Carlos and Maria Elena Abascal
lost sight of, surprisingly, in the shadows of the deserted street. It was almost dawn, and a few wisps of fog clung to the dark portals. However, not worried. To him, to Abascal, never had missed anyone. That unhappy not be the first. Right. El Cholo reappeared in the corner, where air currents were dancing swirling mist. What lit the cone of yellow light of a lantern.
El Cholo walked too straight, stiff, with the artificial rigidity of the drunks who try to conceal his condition. And he made no effort to hide. She felt safe.
Abascal had begun to follow at eight in the evening. Saw him off first to the sordid Guemes Gallery subsoil, whose entrails gushed twang music. The average colorful posters ¬ tian an exhilarating show, and beat the nicknames exotic showgirls. He also had to dive, by force, an accomplice in the shadows, to attend a dreary parade of boring females. The meat limp, soiled, riddled reflectors mercilessly sufficient, according to Abascal, to quell any hint of excite ¬ tion. As if that were not enough, a stench that mingled in the sweat, dirt and plush moth-eaten, permeated the air stale, adhering to the skin and clothes.
He wondered what could appeal Cholo find there. And the answer came, relentless, just when he finished the question formulated.
El Cholo fell within another category of humans, whose tastes and pleasures he would never be able to understand. He lived in a retirement pension, a tenement, rather, sharing a person from the same province as another tiny pieces with several newcomers to the city. Miserably dressed, even when he was well lined pockets, tattered shirt, tattered jacket and pants, moccasins hustle and cortajeados. Was just a knife without ambition, or a ridiculous image of ambition. Useful in its time, but dangerous, so you know, from the moment he had executed his last work, in an emergency, when all the experts of trust and responsibility, like him, like Abascal, were outside the country. Because the surgery was performed recently, increasingly, on an international scale, and travel were the order of the day. Resorting to Cholo
had been, however, unwise. With money in his pocket, that bum did not know to be discreet. Abascal had followed the little theater piringundÃn underground to the May 25, and then another, then another, and saw him take all the crap that was served, and groping the hostesses, and prominence of talking about what one should talk. He did not mention names, fortunately, or referred to the specific facts, identifiable, because if he had, Abascal, who was watching him with an attentive ear from the stool neighbor, would have had to finish it off right there, in the light of all with the recklessness of a beginner.
It was not wise to risk and an organization that had cost so much riding, threatening, by the way, the double life he, Abascal, a real technical, there was always so zealously protected. Is that he was on something else, moved in other environments. Their models, those whose refinements tried copy, he found them in the reception of embassies, the major casinos in the halls of ministries, entrepreneurs conventions. Cared for, above all, the appearance ¬ ences: well-cut clothes, restaurants chosen starlets climbing, fine liquors, sports cars, flying in first class cabins. For example, he was already over, as he slid down the street from Retiro, following the Cholo, the passage that would transport a few hours later, in Caracas. Away from the body of the Cholo and suspicion that its elimination could generate in some circles.
At that, the Doctor had been strict. Kill and vanish. The flight number printed on the ticket, put a strict limit its room for maneuver. Too bad the Doctor, as demanding with him, had committed the blunder of hiring, in the absence of true professionals, a rat as Cholo. Now, as usual, he had to risk his skin to extract up the pieces to others. Although that would change someday. He aimed high, very high in the organization. Abascal
slid his hand through the opening of the bag, heading to the harness that encircled the shoulder and armpit. In doing so touched inadvertently, the booklet of tickets. He smiled. Then his fingers found the hilt of the Luger striated, the cherished, almost sensually, and closed strong, squeezing stock.
The hierarchy also showed in their arms. He had seen long ago, the favorite tool of Cholo. A homemade knife, whose blade had shrunk after countless contacts ¬ tions with the whetstone. Two Suncho pressed the wooden handle, incipiently cracked and polished by handling. Of course, Cholo had used the knife in the last job, leaving a distinctive stamp, unmistakable. Another reason to break there, in the weakest link in the chain that nameless climbed up domes.
