The Last Line (22 page)

Inspiration arrived a few minutes later, however, in the form of two men, one heavyset, the other skinny and tall. Both were a bit unsteady, evidently well along into an evening of bar-crawling. The older, more portly of the two wore a white sports coat with an outrageously vibrant tie—the sort of neon-hued strip of painted silk sold in souvenir shops throughout those Mexican towns that relied on the tourist trade. The other, a kid barely into his twenties, wore a bright T-shirt advertising the Costa Maya resort.

He thought for a moment, then nodded to himself. This could work …

Leaving a tip at the table, Teller walked over to the tourist with the bright tie. “My God!” he said, grinning broadly. “Another couple of yankees!
Damn,
it's good to see you!”

“Well, not quite a
yankee,
mister,” the big man said with a soft drawl born in the Deep South. He looked Teller over, head to foot and then back again, taking in the flower-print shirt and the expensive camera around his neck. “Name's Sam Winters, of Peachtree, Georgia.” He indicated his friend. “This here's my … partner.”

“Greg Coleman,” the other said.

“Callahan,” Teller told them. He let just a bit of Deep South into his own voice. “John Callahan. Can I buy you boys a drink?”

“Well, I sure wouldn't say no—”

“Sammy, do you think that's a good idea?” The skinny one sounded suspicious.

“I know, I know,” Teller said, raising his hands. “
Never
trust a stranger! I just had a quick question for you. What'll y'all have?”

“I'll have a beer.”

“Sure. Me, too.”

“Tabernero!”
Teller called.
“Tres cervazas, por favor!”

“Hey, you speak the lingo real good.”

“Thanks,” Teller said. He dropped his voice to a more conspiratorial level. “Listen, I know this'll sound crazy as hell, me being a total stranger and everything … but … you see my friend at the table over there? Dungarees and a briefcase?”

Winters squinted into the gloom. “Yeah…”

“He was just telling me how very much he admires your
tie
! Where on
earth
did you get it?”

“What … this?” Winters touched the neckpiece. Up close, Teller could see that it was decorated with flamingoes and palm trees—not exactly a coherent fashion statement. “Why, Cancún. Little shop on the waterfront. I forget the name.”

“See, my friend is shy. I mean,
really
shy. He just couldn't get up the nerve to come ask you himself, so I told him I'd find out for him.”

“I wish I could help you, but there are so many little shops there.” He turned to Coleman. “Was it La Playa?”

“Well, it doesn't really matter,” Teller said. Their beers arrived, and he picked his up, raising the glass to salute the two. “Hey, enjoy your stay, okay?”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Callahan.”

“No, thank
you.
”

Carrying his glass, Teller walked back across the restaurant, passing his own table and approaching the seaman, who was just starting to get up.

“Going somewhere, sailor?” Teller asked, speaking Spanish.

The man gave a start and clutched the briefcase against his chest. “Who are you?”

“Juan Escalante,” Teller told him. He was fishing, curious as to whether the sailor knew the real Escalante.

“You don't look Latino.” The man was suspicious, but not because of the name. He was also scared. Good. “You look like a gringo tourist.”

“My mother was from Seattle.” Teller pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to his driver's license, snapping it shut immediately before the other had time to read it. “El Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional. You may have heard of us?”

The man's grip on the briefcase tightened, and he gave a sharp negative shake of his head. “What does CISEN want with me? I've done nothing wrong!”

“Relax,
señor.
” Teller gave him his friendliest smile. “We're not interested in you. We're interested in the man who was just here with you.”

“I know nothing about him.”

“Of course, of course you don't. What is your name?”

“Federico Castro.”

“And what were the two of you talking about, Federico?”

“He … he wanted to sell me something.”

“What?”

“A watch. He had a watch with the strap cut. I think he must have been a thief. I told him to go away.”

“I see. And what's in the briefcase?”

“Nothing. Papers. Listen, you have no right—”

“
Cálmate,
Federico. I know you are lying. I watched him bring that briefcase in here and leave it with you. I notice you haven't bothered checking what's in it. Do you trust him that much?”

The man's eyes widened slightly, then narrowed. “Listen, I've done nothing,
nothing
! Leave me alone!”

“Or what? You'll call for the police?” Teller considered the man for a moment. He was terrified and retreating deeper and deeper into his denials. Teller needed to turn up the heat a notch or two. “I have news for you, friend. CISEN has … connections down here. A working arrangement with some of the major business concerns in the area. You understand?” As he spoke, Teller absently touched his forefinger to a puddle of moisture on the tabletop beside the man's beer, then dragged it swiftly across the surface, forming the letter
Z.
Leaning forward, he said again, “You understand?”

Castro gave a small gasp, a short, sharp intake of breath. Drops of sweat were standing out on his forehead now. Yes, he understood.

“What is the name of the man who just left you?”

“
Señor
 … I … no.” He shook his head. “
You
do not understand. It would mean my life to tell you anything!”

“It will mean your death if you do not.” Teller tapped his fingertip beside the
Z
on the tabletop for emphasis. Los Zetas had a certain reputation.

“You … your people are supposed to be in on this! Working with him, a part of the program!”

“Not all of us agree with the program,” Teller told him. He nodded at the briefcase. “And the man who gave you
that
is not … trustworthy. It seems that he stole from the wrong people.”

“Look … I did what was asked of me. I deserve to be paid!”

Until that moment, Teller had not been absolutely certain that the briefcase contained payment. Castro had just confirmed that.

“I agree. Don't worry. You may keep your payment. As I said, it is the
delivery boy
we are interested in.”

“Julio. He calls himself Julio.”

“I see,” Teller said dryly. “And what is his
real
name?” Teller was fishing here, and taking a small chance with the attempt. Julio might well be the courier's real name, but in this kind of dealing he was almost certainly using an alias.

