King of Swords

Chapter 23

Kent hated his life sometimes. Most of the time he was master of the universe, moving the earth and exerting power over life and death, a kingmaker, a demigod of sorts. But sometimes he was bitch-slapped by fate and had to grovel and mewl to the real powers that be, who were predictably less intelligent or visionary than he.

This was one of those times.

He pushed the door open to the club, and the perennial, discreet, ageless man in black tie motioned for him to follow without uttering a syllable. They proceeded to a different room than the last time — this one slightly larger and equally ostentatious. Inside, the Speaker of the House and three other older men sat scowling their discontent.

“What the fuck, Kent? Explain to me what happened, and where we go from here…” the Speaker of the House blurted.

Kent studied each of their faces in turn, before replying. He sat down and sipped from the water glass at the side of his place serving.

“We lost this round. Everything was going perfectly, and then at the last minute, something went wrong. It happens. I haven’t gotten a full briefing yet, but I expect details will creep in over time. It appears that the assassin who can never fail…did exactly that.”

“Are we exposed in any way?” a concerned voice asked.

“No. By using a straw man, in this case the drug lord, Santiago, we created a Chinese wall. Total deniability. It was a Mexican, trying to kill the Mexican president, for reasons only known to Mexicans. End of story. They kill each other all the time. This time, it didn’t happen. And everyone goes on to fight another day.”

“Well, this sucks. I’m not sure we’ll get another chance before the elections,” the Speaker of the House complained.

“Probably not,” Kent agreed. “A domestic assassination won’t fly. This was perfect — our beloved President executed by slack-jawed madmen, our Vice President stepping bravely into the breach…shit, it had Lyndon Johnson written all over it. The VP would have been a landslide victory, and we would have been guaranteed another four, or even possibly eight, years. Now, we have to go with the cards we’ve been dealt, namely an unpopular candidate fighting headwinds.”

Another man chimed in — in his seventies, almost completely bald, with rodent-like features and darting eyes.

“What if his plane or helicopter went down? Wouldn’t that stoke the sympathy fires?”

“Not nearly the same. In the first scenario, you have somebody else to blame — in this case, a group that many Americans have been coached to hate. Evil Mexicans. Satan’s foot soldiers, killing our beloved leader as he heralded a message of peace and hope. With a domestic assassination, it’s not so easy or clear, and you can’t harness the fury factor. Let’s learn from the whole war-on-terror gambit. Give the country someone with different cultural mores or skin color or language, and it’s easy to characterize them as the enemy. But if it happens domestically, even by Muslims or whatever, it’s not so clear-cut, especially after the last administration’s flubs, invading other countries. For these things to really work, you need an undeniable, larger-than-life bad guy. That doesn’t work so well if it’s domestic.” Kent paused to let the reality of the situation sink in. “This would have been perfect, but it’s over and done with. We got close enough to kiss, but no sex. It happens. We just have to move on.”

The Speaker of the House pondered his words. “All right. Kent’s talking sense. We need to shift gears and get into campaign support mode. It would have been nice, but hey, we gave it our all and lost in overtime. Next time, maybe we win.” The speaker looked around, trying to collect a consensus. “Are you with me? And Kent. You did a remarkable job. We just had some bad luck. We’re not holding it against you, and I want you to know you’re still a valued member of the team.”

A chill ran up Kent’s spine. “I’m glad to hear that. I’ve worked very hard to keep everyone’s confidences, and I hope I get to continue doing so for a long time,” he volleyed. Let them suck on that. There was no way he was going to wind up trying to swim with an engine block chained to his feet. If they had any bright ideas about taking him out, that would give them pause.

The speaker held up his wine glass, toasting Kent.

“To another day.”

~ ~ ~

Cruz stood at the foot of Briones’ bed, Dinah next to him, watching the monitor track the steady beating of his heart. It hadn’t been too long ago that Cruz had been the one in this position. The view from the ambulatory side was better.

“The doctor says you’ll be fine. A week living in the lap of luxury, waited on hand and foot by beautiful young nurses, enjoying the fine dining of the hospital commissary, and then you’ll be playing tennis and cross-country skiing again in no time,” Cruz assured him.

