The Return: A Novel (38 page)

Marder spent the next hour or so pacing his roof terrace. He’d brought half a dozen bottles of Dos Equis in an ice bucket up there and he drank one after another, spinning the recent events in his mind and trying not to scan the causeway more than every ten minutes. Boyfriend? In Michoacán? Finally he saw the yellow motorcycle turn off the road, pass the guard car, and drive on toward the house, with an intact daughter aboard.

“Where have you been?” he demanded when she walked out onto the roof. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“Oh, hello? I’ve been worried sick about
you.
You totally disappeared, and the
federales
had no information about you—I checked with Major Naca—so I was out cruising the roadsides for artistically arranged limb piles.”

“But really.”

“Really, I went to see my uncle Angel at the famous hotel.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because he’s a Templo, and Skelly went off with the Templos and didn’t come back, and he might have known something.”

“And did he?”

“Well, at first he didn’t want to talk to me. And then he said that you both were with El Gordo and he didn’t think anything bad was going to happen to you. I think he’s incredibly ashamed about what he’s come to. Did you know that place is almost a brothel now?”

“Yeah, I gathered that. Did you eventually find a topic of conversation?”

“You, actually. He wanted to know what you were really doing here.”

“Yes, everyone asks me that and then they don’t believe me when I tell them.”

“Because you’re devious in a perfectly sincere way. Anyway, Angel is terrified of you. He thinks the gangsters you’ve pissed off are going to come after him.”

“They might. Maybe I should get him to come here.”

“I suggested that,” she said, “but that scared him too. People watch him, and, of course, this place is guarded by Templos. Honestly, he was the saddest man, and he looks just like Mom did when we were kids. Could I have a beer too?”

He handed her one from the ice bucket.

“It was freaky, Dad. This guy, this stranger with Mom’s face, and I was talking to him, familiarly, like I’d known him as a kid, and the funny thing was, he started talking the same way. He showed me photographs of the family. I noticed there were none of Mom.”

“There’s one. I’ll show it to you.”

“Don Esteban must’ve been a piece of work—I mean, to get that mad that his daughter married without his permission. And in the sixties too.”

“The seventies, actually, but to him it could’ve been the
eighteen
seventies. It was all about shame.
His
grandfather, before the revolution, was the absolute monarch of an area the size of a county. Las Palmas Floridas was their hacienda, hence the name of the hotel, the lost golden place, the legend passed down generation to generation, that family pride; they were
hidalgos, criollos
of the purest blood, that whole pile of shit, and so nothing they ever did would make up for the loss of that status. For a d’Ariés to be reduced to hotelkeeping was shameful enough, but at least he still had absolute rule over his family. Until he didn’t and a gringo ran off with his daughter, a girl he’d already promised to someone. He erased her—well, you know the sad story.”

“Yes, but talking to Angel, I had this—what do you call it? Not déjà vu but spooky in the same way. For a little while I had the sensation of being in an alternate life, as if I had always been Mexican and lived here and had known Angel and his wife and all my cousins, been part of a huge Mexican family. And while I was feeling that, a bunch of drunk guys came in with girls and wanted booze and rooms, and one of them hit on me. It was pretty gross, and Angel, like, totally
disappeared
—I mean, he became another person in front of my eyes, a really sort of nasty person. So I came back.”

She took a long draft. “And I’ll be here for a while, I guess. I didn’t tell you, but a while ago I emailed Schuemacher and ditched my assistantship. Someone else will have to build the next frontier of engineering.”

“That seems a little radical.”

“I don’t know. No more radical than a book editor setting up as a player in the Mexican drug wars.”

“I’m not a player in the drug wars.”

“Actually, you are. Uncle Angel told me all about the arms-and-heroin deal. And since I seem to have committed my life to this enterprise, could you just promise me one thing? Could you for once tell me the fucking truth?”

“I’m sorry, Carmelita. I will endeavor to be more forthcoming in the future.”

“Why am I not convinced?” she said, but under her breath. Then she asked, “Is Skelly back too?”

“No, he remains as a guest of El Gordo against the arrival of the package we promised him.”

