Guardian of Lies

FIFTY-ONE

Liquida spent almost forty minutes trolling the San José neighborhood in his car, never drifting more than three or four blocks from the burned-out house. He wore the oversize shades and the baseball cap.

He pulled up in front of a boutique hotel, rolled down the passenger window, and told the guard out front he was looking for a man named Lorenzo who lived in the area. Perhaps he knew him as the mayor of Gringo Gulch.

The guard laughed, shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

“Thank you.” Liquida drove down the street. He talked to a pedestrian on the sidewalk a block down and got the same reply. The lady with the hose was wrong. The mayor of Gringo Gulch did not know everybody.

He passed a large old colonial house with the words HOTEL VESUVIO painted on the front wall, above the awning. He drove to the end of the block and had started to turn left when he saw two gray-haired gringos in sandals and shorts crossing the street just ahead of him. He hesitated for a moment. What if one of them was the alcalde himself?

Liquida’s mind quickly came up with a cover story. He pulled up next to them, rolled down his window, and said, “Excuse me. I am looking for a man who lives near here. His name is Lorenzo. I don’t know his last name, but his friends sometimes call him the mayor of Gringo Gulch.”

“You mean Larry Goudaz,” said one of them.

“You know him?”

“Yeah, he lives down the street.” The guy leaned down toward the car window. “Just go straight down, through the next intersection. Go one more block and you have to turn right. If you park at the curb after you make the turn, you’ll be right in front of the Casa Amarilla, big yellow house, can’t miss it. Larry’s place is in the apartment building right across the street, on your left. Second floor.”

“Thank you,” said Liquida. “Muchas gracias.”

“Or you could wait until four and catch him at the bar inside the Sportsmens. Larry’s got a stool there with his name engraved on it.” The gringo laughed.

Liquida smiled, rolled up his window, and drove on. But instead of following the directions he turned at the next intersection and went halfway up the block until he found a space to park.

He took his time inching into the space. The streets in San José were layered with so many pours of asphalt that the roadways arched like rainbows. Drive too close to the edge, your car might roll on its side and disappear into the canyon at the curb. To be safe Liquida left the rental car three feet out from the sidewalk.

He locked it up and crossed the street on foot. He had walked one more block, passing under some trees and overhanging bushes that arched above the sidewalk, when he saw the big yellow house off to the right. It was an old colonial from the plantation period. Behind it, on the same grounds, was a modern high-rise office building that looked as if it had wandered into the wrong century. The entire compound was sealed off from the street by a high, spiked iron fence that surrounded the L-shaped block.

As he moved farther along the fence toward the yellow house, Liquida noticed a gate with a guard kiosk. There were a dozen or more expensive cars, Mercedeses and Lexuses, parked inside the grounds. Men in dark suits with briefcases and women in tight power outfits, some of them carrying file folders, walked with an air of consequence between the yellow house and the high-rise. To Liquida, the uniformed security, power people, and expensive cars meant one thing-high-level government offices.

The guard kiosk was directly across the street from the apartment building the two gringos had told him about, the place where Lorenzo lived.

Liquida slowed his stride for a moment as he studied the situation. There was no heavy traffic. The quiet lane that separated the gray-masonry apartment house from the government compound made a dogleg, turning to the left almost directly in front of the entrance to the apartments. Liquida figured he had nothing to lose by walking along the sidewalk and checking it out.

When he came to the end of the block, he crossed the street and ended up directly in front of the apartment building. Turning to his right he strolled along the narrow sidewalk as it curved toward the dogleg in front of the building. It was possible there was another entrance into the building, either around the corner or in the back, where he could pick the lock and not be seen entering by a guard in the kiosk across the street.

He was approaching the entrance to the apartments when he heard the clang of metal. The steel gate at the front door suddenly opened. It blocked the sidewalk directly in front of him. The man stepping out didn’t see him. He nearly collided with Liquida.

“Perdón! Excuse me.” He stood there confused for a moment, hanging on to the gate and blocking the way.

Liquida smiled, said, “Excuse me,” and stepped through the open gate and into the building as if he belonged there. “Gracias.”

“De nada,” said the man. He locked the gate from the outside as the Mexican closed the front door. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

The entrance area was small, a kind of tower with concrete stairs that spiraled up around a central core to the next level. Liquida quickly climbed to the second floor. Finding the right apartment wasn’t going to be difficult. The stairs continued up, but on the second level there appeared to be only one apartment with a single door.

Liquida carefully approached it and put his ear gently to the small pane of translucent glass in the top section of the door. If no one was home, he would take a few minutes to check the place out, make sure he had the right apartment, and look for any trace of the woman. He listened for voices and movement inside as he felt for the small box of picks in his pocket.

The ship Amora was a coastal cargo carrier but with sufficient fuel capacity for long-range travel. Because it had been traveling empty-handed to Guatemala to pick up a load of lumber, it was operating with a skele ton crew. Its tanks had been topped off with cheap Venezuelan diesel for ballast. It had been designed originally as a Great Lakes freighter, with the wheelhouse and superstructure forward, near the bow.

It was less than three hundred tons in gross weight. This meant that it was exempt from the international automatic identification system, otherwise known as AIS. The system tracked the location and identity of large cargo ships around the world by using satellites. It broadcast information as to their identity and location every two minutes over VHF radio frequencies. Originally designed for collision avoidance, the AIS system was now being used increasingly to guard against terrorism and escalating acts of piracy.

Alim had coordinated with the Tijuana cartel. Two of the cartel members had joined the Amora’s crew in Colombia. Armed with handguns, they had disabled the radio and seized the bridge just moments before the container was delivered on board.

Alim and two of his gunmen cornered the last crew member shortly before midnight. By one in the morning, the bodies of the dead were weighted with chain, pitched over the side, and the decks washed clean with high-pressure hoses.

Only the captain remained alive, up on the bridge where Afundi held him at gunpoint until he could rendezvous with the other boat. He would be replaced by a skipper provided by the cartel, along with a new crew, and the Amora’s captain would join his men in the eternal chain locker at the bottom of the sea.

“The Costa Rican government is getting nervous. They’re asking a lot of questions. They want to know why the FBI is making such a big deal out of a case involving a single fugitive.” James Rhytag sat behind his desk in his Washington office and talked into the telephone as he looked at the report from Thorpe’s agents in San José.

“Listen, Jim, give us another day and my people will have him. We’re that close.” Thorpe was on the other end of the line, trying to buy more time.

“The State Department and the White House are getting nervous,” said Rhytag. “There’s a complaint from Costa Rican law enforcement that U.S. agents are conducting electronic surveillance on Costa Rican soil without their government’s knowledge or approval. The Ticos are threatening to file a formal diplomatic note with our ambassador, in which the government is going to start asking questions in the international press. The White House wants a lid on it.”

“My men have locked in on a weak signal from Madriani’s cell phone twice in the last two days. They’re telling me one more time and they’ll have him. Have you seen the report?”

“I’m looking at it now,” said Rhytag.

“The house belonged to Nitikin’s daughter. According to the neighbors, two men got her out just before the place went up. The two men fit the description of Madriani and the guy he’s traveling with. The three of them, the daughter, Madriani, and his friend, all disappeared off the street after the fire. That means if we nab Madriani we may get the daughter as well. And if she took the pictures, she knows where Nitikin is.”

“Who the hell blew up the house?” said Rhytag.

“That’s the point,” said Thorpe. “I can smell it. Something is happening. This thing’s going down. Get somebody to tell the people in the White House that if they shut us down now, they may end up having to answer some very painful questions later.”