“You might want to get your skull checked while you’re here. You sound delusional, Capitan,” Briones warned.

“Seriously. How are you feeling?” Dinah asked.

“I’ve been better. But all things considered, this could be a lot worse. The blood loss was the main problem; the actual wound wasn’t a big deal. If it hadn’t hit an artery, I could have walked into the doctor under my own power,” Briones assured her.

“Well, it seems you’re going to get a commendation. And you managed to duck all the flack that came from you manhandling that poor innocent tomato-guy. It was hard for anyone in management to bitch when you’d taken a bullet keeping the presidents alive,” Cruz reflected. He turned to Dinah. “Would you give us a few minutes? There are a few work things we need to discuss…”

“I still remember where the soda machine is.” She appraised Briones, and then Cruz. “I’ll see you in a few, Capitan,” she said, before shimmying through the door. Both men watched the show admiringly.

“You’re in real trouble there, Capitan,” Briones warned.

“You may be right.” Cruz pulled a chair to the side of the bed, and sat. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, so I’ll just tell you what I know and save you the trouble of drilling me. First, no, we didn’t catch him. Second, no, we don’t know where he is. Third, nothing we did stopped him. The truth is that the two presidents were saved by a hyperactive schoolboy amped up on too much sugar,” Cruz explained.

“Come again?”

“Well, once you’d been stabilized at the local hospital in San Jose del Cabo, I went back over to the site, and we examined the pinata that the kids never got to break open. There was a reason. The whole thing was a bomb, with a carbon fiber shell. We found the transmitter trigger in El Rey’s discarded uniform in the Humvee.”

“I don’t understand. So why didn’t it explode? What happened?”

“The detonator was located in the bull’s nose, concealed by the steel ring. The best our experts can tell, the wire from the battery had worked free — it was less than a millimeter out of place, but that millimeter was enough to render it useless. The battering from the kids slamming it must have jarred it loose. That’s the only explanation,” Cruz concluded.

“But I don’t understand. They weren’t hitting it yet when El Rey approached the stage. He must have been trying to detonate it then…”

Cruz nodded. “Correct. I didn’t understand it either, so I went by and talked to the teachers as the kids were waiting to leave. One of them told me that a few of the boys had been bashing it like mad in the tent, and she had to fix it with a pen to cover up the evidence of the damage — most of it inflicted on the bull’s head. So the kids’ misbehavior saved everyone’s life. Not our efforts. We actually failed quite miserably…”

“My mom used to say, it’s better to be lucky than smart,” Briones observed.

“Your mom was a smart woman. I have no argument,” Cruz agreed. “Though whether she was lucky with her offspring…”

Dinah returned, and they made small talk for another few minutes before Briones began to visibly tire. For all the bravado, he’d come perilously close to dying — they’d actually lost him on the table for a minute in San Jose, though no one was about to tell him as much right now. Fortunately, he was young and strong, so they were able to revive him and get him stable enough to be air-ambulanced back to Mexico City, where the hospitals were far more advanced. He would make it and have a small puckered scar to show for his adventure, as well as honors from the force. But he still needed time to recover, so they said their goodbyes and left him to slumber.

Two armed Federales sat outside his door. Cruz experienced a sense of deja vu. Nothing had changed. The bad guys still ran amok, they were still at war in their own country, and evil ruled the day more often than not.

Only on some days, they got lucky.

Maybe that was the story of the human condition.

For today it was enough.

Dinah nodded to the two stony-faced sentries and then took Cruz’s arm.

“So, Capitan, can I convince you to have lunch with me? I recently came into some money, so I’ll buy. It’s the least I can do for a genuine, wounded hero,” she offered, delivering a gleaming smile to sweeten the proposition.

Briones was right.

He was in trouble

Mendoza was cold in late July — it had snowed two days earlier, typical of the Southern Hemisphere at this time of year. But today was one of those rare, crisp days when the sun warmed the sidewalks in the afternoon, making it practical to sit outside, admittedly with a sweater or jacket, and dine or sip coffee or wine at one of the myriad restaurants downtown.

