lance and put poor old Rosinante out to pasture.

And if Steele doesn’t understand, he can just shove it where the sun don’t shine.

The cabbie dropped Faroe at the edge of the neutral zone called the port of entry. He walked along another street crammed with pharmacies and souvenir stands. A block south of the physical frontier, shops gave way to storefront travel agencies offering passage to Los Angeles and the Central Valley, Wenatchee and Burlington and Spokane, fifteen hundred miles away. Kansas, Chicago, New York, Colorado, the cotton fields of the South; any and all destinations welcoming cheap workers were represented by hawkers competing for warm bodies to fill their quotas.

Faroe passed the long, snaky line of visa seekers outside the administrative offices of the Border Protection Agency. Like someone who has done it many times before, he pushed through the swinging doors that led to the auditorium-sized processing center.

Last stop before American soil.

A customs inspector wearing a blue shirt and a sidearm spotted Faroe’s parcel and pointed to the X-ray scanner.

Faroe put the box on the conveyor belt and waited. A second inspector stared at the scanner screen, examining the contents of the parcels and bags on the belt.

Automatically Faroe stepped through the metal detector and wondered with professional interest what would happen. He might not be in the business anymore but was curious to know how his secret traveling safe stacked up against pros.

The scanner operator stopped the belt to look long and hard at the cleanly sawed oak timber. The outlines of a drawer were clear in the ghostly blue X-ray.

The inspector, whose name tag said “Davison,” backed the belt up and ran the oak timber through again. He stared some more, then touched a button at his elbow.

From the corner of his eye, Faroe saw two more blue shirts converge on the scanner.

“This yours, sir?” the scanner asked calmly.

“Yes.”

A hand touched Faroe’s elbow as a neutral voice said, “Come with me, please.”

One of the converging inspectors stood close enough to block Faroe’s route back to Mexico. The other barred his path to the United States. Both men had their free hand on the butt of a service pistol.

“Sure,” Faroe said to the inspector at his elbow. “You want me to carry the box?”

“That’s okay. We’ll take care of it.”

A supervisory inspector grabbed the parcel off the belt and led the way. Faroe fell in behind, careful to keep his hands in plain sight. Obviously the official X-ray had found one of the compartments. The only real question was, had it found the other one as well?

The sign on the door said “Secondary Inspection.” Inside was an interrogation room, a government-issue table, and two battered, straight-backed chairs. The two escorts followed Faroe to the door and made sure he went through. Then they turned and went back to their former posts.

The supervisor, whose badge said “Jervis,” put the box on the table and faced Faroe coolly. “You look pretty calm for somebody in a lot of trouble.”

During his career, Faroe had made a study of ports of entry; he knew the game. Customs inspectors read body language for a living. Faroe’s expression, neck pulse, eyes, hands, and posture didn’t give the inspector anything to work with.

“I’m clean,” Faroe said, “therefore I’m calm. You saw yourself that the box was empty.”

Jervis pointed at the parcel, looked at Faroe’s passport, and said, “You want to think about that before you get yourself in any more trouble, Mr. Faroe?”

“Nothing to think about. I’m clean.”

“Empty your pockets on this table. Then stand over there and lean against the wall, hands up and flat, legs spread. Got that?”

Faroe could have argued but didn’t bother. Jervis was paid for an eight-hour shift. He could spend it on Faroe or he could share the wealth with the next hundred people in line.

“Yeah, I get it.” Faroe emptied his pockets, assumed the position, and waited while he was thoroughly, professionally patted down. “Relax, I’m not carrying.”

“I’m an old man, Mr. Faroe. I got that way by being careful.” Jervis checked for knife sheaths along the calves and ankles before he straightened. “Go back to the table and pick up your pocket stuff.”

Faroe went back to where his keys, change, passport, cash, and package waited. While he filled his pockets again, Jervis ripped through newsprint until he’d exposed the two-foot length of oak. In its own spare way, the wood was beautiful. Jervis shook it hard.

Nothing rattled.

Jervis grunted. “Looked like a hollow log on the scanner. Around here, we don’t like that. You’re in big trouble, mister.”

“Not unless they’ve changed the rules since I wore a blue shirt,” Faroe said. “The box is empty.”

“So it’s a trap. You admit that.”

“It’s just what the declarations form says-a jewelry box. A handsome piece of wood for the wife to put her rings in.”