“You know the answer to that.”

“Of course,” Teller lied. “But we need to know if you know.”

“I was told his name was … Hamadi. Mohamed Abdullah Hamadi.”

Teller was careful not to betray his surprise. “Correct. And where is the … shipment?”

Castro blinked. “At the warehouse, of course.”

“
Which
warehouse?”

Castro's eyes narrowed. “There is only one. I don't think you know. You're playing a game, you're trying to trick me!”

It was time, Teller decided, to play his last card.

“My friend, did you think I came in here alone?”

“What?”

He nodded toward the bar at the far end of the restaurant, where Coleman and Winters were sitting with their drinks. “See the big man? The one with the tie?”

“Yes.”

“One of my associates.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Hm. Believe or not, as you wish.” At that moment, Winters looked up, and Teller caught his eye. The big man grinned.

Teller grinned back. “You wouldn't know it to look at him,” he said through the smile, “but he happens to be one of our best assassins. If I give the sign, he will follow you out of this place, hunt you down, and strangle you with his tie.”

As he spoke, Teller touched just below his throat, moving the fingers up and down to indicate a tie. Winters's grin broadened, and he reached up and took hold of the neon tie, jigging it up and down.

The blood drained from the frightened man's face, and he sagged back in his chair.
“Dios mío.”

“You
will
answer my questions. What warehouse?”

“The usual one, the one on Santa Elena, by the airport.”

“And when did you make the delivery?”

“Two days ago. Wednesday.”

“Hamadi was there? He took delivery?”

“Yes. There were four or five others there with him.”

“Uh-huh. Other Arabs?”

“One of them was. I'm not sure about the others. I didn't hear their names. But I heard him talking to one of the others in what sounded like Arabic.”

“Were there two … packages?”

Castro nodded.

“How big? How were they packaged?”

“In wooden crates.” He indicated a size with his hands. “About a meter and a half by a meter by a meter, more or less.”

“They were heavy?”

Again a nod. “A friend off the ship helped me. We had to use a handcart.”

“How heavy?”

“I don't know. Thirty, maybe thirty-five kilos.”

“And why didn't they pay you then?”

“I don't know. I wanted them to. Hamadi … he said they needed to check the merchandise, that he would meet me here tonight.”

“So the packages met with their approval, I suppose. Have you checked?”

The man shook his head.

“Let's have a look.”

The man was reluctant, but Teller told him, “It would be a shame to choke out your life with such a garishly hideous tie around your throat.”

“Here.”

“You open it.”

Teller had considered the possibility that the briefcase contained not money but a bomb, a cheap means of getting rid of a witness. The odds were against that, however; between their reputations and having more money than God, the cartels would be more likely to let him live so that he could make other deliveries in the future. The briefcase clicked open without incident, and the man turned it so Teller could see.

“Well, well.” Not money—but four brick-sized bundles of white powder wrapped in clear plastic. Perhaps two kilos. If it was already cut, at a hundred dollars a gram it would have a street value of $200,000.

Teller was glad he'd been careful and simply accused Hamadi of stealing from the wrong people instead of openly assuming that the briefcase contained money. There'd always been the chance that the payoff had been in barter.

The revelation raised an uncomfortable ethical dilemma for him, though. Two kilos of cocaine represented a staggering toll in human addiction, suffering, and crime. He wasn't working for the DEA, it wasn't his job, but he hated to see that much of the white powder making its way north to the streets of some U.S. city. Even knowing that two kilos was a drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of tons that made it north across the border every year, he didn't want to let it go. Several options occurred to him. He could revert to his role of CISEN officer and confiscate the stuff, or pretend to put the seaman under arrest. That would call too much attention to him, however, when he needed to stay out of the light. If the sailor put up a struggle, he might have trouble talking his way out of it when the police showed up.

He could not put the mission at risk, even for two kilos of cocaine.

There might be a way to stop it, though.

“I'd like a sample,” he said. As he spoke, with his left hand he slipped open a zippered compartment on his camera case, reaching in with a finger and emerging with a slender black sliver of plastic perhaps a third the length of a toothpick. He kept his hand below the table, out of sight.

Castro hesitated, then nodded—perhaps while thinking of garish ties. Careful not to alert other patrons in the bar to what was happening, Teller reached into the briefcase with his free hand, worked one end of a sealed plastic bag open, then touched the finger of his other hand to the cocaine inside. As he did so, the action blocked from the sailor by the partially open briefcase itself, he pressed the RFID chip into the bag, burying it within the powder. He made a show then of pulling out his finger and rubbing a taste of the powder stuck to it across his upper gums … and felt the characteristic cold, tingling numbness of the drug's touch.

His estimate of the drug's street value went up to half a million. “Well, that tells me what I need to know,” Teller said, resealing the opened bag and closing the briefcase. “Thank you.”

Castro snapped the briefcase shut and took it back. “You … you're letting me go?”

Teller gave a careless shrug. “Of course. It's Hamadi we want, not you.”

The RFID tracking chip, Teller reflected, wasn't a perfect answer to his ethical dilemma. It would respond to a radio signal from a tracking device, locating the shipment, but only across a fairly short range—a few hundred feet at most. Once this shipment vanished into the multiple pipelines funneling hundreds of tons of cocaine north across the border, it would be almost impossible to find it again, save by the most extraordinary chance.

But the drug would be cut again at least once before it was sold on the streets, and when it was there was a good chance that the chip would be found. Whoever found it would have to consider the possibility that someone was tracking that particular shipment of drugs. The distribution network might be disrupted; the source of that batch of coke would be suspect. Federico Castro might find himself in considerable trouble with whoever he was planning to sell the stuff to.