John Gilstrap - Damage Control

The fact that her heart did not explode in her chest was testament to the fact that she’d taken good care of herself all these years. She left the house through the front doors and never slowed as she approached the wall. Sensing her ire, the guards moved quickly to open the heavy gates to let her pass without slowing.

Maria felt proud of herself for pulling this off, even as she managed the swell of terror in her gut that her confidence had been betrayed. Her FBI contact had sworn on all things holy that her identity would be protected. Without that assurance, she never would have offered up all the information she had these past two years.

Veronica Costanza had always seemed like a straight shooter to her. They’d first met at a coffee shop while standing in line. Both of them favored cold coffee drinks to hot ones, and that had led to a lighthearted discussion of caffeinated drinks. Looking back on it, Maria realized that the chance meeting had been engineered from the beginning, but that knowledge didn’t tarnish the reality that she liked and trusted Veronica.

Even now that Maria knew that she’d been betrayed, she couldn’t wrap her head around the notion that Veronica might have done it. Still, what was done was done. Now she had to cope. While Felix might have been taken off guard by her bluff back at the hacienda, his intelligence network would continue to push for details that would ultimately lead them to her. If not tonight or tomorrow, then next week or next month.

As she climbed into her Toyota Celica and turned the key, her mind raced to find the way out of this. There had to be a way. There was always a way.

As she drove down the streets of Ciudad Juarez, she checked her mirrors frequently, fully expecting to find a machine-gun-bearing technical closing in on her from behind. Such had been the fate of countless others whom Felix had suspected of betrayal. Yet none appeared.

Could it be that her performance had truly been that convincing? Could it be that he actually believed that she loved him? Maybe so. Why else would he have confided so much in her?

Still, his perceptions were at best a ruse. Soon he would learn the truth, and when he did, Maria’s life would be measured in units of agony.

She could never go back, that much was clear. But how was she supposed to make her way out of the country? What were her options? She’d never discussed these things with Veronica. The plan had always been to endure-to wait until the FBI said that it was safe for her to enter the United States. Even as she heard the words the first time they’d been spoken, she’d realized their true meaning to be, after she had provided adequate information to the United States, but that was okay. No favors in the world came free.

She didn’t understand what had changed. Only three days ago, she’d met with Veronica, begging her to bring her in, but as of then, the FBI wasn’t quite finished with her. Maria had even offered up new intelligence on the location of smuggling tunnels, yet Veronica had remained unmoved.

What could possibly have reordered the world to such a large degree? If Felix’s intelligence was right-and Felix’s intel was always right-Veronica would have no choice but to get her out of the country. Surely, she wouldn’t let Maria just die at Felix’s hand.

Unless there was a second informant. Was that even possible?

Of course it was possible. There was no level of betrayal that was impossible within the American intelligence community. But was it reasonable?

Why not? If Veronica Costanza had engineered an excuse to meet with Maria, could she not have created the same opportunity for all of Felix’s mistresses? Could she not have created it for dozens of people who worked for him?

As she pulled onto the main road leaving the compound, Maria shook these thoughts out of her mind. They were silly. Veronica would have told her if there were additional agents within Felix’s compound. To deny that kind of information would be to impose that much more danger on her, and Veronica wouldn’t have done that.

The fact remained that Maria and Maria alone had lost both parents and a brother to Felix’s brutality, and she alone had worked for five years to infiltrate his network for the express purpose of bringing him down.

She had to be the one that Felix had been talking about in his rant. She had to be. She didn’t know that she could live with the knowledge that it was otherwise. When he ultimately faced his punishment, she needed for her hands to be on the chain of evidence and testimony that put him away. In a perfect world, they would be on the apparatus that executed him in prison, but Veronica had prepared her for the fact that execution was unlikely.

She’d prepared her, in fact, for the likelihood that Felix would testify his way to a criminal charge that was barely a criminal charge. Instead, he would give up the American coconspirators who underwrote his criminal activities in return for little or no jail time. That, Veronica had warned her, was the state of panic that existed within the administration in Washington. They were willing to let murderers go free in return for information that would allow them to imprison disloyal bureaucrats.

Maria was a creature of habit. She followed the same route to and from the office every day. For starters, she felt entirely safe doing so-Felix’s enemies knew the faces and names of all of his mistresses, and there was no quicker route to the morgue than to lay a hand on one of them-but also, Maria needed to look for a sign from Veronica that she wanted to meet.

As she drove past the post box at the corner of Chelsea Street and Frutas Avenue, her heart fell. If they were to meet outside the pharmacy in the 2700 block of Santa Anna Boulevard, there would be a chalk mark on the paint-an X if the meeting was to happen tonight, and a heart if it was to happen tomorrow night. The box was in fact the flat green that it normally was.

She drove toward the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, hoping to see a bicycle chain on the wrought-iron fence out front. A silver chain would have had them meet in lobby of the Omniplex Theater for the nine o’clock show tonight, a black one for the same show tomorrow. Maria cursed under her breath as she saw no chain at all.

How could this be? If her cover had been blown this badly, surely Veronica would know about it. And if she knew about it, surely she would want to arrange a meeting.

A chill crawled up her spine as she considered the alternative: that the FBI was unaware that they had their own informant in their midst. That could be a disaster.

Maria resolved that when she got back to her house, she would post on Facebook that her tooth was hurting today. That was the signal for Veronica to make contact as soon as possible.

While she would never reenter Felix Hernandez’s world, she could pretend to be sick tomorrow as the details worked themselves out. Her absence would undoubtedly raise Felix’s suspicions, but there again Maria’s histrionics at the hacienda might serve her well. If she failed to show up, maybe Felix would merely assume that she was angry.

Maria lived in the Campestre neighborhood, once a lovely place where as a child she never would have dreamed she could afford to live. Now, the drug violence had driven most of the decent people away. Many had just abandoned their homes and their businesses, leaving the streets to the warriors. More than a few of the side streets had been completely blocked off with stacks of boulders in an effort to dissuade kidnappers and extortionists from gaining access to their enclaves.

Her heart raced as she pulled to the curb in front of her house. She slapped the transmission into neutral, set the brake, and hurried out of her seat. She made no effort to lock the car because locked doors just made the thieves break windows. Let them explore her ashtrays and the center console. If they found a few pesos, let them have them. Anything to take the edge off those poor wretches’ misery.