The Venezuelan Read online

  The remaining man, his head down, began to charge directly at Cortez. In theory, it was probably an attempt to use his girth to wrestle the knife away from the American. Instead, Cortez stepped to one side and, in the same motion, flung the charging man headfirst into the marble façade wall of a jewelry store.

  The entire incident took less than five seconds to unfold.

  Robideaux quickly picked up one of the assailant’s guns and pointed it at them, while Cortez casually reclaimed their pistols and wallets. She removed her mobile phone from her back pocket and placed a call to her contact in the PM.

  “It’s me…Clarice,” she said calmly, her breathing now steady despite having been fighting for her life not thirty seconds earlier. “Four men accosted us on our way back to the hotel. An attempted kidnapping.”

  “Was anybody hurt?”

  “Unfortunately for them, two of the kidnappers have minor knife wounds to the arm. Another may have a slight concussion, but everyone should live.”

  ◆◆◆

  Jack Gonçalves was sitting in the ASAC’s office in the FBI’s Houston office. It is mid-morning and he was going over a few last-minute items with Morris Applebaum before the ASAC left Houston for a weeklong family skiing vacation in Idaho.

  “What do you hear from Pete Cortez?” Applebaum asked. “He should be returning home pretty soon, shouldn’t he?”

  “I believe his week is up the day after tomorrow.”

  “Any luck with tracking down the Venezuelan?”

  “Pete sent me a photo of the guard who allegedly flew away with the guys who broke him out,” said Gonçalves, removing his eyeglasses and cleaning them with a black jeweler’s cloth he always carried with him in his left back pocket. “Allegedly, he was a Brazilian contractor named Marco, hired out of Belém.”

  Belém is a major port city of two and a half million people at the mouth of the Amazon delta, where the colossal river empties into the Atlantic.

  “What else do we know about him?”

  “Well, according to one of my sources in the Agency, the man is also a former deep cover contractor. A gun for hire. My contact says he allegedly left the Agency’s employ less than a year ago…for reasons they would not, or could not, specify.”

  “Does this person think he’s gone rogue?”

  Gonçalves shrugged his shoulders.

  “My contact doesn’t know, but he suspects he might be part of an ongoing black operation.”

  “Might be?” said Applebaum, shaking his head in disbelief. “Jeez, you’d think the Agency would probably want to figure out the answer to that one pretty quick.”

  “I hate to see Pete caught up in the middle of this,” said the SSA.

  “You mean he doesn’t know yet about the background of this Marco character?”

  “No, I only just found out myself.”

  Applebaum was silent for the next few moments. Although he had spent most of his career “in the field,” he had never served undercover. Gonçalves had, so he deferred to him.

  “It’s your decision,” said the ASAC. “Should we tell him now, or wait until he gets back?”

  “I think we should hold off on letting him know, at least for the next day or so,” said the SSA. “If this guy is indeed involved in a black op, Pete is probably better off in the short run being left in the dark.”

  “I agree,” said Applebaum. “If he thinks he’s bumping into a sanctioned covert operation, he might back off a bit so as to not screw anything up.”

  “Are we talking about the same Pete Cortez?” asked Gonçalves, smiling. “I’ve yet to see him back off from anything…even when doing so would be a good thing.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Are you sure this was an attempted kidnapping?” the Brazilian policeman asked. He took out a cigarette from the rumpled, half-empty pack lying on his desk and lit it. He took a deep drag, then exhaled slowly through his nose, like they do in the old movies.

  Cortez and Robideaux were back at the same Military Police station that they had left less than half an hour earlier. Cortez had blood all over his shirt. His pants and shoes were also spattered with blood from the assailants he had cut with his knife.

  It had taken the Brazilian cops less than two minutes to arrive at the scene. Two ambulances showed up another five minutes after that. In the meantime, Cortez had ripped off the bleeding man’s tee shirt and used it as a tourniquet to stem the loss of blood from the man’s arm, at least until medical help arrived.

  Cortez had managed to miss the artery on the second man’s arm, who used his own shirt to stem the light flow of blood.

  As for the man who charged full speed into the wall, it was hard to imagine him not suffering a concussion. Best case, his head was going to ache for quite a while.

  “Are you sure they weren’t just trying to rob you?” asked the policeman, who was sitting behind his wooden desk in his small office at the station. “Unfortunately, that happens more often in this city than we would care to admit, especially nowadays, with all the Venezuelan refugees flooding across the border.”

  “No, they were definitely trying to kidnap us,” said Robideaux. She had known the policeman—he went by the name Grêmio, after the football team in his hometown of Porto Alegre—for more than a year and had received valuable information from him in the past. “I’m pretty sure it’s related to the questions we’ve been asking about the Venezuelan. Someone is trying to shut us down.”

  There was a knock on the office door. The visitor, a young policeman, walked straight over to Grêmio ‘s desk and whispered something into his ear. The senior man nodded his head somberly. The young policeman turned and walked back out of the office, closing the door behind him.

  “Unfortunately, I think you’re probably right,” he said, stubbing his cigarette butt in the ashtray on his desk. He took out another one and lit it. “One of the men your friend here slashed is well known to us as a gang enforcer with ties to both the FDN and the CV.”

