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One of the Policía Federal officers opened the right doors.
“Slide over to the middle, Mr. D’Alessandro,” Pena ordered, “so my men can get in on each side of you.”
D’Alessandro obeyed. He found himself sitting between two large Policía Federal officers.
The Suburbans moved out from under the portico.
D’Alessandro felt something hard and cold against the base of his neck, and had just decided whatever this was, they weren’t going to kill him, at least not here and now, when a voice inquired, “Hey, gringo, you wanna fook my see-ster?”
Juan Carlos Pena laughed out loud, surprising D’Alessandro, for Pena hadn’t so much as cracked a smile during the meeting with Guzmán.
“She gives a discount for undersized penile apparatus,” the voice said, now without a Mexican accent. “Like yours.”
“Charley, you sonofabitch!” D’Alessandro said.
“Welcome to Sunny Meh-hee-co,” Castillo said. “How did things go with Guzmán?”
“Slick,” D’Alessandro said. “He should be a used-car salesman. And, obviously, I misjudged Señor Pena.”
Pena turned from the front seat and offered D’Alessandro his hand.
“Call me Juan Carlos when no one’s looking, Vic,” Pena said.
“Carlos—Charley—and I go back a long way. He says nice things about you, which may or may not be a good thing.”
“You are going to tell me what’s going on here, right?” D’Alessandro asked.
“On our way to General Juan N. Álvarez International we’re going to plan how to snatch Ferris from the bad guys,” Castillo said. “That’s presuming Guzmán went along with having Ferris’s picture taken standing in front of the Oaxaca State Prison.”
“How the hell did you hear about that?”
“I have a lady friend in Foggy Bottom,” Castillo said. “Well, did he?”
“Yeah. You know where Ferris is?”
“Yeah. All Juan Carlos had to do was dangle Señor Monteverde from the twenty-third-floor Tahitian Suite of the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort on a bedsheet and he quickly volunteered to tell us Ferris is being held by drug guys working for Venezuelans under the direction of the SVR—”
“You’re talking about Murov? He’s disappeared, too.”
“Didn’t your mommy tell you it’s not polite to interrupt people?” Castillo asked, then went on: “. . . in Retainhuled, Guatemala, which is a small town about fifty miles from the border. Now, their plan, Murov, Juan Carlos, and I think—”
“Murov?” D’Alessandro interrupted. “You know where he is?”
“He’s in the Suburban behind us.”
Involuntarily, D’Alessandro turned to look. All he could see was the darkened windows of the following Suburban.
“He’s in that Suburban?” D’Alessandro asked, incredulously.
“All right, we’ll go down that road. Ol’ Sergei has had a religious experience. He has seen the light, and is now prepared to fight the good fight against the forces of evil. When you get back to Biggs Army Airfield, Frank Lammelle will be there to meet him with open arms and a briefcase with one million dollars in it, which I’m sure Sergei will count carefully on his way to wherever Frank intends to stash him.”
“You turned Murov for a million dollars? That’s peanuts! Jesus Christ, Charley! He’s Putin’s number two!”
“Was Putin’s number two,” Castillo said. “But then he had the religious experience I mentioned, which caused him to examine the downside of committing suicide.”
Castillo let that set in for a moment, and then went on: “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted—we’ll get to the few remaining loose ends when I finish—Sergei, Juan Carlos, and I are agreed that their most likely plan is to take Ferris to the prison and then—when you and Abrego arrive—whack everybody.”
“That scenario occurred to me,” D’Alessandro said drily.