“He’s a hostage?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Then how come they let you go?”

“Well, that’s something I need to talk with you about.” And he told her the Warren Alsop story and what he proposed to do and asked her if it could, in fact, be done.

“Oh, sure. Hacking the backhaul of a cell system is fairly trivial, if you have access to the router and the other hardware, which we do. I can set it up in … well, with testing and all, it’ll take a couple of hours.”

“Wonderful! Could you start now? I haven’t slept in almost forty hours, and I need to collapse after I call our guy.”

They both stood up and she hugged him, the first spontaneous hug he’d had from his girl in a while, and it made up for a good deal. She left and entered the rooftop storeroom where they had housed the cell tower.

Marder took out one of the house’s many prepaid cell phones and called the number Alsop had given him.

“This is Marder. I’ve decided to come clean,” he said when Alsop answered.

“Well, Mr. Marder! I kind of figured you’d be calling.”

“Yeah, you were right. I’m not a retiree at all.”

“No, you’re not. And what have you got to say to me?”

“It’s not something I can discuss on an unsecured line. I need to make some calls and then I’ll be ready to make a full and frank confession. And when you hear what I’ve got to say, I believe you’ll be in a much better professional situation than you are at present. I’ll call you later.”

With that, he hung up on the expostulating voice, went to his room, stripped and showered, and collapsed facedown on his bed like a man shot through the heart.

When he awoke, the setting sun was reddening his windows. He shaved and dressed with particular care, in his only suit, a pale-silk-and-linen number, no socks, worn huaraches—a suitable outfit, he thought, for an international man of mystery.

He went downstairs and found his daughter, who raised her eyebrows.

“Impressive,” she said. “You should dress like that all the time; you’d get a little more respect around here.”

“I get far too much respect around here as it is. So—did you do the thing?”

“The thing is done. Do you have the number the call’s going to be routed to?”

“Yeah, your cell phone, and then you’ll send it off to this one.” He punched a number into his phone and let the call go through.

“Ornstein? Marder. How’re you doing?”

“Wonderfully. I am the envy of every starving lefty in New York and enjoying it immensely. So
this
is why people sell their souls to capital! And you’re calling to evict me, right?”

“No, not at all. But I do need a small favor.”

“A kidney? Not an issue. Let me get a knife from the kitchen and I’ll have it out in a jiffy.”

Marder laughed and told Ornstein that he wanted him to impersonate a federal official—a serious felony—and Ornstein said it would be his pleasure and who was the bozo, and Marder told him and Ornstein soon found a YouTube of the bozo making a speech, and Ornstein said it would be a piece of cake. Then Marder gave him the scenario and they closed the conversation.

He called Alsop again (the man picked up on the second ring) and in peremptory tones told him to be at Casa Feliz in half an hour, alone, no wires.

Alsop came—somewhat late, to show who was in charge—and he had a couple of heavies in the car with him but entered the house by himself. Marder took him out to the pool deck and sat him at a chair under an umbrella. The sun was just touching its rim to the cobalt line of the sea.

Marder said, “I hope you aren’t wired, Alsop, but I’m not going to determine whether you are or not. It’ll be on your head if any of this gets out.”

“If any of what gets out?”

“Tell me, did you ever hear of an operation called Southern Gadget?”

“No. What’s it supposed to be?”

“I’ll give you a little background. Approximately five months ago, a convoy of three trucks left a research reactor outside of Perm, Russia, carrying twenty-three hundred canisters of plutonium reactor fuel in the form of metallic buttons, for transport to the Russian Nuclear Center at Sarov in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The trucks arrived safely, but there were only twenty-two hundred and twelve canisters aboard when they arrived. Eighty-eight canisters, each about the size of a coffee can, each containing about 10.25 kilograms of plutonium, were in the wind. The Russians kept this very, very quiet.”

“Then how come
you
know?”

“National technical means,” Marder replied. “Later it was found that one of the workers at Perm had been suborned by Ilyas Musadov. Do you know who he is?”

“No. Why should I? What does this have to do with you, anyway?”

