Three Minutes Page 27

  The same man.

  His cup was empty. Hoffmann stood up and saw in one of the stalls at the edge of the market a kind of small restaurant, and on its only table, he was sure of it, stood a pot of coffee.

  He walked over slowly. Getting closer to the waiting boys, who were sitting on the other side of the small restaurant. The children El Mestizo had worked with for almost twenty years. He must have seen hundreds pass through. A hundred dollars had become two hundred, but otherwise, the same mission. Provide one of them with a revolver. Show them which direction to point the gun. Wait while the task is performed. Much like you’d train a dog. And for the boys, Hoffmann knew it was so, that for them it all began right here, right now. Their career. Because soon they’d be working for those who were even bigger. Sicario. Assassin. I’ll pay you—and you kill for me. Hoffmann took a cup of coffee, and it was as strong as he feared. Murderer. He was one himself. But there was a difference. Surely, there were murderers and then there were murderers? Another kind of murderer who shot people to survive? He’d done so. He’d killed inside that Swedish prison to survive. And he had killed here to survive. Was that right? Was a murderer always a murderer? Was Hoffmann just another version of the boys who got their two hundred dollars, who bought a gift for their mothers on the way home without ever thinking of the death itself? Was there any difference when Hoffmann killed because he had no choice? Did they have any choice? Had El Mestizo just moved the limits a little—a child, a woman, whoever else—until it was reduced to an assignment? Like these kids I’m staring at. When will I readjust my limit? How long have I been here if I too am prepared to shoot a girl holding her father’s hand?

  Home. We’re on our way home.

  Hoffmann had seen how El Mestizo kept track of all the boys he’d hired. His employer and mark drank a little too much one evening and opened up one of the safes in the brothel in order to proudly present the contents of his bank accounts, here and in Panama, then his more morbid accounts, explained what the code really meant. Page after page. First name. Last name. The number of shootings. The number of bullets used per shooting. And last, almost every time one kept going for several years, a death date.

  Hoffmann put the empty cup down on the table, thanked the kind woman, and took a few steps out of the tight passageway in order to see better.

  All of you sitting there waiting. In ten years, you’ll be dead. According to the only statistic that exists. Three of you will be killed by the person you were supposed to kill. Two of you will be killed by someone avenging the death of a relative. Two of you will snort yourselves to death, two will overdose, three will die because you know too much, three will fall victim to police bullets meant to clear you off the streets. And those few of you who manage to live until your twentieth year—you’ll die when the pride of being selected ends and the shame of completing your mission sets in. That’s how it works. The drug trade, profit, opens the doors to the darkest rooms of humanity

  He’d just started walking toward them again, this time he’d go all the way, when a woman got there before him. Well-dressed, long, dark hair put up carefully in a knot, mid-thirties. She stood out as she made her way through the aisles and between the crowded stalls, there was something about her way of moving through a crowd. Someone who had power. Hoffmann saw her approaching the boys. They flocked around her until she picked one of them, a tall kid with a baseball cap on backward, bang bang, he shot me down, and the others, disappointed, returned to their seats to continue waiting, bang bang, I hit the ground.

  Hoffmann waited until she was finished, until both she and the recipient of her mission had disappeared. Then he approached. And stopped the pack before they had time to gather around him, pointed to one, beckoning him forward.

  “Do you recognize me?”

  “You’re Mestizo’s friend.”

  Hoffmann nodded toward the stairs he’d been sitting on, that’s where they were had been, that’s where they went. “Take a seat.”

  The twelve-year-old boy in the too-big T-shirt looked toward his colleagues and competitors and seemed surprised at how clearly you could see them from here.

  “Camilo, right? And you’re waiting for an assignment?”

  “Every day. What do you have?”

  Authority. Hoffmann recalled how he’d noticed that last time. This twelve-year-old boy—who was neither tall nor dangerous-looking—radiated a self-control that was similar to the woman he’d just seen, ruling over life.

  “How many times have you . . . ?”

  “Twenty-five, señor.”

  A dignity that was obvious. Nevertheless, he was stretching to make himself taller.

  “So what’s my mission? I’m fast, señor. And use two bullets.” His right hand shaped like a gun, he raised it and fired it against his own chest and his own forehead.

  “When you get paid. For a mission. What do you do with the money?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “If you want this mission, you’ll answer.”

  Camilo, child and professional killer, observed Hoffmann as if sizing him up, then shrugged.

  “One hundred to my mother. The rest in my tin box.”

  “And what’s the money for?”

  “Savings.”

  “Saving it? For what?”

  “For later.”

  Hoffmann turned toward the market, which seethed with life, the opposite of this boy’s daily life. Saving it? For later? You’re going to die soon, like you all do, don’t you know that?

  “Okay. Here’s your mission.”

  A tool that had a function. He was someone. For a moment. And his eyes shone as Hoffmann pulled a small stack of hundred-dollar bills out of his jacket.

  “Your salary.” Hoffmann held out two of them, and the boy took them with an outstretched hand, waiting for more.

  “I need the gun.”

  “You’re not getting one today.”

  “A pistol. That works just as well.”

  “Nothing.”

