Blood of the Assassin - By Russell Blake Page 0,66

hurried to Cruz’s office and disappeared inside, only to return again two minutes later.

“He’s on a conference call that will probably go on for quite a while. I’ll see that he gets in touch when he’s done. Figure an hour or two.”

“Great. So the situation is already interfering.”

“Like I said. He’ll call when he has a free moment.”

El Rey shrugged and turned, then paused and looked back at Briones. “Just out of curiosity, who’s the ranking Los Zetas honcho in D.F. these days? Used to be El Jaguar, if memory serves. That still the case?”

“Sounds right.”

El Rey glanced over his shoulder at the men watching the encounter from behind him.

“Tell your boss I’ll be waiting for his call. I’m headed out to the site for another look around. I had a few ideas of how to further tighten things up.”

Briones didn’t answer. The assassin sauntered back to the elevator, and a few moments later the steel cube swallowed him up and some of the tension in the room dissipated. The distinctive ring of Briones’ line sounded from the common room’s work area, and before long the encounter with the assassin was out of his mind as he dealt with a flurry of calls while Cruz coordinated with the team that was investigating Dinah’s disappearance.

Chapter 27

Rauschenbach dropped his luggage on the bed and surveyed with relief the room at the upscale apartment hotel he’d checked into for three nights. The trip had been grueling, and he wanted nothing so much as to take a long hot shower to wash away the fish stink – the trawler had been right on time, but it was at least fifty years old, every one of which had been spent as a working fishing boat, which meant that every surface was saturated with the residue of the sea. When he had finally climbed off just before dawn and been spirited ashore in the creaky old scow’s tender, he felt like he’d spent the night in the hold with the cargo of dead shrimp.

The port had been quiet and his passage unnoticed, but when he found his appointed rendezvous spot for a ride inland to the airport, things had gone awry – the vehicle hadn’t been there. He had waited for an hour, watching the sun come up, but once day had broken he had felt exposed and decided not to wait. There were any number of possible explanations for the car not making it, from a breakdown to an accident, but it was doing him no good to wait in vain.

There hadn’t been much in the way of transportation in the tiny berg of Puerto Madero, so he was left to fend for himself with the local bus that ran to and from Tapachula, a medium-sized city whose international airport was only six miles from the port.

He’d found a passable family restaurant that was just opening for the working crowd, and wedged himself into a booth, his gear next to him. Watching the dining room fill, he’d had a friendly conversation with the waitress, who had told him where to catch the bus over his third cup of coffee and assured him that they ran every hour or two.

The ride had been everything he’d expected, and it had been with considerable relief that he’d arrived at the small airport and made his way to the passenger terminal, where he was informed by an uninterested ticket vendor that the next flight to Mexico City left in three hours. He paid his fare, noting the machine-gun armed soldiers loitering in groups around the building, and after a hurried washing-up in the men’s room, had settled in to wait in the departure lounge, which would have made any bus station in Europe seem lavish by comparison.

The flight had taken a little over an hour, and when he had arrived in Mexico City he had spent some time in the airport internet café looking for suitable accommodations. He wasn’t worried about his identification – it was indistinguishable from the genuine article, even under close scrutiny. Nobody at the airport security checkpoint in Tapachula had given him a second look, and his passport had been barely glanced at by the ticket agent. He had worried that the lack of an entry stamp would be a problem, but needn’t have – nobody seemed to care.

The apartment hotel he had found was perfect for his needs – anonymous, large, in a decent area of town – not inexpensive, but not five star