“Tunnels?” Faroe asked casually. “The Chinese ones?”

“Tunnels?” Beltran said, smiling like a cat. “I know nothing of such things, the eighth wonder of the underworld, ROG’s great secret.”

“The Chinese tunnels were shut down a long time ago,” Faroe said.

“Si, but Jaime built them again.”

“You mean the one the DEA shut down a while back?” Faroe asked. “The one that was good for forty tons of cocaine?”

“That was one of them, yes. A half mile long. It goes from a pottery warehouse in Mexico to a farmer’s barn in Campo, on the other side.”

That was one of them.

Faroe was glad his game face had had a lot of practice. “Too bad they found it. A blocked tunnel doesn’t help me kill Hector, so it doesn’t help you get out of La Mesa alive.”

“There is another tunnel,” Beltran said.

Grace looked at her hands and prayed as she hadn’t since she was thirteen years old.

“Is it open?” Faroe asked.

“Like the plaza, yes, it is open.” Beltran grinned, showing off some gleaming stainless steel teeth. A rich man’s smile, because only the rich in Tijuana could afford a dentist.

“Where is it?” Faroe asked.

“Ah, that is the mystery.”

“The men who built it know where it is.”

Beltran’s smile was darker this time, shaded with something close to respect. “So quick. You would make a good jefe.”

Faroe waited.

“ROG found a small village of hard-rock miners, brought eighteen of them in under guard, and used them to construct two tunnels,” Beltran said. “Later he killed the men.”

Sister Maude crossed herself and murmured, “Eighteen souls.”

“Innocents,” Beltran agreed.

“Even for Hector,” Faroe said, “that’s a lot of bodies to hide in the desert all at once.”

“You remember the massacre three years ago, the men in the mountains east of Ensenada?” Beltran asked.

“They were members of a tiny ejido, a communal settlement,” Sister Maude explained to Grace. “Armed men stormed the village at night, rounded up all the men, and murdered them with machetes and machine guns. No one knew why. It was just assumed they were smugglers or marijuana farmers.”

Beltran shook his head. “They were miners, all of them.”

“The men who dug the two tunnels,” Faroe said. “Makes sense, if you’re Hector Rivas.”

Again, Beltran smiled in approval. “When the first tunnel was discovered, Hector thought someone had talked. To protect the remaining tunnel, he sent men into the village. The executioners were sloppy. One miner survived.”

“That’s quite a story,” Faroe said. “Too bad I can’t verify it unless I talk to the survivor.”

Beltran laughed with delight. “If you get tired of being poor, I would make you my second-in-command. But I need much money to introduce you to this miner. For me, for my courier, and for the poor miner, you understand.”

“Do it,” Grace said quietly.

“How much, jefe?” Faroe asked.

“A million dollars. American, of course,” Beltran said. “Cash, you understand.”

“A million dollars?” Grace laughed sharply. “That’s crazy.”

“A million dollars is not much for a life, when it is your own-or your son’s.”

“Only drug dealers have that kind of cash,” Grace said.

“Or money launderers,” Faroe said.

“I don’t have access to Ted’s accounts.” She looked at her watch and tried to swallow the bitterness clawing up her throat. “Even if I did, I couldn’t raise that much cash in less than six hours.”

Faroe took her clenched hand in his own and gently straightened her fingers.

“The meeting with the miner must be arranged immediately,” Faroe said to Beltran. “He must give me complete and detailed information about the tunnel. To sweeten the deal, if I get the chance, I’ll throw in Hector Rivas. Dead.”

Beltran thought about the terms, then nodded his acceptance. Even if Hector killed the boy, there would still be money up front that Beltran would keep.

A lot of money.

“Si,” Beltran said.

Faroe reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small packet. Skillfully he undid the folds of paper and held it out toward Beltran.

Diamonds gleamed and shimmered with every breath Faroe took.

“Hijo de la chingada,” Beltran said softly, almost reverently. Then, without taking his eyes off the sparkling stones, he called, “Cesar, ?andale! Bring your loupe.”

Beltran took the open jeweler’s packet with an ease that said he was used to handling loose stones. He stared down at the shimmering band of white fire gathered like pay dirt in the seam of a gold miner’s pan.

The redheaded man with the scar came to the doorway of the living room. “Si, jefe?”

