Black List

on.

As he moved through the airport, he kept his hat on, his collar up, and his eyes looking down, trying to avoid the cameras as best he could. At least three people knew that he was on his way to Mexico, and that was already three too many.

The customs and immigration agents seemed more interested in one another than in Harvath and his Italian passport. They simply stamped it and waved him on through. He would make his flight to Monterrey, Mexico, with time to spare.

Walking through the terminal, there were countless opportunities to relieve any number of oblivious travelers of a cell phone or a laptop computer, but he resisted the urge. It wasn’t worth the risk while in transit. Staying off the radar meant staying completely off. Hopefully he’d have answers to his questions soon enough.

After getting more coffee, he killed time in an adjacent gate area until the final call came for the flight to Monterrey. He had surveilled all of the passengers on his flight and none of them gave him any pause. Boarding, he found his seat, stowed his bag, and sat down next to an attractive young woman who seemed more interested in her stack of Mexican fashion magazines than in striking up any sort of conversation with the man sitting next to her. They were perfectly suited for each other. An hour and twenty minutes after takeoff, when the plane touched down in Monterrey, the woman was still engrossed in her reading.

Harvath made his way through the drab airport to the transportation counter and purchased a ticket into the city, then exited the terminal and walked over to a cab stand. He counted the number of vehicles in the queue and watched them as he moved forward. At the last minute, he allowed two families to step in front of him and take the awaiting taxis. They thanked him for being such a gentleman, and he smiled. None of them realized that they had done him more of a favor than he had done for them.

After showing his ticket, the driver unlocked the doors and Harvath climbed inside with his bag. Leaning over the seat, he handed the driver the address Peio had given him. The man looked at the slip of paper and then turned and looked at his passenger. “Con permiso, senor,” he said. “Estas seguro de saber lo que haces?”

Even if Harvath didn’t possess a minor grasp of Spanish, he would have understood the question just by the look on the man’s face. Was Harvath sure he really wanted to be taken to that part of town? “Si,” Harvath replied. “Vamonos.”

The man shrugged, put his cab in gear, and pulled out into evening traffic.

It was a twenty-minute drive from the airport into the city, one of the largest in Mexico. It was hard to believe that in 2005 it was ranked the safest city in all of Latin America. Now it was wracked with cartel violence and incredibly dangerous, each year bloodier than the one before.

Harvath had no idea where the address was that the taxi driver was taking him to, but he had a feeling it wasn’t one of the city’s garden spots. By the same token, Harvath hadn’t expected it to be anything spectacular. Orphanages didn’t usually occupy prime real estate.

He had to hand it to Nicholas, though. Being plugged into a worldwide network of orphanages was very much akin to how intelligence agencies used NGOs. They provided a certain amount of cover at ground level and allowed you to tap into what was happening “on the street” better than at almost any other level save for narcotics or law enforcement organizations. Orphanages often had a religious affiliation that put them above reproach and scrutiny. On top of that, if they had been treated well, former charges who were now adults could be incredibly loyal and prove extremely helpful in certain situations.

Harvath didn’t doubt Nicholas’s sincerity, but he also didn’t doubt that Nicholas structured many of his relationships with a secondary benefit in mind.

Nearing the city, the driver—who had wisely stayed off the highways because they were controlled by the drug cartels—began taking narrower side streets. Many of the buildings were dilapidated and covered with graffiti. At the next stoplight, a street vendor appeared and the driver double-clicked the cab’s door locks. It was the man’s subtle way of giving his passenger a heads-up. It happened again two blocks later as a motorcycle came up from behind and slowed down next to them, its rider taking a particularly long look at Harvath before moving on.

Five minutes later, the cab came to a stop not outside an orphanage, but a dimly lit tavern. Sensing his passenger’s confusion, the driver read the address aloud from the slip of paper as if to say, “This is where you asked to be taken,” and handed it back to him. Harvath turned over the fare ticket along with a U.S. twenty dollar bill as a tip, grabbed his suitcase, and got out.

He looked up at the battered colonial facade and checked the address himself. Sure enough, it was the one Peio had given him. The cab idled as Harvath stood on the sidewalk studying the tavern. The sound of Mexican pop music could be heard from inside. A bad feeling began to overtake him. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was walking into an ambush.

The longer he stood waiting outside, the more attention he was going to draw to himself, so he decided to walk in. As he moved toward the door, he heard the cabdriver put the taxi in gear and drive away.

Harvath was now totally on his own.

CHAPTER 27

Calling the tavern a hole in the wall would have been a compliment. The place was an absolute dump. Faded 1960s reprints of Mexican artwork adorned the worn plaster walls, which had been stained brown over the decades, like the ceiling, by a patina of cigarette smoke. A string of red, Italian-style Christmas lights looked like it was left up year-round, adorning the dirty mirror behind the bar.

Tables of men conversed as waitresses carried drinks from the bar and plates of food from the kitchen. A bouncer at the door looked up as Harvath walked in but went back to the paperback he was reading, as if tourists with wheelie bags were their bread-and-butter customers. Judging from the neighborhood and the cabdriver’s reaction, Harvath was pretty sure no gringos had seen the inside of this joint in a long time, if ever.

He picked a table off to the side, away from the majority of customers, where he could watch the door.

A couple of minutes later, a waitress came over to take his order. Just like the bouncer, she didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised to see him there. “Cerveza, senor?”

What he wanted was a coffee, but having a beer bottle in front of him at the moment was appealing on several different levels. He saw that they served Bohemia in the bottle and asked for one.

As the waitress left to get his beer, he could see beyond the bar and into the kitchen, where some sort of meat was being roasted on a spit over hot coals, probably cabrito, young goat. It was a popular dish in this area of northern Mexico, as was something called discada, a combination of meats cooked in beer inside a plow disc that’s been welded shut.

Harvath must have been paying a little too much attention to the kitchen. After dropping off his bottle of beer, the waitress returned with a plate of meat, accompanied by onions and fresh salsa, and a container with hot tortillas. Though he tried to explain to her that he hadn’t ordered it, she simply told him to eat and walked away to see to another table of customers.

Not knowing when he’d be able to eat again, Harvath spooned some meat into one of the tortillas, added some onion and salsa, and dug in.

It was cabrito, and having eaten as much goat as he had in his day, most of it lousy, he knew good goat when he tasted it. This was very good goat.

When he was done, the waitress returned with some sort of custard for dessert, which Harvath politely declined. She asked if he wanted any coffee and though he was still slowly sipping at his beer, he said yes. She returned with cafe de olla, a rustic style of coffee brewed with cinnamon, and cleared his dinner dishes. Missing, though, was the steak knife Harvath had tucked carefully beneath his leg.

An hour later, there were only two other tables of customers left in the place. Harvath declined a third cup of coffee and watched as the bartender waved the bouncer over and handed him two pieces of paper.

The bouncer delivered one to each table and stood there as the groups of disgruntled patrons were forced to pay up. Harvath waited for his bill to come, but it didn’t. Instead the bouncer saw the last of the customers out and then bolted the door.