Agent 21 (24 page)

For a moment he considered leaving via the ceiling to stop himself being viewed on the security camera. But there was no time for that. He needed to find this Gonzalez quickly, before they took him away. Instead, he grabbed a pair of swimming trunks and a towel from the wardrobe full of clothes in his room. If anyone saw him, he’d say he was going for a swim.

He took a deep breath and left the room.

Zak walked slowly along the corridor towards the landing which overlooked the atrium. The chirruping of the songbirds in their cage grew louder and soon he was walking down the staircase. Once he was in the atrium itself, he scoped the place out.

A guard walked through and frowned at him. Zak smiled, held up his swimming gear and headed towards the pool. But as soon as the guard had disappeared to the front of the house, he double-backed on himself.

He didn’t know for sure where Gonzalez was being held, but he had a pretty good idea. Zak crossed the atrium towards the basement stairs down which he had hidden the previous night.

It was still dark and gloomy down there. Zak hurried down the stairs, his skin prickling as he went. And sure enough, in the cell along the left-hand side of the basement corridor, he saw a man.

He was huddled in the far corner of the cell, clutching his knees, and he looked pretty bad. His dark eyes were wild with terror and he had a great purple bruise on one side of his face. He’d clearly taken a beating. He looked at Zak.

‘Kill me,’ he said in a hoarse, painful voice. ‘Do whatever you want to me. But leave my family, I beg of you.’ There were tears in his voice.

Zak looked over his shoulder, then approached the bars. ‘Listen carefully,’ he hissed. ‘I’m not killing anyone. I
know
you’re not a traitor to Martinez. I’m here to help you.’

Gonzalez stared at him, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘It doesn’t matter who I am,’ whispered Zak. ‘They’re going to kill you and your family. If you want any chance of getting out of this alive, you have to do
exactly
as I say. OK?’

Gonzalez stood up. He wasn’t much taller than Zak himself, but he was stocky and strong. He approached the bars. ‘You would really risk this?’ he asked, his eyes slightly wide.

‘Yes. But we
have
to hurry.’

Gonzalez was right by the bars now. He held out his hand. ‘My brother,’ he said, his face shining with gratitude.

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Zak impatiently took Gonzalez’s hand. But the moment they touched, he knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

Gonzalez clutched Zak’s hand, squeezing it hard and pulling his arm through the bars. He grabbed hold with his other hand and his eyes lit up with triumph as he started to shout at the top of his voice.

‘GET DOWN HERE,’ he yelled. ‘GET DOWN HERE NOW. I HAVE FOUND YOUR TRAITOR. HE IS WITH ME. I HAVE HIM!
GET DOWN HERE, NOW!
’

Panic surged through Zak. He struggled to get away, but Gonzalez kept a firm grip on him, pinning him to the bars of the cell. And in less than a minute he was surrounded by three more guards, all armed, all pointing their weapons in his direction. Only then did Gonzalez let go.

‘He tried to help me escape,’ the prisoner said in an urgent voice. ‘Tell Calaca. Tell him what he did!’

‘He’s lying,’ Zak protested. ‘He’s trying to save himself . . .’

But the guards didn’t want to listen. They hustled him away from the cell and up the stairs. Calaca, who had clearly heard the commotion, was striding across the atrium. One of Zak’s guards approached and they spoke quietly.

Calaca’s face was expressionless as he listened. When the guard had finished, he paused for a moment, fixed Zak with his single eye and wiped some sweat from his
forehead with the back of his hand. Then he spoke.

‘Bring him with me.’

Calaca moved purposefully, across the atrium towards the door of Martinez’s office. He didn’t bother to knock – he just burst straight in, and Zak was thrown in behind him.

Martinez was at his desk, smoking a cigar and reading through some papers. The yellow roses on his desk that Zak had noticed the previous day were fully open now. Martinez looked up in irritation. ‘What is it, Adan? I don’t wish to be disturbed right now . . .’