  Camilo looked at his employer, put his hands around his own neck and pretended to squeeze.

  “Nothing? Should I . . . do you . . . should I kill with my hands?”

  “No killing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Hoffmann took two more hundred-dollar bills from the crumpled heap. “Your mission is to not shoot anyone today. You should go home now. And this time, you get paid double. You give your mother two hundred dollars. Put two hundred into your tin box. And don’t come back here for a month.”

  “A month? I can’t.”

  “That’s what you’re getting the money for. Paid double. To not shoot anyone for a month.”

  Camilo sat on the gritty landing staring into space, not at the crowds that were always there, nor did he hear the drone of voices that were always there. He’d just been offered four hundred dollars for doing nothing. An insane fortune in his world. He should have laughed, cheered, danced. But he didn’t.

  “Those ones over there—they’re just beginners.” He stood up from the stone steps, pointing to the benches and the side where Hoffmann knew the youngest sat. “And those ones . . .” He shifted his skinny arm slightly, pointed to some slightly older kids at the far end of the other side of the bench. “. . . they’ve shot a few. But I . . .” He pounded his hand into his own chest now. “. . . I am a sicario.”

  The little boy stood there pounding his own chest. The most rotten of rotten societies, and he was proud. It was about money. But also about something much bigger, confirmation. Identity. In his world, this child was a sicario. And now that was being taken away by offering him money to not kill. Hoffmann watched the boy weighing, considering this strange question. Could it be worth more to not take lives?

  When the drug trade shows you its ugliest face. When a human life is worth a few hundred dollars and the executioners are ten, twelve years old. When profit is boiled down to child sicarios, this is a symptom of the blackest darkness.

 
“Okay.” The thin boy nodded, reached out his hand, and took the money. “I’ll stay home. For one month.”

  Then he left. Camilo, twenty-five.

  How many will you kill before someone kills you?

  And after he was swallowed by the throng of the market, becoming part of that drone, Hoffmann left too. Headed to his car. It was time to go home.

  SUE MASTERSON WALKED straight into a wall of heat. Built of stagnant and clinging humidity. At this time of year she collided with it every time she passed by the uniformed guards and took her first step out the door after a long day of work at DEA headquarters. Life in Washington. All those hours indoors in cool, air-conditioned offices made you forget you were living in a subtropical climate. Sweat was already dripping from her hairline after just a few hundred feet. But she liked it. Or rather, she needed it, as if to illustrate that her hours of living under constant threat surrounded by those ever-present bodyguards were over now. Every day, no matter the season, she walked to and from her home on Reservoir Road in Georgetown, forty-five minutes very early in the morning and late in the afternoon in her own world, but simultaneously in the other one as well, time spent clearing her thoughts, breathing in chaos and breathing out peace.

  She had just purchased her usual bottle of water in the corner store—run by a married couple who no longer cared if their quarrels and nagging took place in front of their customers—when her phone rang. Her private phone. An incoming call from a number she didn’t recognize. No. Too soon. She’d barely started walking, wasn’t even close to feeling like she was on her way. This was her personal time, and she put the phone back into the purse she hung over her shoulders like a knapsack. The phone rang again. The same number.

  “Yes?” She sounded annoyed, she knew that. That was the point.

  “Good afternoon, Sue.”

  But maybe the voice on the other end hadn’t understood that. Or didn’t care.

  “Or should I say good evening? I don’t know what’s up or down anymore, I can’t make sense of the time change. Or at least my body can’t.”

  A man’s voice. Not American.

  “This is your friend from the café yesterday.”

  Grens. The Swedish detective.

  “Good evening. I thought we were done talking. That you would already have left?”

  “I changed my mind—yesterday was so nice. I’m sitting here again. Same place, same table. Saxby’s Coffee, on Thirty-Fifth Street. I’ve been here most of the day. Or, to be frank, all day. They have a great breakfast. And a great lunch. Did you know that?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “The coffee. The doughnuts. Sue, you have no idea what you’re missing.”

  “Did you call to go through their menu?”

  The rattle of a porcelain cup on a porcelain plate. And someone who slurped and swallowed, unabashedly.

  “I’d like to see you again. Buy you a cup of coffee.”

  Masterson continued walking through the wall of heat and moisture. He sounded sober. Heavily accented English, but she was sure she understood him correctly. “Sorry, detective. I’m headed home for a cold shower.”

  “In that case, can I ask you to consider going home just a little later today?”

  Restless traffic. Red light. And her bottle of water was already empty.

  “For the last time, Grens—”

  “I’d really prefer if you came here, Sue. Bowling, you know.”

  “Bowling?”

  “Our shared interest. We never really finished talking about it.”

  He was sitting in the same place, a cup of black coffee and a plate of crumbs from at least three kinds of pastries. In front of her chair sat a larger cup, and he’d placed a dish on top of it to keep the beverage from cooling. He even pulled out her chair.

  “Here you go, madam.”

  She lingered, not completely comfortable sitting down yet. This was beginning to resemble a courtship. “I don’t know, Detective Grens, maybe you misunderstood something, but just to be on the safe side, I’m happily single.”

