The Sigma Protocol (21 page)

A theory was beginning to emerge. The killers—for there had to be more than one—were probably well financed and had access to good intelligence. If they weren’t acting on their own, then they’d been hired by someone with money and power—but with what
motivation
? And why now, why so suddenly?

Once again, she was back to the question of the list—who exactly had seen it? Bartlett had spoken of an internal CIA audit, and of the decision to bring in the ICU itself. That suggested researchers, government officials. What about the Attorney General himself—had he seen it?

And there still remained several salient questions. Why were the murders disguised as natural deaths? Why was it so important to keep the fact of the murders secret?

And what about—

The phone rang, yanking her out of her reverie. The taxi was here.

She finished applying her makeup and went downstairs.

The taxi, a silver Mercedes—probably stolen, too—hurtled through the crowded streets of Asunción with apparent disregard for the sanctity of human life. The driver, a handsome man in his late thirties with his olive complexion nicely set off by his white linen tropical-weight shirt, brown eyes, and close-shaven hair, glanced back at her periodically as if hoping for eye contact.

She pointedly ignored him. The last thing she needed was some Latin Lothario taking an interest in her. She stared out the window at a street vendor selling fake
Rolexes and Cartiers, holding up his goods for her as they stopped at a light. She shook her head. Another vendor, an old woman, was peddling herbs and roots.

She hadn’t seen a single gringo face since she’d arrived here. Maybe that was to be expected. Asunción was not exactly Paris. A bus in front of them belched foul-smelling smoke. There was a burst of instrumental music.

She noticed the traffic had thinned, the streets were wider, tree-lined. They were on the outskirts of town, it appeared. She had a city map in her handbag, but didn’t want to unfold it if it wasn’t necessary.

She remembered Captain Bolgorio mentioning that Prosperi’s house was on Avenida Mariscal López, which was in the eastern sector on the way back to the airport. She had traveled down it on the way into town, the street with all the beautiful Spanish Colonial mansions.

But the streets she saw out the window didn’t look at all familiar. She certainly hadn’t seen this part of town before.

She looked up at the driver and said, “Where are we going?”

He didn’t reply.

She said, “Hey, listen to me,” as he pulled the car over to the shoulder of a quiet, untrafficked side road.

Oh, Jesus.

She didn’t have a weapon. Her pistol was locked in her drawer at the office. Her training in martial arts and self-defense would scarcely—

The driver had turned around and was pointing a large black.38 at her.

“Now we talk,” the man said. “You arrive at the airport from America. You wish to visit the estate of Señor Prosperi. Do you understand why some of us might find you interesting?”

Anna focused on remaining calm. Her advantage would have to be psychological. The man’s one disadvantage was the limits of his knowledge. He did not know who she was. Or did he?

“If you are a DEA whore, then I have one set of friends who would enjoy entertaining you…before your final, unexplained disappearance. And you won’t be the first. If you are an American
político
, I have other friends who will enjoy engaging you in, let us say, conversation.”

Anna composed her features into a look of boredom mixed with contempt. “You keep speaking of ‘friends,’” she said, and then hissed in her fluent Spanish: “
El muerto al hoyo y le vivo al bollo
.” Dead men have no friends.

“You do not wish to choose how you will die? It is the only choice most of us ever get.”

“But
you
will have to choose first.
El que mucho habla, mucho yerro
. I feel sorry for you, taking on an errand and making such a botch of it. You really don’t know who I am, do you?”

“If you’re smart, you’ll tell me.”

She curled her lips in scorn. “That is the one thing I will not do.” She paused. “Pepito Salazar would not want me to.”

The driver’s expression froze. “
Salazar
, you said?”

Navarro had mentioned the name of one of the most powerful cocaine exporters of the region, a man whose trading enterprise outstripped even that of the Medellín kingpins.

Now the man looked suspicious. “It is easy to invoke the name of a stranger.”

“When I return to the Palaquinto this evening, it is
your
name I will be invoking,” Anna said provocatively. The Palaquinto was the name of Salazar’s mountain
retreat, a name known only to the few. “I regret we were not formally introduced.”

