Power and Empire

40

Midas didn’t mind navigating, so Ryan slid in behind the wheel of the Peugeot. He enjoyed driving a stick. It made him feel alive, even in the stop-and-go Buenos Aires traffic. He nearly ran over an older female pedestrian at a four-way intersection — which meant he was getting the hang of driving like an Argentine. She gave him an energetic “Up yours” gesture and called him “¡Pelotudo!” which appeared to be the go-to word for angry people in this country.

Ryan turned left on Avenida Santa Fe, working through what little they did know about the situation while he drove. The team had been over it until they were blue in the face, and there were a dozen plausible scenarios — but some vital piece of evidence that would make everything fall into place still eluded them.

Eddie Feng was a Taiwanese national. Vincent Chen was also from Taiwan, but living in the United States with a cover identity selling imported greeting cards from the People’s Republic of China. So far, the only thing linking the two men was their propensity to frequent Tres Equis/Sun Yee On triad strip clubs that exploited underage girls — a trait that should have earned them both a spot in a very dark hole but didn’t explain Chen’s connection to the PRC and whether he was friend or foe. The meetings between the Chinese and the other delegations had definitely brought him to Argentina.

This Japanese girl added a new twist to the mix. The guy Ryan killed from Villa 31 had apparently been after her with a machete — which by virtue of her enemies edged her into the good-guy column. Sometimes, though, the enemy of my enemy was, well, just another damn enemy. It was not too much of a leap to assume she was there because of the Japanese delegation — but ministers of agriculture rarely engendered enough intrigue to cause someone to run through a tunnel filled with sewage. And if this woman had arrived with the Japanese agricultural delegation, how did she even know about the existence of the tunnel? Jack had seen her exit the Palacio Duhau Hyatt, the same hotel where the Chinese foreign minister was staying. The Japanese had rooms at the Four Seasons, more than five blocks away. Why was she there? Why had she gotten to Villa 31 right after the brunette with known ties to Chen? She’d warned Jack to run. Why hadn’t she confronted him — or, at the very least, left him to his own fate?

Ryan tapped the steering wheel in thought. He had a lot of puzzle pieces. They just seemed to be from different puzzles.

He passed the Parrilla Aires Criollos restaurant on his right, and continued for another block and a half to a parking garage just beyond the intersection with Riobamba. A chilly wind blew in from the Río de la Plata, which, at 120 miles wide, seemed more like a bay off the Atlantic than a river. Once he was parked, Ryan grabbed a dark windbreaker from the back of the Peugeot. It would cut the wind, and had the added benefit of being nighttime camouflage, should he need to move covertly when the sun went down.

The men split up after they left the vehicle, Midas loitering his way east, browsing the shops along Santa Fe while Jack went north a block on narrow, tree-lined Riobamba. Businesses occupied the bottom floor of most buildings, but judging from the many balconies above, most of the upper floors were private apartments. Ever thinking strategically, Jack noted the prevalence of concrete railings and statuary around the balconies and thought how the Secret Service would avoid this kind of street like the plague. There were just too damn many places to hide.

Pockets of old men with jaunty tamlike gaucho hats sat here and there at the many sidewalk cafés on the quiet street, sipping yerba mate through a silver straw in a communal gourd called a mate that gave the drink its name. Mate was a national pastime. Entire shops were devoted to mate mugs and straws and thermoses, as well as exotic leather carriers resembling a tall binocular case in which to store everything. The hotel valet had offered Jack a drink from his mate straw, instructing him to empty it before passing it back. Jack had complied, grudgingly, and found it tasted like a mixture of boiling water and hay. He preferred to get his caffeine fix from actual tea, or a good old cup of coffee. The stuff made by the Navy stewards in the White House was particularly good… but he didn’t get by there to see his folks as much as he used to. Certainly not as much as he should.

It was a little after four p.m. when Ryan turned back to the east on Arenales, paralleling Santa Fe for several blocks so he could come in the opposite direction from Midas with the restaurant in the middle. The thought of Navy mess coffee made him wish for a cup, and he began to look for a likely shop as he walked. It would give him something to do as he whiled away the hours… and watched.

In days gone by, arriving on station early was a double-edged sword. Get there too late and you missed important changes in personnel, local habits, and anyone from the other team who decided to set up an ambush or conduct countersurveillance. Coming in too early ran the risk of drawing unwanted attention.