  “With ties to who?”

  “Familia do Norte and Comando Vermelho are the two most powerful criminal organizations in Brazil,” said the policeman. “FDN is based out of Manaus and CV is out of Rio de Janeiro. The man is known as Cobra, the Snake. He doesn’t involve himself in petty street crime. The fact that he was involved here means this was a lot bigger than just a street robbery.”

  “So where do we go from here?” asked Robideaux.

  “I would recommend that you and your friend get out of Santarém as quickly as possible. As in immediately. Right now. You can be certain that whoever was behind this attack will try again…and sooner rather than later.”

  “We can’t just leave now,” she protested. “Not when we’re so close.”

  “If you leave today, I think I can cover up your involvement in this incident,” said Grêmio, trying to convince her to do something for her own good. “I’m sure you realize that if either your name or your friend’s shows up in the official report, my government will have no choice but to complain, and your government will almost certainly ship you home.”

  Robideaux stormed out of the police station, with Cortez trailing behind. The Brazilian cop couldn’t tell whether he had gotten through to her, but figured he’d find out soon enough.

  ◆◆◆

  “What do you mean, they’re hospitalized?” shouted Fósforo, displaying the short fuse temper that gave rise to his nickname as a young teenager.

  Claudio, the Brazilian bodyguard, had heard tales about the Venezuelan’s mercurial temper, but this was the first time he had ever experienced it firsthand.

  “I thought you said this Cobra guy was your best man,” said Calderón, a look of disdain on his face. “How in the world do two Americans—and one of them is a woman, mind you—manage to take out four experienced professionals…and that’s also after your people got the drop on them?”

  “Señor Fósforo, they did not see the American’s knife until it was too late,” he protested, anxious to
calm down the Venezuelan before things really got out of hand. “According to one of the survivors, the entire fight, once it started, lasted only a few seconds. He said he has never seen anyone so quick and nimble with a knife as the American man.”

  The Venezuelan was quiet for a moment. No, he thought to himself, it couldn’t possibly be him. What would an American FBI agent be doing in the depths of the Amazon?

  “Did anyone happen to get a picture of these two Americans?”

  “No, Señor Fósforo,” the man said dejectedly, clearly uncomfortable and embarrassed by the fiasco that had occurred under his watch. “They had them both in custody and were getting ready to walk them to a vehicle awaiting them in an alleyway not more than twenty meters away. They didn’t think it was necessary to photograph them while still on a busy street.”

  Calderón sighed. He breathed deeply and exhaled slowly to calm himself.

  “Do you have any contacts within the police in Santarém?”

  “Of course, Señor Fósforo.”

  “Good. Get me a photo of the Americans…particularly the man.”

  “Should we also kill them?”

  The Venezuelan grunted in laughter, then turned and looked the man straight in the eyes.

  “Kill them? You just sent four of your supposed best men to apprehend this man and this woman, and they wound up getting their asses kicked.”

  Claudio, his pride wounded, also realized now was not the time to play the macho card, so he kept silent, waiting for the Venezuelan to tell him what he wanted them to do.

  “No, Claudio, I want them to believe that this was just a local criminal attack, a symptom of the moral breakdown in society,” he said.

  It was difficult for him to tell whether the Venezuelan was being sarcastic.

  “I don’t want them to realize how close they actually are, because I’m not yet well enough to leave this place. For now, though, they live.”

  “I will take care of it,” the man said, hoping to soon work his way back out of Calderón’s doghouse. “You won’t see a repeat of this morning’s failure.”

  “Good. A lot of lives depend upon it…including yours, my friend.”

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 8

  Alter do Chão, Brazil

  Carajo,” shouted Calderón, staring at a picture of the two Americans taken at the Santarém military police headquarters. He pushed his aviator glasses up above his forehead to get a better look at the man in the picture. It was a face he would recognize anywhere. “That’s definitely him. That’s Pete Cortez.”

  “Who is Pete Cortez?” asked Claudio.

  It was early evening and the wind was beginning to pick up a bit, creating a pleasant breeze across the open-air veranda. This stood in stark contrast to the intense heat now emanating from the Venezuelan’s increasingly foul disposition.

  “He is the same American FBI agent who put me away, the man who caused me to be sent to that jungle hellhole where I spent the past eight months,” said Calderón, spitting out his words like a boxer spits blood after being punched in the face. “He is also someone I’ve known all my life. We grew up together in Caracas.”

  The Venezuelan took another look at the photo and suddenly recognized another familiar face.

  “Mierde,” he said, his jaws tightening with building rage. “That’s the same woman who visited the jungle compound several times while I was being held captive there.”

  Claudio didn’t know what to make of the fact that his new boss had a personal—and obviously unhappy—history with both Americans. He sensed it probably wasn’t a good thing for him, especially given the botched snatch and grab job.

  “It’s hard to believe this was the fellow who took out my boys yesterday,” said Claudio, attempting to lighten the mood as he again looked at the picture.

  What he saw was a man who looked more like an accountant than a killer…and certainly not someone a man like the Venezuelan should be concerned about.

