Blood of the Assassin - By Russell Blake Page 0,52

an automaton, Cruz selected a speed dial number on his phone and pressed send. Two rings, and a deep male voice answered.

“Yes, sir. Is there a problem?”

“You tell me. Did you see Dinah today? My wife?” Cruz asked one of the men on duty downstairs in the lobby.

“No, sir. But I only came on duty at eight tonight. Why? Is something wrong?”

Cruz ignored the question. “Who was working the day shift?”

“Diego Vasquez and his partner. Do you want me to try to reach him?”

“Yes, please. My wife may have left...on vacation. I’d just like to confirm that someone saw her.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll call and then get back in touch with you.”

Cruz disconnected, and then sat down again, staring at the closet’s maw, the emptiness like a shrine to his failure as a husband and a man.

He knew what the call would say.

When it came a few minutes later, it was as he thought.

“Sir, she took several suitcases down to her car and then left. There was no foul play. Do you...is there something we should do? Something we need to know?”

Cruz thought about it for a moment, then sighed. “No, that’s fine. I just wanted to verify that she got out of here okay. That’s all.”

When he hung up, he tossed the phone onto the bed and lay back, everything redolent of Dinah – the pillows, the sheets, the air itself. Twenty minutes later he was fast asleep, snoring gently, fully clothed, his body having finally succumbed to its requirement for rest.

Chapter 21

Guatemala City was blanketed in smog as the flight from Chile dropped on the final descent, buffeted by updrafts from the mountains surrounding the metropolis. The tired Boeing 737 was on its last legs, running routes between South and Central America after being retired from a U.S. airline, and the seat that Werner Rauschenbach occupied was at least forty years old if it was a day, the cushion and springs having long ago given up any pretense of offering comfort.

A particularly violent gust shook the plane and it lurched to one side, and then the jet dropped a few hundred feet in seconds, the sensation much like that of a roller-coaster, but missing the assurance of a safe conclusion to the ride. The cracked ventilation nozzle overhead whistled a malodorous stream of stagnant air at his pate, serving no purpose other than to annoy him during the final half hour on the long trip from Santiago. He reached up and twisted the air off, and then peered out the window at the dark gray bank of clouds below. It wouldn’t be long now, and then this leg of his journey would be over and he would be traversing the third-world Guatemalan countryside on his way to the coast, where he would embark on an ocean voyage that would have him rendezvousing with a Mexican fishing trawler that night, five miles offshore, which would ferry him into Mexico without having to deal with niggling details like customs or immigration.

Another bump and a loud grinding hum vibrated from the wings as the flaps activated in preparation for landing. They dropped into the overcast and the plane was knocked around like a lottery ball before they broke through and he could make out the city dead ahead in the early morning light. When the wheels struck the runway and the engines screamed as the plane fought to slow before it ran out of space, Rauschenbach closed his eyes and exhaled evenly, thankful that the long hours on planes from Spain were finally over.

The fishing rod gambit had worked like a charm, and his precious cargo was safe in the belly of the jet, none the worse for the transatlantic journey. If all went well, he would be in Mexico City the following evening, at the latest. It would all depend on the efficiency of the group he’d arranged to smuggle him into the country. The Los Zetas cartel had established a considerable network in Africa, with a drug pipeline to most of the major regions in the Russian Federation and Europe, and it had been merely a matter of spreading a boatload of cash around to find the right conduits to arrange for his safe passage once in Guatemala. The cartel had almost complete control of whole sections of the country, and it routinely moved drugs, arms, slaves, and illegal immigrants from the beleaguered Central American nation into Mexico, so if anyone could get him in without triggering alarms, Los