crushing them between his teeth. That hadn’t helped. He’d stood by the car just briefly. A minute or less. But he thought the stench of Felix’s decomposing flesh would stay with him for a very long time to come.
Head in hands, he massaged his eyes. On the desktop near his right arm was a small leather case that he had withdrawn from a concealed safe elsewhere in the office suite. Inside it was a plastic ampule and a wrapped, sterile syringe. His reward from
Although Enrique was not a scientist, he had a solid layman’s understanding of the incredible biological weapon he’d been given. The clear liquid sealed inside the ampule was a neutral, harmless medium for transport and administration of the microscopic capsules suspended within. But a single drop held a concentration of hundreds, perhaps thousands of microcapsules. And since each of those capsules was a tiny bomblet packed with trigger proteins that would allow the Sleeper virus infecting every human being to “awaken,” that drop would be sufficiently potent to kill the target of an attack many times over. All that was required for the virus to mutate into its lethal form, attach itself to a specific genetic feature, and amplify, was its victim having a sip of water that had been implanted with the trigger, a bite of food… or, Enrique thought darkly, a mint of the sort he’d been crunching down in the car.
And the fluid medium was only one among many methods of getting a trigger into the human body. If your desire was to take out a single individual, you could introduce it to whatever he was having for lunch. If you wanted to be rid of his family as well, you might inject their Thanksgiving turkey before the holiday dinner. Widen the bull’s-eye to include a larger group of people, and you’d distribute the trigger across a sweeping number of routes. Instead of the food on the table you could saturate an entire population’s food supply — and beyond. Spread it over their farm soil, dump it into their reservoirs, float it through the air they breathed. Turn their environment into an extension of your weapon.
Enrique supposed the release of a powdered or aerosol medium would give the best shot at effecting a mass exposure. In fact, he had heard El Tio had done exactly that with the Sleeper virus itself. Just as whispers had reached him that Alberto Colon, who had died from mysterious causes last month, was El Tio’s first pigeon to die from a precision bio-strike.
Enrique had little doubt that the rumors concerning the virus’s dissemination were true. Whether those about Colon were accurate, he didn’t know. But it seemed a novel coincidence that the Bolivian president-elect had been poised to threaten the South American coca growers and suppliers from whom El Tio’s distribution network — of which the Quiros family was a part — obtained the majority of its product.
Right now, however, Enrique had something else to occupy his thoughts. A very personal affair had to be settled. And though he was inclined to stick with his initial feelings about how to do it, he wanted to deliberate on them further, confirm that he wasn’t allowing himself to make a dangerous blunder.
The difficulty now was that he was used to making calculated, rational decisions when it came to business. But in his business, things weren’t always that clear. Actions might be rational and emotional without contradiction. Violence could send simultaneous, definitive messages to both the heart and brain. And there were traditions that must not be violated. Matters of honor and loyalty.
He pictured Felix in the trunk of that car. His head blown to pieces and gnawed by rats. His flesh cooking in a soup of his own blood.
An effective message right there.
Enrique lifted his head from his hands, straightened, slipped his glasses back on, and sat quietly staring at the wall. The poor, brainless kid had overstepped. His stunt had hit the Salazars where it hurt. What choice did Lucio have except to retaliate? Enrique and his people had been aggressively cutting into his market, and because Lucio knew they were backed by El Tio’s international organization, he’d had to accept it, become resigned to shrinking profits. Success brought competition; it was a basic law of trade. However, he would not let himself be muscled aside, could not allow everything he’d built up to be usurped. He had to protect his interests. And if Lucio believed Enrique had condoned Felix’s move, as Lathrop said he did, he would be especially pressed to show it was a big miscalculation. Show where he drew his limits. Show a steep price had to be paid by the transgressor of those limits.
Enrique understood this. He appreciated that Felix had brought about his own fate with his deeds. And in a way, he’d also dictated the steps Enrique now must take, irrevocably linked him to a chain of action and consequence whose end could not be foreseen. Even in his sorrow over what had happened to Felix, Enrique resented him for that. And he suspected he always would. Were it not for him, this whole thing would never have gotten started.
But Felix had been his nephew. He could not let Lucio Salazar get away with his murder. Because it would make the Quiros family look vulnerable and invite further trouble, despite their powerful affiliations. And family was supposed to look after each other.
Enrique glanced down at the leather case on his desk, remembering the night he’d met Palardy at the harbor. To be involved in the assassination of somebody with Roger Gordian’s fame and stature, even if his connection couldn’t be verifiably established… it was insane. There again, his hand had been forced. He’d had to play along with El Tio, knowing very well that his almighty friend might otherwise become his most formidable enemy.
He scowled. To a greater or lesser extent, maybe all actions you took were predetermined. He didn’t know. He wasn’t a philosopher. But what he did know was that Felix’s killing demanded retribution, and that the contents of the ampule would ensure it was achieved. A drop of it, one drop administered to the food or drink Lucio Salazar was renowned for consuming with boundless passion, and the Sleeper inside him would begin its ferocious process of incubation. Disease would rage through his body, eating away his cells and tissues like the hungry little creatures in that old Pac-Man game. His suffering would make death a craved relief. And Enrique would have full deniability. Moreover, only the merest few would even suspect Lucio had been murdered.
But how would it send a message? How would it demonstrate that Enrique Quiros — college-educated, soft- spoken Enrique — had the qualities to control and build upon the empire he’d inherited from his father? That he was a man who stood on his honor and loyalty? A man who could conduct himself with strength?
Blood for blood. In his world, that was how it had to be. It was a principle that was understood from the brothers and sons who would be Lucio Salazar’s successors, down the line to his street-level dealers and enforcers.
Lucio could not die in bed of some untraceable sickness.
If Enrique was to be respected, his hands would have to drip red.
Taking a deep breath, he turned his eyes from the leather case and reached across his desk for the telephone.
Lucio Salazar’s wristwatch read ten minutes past two in the afternoon when he received an unexpected and somewhat puzzling telephone call from Enrique Quiros.
Their conversation, such as it was, lasted just over sixty seconds.
A pensive frown on his face, Salazar replaced the receiver on the end table beside him. Then he sat back in his couch, turning his head to look out at the rippling blue surf far below, his hand moving from the cradled receiver to the large gold charm around his neck.
He was thinking that this was maybe the third time they had exchanged words since Enrique had taken over the family operation from his father, their last direct contact having occurred the year before, when they had gotten together to smooth over a territorial dispute between a couple of their lieutenants. At the time, he’d expected Enrique to assume airs, him having gone to that top college and all, but it turned out he’d been reasonable and respectful. Well, okay, sort of lacy, too, but he hadn’t come up the hard way like his old man, dodging lawmen on both sides of the border with carloads of bootleg whiskey and cigarettes. Most important to Lucio, he’d conducted himself okay, showed integrity, before and after. They had reached a compromise agreement that satisfied everyone involved, cemented it with a handshake, and Enrique had observed it to the letter. Since then — this was
Lucio fingered his charm, a representation of Saint Joseph, patron of workingmen and heads of families — categories he very much fancied encompassed his position in the great order of things.
On the phone, Enrique had said he wanted to go man-to-man, resolve their problems before they got any