  “Well, believe it,” said Calderón, looking him square in the eye. “Down deep, this man is an animal.”

  “What about the woman? Who is she?”

  “I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out,” said the Venezuelan, his eyes staring at the picture of the two Americans with an intensity so fierce it could set the photo paper on fire. “I will track them both down and kill them—slowly— if it’s the last thing I do in my life. First, though, I have more important business to attend to. It’s time for us to cut short our stay in this beautiful house.”

  “When are we leaving?” asked the bodyguard, the disappointment clear in his voice. He had been enjoying his time at the villa.

  “This time tomorrow afternoon,” said the Venezuelan. “We have a booking on a boat sailing downriver to Belém. They say it will take two and a half days.”

  “Why not fly?”

  “With all the activity surrounding the attack on the two Americans, I expect the airports in this region to be tightly covered, especially for the next week or so. The longer I stay here, though, the greater the chance they will find us.”

  “What do you want us to do about the Americans? Should we kill them?”

  “No, let’s just let it be for the time being,” said the Venezuelan.

  He removed a cigar from the elegant rosewood box on the table, clipping the end and lighting it. He took three or four stout puffs until he was satisfied it was sufficiently lit. “If we were to respond immediately, Cortez would know that he has stumbled onto something important. Let’s just let them think that it was simply a random assault.”

  “Yeah, he’s probably having second thoughts about remaining in Santarém anyway,” said Claudio, who was still trying desperately to earn his way back into Calderón’s good graces.

  “The only thing that will move him along is the belief that what he is looking for is not here,” said the Venezuelan. “He’s not the type of man who scares easily. I misjudged him once. I will not make that mistake again.”

  “Then why not just eliminate them both now, while we have the chance?”

  “Because, Claudio, we have much bigger fish to fry.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Oh, come on, Ryan,” said Robideaux over her secure satellite phone. Her frustration was spilling over into her tone of voice. “We can’t just run away and hide at the first sign of danger.”

  She was in the process of filling in her boss, Ryan Carpenter, on the events of that morning, including the violent incident that took place in broad daylight on a busy street in downtown Santarém. She also told him about Grêmio’s suggested solution to the problem.

  “Clarice, you’re no good to me if you’re dead,” said Carpenter, who clearly agreed with the Brazilian policeman. “Besides, if anything were to happen to our FBI guest, Langley would be all over my butt.”

  “I think we can take care of ourselves,” she said, exasperated. “After what happened during this morning’s incident, I think people will be more reluctant to mess with us.”

  “Oh, please, Clarice, you don’t honestly believe that nonsense, not even for an instant?” asked Carpenter who, by his internal count, would permit her one more rebuttal before shutting down the argument. “If anything, this places a target on your backs with fluorescent paint. Besides, you’ve already told me that the state Polícia Militár say they can’t guarantee your safety if you stay in the Amazon region.”

  “He said he couldn’t guarantee it. Hells bells, only God can guarantee something, especially in our line of work.”

  That was three rebuttals, he thought to himself. It was time to shut down the debate.

  “Alright, Clarice, we’re done here,” said Carpenter. “Case closed. I’ve heard your arguments and I’ve made my decision.”

  He had read somewhere in a leadership book that a sign of good listening was to allow the other person three counterarguments before cutting off the debate. Even though he originally thought it sounded like an overly simplistic maxim, he had come
to realize over time that it really wasn’t such a bad measuring stick after all.

  “Tell your pilot to fuel up and fly you both back to Manaus. I will have a plane waiting for you there to fly the two of you back to Brasilia.”

  “But Ryan …”

  “And then we’ll release Cortez back to the FBI and fly him home to Texas.”

  “Ryan, please …”

  “That’s it, Clarice. You have your orders. Now, comply with them.”

  ◆◆◆

  “Mateo, my boy, how are you feeling?” asked the tall, heavyset man who had just entered the room moments beforehand. He had a broad smile across his face as he embraced the young Venezuelan, who winced in pain. The visitor looked to Calderón like what he imagined a Viking would look like.

  It had been less than a week since he had been liberated from his captivity in the jungle prison and he was still regaining his strength. It would be at least another week or so until he was back to anything even approaching normal.

  “For our purposes today, you can simply call me Corcovado,” said the man who had engineered the Venezuelan’s escape from his jungle captivity. The two had never met before.

  The visitor walked over to the two large wicker chairs and sat down. He was a tall man, only an inch shorter than Calderón, who stood six-foot-six. He had inherited his red hair from his mother, who had met his father while both were students at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland more than fifty years earlier.

  Fortunately for him, though, he had also inherited his father’s tough skin, a useful trait given the yearlong sun he was exposed to in Rio de Janeiro, his birthplace and the center of his extensive business empire.

  “I hope you find the accommodations suitable?” he asked, motioning to one of his bodyguards to bring him one of his Cuban cigars. The older man then spent the next thirty seconds carefully preparing the Montecristo Linea 135 before lighting it.

  “Yes, thank you,” said the Venezuelan, a broad smile on his face. “I understand I have you to thank for my newfound freedom.”