by an operative of Hasan, and Haroun was advised to share them with these men.
But not today. This time Haroun was told not to touch the pastries on pain of death. As always, he obeyed his master’s instructions to the letter.
It was the least he could do for the man who showed him the Gate of Paradise, granted him a tantalizingly brief vision of the world beyond this one.
Haroun did not know what deadly poison his master had used to kill these men. Nor did he care. All that mattered was that at last the plan had been set into motion. Nothing could stop the tide of blood to come. The dead men scattered around him were but the first of many who would fall. But unlike the quiet, anonymous deaths of these foolish pawns, the massacre to come would be seen by hundreds of millions all over the world.
The pop tune ringtone shook Fay Hubley out of her monitor trance. She saved her work, reached for the cell in her leather bag, dangling off the back of the chair
“Hello.”
“Fay? It’s Jamey. I tried to reach Tony but—”
“He turned his phone off. He hooked up with some smelly snitch down here and he’s following a lead or something.”
“He should have passed that information on to Nina.”
“Tony told me to make the call,” said Fay. “I was just about to—”
“What’s the name of this snitch?”
“The guy’s last name’s Dobyns. His first name is Ray.”
“Can you spell his last name?”
“No, but Tony said he knew the guy from before so it’s probably in one of his after-action reports.”
“And where did Tony go?” asked Jamey.
Fay exhaled with distaste. “Some ho’ house. A place called
Jamey noted the information in the mission log, pumped Fay for more and came up dry. She was concerned about Fay. The girl sounded distracted. “Listen, Fay, I want to give you a heads up. We found a Trojan horse. It’s an attractive download for people with the right equipment — a movie that hasn’t been released yet. Milo Pressman matched the hidden virus with the protocols you isolated and he says it has Lesser’s fingerprints all over it.”
Fay chewed her lip. “That’s bad. If Lesser’s launched something in the last five days, he did it from a server we know nothing about. That means he’s at least one step ahead of us.”
“Ryan Chappelle is sending Milo Pressman down there to back you up. He should arrive in a few hours. I’ll update you when I know more.”
“Cool,” said Fay. “That will be fun. Milo’s cute.”
“Listen up, girl. You’re not on vacation. Stay alert. Stay wary. Tony’s an ex-Marine, and he has good field experience. If he left you with instructions, follow them. This mission is heating up and a lot can go bad down there.”
Fay laughed. “Take it easy, Jamey. I’m not in Afghanistan. I’m just across the Mexican border. Really, what can happen to me in the middle of the day?”
Ray and Tony took a cab to the choked streets of Centro, but Tony made them get out in front of Planet Hollywood.
“Why are we switching cabs?” Dobyns asked nervously. “Are we being shadowed or something?”
“We’re walking from here, that’s all,” said Tony.
It was apparent from his girth that Ray Dobyns didn’t like walking. All the way to Albino Street the man complained about his sore feet, the uneven pavement, the crowds, the heat, the exhaust fumes.
The neighborhood surrounding the tavern and brothel called
Ray Dobyns described Number Five Albino Street as a warehouse, but it was obvious to Tony that the building had been an ice house in the 1940s and ’50s before it was converted to industrial use. The warehouse was a flat-roofed, windowless rectangle of dingy red brick. A three-story wooden clapboard tavern and inn had been built against the older brick structure sometime in the 1950s. Over the rough wooden porch that fronted the tavern, a faded billboard for Azteca beer and a neon Cuervo sign in the window were the only indication this place was more than another tenement. A battered Ford van was parked in front of the building, locked tight. No one was visible on the porch, or on either of the narrow wooden balconies fronting the second and third floors.
“Do we go in?” Tony asked.
Dobyns shook his head. “Listen, Navarro. I don’t want to blow this deal — I need the money bad. Let me go in first and check the place out. I’ve been here before. They know me. I’ll be back in five minutes or less. You can time me.”
Tony considered the man’s plan. While he didn’t trust Dobyns, Tony knew the con man would gain nothing by double-crossing him. Above all, Dobyns loved money, and he seemed to be in desperate need of some right now.
“Okay,” grunted Tony. “I’ll meet you right here in five minutes.”
Dobyns waddled across the street, pushed through the wooden screen door and into the seedy tavern. Tony watched for a moment, then went into a tiny store and purchased a cold bottle of Jarritos. Sipping the sugary Mexican soda, he waited, glancing at his watch from time to time.
Dobyns reappeared exactly five minutes later. But instead of crossing the street, he motioned to Tony from the porch.
Tony chugged his drink, tossed the empty bottle into a garbage can and crossed the dusty street.
“It’s Lesser, all right,” said Dobyns. “He’s upstairs on the third floor. He’s not even hiding. The bartender spilled when I slipped him an Andrew Jackson.”
“Is he alone?”
Dobyns nodded. “Come on. The faster you find him, the faster I get my money.”
Tony hesitated. As tactical situations went, this whole set up stunk. He was heading into an unknown environment armed with only the Gerber Mark II serrated combat knife in his boot. On the other hand, Lesser was small potatoes and had no clue anyone from the U.S. government was looking for him, and he was not a violent felon. He was, in fact, a computer nerd. Plus Dobyns had nothing to gain and everything to lose if the deal fell apart.
“Lead the way.”
Dobyns grinned and pushed through the screen door.
The interior was dim and nearly empty. Behind the bar, a squat bartender nodded at Dobyns, then went back to watching the jai alai match on the television above the bar. At a corner table far from the door, two middle-aged men were partying with two young prostitutes. The men were hang-dog drunk, the women clinging. Two more women sat in the corner, gossiping and polishing their nails. They looked up when the door opened, but when they saw Tony was with Dobyns, they returned to their conversation.
“The stairs are back here.”
Dobyns led Tony across the bar to a narrow hallway. Beyond the single rest room another door opened into a stairwell. A trio of leaping silver-gray fish, stuffed and lacquered, were mounted above that door, which gave the brothel its name,
Dobyns, in the lead, squeezed through the narrow doorway and slowly lumbered up the steep staircase to the second, then third floor.
Through another door, another narrow hallway flanked by peeling wallpaper, a floor of stained, avocado- green linoleum. From somewhere behind a wall, a man grunted, a woman laughed.
They went to the wooden door at the end of the hallway. Dobyns knocked twice. “Come,” a muffled voice