The man spoke with a tremor in his voice. To make trouble for a personal courier of Salazar was more than his life was worth. “I have heard stories of the Palaquinto, the faucets of gold, the fountains of champagne…”

“That’s only for parties, and if I were you, I wouldn’t count on any invitations.” Her hand dipped into her small purse for her hotel keys.

“You must forgive me,” the man said urgently. “My instructions came from people with incomplete knowledge. None of us would dream of dishonoring any member of Salazar’s entourage.”

“Pepito knows that mistakes will be made.” Anna watched the.38 dangling loosely in his right hand, smiled at him encouragingly, and then, in a swift movement, dug her keys into his wrist. The jagged steel stabbed through flesh and fascia, and the gun dropped into Anna’s lap. As the man howled in agony, she scooped it up in one deft movement and placed the muzzle at the back of his head.

“
La mejor palabra es la que no se dice
,” she said through gritted teeth. The best word is the one that is not said.

She ordered the man out of the car, made him walk fifteen paces into the scrubby roadside vegetation, then got into his seat and roared off. She could not afford the time, she told herself, to replay the terrifying encounter; nor could she allow panic to seize her instincts and intellect. There was work to do.

The house that had belonged to Marcel Prosperi was set back from the Avenida Mariscal López. It was an immense Spanish Colonial mansion surrounded by
extravagantly landscaped property, and it reminded her of the old Spanish missions back home in California. Instead of a simple lawn, though, the expanse of land was terraced with rows of cacti and lush wild-flowers, protected by a high wrought-iron fence.

She parked the silver Mercedes some distance down the road and walked toward the entrance, where a taxicab was idling. A short, potbellied man emerged from it and ambled toward her. He had the dark skin of a mestizo, a drooping black
bandito
mustache, black hair combed straight back with too much hair goo. His face gleamed with oil or perspiration, and he looked pleased with himself. His short-sleeved white shirt was translucent in places where sweat had soaked through, revealing a mat of dark chest hair.

Captain Bolgorio?

Where was his police cruiser? she wondered as his cab drove away.

He approached her, beaming, and enveloped her hand in his two large clammy ones.

“Agent Navarro,” he said. “A great pleasure to meet such a beautiful woman.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“Come, Señora Prosperi is not used to being kept waiting. She is very rich and very powerful, Agent Navarro, and she is accustomed to getting her way. Let’s go right in.”

Bolgorio rang a bell at the front gate and identified themselves. There was a buzz, and Bolgorio pushed the gate open.

Anna noticed a gardener hunched over a row of wildflowers. An elderly female servant was walking down a path between ledges of cacti holding a tray of empty glasses and open bottles of
agua gaseosa
.

“We’re all set to go to the morgue after this interview?” Anna said.

“As I said, this is really not my department, Agent Navarro. A magnificent house, is it not?” They passed through an archway into cool shade. Bolgorio rang the doorbell at the side of an ornately carved blond wooden door.

“But you can help arrange it?” Anna asked, just as the door opened. Bolgorio shrugged. A young woman in a servant’s uniform of white blouse and black skirt invited them in.

Inside was even cooler, the floor tiled in terra-cotta. The servant led them to a large, open room that was sparely decorated with woven primitive rugs and earthenware lamps and pottery. Only the recessed lighting in the stucco ceiling seemed out of place.

They sat on a long, low white sofa and waited. The maid offered them coffee or sparkling water, but both of them declined.

Finally a woman appeared, tall and thin and graceful. The widow Prosperi. She looked around seventy but very well taken care of. She was dressed entirely in mourning black, but it was a designer dress: maybe Sonia Rykiel, Anna thought. She wore a black turban and outsized Jackie Onassis sunglasses.

Anna and Bolgorio both rose from the low sofa. Without shaking their hands, she said in Spanish, “I don’t see how I can help you.”

Bolgorio stepped forward. “I am Captain Luis Bolgorio of the
policía
,” he said with a bow of his head, “and this is Special Agent Anna Navarro of the American Department of Justice.”