Then smartphones came along and devoured the collective brain of society. Mobile phones were the single greatest thing to happen to a surveillance team in recent history — and communication had nothing to do with it. Trained observers generally relied on a set of known habits and best practices. But just as a baboon might alert the gazelle of a leopard’s presence in the wild, being noticed by the local populace was a surefire way to spook a target. Since most noses had become buried in a phone screen, it was a safe bet that a person could spend a couple hours browsing local stores in a three-block operational area without drawing so much as a second look. That time more than doubled if a stop at the neighborhood coffee shop was added to the mix.

City crews had already come by and dropped off wooden barricades in front of Parrilla Aires Criollos. These ten-foot-long sawhorses leaned against a row of garbage bins, causing pedestrian traffic to split and flow around them like water around a boulder in the middle of a river. Uniformed officers began to arrive approximately an hour after Ryan and Midas came on station.

The newly formed Buenos Aires city police looked to be playing second fiddle to the beret-wearing Grupo Alacrán, the elite Scorpion Group of the Gendarmería Nacional Argentina. Dour-looking men with H&K MP5 submachine guns and Steyr AUG assault rifles deployed from two four-door Volkswagen Amarok pickups and a white Mercedes-Benz communications van on either side of the restaurant door.

Right-wing death squads during Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the 1970s and 1980s left the population suspicious of the military — or anything that resembled it. The Army was not allowed to take part in civilian affairs, but the government got around this by describing the GNA as a “civilian security force of a military nature.” The Scorpion Group looked about as military as they came, but then they had to be. While other squads within the Gendarmería provided Argentina with border security, Grupo Alacrán was tasked with the mission of combating terrorism and often assisted with the protection of Argentine and visiting dignitaries.

These new arrivals set up the wooden barricades quickly, forcing pedestrians to cross Avenida Santa Fe in order to go east or west rather than walk in front of the restaurant. Ryan and Midas quickly found themselves outside the perimeter, half a block from the restaurant.

The presence of men with machine guns upped the feel of the operational tempo, putting Ryan and Midas on their toes. Buenos Aires had seen more than its share of domestic terror, with a recent bombing in front of a Gendarmería building. Members of the Scorpion Group eyed people in the passing crowd as if they were food, their mean-mug looks sending people across the street as surely as the wooden barricades. A dog handler with a visage as fierce as that of his Belgian Malinois stood at parade rest to the right of the restaurant doors.

None of these guys were on a mobile phone.

In an effort to remain inconspicuous, Ryan and Midas had looked through the window of every shop for three blocks on either side of the restaurant up and down Avenida Santa Fe, some of them twice. Midas was able to work his way up to a vacant seventh-floor balcony above a restaurant called La Madeleine at the end of the block. Ryan claimed a vacant window seat at the McDonald’s almost directly across the street from the dinner meeting venue. He was pretending to surf on his cell when Adara called. He relayed her message to Midas over the radio a moment later.

“Chen’s moving.”

“About time,” Midas said. “I stopped to gawk at that shoe store down there so many times I was about to have to break down and buy me a new pair of Pumas whether I need them or not. They coming this way?”

“She didn’t know yet,” Jack said. “Don’t you get shot up there, brother. These Gendarmería guys look a little jumpy if you ask me.”

“Yes, Mom,” Midas said.

Across Santa Fe, a caravan of dark sedans, each much larger than the bulk of the vehicles in Buenos Aires, began to arrive in front of Parrilla Aires Criollos. Men in dark suits dismounted from the front to hold the doors for more important men in more expensive suits as they exited the rear seats. Uniformed Buenos Aires city police officers moved wooden barricades while Grupo Alacrán operators stood by and glared over their SMGs.

Little of this would be for the agricultural delegations. The foreign minister of China was definitely on his way.

Personal security was minimal for secretaries and ministers of agriculture, but it wasn’t nonexistent. Express kidnappings — impromptu abductions of people who looked like they had money — were all too common in South America. To make matters worse, the respective countries of each of these delegations had advertised their attendance well in advance. Some governments, like Japan, sent a security man; other officials, like the Swiss minister of agriculture, were wealthy enough to hire someone on their own to watch their back.

Jack made a mental note of each delegation as it arrived. So far, he’d seen representatives from six countries: Argentina, India, Japan, Switzerland, Thailand, and the Netherlands. Each minister had at least one security man, and between three and five assistants. The Gendarmería had closed the restaurant to regular customers, but it was a relatively small space, and the private function would come close to filling at least half the seats.