Instead, the gun had Abascal printed on blue steel, the nobility of his lineage. When disarmed, and when oiled, meticulously, piece by piece, enjoyed the personal fantasize about ¬ ality of its previous owners. A handsome "junker" Prussian, who had preferred fired a shot in the temple rather than admit defeat in a suburb of Leningrad? Or a deputy Marshal Rommel, died in the hot sands of El Alamein? He had bought the Luger, precisely, in a bazaar in Tangiers where peddlers finished off their spoils of steel helmets, swastikas and other trophies snatched from the vastness of the desert.
Of course, the Luger also filled their ambitions. Knew there ¬ ence of a more sophisticated artillery, more deadly, whose management was reserved for other instances of the hierarchy, to the point of becoming a kind of status symbol. As he ascended, as no doubt would rise, would also have access to that arsenal legend, the exclusive preserve of the powerful.
Interestingly, the hierarchy had to Abascal, other side. It was not only how to kill, but in parallel, how they die. I dreaded the possibility that an improvised weapon, bastard, like the Cholo, you poke the innards. At the same time, the backlash of the Luger enaltecerÃa Cholo, but neither would be enough for him, Abascal, when he reached its peak. The rule of the game and he was singing, fatalistic conviction, he accepted, would not die in bed. All he asked was that when you touch the tumor, his tormentors were slipshod and knew not choose noble instruments.
The sudden arrest of his prey, the next intersection, he cut the thread of thoughts. Cholo probably instinct, honed in the forests of Oran and ambushes of a Buenos Aires treacherous, had noticed something. Footsteps too remain ¬ TES deserted street. A vibration intruding into the atmosphere. Awareness of the dangers lurking had helped clear the Chera ¬ cleared and turned around, crouching. The knife chop the mist, making doodles, suddenly become a natural extension of the hand that grasped. Abascal
Luger's draw ended. ¬ fired from a CIA safe distance, once, and the bullet punched a hole sharp edge on the front of Cholo.
Mission accomplished.
The clatter of typewriters came vaguely to the office, overcoming the barrier of sound insulation. On the picture window you could see a horizon of concrete and, further, where the moles left some loopholes, fallow plots poked River Plate. The smog was a mattress on the city and water.
Doctor took first place, the cable dated Caracas that his secretary had deposited on the desk, next to the photo of a blonde, fine features, aristocratic, flanked in a garden, two children also blond. He knew in advance the text of the cable: "We signed the contract." Could not be otherwise. ¬ tion the organization functioned as a well-synchronized machine. Therein lay the key to success.
"We signed the contract," he read, indeed. So someone, no matter who "had severed the last loose end product of an unfortunate operation. First
had been necessary to Cholo, a mar ¬ malevito swimming, venal, that offered no guarantee for the future. Then, of course, was necessary to silence the Cholo. And now the circle had closed. "We signed the contract" meant that Abascal had been received at the airport in Caracas, on the steps of the plane itself, by a bullet from a Browning 30-caliber rifle equipped with telescopic sights Leupold M8-100. A rifle, said the Doctor, that Abascal would have respected and admired because of their mo ¬ proverbial enthusiasm for the hierarchy of weapons. The settlement at the airport, with that rifle and not another, was indeed the preferred method of the subsidiary Caracas, traditionally favored to win time and avoid unnecessary surprises.
A loss sensitive, thought the Doctor, dropping the cable on the desk. Abascal had always been very efficient, but his speech, bound in that case sentenced him irremisiblemen ¬ te. The order from above had been uncompromising: no trace, and snitches links. But of course, it was impossible to remove all, absolutely all the links. He, the Doctor, was ultimately one of them.
Then the Doctor picked up the large manila envelope that his secretary had given him along with the cable. The postmark was from New York, the letterhead was that of the firm served as a front for the organization. Usually, the arrival of one of the envelopes marked the beginning of another operation. The code to decode the instructions rested at the bottom of your safe.
The Doctor put the tip of the knives under the flap of the envelope. The blade slipped to stumble briefly with an obstacle. Inertia determined to continue moving forward. The Doctor realized that to decrypt the message does not need help. And was surprised to discover that in that trance was not thinking of his wife and children, but Abascal and his cult of the hierarchy of weapons. Then, the explosive charge, activated by the pull of the wire cutters on the detonator, changed all that floor of the building in a field of rubble.
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