  He gestured to the chair. And smiled at her, a little too long. “Sit down, Chief Masterson. I certainly understand why Erik Wilson fell for you, and I’m single too, and a real catch—a body like a twenty-year-old and the same clothes as yesterday—but this isn’t about me or you. It’s about our child.”

  The limping, overweight man waited patiently. “Also—I already fell in love with a colleague once, and it didn’t turn out so well. So even though I am completely irresistible, I’m going to have to ask you to keep this professional.”

  He smiled again, and she sat down, lifted up the dish, and felt the heat rise. Half a cup. “Grens? I’m just as accustomed to meaningless interrogations as you. Just as tired of them. So . . . you wanted something? My shower awaits.”

  “Yes. I want you to do something for me. For our mutual friend.”

  “I already did yesterday—made sure he got those timing glitches. I’ve been working on it most of the day—the carbon fiber and submarine sounds, the eight soldiers didn’t take long, but the Cesium-137 did. I’ve exposed myself to risks so great you couldn’t possibly understand them. But now I’m done.”

  “One more thing.”

  She put down the cup she’d just lifted up.

  “One more . . . what?”

  “Something you have to do. For him to survive. So they both survive—the one in the jungle, too. Then you’ll be finished.”

  Her gaze was sharp, intense, searching—the kind of look Anni used to get when he went too far. He missed it every day.

  “In that case, Grens—why the hell didn’t you mention it yesterday?”

  He met that look. And it pierced him.

  “Because I wanted you to become a part of this. You needed time to think and feel. Sleep on it. Wake up with it. If I said yesterday what I’m about to say now, and you protested and said no, then we never would have gotten as far as we did.”

  She was silent for a long time. “At least you’re honest.”

  “When it’s to my advantage.”

  The waiter had slipped up behind them without either of them noticing, now he cleared the plates and asked if they wanted anything else.

  Grens nodded. “I want a coffee. Black like before. And a very small brownie.”

  “They all come in the same size.”

  “Then one of those.” The detective superintendent winked at Masterson. “Body of a twenty-year-old. One pastry at a time.”

  Then he leaned across the table. “Our friend needs our help with one more thing. A formal arrangement with the White House.”

  “Arrangement?”

  “He’ll free the speaker and deliver him unharmed—and you remove his name from the kill list. In a signed document.”

  The sound of glass shattering as a tray fell to the floor, and a waiter turning red as he peeked out from the kitchen. Masterson’s gaze had gone from sharp to ice cold. Just like Anni’s when he’d taken things another step too far.

  “And who exactly do you suggest present this proposal?”

  “I assume that the head of the DEA has training in negotiation? She might be a good candidate for the job.”

  “This is not about negotiating with criminal elements.”

  “Then how would you describe the White House’s treatment of Hoffmann?”

  LATE EVENING. She’d been asked to wait patiently for a spot in their busy schedules. She’d passed the time walking home, taking a long shower, eating some food, and walking slowly here. Now Masterson entered the White House once more, walked over its echoing floors and under its high but weighty ceilings. And it was just like before, but this time there were two guards. Secret Service, black uniform with a golden badge on the chest, and new instructions—one guard in front of her and one behind, what had been courtesy was now open suspicion.

  Survivor’s guilt. That’s what they called it—the guilt you feel when you’ve failed to save someone from dying, while you your
self survive. And which forced her to say yes to Superintendent Grens’s unreasonable request, to book a meeting about the one thing she was emphatically instructed to stay away from.

  Unlike on her last visit, the door to the vice president’s office was now closed. Masterson knocked, received a come in, and nodded to the woman sitting behind the oak desk, whose red glasses, rather than hanging across her chest, now sat like two extra eyes on top of her head. The chief of staff was in the other corner of the white sofa and had shoved the overstuffed pillows onto the floor. But he was just as friendly as last time, greeting her with a quick wink.

  “Vice President Thompson. Chief of Staff Perry. I appreciate you meeting with me on such short notice.”

  The fireplace was quiet, but something seemed to move in the large gold-framed mirror as she passed. Masterson wondered who, then realized it was her own shoulder. She stopped between the blue-and-green armchairs the directors of the CIA and FBI had sat in last time, waited to be asked to sit down.

  “Chief Masterson?” The vice president’s cheeks were as red as her neck as she spoke. “What part of ‘cut off all contact with your informant if you want to keep your job’ did you find so hard to understand?”

  “I understood. And I did not contact him or allow him to contact me.”

  “That’s not exactly what I understood from the request you made through my secretary. You said this was critical to our operation in Colombia and concerned national security.”

  Masterson continued to stand. They were not going to invite her to sit down. “However, I have received information via a third party.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “It’s not at all the same thing. That’s precisely why you’ll see that I haven’t acted against your wishes” She paused. “I’ve been asked to share a proposal with you.”

  No one responded, no one said a word.

  Masterson had difficulty facing both of them at the same time and decided to try to meet the vice president’s fathomless gaze. “I’m here representing a person in Colombia who knows the exact location where Crouse is being held. This person wanted me to present this deal to you. And—if you agree to it—it would mean Crouse would be freed and his life would be spared.”