Page 70 of Prisoner of War
The one on the far left, on the bottom,showed an office with someone’s head just peeping over the back of the big leather chair in front of the desk.
There was another man by the window. Minnie frowned. Yes, that was Torrez, the white-haired man. Movement on the other side of the screen pulled her gaze.
Zalaya.
This had to be Serrano’s office then. Did Serrano know his own office was bugged? That was an answer she would give moneyto know.
She frowned up at the screen, watching Torrez’s lips move. She needed sound. Many of the buttons and dials on the console were unlabeled. The labels that existed were in Spanish and too technical for her to translate. She stared at each dial and sliding control and switch, trying to guess its purpose. Then she found the button in a row of small switches at the back on the console, mountedon the vertical panel behind the slides and dials. It had a tiny speaker symbol, almost identical to the volume symbol on her phone.
She reached over and pushed it in and immediately Torrez’s voice jumped from the speaker set into the panel. She grinned, pleased at her success, but as Torrez’s fast Spanish registered, her grin faded for he was speaking of death and assassination...and of NicolásEscobedo.
* * * * *
“It was ill-conceived,” Zalaya judged, “and that does not even begin to address the pathetic execution of the plan.”
Serrano smiled. “There was nothing wrong with the execution.”
“Of course not! As long as you overlook the fact that you missed the intended target.”
“Who cares?” Torrez said from his position by the window, where he watched foot traffic along the path betweenthe administrative buildings and the palace. “The bomb achieved everything else. It has them virtually headless. Escobedo cannot control them single-handedly. There is no one of Blanco’s caliber left to pick up the slack. Escobedo will crumble and the whole operation with him.”
Serrano smiled and tried to hide it. It pleased him when his senior officers bickered. It was an excellent way to keepthem on their toes and operating at peak efficiency.
Zalaya didn’t seem particularly stirred, though. He raised a single brow at Torrez’s announcement. “Really? That’s your analysis of the whole debacle?”
Torrez’s face hardened. “You have a better one?”
Zalaya gave a hard smile. “For someone who has lived amongst these people, you’ve learned next to nothing about them. Did you spend all yourtime there prowling the bars and fucking American coeds?”
Torrez’s neck flushed red and the color gradually rose to cover his face. “Are you deliberately trying to piss me off?”
Zalaya spread his hand in a flourish. “All those jocks...no wonder you couldn’t keep your pretty mind on the job at hand.”
Torrez’s jaw rippled. He glanced at Serrano then back to Zalaya. Serrano noted that Torrez’shand was curled into a fist so tight the color had drained from the knuckles. White bands of fury bracketed his mouth.
“At least I was there doing something useful,” Torrez ground out. “Not lying on my back on a hospital bed.”
Zalaya actually laughed, showing even white teeth. “That’sit?” he asked. “That’s the best insult you can come up with? Torrez, you continually fail to amaze me.” He gotto his feet, the cane propping him. “I am not only deliberately making you angry, I am also demonstrating that you have no idea what those two pounds of plastique will do to the people in that house.”
“What is he talking about?” Torrez appealed to Serrano.
Serrano looked to Zalaya, only slightly less baffled.
“I’m talking about simple psychology,” Zalaya said. “It is possible you may not haveheard of it, because you clearly have no idea how to apply it.”
“And you do?” Torrez raged back.
“I just pushed allyourbuttons, didn’t I?” Zalaya asked coolly.
Torrez’s mouth opened, but nothing emerged. He shut his mouth with a snap.
Serrano laughed, his belly jiggling. It had been a long while since Zalaya had dismantled someone so thoroughly.
Zalaya was not finished with Torrez yet.He moved restlessly, shifting the weaker leg. “I never met Nicolás Escobedo personally, yet from a distance I still learned enough about him to know the man would never reach out and grasp visible power for himself. He was perfectly conditioned by his brother’s blinding presidency into thinking his place could only ever be in the shadows. He’d have to be pushed into being a formal leader—and pushedhard.
“If you had just left him alone, Torrez, he would have procrastinated himself into a standstill. There is no one else in that house with the ability to lead them into anything more complicated than a picnic. Not even Blanco. By killing Blanco, you’ve given Escobedo the push he needed. Now he’s going to come after us. Not tomorrow, not the next day. But soon. Because you’ve given him allthe reason he needs.”
“Me?” Torrez shot back. “I didn’t have anything to do with this!”
