The Buenos Aires Affair - Part III

The Buenos Aires sanction is a disaster, but now the Frenchman has arrived. Can he help Chance salvage this operation, or is he going to get dragged down with the lot...

 

Edgar’s Bacchian launch sent the metallic projectile on a direct course for my skull. Years of training had taught me that when you’re attacked, you don’t leave your head sitting in the same place. On the other hand, my miraculous catch was the result of good fortune rather than training. I unscrewed the cap from the Frenchman’s hip flask and took a long pull. I wouldn’t say that I needed a drink – sobriety was called for under the circumstances – but damn if I didn’t want one.

 

After screwing the cap back on, I tossed it back to him in a much more civil fashion.

 

“Larson was murdered. We were here to pull a sanction on…”

 

“Carlos Valdez?” I wasn’t thinking. In retrospect, it should have been obvious to me that the Frenchman wasn’t here burglarizing hotel rooms in Buenos Aires without knowing a few of the details, but I clearly didn’t have all of my synapses firing. Most of my co-workers don’t get killed on assignment. I would wager that none have ever gone out like Larson. So, yeah, I was a little shaken up. Edgar had a familiar smirk going. I really hated that smirk, but it also gave the situation some feeling of much-needed bravado.

 

“You want to fill me in on how much you know? I don’t think we have a lot time.”

 

“You are right, Chance. About ten minutes after you left, a teletype check was run on your rental car by a corrupt B.A. police officer. Our contacts at Interpol flagged the check, but they were not able to prevent Valdez’s men from getting the information. It won’t be long before they trace the car to your cover and your cover to this hotel.” The Frenchman took another sip from his flask and this time handed the open flask to me. “Your cover is blown, mon ami.”

 

“We need to get out of here then.” It seemed like as good a plan as any, but what I really wanted to do is just sit and drink and take our chances. It was a nice room and now I had company.

 

The Frenchman lazily got to his feet and said, “By all means, Monsieur Ransom. I have a safe car. We will pick up your friend as we leave.”

 

I picked up my grip and silently hurried down the stairs. Edgar had hired a black Mercedes. It was about as common a car as you could find in this country. We swung by Garcia’s car and I told him to get in the back of the rental. He looked scared. He must have thought we were Valdez’s men.

 

Garcia began to introduce himself to Edgar, but I waved him off. If there was ever a time to dispense with pleasantries, this was it.

 

“Get down!” Edgar hissed seconds after we started to move. Both of us sank below the line of sight of an oncoming SUV. The truck had dark tinted windows but we were still able to make out the silhouettes of four passengers. This could be a hit squad or it could be the string quartet from the banquet, looking to play their rendition of Boccherini as background music for our escape. I’m not sure of which scenario I would have been less fond, but the smart money was on it being a hit squad. Besides, if I’m going to listen to any escape music, it’s going to be Escape – The Pina Colada Song, but the Frenchman had left his Rupert Holmes Greatest Hits CD back in Marseilles. At least that’s what he told me.

 

However, they were either not too bright or were just too focused on getting to the hotel and roughing up the clerk to get my room key, because they took no notice of the Mercedes.

 

“Where are we going?” I asked Edgar, switching to French so that Garcia would not understand what was being said.

 

“I have a safe house on the outskirts of town.” Also answering in rapid French.

 

“Really? I didn’t think la Confrerie had any operations in Argentina…”

 

The Frenchman shifted uncomfortably, “Chance, there is no time to explain all of this. You said Larson was murdered. How did you come to this conclusion?”

 

“Valdez knew about the poison somehow. Larson was going to poison him. I don’t know if you knew that part. I saw Valdez kick the swab that Larson was going to use under a table so that no one else would touch it. I have no idea how he knew.”

 

“Larson was the sanction, Chance.” He peered back at Garcia in the rearview mirror to see if anything registered on his face. I suppose he was satisfied. Edgar sobriety was surprising. He had the ability to guzzle a barrel of whiskey and not let it affect his driving. He is the person that Mothers Against Drunk Driving does not want you to believe exists, like an alcoholic abominable snowman or Boris Yeltsin.  