El Rey didn’t drink alcohol, but he’d made an exception once he'd landed in Argentina, and he’d quickly incorporated a glass of wine with lunch and dinner — Malbec, of course. To drink anything else in Mendoza was close to sacrilegious. He still didn’t like the small loss of control it brought, but he had to admit that the taste was an experience, so now he wasn’t on high alert at all times, perhaps he could relax a little.

He’d leased a flat, two blocks from the Park Hyatt, and had already settled into a pace after only a month in town. Argentina was nothing like Mexico, and yet there were similarities; the language being the most obvious. The locals also appreciated the siesta, and the shops all closed between two and four, and in some cases from two to five, so that the workers and proprietors could enjoy a leisurely lunch, followed by a snooze.

The restaurants contrived fare fit for a gormandizer; he’d already found a few that rivaled the cream of Mexico and Europe, which he’d sampled while fulfilling contracts. The beef was incredible, the Italian food superb, which made sense; every other person in Mendoza had an Italian last name, a function of the wine industry that was the primary business in the region.

He’d stopped in Mendoza en route to Uruguay and decided to stay a few days, which had turned into a few weeks. Surprised that he wasn’t anxious to keep traveling, he’d taken a flat on a month-to-month basis, reasoning that if he got tired of Argentina he could just move on. Montevideo would still be there waiting for him.

The Los Cabos hit bothered him, but not so much that he was willing to return the money for the contract. Santiago was dead so he wasn’t going to need it, and Mexico was too hot for him to operate in until any manhunt died down. He hadn’t seen anything online or in the newspapers about the summit or the cop he’d shot, so the Mexican authorities had obviously clamped a lid on it, pretending that nothing had happened. That was easier to do than one might think — no bombs had detonated, no audible shots had been fired. A military helicopter had crashed, which was regrettable, but helicopters bit the dust all the time. It was not unexpected, and the papers paid mere lip-service to it all.

As far as the American and Mexican publics were concerned, nothing had happened except some boring meetings where a bunch of finance wonks had voiced the hackneyed tenet that the world was all screwed up, and getting worse. It had hardly rated a few column inches.

Ironically, the outrage over the Mexican cop terrorizing the protestor had been the most memorable part of the G-20 summit. Footage of the cop, murderous intent etched deep into his features as he drew his weapon on the unarmed (save a tomato) peace advocate, received heavy network television and internet play, and the disheveled man in the Rastafarian cap had become somewhat of a minor celebrity, landing a few talk show appearances, and even getting a book deal. Though who would write it wasn’t disclosed.

No news was forthcoming on the cop. El Rey figured he’d either survived, or the government had covered up the shooting. After all, Mexico got enough bad press without aggravating their image with reports of cop killings at the global financial summit.

The boat had gotten to him, right on time, and it had then taken forty-eight hours to make its way to Mazatlan, where he disembarked and waved goodbye to a life at sea. Once on the mainland, he’d bused it to Culiacan, where he had a condo with a safe containing half a million dollars in cash and gold. From there he’d driven one of his cars to Mexico City, where he’d sold it to a man he knew who could make things disappear, then boarded a flight to Santiago, Chile, using one of his four fake passports — this time, a Spanish one. In South America, a Spanish passport got you waved through customs without comment, a throwback to the times when Spain had been the conquering victors.

After a night in Chile, he’d taken the recommendation of the hotel concierge and decided to try Mendoza. The rest was history. He’d settled in, found a few strip clubs with world-class talent, and cultivated an appreciation for fine wine and great food. He didn’t know where he’d wind up settling permanently, but for now, Mendoza was as good as anywhere.

He swirled the deep purple liquid around the curve of the glass and savored the aroma as the waiter arrived with his entree: a medium rare filet over a bed of grilled tomatoes and onions, drizzled with a balsamic glaze and accompanied by roasted vegetables and grilled potatoes. Heaven. He made a mental note to increase his time at the gym so he wouldn’t pay the piper for his indulgences. It wouldn’t do to get soft. One never knew what the future might bring.

Carefully setting his glass down, he sliced into the perfectly cooked filet and took a bite, admiring the way the beef flavor melded with the complements.

El Rey caught sight of his reflection in the restaurant window and saw a bohemian world traveler smiling back at him, enjoying the experience of being at peace with the world. He supposed he was, for once. For now.

Life was good.