Jervis eyed him. “You really were a blue shirt? Where? Here?”

“Yeah.” Faroe shrugged. “It’s been years, but I was.”

Jervis inspected the timber closely. After almost a minute, he pointed to one corner.

“There,” he said. “I can see the seam of the lid, barely. Nice work.”

Faroe wasn’t worried that the inspector had found the outline of part of the box. The whole thing would be installed in the bilge of his boat, which at the moment happened to be lacking a two-foot length of timber. Once Faroe was finished doctoring the oak, even someone who knew the trap was in the bilge would have one hell of a time finding it.

“Jewelry box, huh?” The inspector went over the board again carefully, looking for the catch with his sensitive fingertips. “This is about the only place the catch could be.”

“Yeah?”

Jervis poked at a round one-inch knot, the only imperfection in the tight-grained oak. Nothing moved. “Huh.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Faroe said. “You’ve X-rayed it. It’s empty.”

Jervis sucked air through his front teeth. “I should confiscate this and burn it.”

“Not a good idea. There’s this thing called illegal seizure.”

Silence stretched while the customs inspector rocked on the heels of his leather boots and watched Faroe’s body language.

“Get out of here,” Jervis said finally, jerking his head toward the door to America. “But you can fire your proctologist, because if I put your smart ass in the computer, you’ll get a body cavity search every time you cross a border anywhere.”

Faroe nodded. “Have a nice day.”

He picked up the timber and headed out the door. With long strides he headed to his car and an appointment with his safe-deposit box in Oceanside Federal Bank. If his luck held, by the time Steele found another only-you-can-do-this lure to dangle under his ex-employee’s nose, said ex-employee would be headed out to sea with several million in D-flawless diamonds tucked in the bilge.

Faroe had earned his retirement the hard way. He planned on enjoying it.

And to hell with saving people from their own stupidity.

ALL SAINTS SCHOOL

SATURDAY, 12:20 P.M.

THE UNEXPECTED ROADBLOCK ON the toll road had cost Grace ten minutes of anxiety while sweating federales gripped their automatic weapons and peered into cars. Now she confronted another new security checkpoint on the well-maintained dirt road that led to All Saints.

A clean-shaven young man in Levi’s and a loose cotton guayabera stood in the center of the road. A lethal-looking black submachine gun hung across his shirt from a long leather shoulder strap. He supported his elbows on the weapon as he watched her SUV approach. Except for the casual shirt, he looked just like the dark, sweaty men on the toll road.

The gun was certainly the same.

Grace hated guns. She had one, knew how to use it, and hated it just the same, hated what it implied: law alone couldn’t protect everyone in all places, all of the time.

In addition to the armed man in the middle of the road, she noted a black Suburban with heavily tinted windows parked off to the side. The driver and passenger-side doors were open. There were two more guards in the vehicle. One wore Levi’s and a T-shirt, the other had on a black suit with a white shirt and tie.

Both men held assault rifles across their laps.

Uneasily Grace stopped and rolled down her window, holding out her passport. “I’m here to see my son.”

The guard’s eyes widened when he read her passport. His right hand dropped to the receiver of the submachine gun. His index finger curled around the trigger guard. He turned and whistled to the men in the Suburban. The man in the suit picked up a hand radio and started talking.

Face carefully blank, Grace waited. Card players weren’t the only people who needed poker faces; judges did too. Hers was as good as any and better than most.

Beneath it she was scared spitless.

It is not something to be discussed over the telephone.

“Windows open, por favor,” the guard standing in the road said.

Despite the polite tone, it wasn’t a request.

Grace punched buttons until Ensenada’s hot, humid air filled the vehicle. The sun was hidden behind a gunmetal haze of monsoon moisture, and the temperature was hovering near one hundred.

That’s why I’m sweating. It’s hot.

But her sweat was cold.

The young guard circled the Mercedes, peering carefully through the open windows, making sure the cargo space was empty.

The man in the suit continued to talk into the radio. Grace couldn’t hear him, but she knew from the way he watched her that he was talking about her.

The guard with the submachine gun completed his inspection and looked over his shoulder. The man in the Suburban listened to his radio, then nodded.

“Go ahead, senora, but drive immediately to the soccer field,” the guard ordered.

“Why? Is there something-?”

“Soccer field,” he cut in, curtly waving her forward. His right hand was still curled around the trigger guard of his weapon.