 

I wasn’t really thinking about any of these things that night. I felt sick and confused, but I wasn’t paying attention to that either. I hadn’t wanted to kill anyone, not even a piece of human garbage like Valdez. And while I had no love lost for Larson, he was still a Wingman, and not just any Wingman. One with a distinguished, if notorious, reputation. My head was spinning. Edgar handed me the flask again, but I pushed his hand away.

 

“This is…this is…no f*****g way.” I couldn’t even come up with an intelligent question.

 

“Chance, the Director is a piece of s**t. I have told you this before. He asked me to take this assignment ‘no questions asked’ and I told him to stick it up his a*s. They sent me to Dubai on another assignment and pulled you out of Macau. Once you were in the field, they called me back and told me that I had better reconsider this because you were in danger.”

 

So there it was. I wasn’t hand picked for any assignment. They were just trying to exploit my naivety and my bond with the Frenchman. The problem with being a part of an international operation is that it was hard to keep tabs on everyone. Edgar and I typically had no idea on what sort of assignments the other was sent. Well played, Monsieur Director.

 

“Excuse me.” This was Garcia reacting to being starved for information.

 

“Callate la boca!” Shut up! And of course that reply came from the Frenchman. It resulted from an entire life of being ill mannered. Edgar turned off the highway onto a narrow dirt road with which he seemed to be familiar. How long had he been in this country? Edgar stopped the car and killed the lights. He then took the keys from the ignition and told the kid to wait inside. He and I got out.

 

The Frenchman lit up two cigarettes at once with a match and handed me one, “Sorry, Chance. It is my last match. Be careful that you do not become intoxicated from the scotch that I surely breathed upon the end.”

 

I wasn’t in the mood for jokes, but I was mildly revolted by the thought. It was probably about 90 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Why do I always think that it’s a good idea to wear a coat? Edgar took a drag and began speaking.

 

“The job was authentic in the beginning. We were going to help this Garcia kid get his cousin back and make Valdez disappear. Then we found out that Larson was playing both sides. He was going to cross over. He was going to freelance away from la Confrerie.”

 

“So why all of the drama? Why not just sanction Larson?”

 

“No Wingman has ever been sanctioned. We have never had to. I guess it’s because of how carefully we are able to vet the new recruits. We could not do it in a place where la Confrerie runs operations. It also had to be done under circumstances about which members could only guess. This situation presented itself to la Confrerie by coincidence. The only issue was that the Director knew that no one would accept a sanction on another Wingman.”

 

“Except you?”

 

“Except us, actually.” I hated Edgar right at that moment and he read it on me. “Do not be an ungrateful b*****d, Chance. Larson was going to kill you too.”

 

“Why?” Still angry and not entirely buying into all of the twists in this story.

 

“Because he had contracted to kill Garcia and could not leave you alive to figure out what he was doing.”

 

The fog was starting to lift from my mind, so I decided to give it a challenge and took another belt of scotch.

 

“What would Larson gain?” But I was starting to figure it out for myself.

 

“Autonomy? Money? Who knows? He was always cruel and ambitious, that one. Killing Garcia was a way into Valdez’s world. Not just winging for people. Real power.”

 

“So how did you do it?”

 

“The polymer that he put on his hands was the toxin. When it dried, his ticket was punched, as you Americans say. The liquid on the swab was absinthe. Not all that dangerous, but I prefer scotch.”

 

I just gave him a look of irritation because of his cavalier attitude, but in the end he was right. It’s not as though Wingmen are God’s chosen people. If Larson was going to kill someone like Garcia just to jump into bed with a child pornographer, then good riddance. I just felt like an idiot.

 

“Okay, Edgar. Why did Valdez need Larson? He could have made Garcia disappear any time he wanted, from what I’ve seen. Why the fancy public accident?”