‘Harry Gold was caught trying to help Gonzalez escape. He was found outside the cell.
He
is your traitor.
He
is Agent 21.’

A horrible silence filled the room. Martinez calmly laid his papers on the desk in front of him. When he spoke, it was in little more than a whisper. ‘Is this true, Harry?’

‘No, señor.’

‘Then what were you doing outside the cell?’ Martinez appeared perfectly calm.

‘I . . . I was just being nosy, señor. I was on my way to the pool and I wondered what was down those stairs. I got talking to Gonzalez and he grabbed me and started shouting for the guards.’

Martinez nodded. ‘A reasonable explanation, wouldn’t you say, Adan? This Gonzalez would try to
pin the blame on anyone. We have seen people do worse things to try and save their skin, after all.’

Calaca looked like he was going to spit. ‘Señor,’ he said. ‘You are not seeing things as they are . . .’

Another silence. Martinez looked from Zak to Calaca, then back again. He looked like he was deciding which one to believe.

‘Bring Gonzalez here,’ he said finally.

Calaca barked an instruction and two of the guards disappeared. Zak felt sweat trickling down his back. Nobody spoke and it was impossible to read the expression on the drug lord’s face.

Two minutes later, the guards reappeared. They had Gonzalez with them, his hands tied behind his back. They pushed him further into the room so that he was standing a couple of metres away from Zak, just in front of Martinez’s desk.

The drug lord examined them both.

‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that I have to choose between you.’

He stood up, walked around the desk and behind the two prisoners. ‘Gonzalez, Adan tells me you are a traitor. That there is no doubt about it.’

‘No, señor . . . I swear . . . I would not dare . . .’

‘
Silence
.’

He continued to pace behind them.

‘And you, Harry. Yesterday you saved my son, today
you saved my family by bringing us closer. I have much to thank you for.’

Zak kept his head held high. He didn’t trust himself to answer.

‘And yet . . . and yet . . .’ Martinez mused. ‘Perhaps Adan is right. Perhaps I would be foolish to ignore these warning signs.’

He walked back to his desk, gently touched one of the yellow roses and bent down slightly to smell its fragrance. ‘Do you know, Harry, what the yellow rose represents in Mexico?’

Zak shook his head.

‘It represents death.’ He pulled one of the long stems out of the vase then returned to his seat and continued to smell the rose for a little while longer, his eyes closed.

‘Adan,’ he said finally. ‘Give me your gun.’

Calaca approached and removed his handgun from underneath his green football shirt. He placed it on the desk in front of his boss and took a step backwards. Martinez laid one hand almost tenderly on the handgun. He picked it up and pointed it at Gonzalez. The handcuffed prisoner started to shake. ‘No, señor . . .’ he breathed.

Martinez ignored him. He moved his aim towards Zak, who just jutted his chin out a bit further.

‘Maybe,’ Martinez whispered, ‘I should just kill you both, to be on the safe side.’

He waved the gun at Gonzalez, then at Zak again.

And then he laid it once more on the table.

Zak felt like a mouse being played with by a cat. Half of him considered taking his phone out there and then and dialling the distress number. But that would just give him away and the chances were that Martinez would shoot him immediately.

No. He had to brave this out. He had to keep up the pretence.

‘Harry,’ Martinez said. ‘I am a fair man. I shall give you the benefit of the doubt.’

Gonzalez’s legs buckled. ‘Please, señor . . . my little ones . . .’

‘
Silence!
’ shouted Martinez. He took a deep breath to calm himself, then looked back at Zak. ‘As I was saying,’ he continued, ‘I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I shall give you the chance to prove that you are not a traitor or a mole. That you are loyal to me and nobody else.’ Martinez’s face twitched. ‘Take the gun,’ he said.

Zak gave him a confused look. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s very simple, Harry. I told you to take the gun.’

Zak’s eyes flickered nervously between Martinez and Calaca. He stepped round the side of the desk and picked up the weapon. The handle felt slippery in his sweaty palm.

