Guardian of Lies

SIXTY-EIGHT

It took a few days for the dust to settle. By then federal authorities had hauled the device to a safe location where they could study it and dispose of the fissile materials when they were finished. The press and the media never got wind of exactly what had happened.

The president had delayed his televised warning by an additional half hour to provide more time for logistical planning. In the meantime, the device had been defused and the need for a warning evaporated. None of the more than ten thousand people on the naval base that day ever learned just how close they had come to Armageddon. Nor did the thousands who lived in Coronado or those in San Diego, across the bay.

Within days of the event, government analysts, physicists, and weapons-design experts assessed the potential yield of Nitikin’s device and crunched the numbers. They determined that the distance between the giant aircraft carrier moored at the dock and the epicenter of the blast where the truck was parked was just over half a mile, which placed the carrier squarely within the zone of total destruction.

Structures within a mile of the epicenter would have been totally destroyed, either by the blast effect or by heat from the fireball. Within that one-mile radius, virtually no living thing above the surface of the sea would have survived. Those who were not instantly incinerated would have suffocated as a result of oxygen deprivation, all oxygen having been consumed in the blast, or from the lethal dose of radiation poisoning.

Within a two-mile zone the vast majority of those in the open, with out shelter, would have been killed. Any wooden structures would have been, for the most part, ignited by the superheated air from the blast and destroyed by fire.

Beyond that, radiation poisoning would have devastated those who survived the initial blast, some of whom would die within days, others over longer periods.

Much of the city of Coronado would lie in ruins. The blast effect, unimpeded by any structures on the water, would reach across the bay to wreak havoc on buildings along the waterfront in San Diego, and the effects of radiation would drift across the harbor and contaminate large portions of the city as well as the suburbs beyond. To those with visions of the California dream-balmy beaches and bikinied blue-eyed blondes- Southern California would never look the same again.

But for Paul Madriani and Katia Solaz, the most important item may not have been the bomb. Their salvation was found farther down the street.

In some brush near a house a half block from the location of the rental truck, police found an abandoned weapon, a Chinese Kalashnikov rifle along with an extra clip of ammunition. Ballistics tests showed that the rifle in question was the weapon used to kill three federal agents and to wound two others, all of whom were hit from behind as they approached the truck.

Fingerprints lifted from the rifle were run through federal computers and a positive match identified. The prints belonged to a man named Alim Afundi, the same name given to the authorities by Maricela Solaz. Military records showed that Afundi was a noncombatant detainee who’d been captured in Afghanistan and transported to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He and several followers had escaped, disappeared, and were presumed dead somewhere in the swamps or sea surrounding the base.

Of more immediate importance were the contents of a small day pack found on the sidewalk across the street from where the rifle had been found. Inside the backpack was a laptop computer belonging to Emerson Pike, one of the victims in the double murder at Del Mar months earlier. Fingerprints on the computer also matched Afundi’s, as did digital images in photographs found on the computer’s hard drive when matched with mug shots taken at Guantanamo.

With Yakov Nitikin now dead and his device safely disposed of, federal authorities no longer had reason to withhold the coveted photographs. Faced with the fact that the laptop computer was known to be in the victim’s residence on the night of the murders, and the unassailable evidence of Afundi’s prints all over it, plus the fact that he had clearly committed further acts of violence, state prosecutors had no choice.

Ten days after the events in Coronado, Deputy District Attorney Lawrence Templeton unceremoniously slipped into the courtroom of Judge Plato Quinn and, without notice to the press or public, filed motions for dismissal with prejudice regarding all charges against Katia Solaz and Paul Madriani in the double murders at Emerson Pike’s house.

Katia and Maricela went back to Costa Rica to begin their lives anew. Katia continued to mend and was released from the hospital to be cared for by her mother. The reunion between the two was the perfect medicine for the woman who’d lost her best friend in the carnage on the sheriff’s bus. The chief regret was that Yakov Nitikin would never have the chance to know his granddaughter, nor she him. Though now at least she would have the chance to learn about him from the woman who loved him most, his daughter, Maricela.

As for Harry, he finally forgave me for some of the more stupid things I’d done, including the failure to tell him about the catnip in my desk drawer or my second meeting with Katia at the Brigantine. As always, Harry was there to pick up the pieces, and I’ll never forget that.

The case of Katia Solaz changed my life. The practice of law no longer held the same fascination or urgency it once did. It is difficult to know why. They say that those who have a near-death experience often use their second chance at life to redeem their earlier mistakes; some pursue the spiritual, and others search for meaning in what remains of their existence on this earth. Discovering what this is for me has now become a quest.

SIXTY-NINE

Tonight Liquida was back at the auto-body shop where he had melted the gold, the dingy chop shop owned by his friend. While he wasn’t making gold bricks this time, to Liquida this task was something almost as enjoyable.

Like in an Aztec ceremony he had the Arab chained to the steel rafter on the ceiling, his feet dangling just off the floor. Except for his boxers Alim was naked, with his ankles taped together and strapped to an eighty-pound anvil. Liquida moved around him with a pair of pliers testing the flesh for thickness and durability as he poked and prodded for pockets of pain, those special little places that only intimacy with iron tongs can reveal.

With his mouth taped shut and his eyes wide open, Alim watched in horror as the Mexican flipped a switch and powered up the arc welder.

Liquida stepped over and sparked him a couple of times, then smiled as he watched him dance on the end of the chain. It was going to be a long night, and Liquida was determined to enjoy every minute of it. The only thing that could have made it better was if the lawyer and his partner were chained over the rafter as counterweights.

Madriani had saved the woman in San José and was probably responsible for the mess on the sheriff’s bus. But most of all Liquida’s anger at Madriani was reserved for the loss of the gold, a small fortune that could have seen Liquida through his retirement years. When John Waters didn’t show up for the court hearing, the authorities had drilled into the safe-deposit box and found the gold ingots. It was in all the newspapers.

It took them a while, but after the shootout in Coronado they finally got around to weighing the gold bars. According to the news reports, the weight of the bricks matched almost precisely the records maintained by Emerson Pike showing the weight of the missing coins from his study. The authorities now had a lead on the identity of Pike’s killer, one John Waters. Fortunately, they would have no film from the bank’s security cameras, as too much time had elapsed since the date he had opened the account, no thanks to the lawyers. Besides, Liquida had worn a good disguise, gray hair and makeup to age him considerably and Cuban heels to make him four inches taller than he actually was on the day he rented the safe-deposit box.

Still, he was having difficulty sleeping at night. He kept hearing the infernal “beep-beep” of the Road Runner cartoon. In his mind he kept seeing the big African American outside the house in San José that night, and the lawyer up at the corner, the man he couldn’t find when he went looking.

As far as Liquida was concerned, all of them, Madriani; his partner, Harry Hinds; and the investigator, Herman Diggs, were now among the walking dead. He was already busy doing research on their habits and routines. He would have to squeeze them in between paying jobs since he was now a poor man once more. But it would be a labor of love. They were now on Liquida’s short list, and the man known in Tijuana as the Mexecutioner had a very long memory.