 

“Valdez wanted a public execution that wouldn’t ruin his public reputation. He would later leak subtle clues that he had killed Garcia.” He glanced around and then said, “We need to get to the safe house.”

 

I still wasn’t entirely okay with everything that I had just learned, but it would have to suffice for the time being. The road was dark but we weren’t invisible. I thought Edgar was being prudent, but I soon learned that he just wanted to refill his flask. As it turned out, we were only a few minutes from our final destination.

 

While en route, Edgar told Garcia and me in accented Spanish, “Neither one of you speaks Spanish.” Turning to Garcia in the back, “You got that, kid?”

 

This seemed like a strange protocol for a safe house. He asked Edgar in Spanish, “What do I speak?”

 

Edgar looked annoyed, but Garcia had a valid point.

 

“Do you speak any other languages?”

 

“German.”

 

Edgar eyed him suspiciously. Europeans have a long memory. Many of them remember the Nazis that had fled to South America from the Allied occupation. Garcia had brownish hair and hazel eyes. Despite the olive skin, he did not appear to be purely Argentinean.

 

Garcia apparently read Edgar’s concerns. “Relax. I took it in secondary school.”

 

“Okay. So while we are at the safe house, we all speak German. That will work”

 

We turned down a dirt road and arrived at some sort of farm. I mean, it looked like a farm with the barn and a pen and all of those stereotypical farm things, but it didn’t seem real. I grew up in the Bronx, but I had seen a movie or two. To begin with, there were no animals anywhere. Not even a dog. The ground looked very dry and was covered with vicious looking weeds. If anything was being grown or raised here, it was rust. Rust coated everything: The 1920’s-looking tractor, the ancient truck, the side of the house. There was rust on things that I didn’t even know could rust, like the corrugated fiberglass front porch roof.

 

“Nice place, Edgar.”

 

He ignored the jab, but before going to the front door, the Frenchman reminded us, “Not a word of Spanish.”

 

He then put a big dopey smile on his face and walked in the front door, calling, “Hello? Hello, Esperanza?” in English with a British accent. Edgar had mastered six languages and was able to get by in a few others, but what always amazed me was his ability to mimic dialects and accents.

 

“Hola, Edgar!” The excited voice came from another room. A few seconds later, a 40ish Argentinean woman entered the room and began showering Edgar with kisses. We were regarded with the same interest as if he had brought in a couple of bags of groceries. I was able to understand most of what she was saying. It was kind of like:

 

“Oh, Edgar, I missed you. Where were you? I worry so much about you. This is not a good place to go wandering around without knowing Spanish. You smell like you’ve been drinking. Come to bed with me…” All of those sentiments were repeated at least three times in varying order. Esperanza was attractive in a matronly sort of way, but after a few minutes, I was under the assumption that her rapid-fire endearments were what were causing all of the rust. Then again, I’m not a scientist. What I was sure of is that she was incredibly irritating.

 

So apparently Edgar had come to Buenos Aires and gotten married in the course of a few days. Wonderful.

 

He gently pushed her back and waved an arm towards us and said in loud English, “Friends…friends.”

 

She ran over and took my coat and hat and Garcia’s jacket. She then made the universal sign for eating, a fork lifted to the mouth. Edgar responded, “Si…is it?...si.”

 

Esperanza disappeared into the kitchen. In German, I asked Edgar, “What the hell is going on here?” Edgar went over to a credenza and picked up a bottle of scotch and yelled, “Outside. Out-side,” in the direction of the kitchen.

 

Once we were outside, Edgar switched to French. I assumed that this was to once again prevent Garcia from knowing what was said.

 

“I met her at the supermarket. She thinks I am helpless.”

 

“Are you out of your mind? We need to get out of this country.”

 

“Oh? And what about Valdez? What about your boy Garcia there?”

 

“Garcia’s a good kid. He won’t say anything about Larson.”

 

“No, because he will certainly be dead. Valdez is not going to let this go. He knows that the two of you left together. Unless he is an idiot, he will put it all together. It will be a matter of days until...”