‘Good,’ said Martinez. ‘Now then. Kill Gonzalez.’

Zak blinked. It was the Devil’s choice: kill an innocent man, or save his skin.

‘Perhaps you didn’t hear me, Harry. Kill him. Now.’

Gonzalez started to shake – ‘
Please, señor
. . .’ – but Martinez was deaf to him. All his attention was on Zak. ‘I know it does not worry you to kill a man,’ Martinez almost purred. ‘You showed me that yesterday. Now I am giving you an opportunity to prove that your loyalty to me has not been an act.’

Zak licked his lips. He raised the gun towards Gonzalez.

‘That’s right,’ whispered Martinez. ‘Do it now.’

Zak felt sick. His brain burned. He tried to work out what Michael would tell him to do. What would Raf say? Or Gabs? Would they tell him to kill this man? To turn his children into orphans and his wife into a widow?

Was that the sort of person he’d turned into?

Gonzalez started to whimper. His head was bowed and his shoulders were shaking. Zak imagined Calaca and his men turning up at Gonzalez’s house, ready to kill his family. Could he really let that happen?

But then he imagined what they would do to him if he failed to shoot this man. He remembered something Michael had said months ago.
There are a great many people out there who don’t play by the same rules as ordinary folk
. Cesar Martinez Toledo was, without
doubt, one of those people. His retribution would be violent . . .

All eyes were on him. His hand didn’t shake as he kept the weapon pointed at Gonzalez.

He looked the terrified man in the eye.

And then he lowered the gun and placed it back down on the table. The game was up.

‘I won’t kill an innocent man,’ he said in a hoarse voice. He turned towards Martinez. ‘I’m not a murderer, unlike you.’

A strange expression crossed Martinez’s face: a brief look of pain, as if Zak’s betrayal had truly hurt him.

But it didn’t last long.

‘Search him,’ he instructed.

It was Calaca himself who patted Zak down like an airport security official. He found Zak’s phone immediately, of course, and confiscated it; but he failed to locate the tiny GPS chip which Zak had secreted in his sock. That wasn’t much comfort. Now that Zak couldn’t let his controllers know he was in trouble, all the GPS chip would do was lead them to his corpse . . .

‘Lock him up,’ Martinez said in a flat voice. ‘Keep a guard outside the cell.’ He looked up at Zak. ‘I treated you as a friend, Harry Gold,’ he whispered. ‘I treated you as
family
. You saw fit to betray that trust, and now you will feel the anger of Cesar Martinez
Toledo. We will wait until after dark. Then my men will take you from the compound and deal with you.’ He turned to Calaca. ‘I want
you
to be the one who executes him, Adan. Leave his body hanging, so that the birds start to peck at his flesh. Then, when he can still be recognized, dump his body outside the house of this Uncle Frank. I want the old man to know what awaits him after we kill him too. Report back to me when the boy is dead. Now get him out of my sight. I never want to see this fool again.’

A nod from Calaca, and the guards roughly manhandled Zak out of the office. Just as he was leaving, he heard Martinez’s voice again. ‘And kill this Gonzalez, just to be sure . . .’

‘No!’ Zak shouted. ‘
No!
’

But too late. The office door closed behind him just as there was a shot. A shot that meant Gonzalez’s children had just been orphaned.

Out in the atrium, he saw Cruz. He was coming down the stairs as Zak was being forced towards the basement. Their eyes met, and Cruz looked confused. He didn’t do anything, though. He just stood on the stairs and watched as the guards forced Zak down towards the cell.

One of them opened the cell door; another hurled Zak inside. He heard the door being locked almost before he hit the ground with a thump. He winced,
wondering for a minute if his arm had been broken. But he could move it all right – not that it would do him much good, locked in here, waiting for Calaca to come and finish him off. Perhaps there would be an interrogation first. He thought back to his ordeal on the island. Calaca, he knew, would not show the same restraint as his guardian angels. He could be in for a very unpleasant few hours – if he even lasted that long.