Ryan looked at his watch — six twenty-three. Another hour and it would be dark. It was still far too early for most Argentines to eat dinner, but many of the visiting ministers would be more in the mood for breakfast. Seven p.m. in Buenos Aires was midnight in Amsterdam and six a.m. in Beijing — so concessions for the time differences were made in the spirit of good diplomacy. Ryan’s North American stomach was on D.C. time. Six-thirty was just about right for dinner. He loved a good steak, but eating one every night after nine o’clock seemed like a recipe for bad dreams and blood with the consistency of 30 weight motor oil.

Ding Chavez broke squelch fifteen minutes later, crackling with static as his radio came into range: “…you guys copy?”

“You’re coming in slurred and stupid,” Midas said. “Go ahead, boss.” Being a retired lieutenant colonel with Delta earned Midas a great deal of latitude. He never would have said such a thing to Clark, but Chavez played by somewhat looser rules in the name of team cohesion when it came to radio decorum.

“Roger that,” Ding said. “Chen and one of the Asian males are in the in the Chevy, heading… They’re heading south… No… Shit… These streets are all turned around… East on Libertador… Turning south on Ayacucho now. Looks like we’re coming to you — scratch that. He cut back toward Recoleta Cemetery… Pulling over at Adara’s ice cream shop.”

“Copy,” Midas said. “We’re getting movement here. Gendarmería has the place buttoned down. Due respect, boss, but shouldn’t we send this information to higher and maybe have someone from State contact the Argentines and warn them of a possible threat? Chen and one actor leaves three still in play somewhere.”

“I ran it by Clark,” Chavez said. “He thinks we still have too many variables. He gave me the option, and I say we sit and see what develops, at least for the next few minutes.”

A tall Asian man with a buzz cut exited the restaurant and gave the officer with the dog a dismissive nod. The pigtail of an earpiece disappeared into the collar of his suit jacket. Ryan made out the telltale print of a pistol over his right hip. A similar bulge on his left side, this one slightly blockier, was surely a radio. The man motioned to the BA city police officers with a flick of his hand, and two of them scurried to move the barricades off the street for an imminent arrival.

Buzz Cut was the advance, on station early to see that things were safe before his boss got there.

A yelping siren drew Jack’s attention to the east and he watched two Yamaha police motorcycles nose out from Rodríguez Peña a block away. Strobe lights flashed in the gathering dusk. A black Cadillac sedan stayed tight behind the bikes onto Santa Fe, followed by a shiny black Escalade, and then five more sedans. Two more bikes brought up the rear. It was nothing close to the size of his father’s detail, but a seven-vehicle motorcade package with a motorcycle escort was a lot for a foreign minister, even from a country as large and controversial as the People’s Republic of China. Jack had read a couple CIA briefs on Li Zhengsheng. For someone so high up in PRC government, little was known about the man, but for the fact that he appeared to dote on his wife and son — and he was apparently quite full of himself.

“The ego has landed,” Ryan said. “Foreign Minister Li is on site.”

Ten minutes later, the Canadians and Uruguayans arrived in turn. The Gendarmería posted out front appeared to relax now that the dignitaries who’d been invited were all safely off the street.

“We’ve got ten digs inside,” Midas said. “Including Foreign Minister Li. Thirty to forty staffers and a whole shitload of armed dudes, half of those from Li’s detail.”

“Copy,” Chavez said.

Jack took a sip of his coffee. It wasn’t White House Navy mess, but it wasn’t too shabby, either. “Any movement from Chen?”

“That’s a negative,” Adara said. “They’ve dismounted and gone into a café for dinner.”

“You’ve still just got eyes on the two?” Jack asked.

“Correct,” Chavez said. “Chen and one of the Asian males from the airport.”

Jack pushed away from his table. “No females?” The question was rhetorical. Chavez had already told him who he was watching — but muttering was part of Ryan’s process.

“No joy,” Adara said. “Or the second male.”

“Hmm,” Jack said. “Both women were here last night, scoping out the restaurant at the same time we were. They would fit in with the locals, so it makes sense for Chen to send them in close while he stays back. I’m betting they’re somewhere nearby. Could be they’re waiting for a meet with one of the Chinese staffers. Midas, anybody look like they’re waiting around with the vehicles?”

“Can’t tell,” Midas said. “I have a good eyeball on the front door, but from up here Santa Fe’s a river of black sedans…” His voice trailed off. When he spoke again, it was in a rasping whisper. “Jack, didn’t you say that Japanese girl you followed had a big scab on her face?”

“Scratches,” Ryan said. “Not exactly a scab. Why? You see her?”

Midas whispered, “On the balcony two floors below me, sitting behind a rifle. The girl’s runnin’ a gun.”