 

I weighed the likelihood of Valdez’s revenge and determined that it didn’t look good for Garcia.

 

“There’s something else, Chance.” The Frenchman had an almost concerned look now. What he was going to tell me was not going to be pleasant, “I killed a Wingman. Our brothers will never accept it.” He went on to explain that the final part of the plan was to make it appear that Larson had been killed by Valdez and we were here to avenge his death. Corrupt or not, the murder of a Wingman had a price that would have to be levied. Because Valdez was pure evil, he could be proffered in lieu of the Frenchman. At least that is how this sanction would be justified in the end.

 

“Edgar, what the hell are we becoming?”

 

“Chance, I came here to protect you. We have both been played the fool by the Director, but this is our mess now. We can keep Garcia here with Esperanza until the deed is done.”

 

“Yeah. Poor kid. I don’t think he caught it, but she had fresh tracks behind her leg. I guess it takes becoming a junkie to live with someone like Valdez.”

 

“I saw,” Garcia said in Spanish-accented French. “I know about the heroin.”

 

I was about as surprised as one could be after watching a co-worker crushed by a butter bull only to find out that he was really killed by a friend. So, not really that surprised after all.

 

Edgar was expressing a different emotion. “You little piece of merde. How dare you deceive us after bringing us here.”

 

Garcia was clearly scared, which made his boldness that much more impressive. “Don’t talk to me about deception. You and your organization used me to kill one of your own. I didn’t get into this to kill Larson. I want Valdez dead. Dead! If you don’t do it, Chance, I will. F**k both of you.”

 

“You against Valdez. You are f*****g mad!” The Frenchman snorted.

 

“No. I’ll do it and I’ll do it myself.” I didn’t feel like the words were my own, but it was my lips that were moving. “You have a life to start with Fatima, Jose.” And you have no life worth protecting, Chance.

 

“Fatima is not what I thought. Help her? Yes. But no more can I start a life with her. The Precipitación Fuera del Antrax awakened my eyes. To see her prancing about in that fur and jewelry and the scar of the needle…I don’t care if she knows about Valdez or not. I saw no sadness in her eyes when Larson died. In the old days, she would have cried. She is not my sweet cousin anymore. He has stolen her soul and I want revenge. I want Valdez dead because what he does to her, he does thousands of times over to others.”

 

Since the beginning of this mission, I had felt a mild revulsion every time Garcia mentioned his cousin in amorous terms. Still, I realized that behind the quasi-incestuous inappropriateness of it all, he really did love Fatima. What he had just said was moving. Well, at least I was moved. The Frenchman never was, which was why I was so surprised when he made his decision.

 

“We do it together. All three.” He handed the bottle of scotch to Garcia. “But then you get out of B.A. You will have to for your own sake.”

 

Esperanza called us in, and we dined in silence on sausage and eggs. It was delicious, but I wondered whether or not I was consuming a thin patina of rust in each bite of sausage. Relief washed over me when I saw the Jimmy Dean package peeking over the edge of the garbage can, and I decided that the pork products might have survived the fate of everything else at Rust Manor. The stress had heightened my hunger. Esperanza stood behind the Frenchman and massaged his shoulders as he ate. It actually appeared that it was making it difficult for him to swallow. She proudly beamed at the table as though the meal was a culinary work of art worthy of Jean-Louis Andre.

 

No sooner had he shoveled the last bite in his mouth than she took Edgar by the arm and dragged him to the room.

 

“Heure de payer le loyer,” Edgar said over his shoulder in French, breaking his own moratorium on languages other than German, as well as the laws of good taste. I didn’t feel sorry for him. Esperanza had a few miles on her, but she was actually fairly attractive. Like an older Carmen Miranda without the smorgasbord of fruit piled on top of her head.

 

Garcia and I had sat looking at each other for about twenty minutes when Edgar emerged from the room and said in German, “Get cleaned up. I will be out in about a half hour.”