“Consuela Prosperi,” she said impatiently. “Please accept our deepest condolences on the passing of your husband,” he continued. “We simply wanted to ask you a few questions, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Is there some sort of problem? My husband was
sick for a long time, you know. When he finally passed away it was surely a great relief for him.”

Not to mention for you, too, Anna thought. “We have information,” she said, “indicating that your husband may have been killed.”

Consuela Prosperi looked unimpressed. “Please sit down,” she said. They did, and she sat in a white chair facing them. Consuela Prosperi had the unnaturally tight skin of a woman who has had too many face-lifts. Her makeup was too orange, her lipstick glossy brown.

“Marcel was ill for the last several years of his life. He was confined to bed. He was in extremely poor health.”

“I understand,” Anna said. “Did your husband have enemies?”

The widow turned to her with an imperious glance. “Why would he have enemies?”

“Señora Prosperi, we know all about your husband’s past endeavors.”

Her eyes flashed. “I am his third wife,” she said. “And we did not speak of his business affairs. My own interests lie elsewhere.”

This woman could hardly be ignorant of her husband’s reputation, Anna knew. She also did not seem to be much in mourning.

“Did Señor Prosperi have any regular visitors?” The widow hesitated but an instant. “Not while we were married.”

“And no conflicts that you know about with his international ‘trading’ partners?”

The widow’s thin lips compressed, revealing a row of vertical age lines.

“Agent Navarro means no disrespect,” Bolgorio put in hastily. “What she means to say is—”

“I’m quite aware of what she means to say,” Consuela Prosperi snapped.

Anna shrugged. “There must have been many people over the years who wanted your husband apprehended, arrested, even killed. Rivals. Contenders for territory. Disgruntled business partners. You know that as well as I.”

The widow offered no response. Anna noticed her thick orange pancake makeup cracking over her sun-lined face.

“There are also people who sometimes provide early warnings,” Anna went on. “Intelligence. Security. Do you know if anyone ever contacted him to warn him of any possible threats?”

“In the nineteen years we were married,” Consuela Prosperi said, turning away, “I never heard anything of this.”

“Did he ever express to you the fear that people were after him?”

“My husband was a private man. He was an absentee owner of his automobile dealerships. He never liked to go out. Whereas I enjoy going out quite a bit.”

“Yes, but did he say he was afraid to go out?”

“He didn’t
enjoy
going out,” she corrected. “He preferred to stay in and read his biographies and histories.”

For some reason, Ramon’s muttered words ran through her head.
El diablo sabe más por viejo que por diablo
. The devil knows more because he is old than because he is the devil.

Anna tried a different tack. “You seem to have very good security here.”

The widow smirked. “You do not know Asunción, do you?”

“There is great poverty and crime here, Agent Navarro,” Captain Bolgorio said, turning to her with out-spread hands. “People of the Prosperis’ means must always take precautions.”

“Did your husband have any visitors at all in the last few weeks of his life?” Anna went on, ignoring him.

“No, my friends came over quite a bit, but none of them ever went upstairs to see him. He really had no friends in the last years. He saw only me and his nurses.”

Anna looked up suddenly. “Who supplied his nurses?”

“A nursing agency.” “Did they rotate—did the same ones come regularly?”

“There was a day nurse and an evening nurse, and yes, always the same ones. They took very good care of him.”

Anna chewed at the inside of her lower lip. “I’m going to have to examine certain of your household records.”

The widow turned to Bolgorio with an expression of indignation. “I don’t have to put up with this, do I? This is a grotesque invasion of my privacy.”

Bolgorio tented his hands as if in supplication. “Please, Señora Prosperi, her only interest is to determine whether there was any possibility of homicide.”

“Homicide? My husband’s heart finally gave out.”

“If we must, we can obtain them at the bank,” Anna said. “But it would be so much simpler if—”

Consuela Prosperi got up and suddenly stared at Anna, nostrils flared, as if the American were a rodent that had made its way into her house. Bolgorio spoke in a low voice. “People like her, they do not tolerate invasions of their privacy.”

“Señora Prosperi, you say there were two nurses,” Anna said, soldiering on. “Were they very reliable?”