“Be patient, I’ll get to that. Musadov is a Chechen terrorist. He has wide contacts in central Asia and via Afghanistan with the drug trade in the western hemisphere. In any case, we believe the material was transported via Kazakhstan and Afghanistan to Karachi, where it was apparently put aboard a ship, although at the time we had no idea which ship. About six weeks ago, we received reliable intel that the shipment had reached the hemisphere and had been off-loaded at the port of Lázaro Cárdenas and into the possession of Melchor Cuello, of the La Familia cartel. That’s when my team and I were mobilized. The operation to locate and secure the plutonium is called Southern Gadget. It is now the single highest priority of the U.S. intelligence community.”

Alsop stared at him for a moment and then laughed. “You must think I’m fucking stupid.”

“Not at all. You spotted right away that I was not what I said I was. Now I’m telling you the full story, because I can’t have you interfering with my operations or movements.”

“And you expect me to believe that you’re a, what, a CIA agent?”

“I don’t expect you to believe anything. I want you to call Carleton Everett. I assume you’re familiar with the name.” Marder took out his cell phone. “Here, I’ll dial his number.”

“It’s after eight in D.C. There won’t be anyone there.”

“Yes, there will. No one at the top of U.S. intel is going home until we have the cans. There are eighty-eight of them. Just one of them surrounded by explosives and detonated would render a city center uninhabitable for decades. It might not kill a lot of people, but the economic costs would be devastating. It’s a perfect terror weapon. Everett is obviously one of the people involved, because it looks like a drug gang is getting into the contract terrorism business. You know what they say—the best way to smuggle a terror weapon into the United States is to hide it in a shipment of cocaine or heroin. What are you people catching now? Ten, fifteen percent? And these are the boys who know how to ship major weight. Or maybe—best case—they’re going to try to make the Mexican Army back off by threatening to use them in Mexico City. It doesn’t matter. We have to get control of that material. So? You want me to call him, or would you rather use your phone?”

For the first time, Marder saw the man drop his confident mien. Alsop pulled out his own cell phone and dialed a familiar number, that of the deputy administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

*   *   *

Up in the little room on the roof, Carmel Marder’s cell phone vibrated. She took the call and said, “Drug Enforcement Administration, Deputy Administrator Everett’s office.”

“I’d like … I mean, this is Warren Alsop, the head of the Rabbit Punch operation in Michoacán. In Mexico? I’d like to speak with Deputy Administrator Everett, please.”

“Yes, sir. May I ask what this is in reference to?”

“Ah, well, it’s in reference to an operation called Southern Gadget. I have this man here who claims he’s—”

“Please, sir! This is an unsecured line,” said Statch in a shocked tone. “Hold please for the deputy administrator.”

She waited for half a minute, then worked her computer keys and heard the sound of ringing.

“Everett,” said a voice.

“Sir, this is Warren Alsop. I’m sorry to trouble you this late, but—”

“Shut up, Alsop! What the fuck possessed you to blurt out the name of that operation on an unsecured line?” The voice was deep and rich and had the twangy East Texas drawl familiar to all the minions of the DEA.

“I’m sorry, sir. I have this man named Ma—”

“I told you to shut up! Listen to me carefully now. One, you will forget you ever heard of the operation in question. Erase it from your mind, speak to no one about it, especially to no Mexican national. Two, you will immediately sever all connection with the gentleman in question. I mean the
editorial
gentleman and any of his associates. You will not watch him or interfere with him in any way. Three, if this gentleman or his associates ask you for any help whatever, you will give it to the fullest extent of your power, asking no questions. Four, you will not refer these orders to your chain of command; you will communicate only with me, at my discretion. Five, you are never to call here again for any reason. Now, those are five orders, and while I can’t write them down, I expect you to remember every one of them and comply. Can you do that, Alsop?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. If you don’t, my friend, I will drop more shit on your head than you knew existed in the world. And we never had this conversation. Are we clear on this?”

“Yes, sir.”

The connection was broken. Alsop stared at his phone as if it would of itself make the world what it once was.