 

Forty minutes had passed when Edgar emerged from the bedroom. He almost had to push Esperanza back inside. Her carrying on put me in the mind of a wife’s reaction to her husband going off to war, only Edgar was just going out into the yard. Edgar whispered that Garcia would take first watch sitting in Edgar’s car at the end of the road. He would be relieved in three hours by one of us.

 

A week passed at Rust Manor. During that time, we developed dark circles under our eyes, our German sharpened, and everything that I had brought with me developed an orange hue from the perpetual rust dust. We were all gaining weight. In addition to being able to thaw sausage, Esperanza could also boil hotdogs, microwave pizza, and toast Pop-Tarts. I think it might have been the reason that she was still single. Of course we all raved over the food in whatever language other than Spanish we felt like speaking at the moment. Dinners were like the UN visiting a low budget food court…which I’m sure that they do on their shopping days.

 

Edgar was getting briefs from a surveillance team that he had brought in the night of Larson’s death. They were told that the three of us had been on a joint operation when Larson was killed, and that they had to be called in for support on what they could only guess was going to be the sanction of Larson’s killer. We didn’t have much of a plan. Edgar said that we needed to catch Valdez when he was vulnerable, so we had to remain flexible. Edgar would go into town every morning with Esperanza. On the third day, she came back alone driving Edgar’s Mercedes. I was relieved when I saw Edgar appear a few minutes after in an old panel truck.

 

“Rental,” was his only explanation. Inside I would later find out was some older surveillance equipment and a couple of guns. He handed me a black snub-nosed revolver.

 

“I’m not that great with guns.”

 

“You will be so close that it won’t matter.”

 

The gun didn’t feel right in my hand. They still don’t.

 

It was on a Sunday. Eight days after the Precipitación Fuera del Antrax, our break came. Edgar came into the bathroom while I was shaving. “Get your things. Surveillance picked something up.” I wiped my face with a small unrusted portion of a towel.

 

We drove in silence, Edgar in the panel truck with me in the back, Garcia in the Mercedes. If we weren’t fast, Edgar said that we would miss our opportunity. We drove fast. Gravel flew on the dirt road as the vehicles left a tearful Esperanza at the end of the drive. She would never see Edgar again and somehow she knew. I actually felt sad for the most annoying women that I had ever met.

 

 

“A coat and hat, hermano? At this time of year?” Ernesto inquired, smiling as he glanced around the dirty cantina to make sure that they were still alone.

 

“I did not misspeak, my friend, did I?” Valdez’s words were soft, but Ernesto knew from the edgy tone that Carlos did not consider anything about this issue amusing.

 

“No, you did not. It’s just that one of my men was able to obtain a license plate the night of the unfortunate demise of that Larson. The man getting into the car had a coat and hat as well. It cannot be a coincidence.”

 

“No, Ernesto. That man must be handled.”

 

“As you wish, hermano,” Ernesto replied eloquently, and then turned to the bartender. “Camarero, I want two more shots of tequila. I want good tequila, like the kind that you would serve to your w***e mother on a Sunday after church. I also want them in clean glasses.” With that, he backhanded the two mismatched shot glasses. They flew across the counter and broke on the floor of the bar.

 

The bartender replied, “Si, jefe.” His eyes were properly averted downward. Ernesto noted this with approval for the action and disdain for the man.

 

“Be a good boy and we will give you a nice tip.” Both men laughed. It was good for Ernesto to see his boss laugh at something.

 

The bartender just kept looking down as he searched through the bottles lined up along the mirror to find the best tequila that he had. He selected a bottle and then found two champagne flutes that had probably never touched the lips of another living soul.

 

“Are these okay, jefe?”

 

Ernesto dismissed his question with a wave. “Bueno.”

 

The bartender wiped the flutes down and set them up in front of the two gentlemen. He then showed them both the tequila bottle as though it were a bottle of wine from the vintage stock of Louis the XIV.

 

“Get on with it, peon.”

 

As the bartender poured the amber liquid into the ill-suited vessels, he stopped mid-pour and put the bottle to his own lips.