“Are these real?” Beltran asked.

Cesar looked at the dozen stones in the fold of the paper. His eyes widened. He licked his lips unconsciously, then looked first at Beltran and then at Faroe.

“Wow!” Cesar said in unaccented English.

“I paid more than a million for that packet in Ciudad del Este,” Faroe said. “I know diamonds. Do you?”

“Oh, he knows,” Beltran said. “He used to be a cat thief, cat burglar, whatever you call them. Before that, he was a jeweler.”

Cesar took the diamonds over to a window, pulled up the shade, and carefully laid the paper on the sill. He picked up one of the stones and held it to the light. The stone was big enough that he could handle it with stubby, massive fingers that looked more suited for strangulation than finesse.

“You have a good eye,” Cesar said, going through the stones with the speed and precision of a professional. “If these came from Ciudad del Este, on the Triple Frontier, they were probably mined in Brazil or are smuggled goods from somewhere else.”

“What are they worth?” Beltran asked. It was the only thing he cared about.

Cesar shrugged. “It’s all about demand.” He handed the packet back to Faroe. “But you’d have to be a complete burro not to get a million American for these in Hong Kong.”

Beltran started to say something, remembered Sister Maude, and said something else instead. “I am in prison in Mexico. How can I expect to turn that pretty pile of glitter into money in Hong Kong?”

“If you can arrange multikilo hashish shipments from here, you can convert those diamonds into cash,” Faroe said evenly.

Beltran pursed his lips and traced his mustache with his forefinger.

Faroe tapped the jeweler’s parcel and waited.

Beltran traced his mustache again.

Faroe started to put the packet back into his pocket.

“I will call the miner,” Beltran said, holding out his hand. “No guarantees.”

Faroe had expected something like this. He opened the packet, selected three of the stones, and cradled them in his palm.

“Here’s the deal, jefe,” Faroe said. “You work on thirds. A third now, a third when you deliver the miner, and another third when we locate the tunnel to our own satisfaction. The miner gets the three smallest stones, two when he tells me about the tunnel and one when we locate both ends of it. Since he knows you’re involved, I’m sure the miner won’t lie to me.”

Beltran pursed his lips, shifted his belly a bit, and finally reached for the diamonds in Faroe’s hand.

“The miner lives in the mountains,” Beltran said. “I can get a message to him, but the nearest phone is three kilometers from the village. If he agrees, I’ll call you.”

58

SAN YSIDRO

MONDAY, 7:15 A.M.


FAROE AND GRACE CROSSED back over the line into San Ysidro and headed west on Dairy Mart Road into the marshy bottomlands of the Tia Juana River. The silence in the car didn’t bother either of them.

Then she sat up straight and shook her head.

“What?” Faroe asked.

“I’m sorry. But I’ve got to say it. What’s to prevent Beltran from keeping the diamonds you gave him and blowing you off?”

“Greed,” Faroe said. “Beltran wants the rest of the payoff. He doesn’t get it unless he delivers this miner.”

“He could double-cross you.”

“Beltran?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not a fool, Grace. Neither is Beltran.” Faroe smiled coldly. “He likes his brains right where they are, in his skull. And he wants Hector dead so bad he sweats thinking about it.”

“Are you really going to kill Hector for Beltran?”

“Not unless I have to.” Faroe looked in the mirrors automatically. Nobody in sight.

Time to start worrying.

“But knowing how that smart son of a bitch Hector works,” Faroe added, “he probably won’t leave me any choice. That’s one hard, efficient dude.”

“You sound like you admire men like Hector.”

“Admire? No. They’re filth with a swagger. But respect? That’s a different matter. Hector and men like him are modern warlords. They grab survival with both hands and use it to club any rival to bloody surrender.”

Grace grimaced.

“Civilization is all about not having to confront warlords on an everyday basis,” Faroe said. “But just beneath the pretty veneer, survival is always about the strong and the quick and the mean.”

She wanted to argue.

She couldn’t. She’d seen too much in the past day that supported his words.

A mile north of the spot where the stinking little channel of Rio Tia Juana flushed into the ocean, Faroe turned into a small, decently maintained trailer park that had far more vacancies than rentals. The fencing that surrounded the park had gaps you could ride an elephant through.