 

Ernesto sneered and began to say something, but it was cut short when the base of the heavy bottle connected with his left temple. This blow was enough to knock Ernesto off of the stool, but surprisingly not enough to break the bottle. As the bottle traveled through Ernesto’s head across the body of the bartender, Valdez began reaching inside of his jacket. The bartender leapt up onto the bar and directed the bottle in a downward swing onto the upper brow of the most powerful man in Buenos Aires, breaking the bottle.

 

I walked in and was in the middle of the room before the sound of the door striking the wall could be heard. My right hand came from my coat pocket and the freshly taped .38 was in it. I took aim at Ernesto, who was starting to recover, and my hand exploded, but I didn’t hear anything. I moved the weapon to Valdez and I saw the fire flaring out of my fist, but still didn’t hear the sound. I then walked over to Ernesto, who was writhing on the ground, and pressed the gun to his temple just before the gun went off again to the profound sound of silence.

 

I looked at Valdez. He would be dead soon. The bullet had entered his lower back. With medical attention, he might survive, but that was not going to happen. I kicked him and his body cooperatively rolled onto its back. His mouth was slightly agape as he tried to suck in air. I bent down, placing the hot barrel between his lips. I wanted to say something dramatic or cold or meaningful, but in the end I realized that none of that was important. What was important was getting this done. I heard the blast this time.

 

I looked at Edgar in white shirtsleeves and black vest. “What did you do with the bartender?”

 

“He is handcuffed and sleeping in the back. We will leave him in the van and drive it down the street. The police will receive an anonymous tip on this place when we touch down in Rio di Janeiro. I will see that he gets something for the difficulty that I have caused.”

 

I nodded thoughtfully as I locked the front door. My Jean Paul Gaultier coat was speckled with red dots. I doubted it was salvageable. Even if it was, I didn’t want it anymore.

 

“Do you think this Garcia kid is going to make it, Edgar?”

 

“La Confrerie? No, but you do.”

 

We didn’t care about cleaning up. The gun was untraceable. The Frenchman smashed all of the glasses that he had touched to make sure that they couldn’t be processed for prints. The entire time that he had been waiting on Ernesto and Valdez, he was wiping down surfaces for prints. This step was surely unnecessary. Still, we donned rubber gloves before emptying most of the liquor stock onto the wooden floors. Edgar found an old gas stove in the back and opened the valve wide. He then quickly lit the fuel on the floor before making a rapid exit to the car.

 

As we walked out, Garcia pulled up in the Mercedes. When we got in, I told Garcia to head to the airstrip. He didn’t ask how the sanction went. He knew.

 

When we pulled up to the airstrip, Garcia anxiously said, “I’ve never been on a plane before. I’m kind of nervous.”

 

I wasn’t nervous. I would normally be petrified. I didn’t like airliners, but little twin prop planes turned my spine to water. I had no words of comfort for Garcia until I thought about how his life was about to become part of our total abyss. I knew a trip in a little puddle jumper was the least of his worries, “It’s nothing, kid.” I looked back over my shoulder at the city that made me a killer and repeated, “It’s really nothing.”

 

I shrugged my coat onto my shoulders, pulled the brim of my hat down over my eyes, and faded into the night.

 

The End

 

http://www.myspace.com/chanceransom

 

 

Author's Note

This is the final part. Please, be as critical as you like

Reviews

[Yvonne Heidt]

but the Frenchman had left his Rupert Holmes Greatest Hits CD back in Marseilles. At least that's what he told me... LOL!

"Get on with it, peon." I haven't heard that word in years - LOL

The story was very espionage related, written very well. I love how you distribute different languages throughout the dialog. Which moves the story quite well.

I didn't see any spelling, grammar or punctuation problems at all. I'm so impressed with this story.

Excellent job.

[Beautifully Tragic xPoe..]

You have some great stories, my friend! Very impressive.


Great Write

[None]

Michael, you surpassed impressiveness with this third part. I loved all your stories, but this really made an incredulous indentation with each paragraph reaching out to brand me. Superb writing!