Frederic Forsyth - The Cobra

"Senor Cardenas. Please, enter, take a seat."

The father of the young woman in a detention center in New York took a pace forward. The door swung closed and the bronze locking bar clicked. It would need the right plastic card or a battering ram to open it from outside.

Cardenas reminded Dexter of a main battle tank on legs. He was burly, solid, seeming immovable if he did not want to move. He might have been fifty, but he was muscle packed, with the face of an Aztec blood god.

Cardenas had been told that the man who had intercepted his Madrid messenger and sent him a personal letter would be alone and unarmed, but of course he did not believe it. His own men had been vetting the hotel and its surrounds since dawn. He had a Glock 9mm in his waistband at the back and a razor-edged knife against the calf inside his right trouser leg. His eyes flickered around the room for a hidden trap, the waiting squad of Americans.

Dexter had left the bathroom door open, but Cardenas still had a quick look inside. It was empty. He glared at Dexter, as a bull in a Spanish ring who can see his enemy is small and weak but cannot quite understand why he is there without protection. Dexter gestured to the other wing chair. He spoke in Spanish.

"As we both know, there are times when violence works. This is not one of those times. Let us talk. Please, sit."

Without taking his eyes off the American, Cardenas lowered himself into the padded chair. The gun in the small of his back caused him to sit forward slightly. Dexter did not fail to notice.

"You have my daughter." He was not a great man for small talk.

"The New York law authorities have your daughter."

"It would be better for you if she is well."

A Julio Luz almost urinating with fear had told him what Boseman Barrow had said about some of the upstate women's penitentiaries.

"She is well, senor. Distressed, of course, but not maltreated. She is retained in Brooklyn, where conditions are comfortable. In fact, she is on suicide watch…"

He held up his hand as Cardenas threatened to come roaring out of his chair.

"But only as a ruse. It means she has her own room in the hospital annex. She does not need to mix with other prisoners, the riffraff, so to speak."

The man who had risen from the gutters of the barrio to key member of the Brotherhood, the controlling cartel of the world's cocaine industry, stared at Dexter, still unable to make him out.

"You are a fool, gringo. This is my city. I could take you here. With ease. A few hours with me, and you would be begging to make the call. My daughter for you."

"Very true. You could, and I would. The trouble is, the people at the other end would not agree. They have their orders. You of all people understand the rules of absolute obedience. I am too small a pawn. There would be no swap. All that would happen is that Letizia would go north."

The black-eyed, hate-filled stare did not flicker, but the message went home.

The idea that the slim, gray-haired American was not a pawn but a main player, he discounted. He himself would never have gone into enemy territory alone and unarmed, so why should the Yanqui? A snatch would not work-either way. He would not be snatched, and there was no point in taking the American.

Cardenas thought back to the report from Luz on the advice of Barrow. Twenty years, an exemplary sentence. No viable defense, an open-and-shut case, no Domingo de Vega to say it was all his idea.

While Cardenas was thinking, Cal Dexter reached with his right hand to scratch his chest. For a second, his fingers went behind his jacket lapel. Cardenas came forward, ready to draw his hidden Glock. Mr. Smith smiled apologetically.

"Mosquitoes," he said. "They will not leave me alone."

Cardenas was not interested. He relaxed as the right hand came out. He would have been less relaxed had he known the fingertips had touched a sensitive Go button on a wafer-thin transmitter clipped to the inside pocket.

"What do you want, gringo?"

"Well," said Dexter, impervious to the rudeness of the address.

"Unless there is an intervention, the people behind me cannot stop the justice machine. Not in New York. It cannot be bought and it cannot be diverted. Soon, even the mercy of keeping Letizia out of harm's way in Brooklyn will have to be terminated."

"She is innocent. You know that, I know that. You want money? I will make you rich for life. Get her out of there. I want her back."

"Of course. But, as I say, I am but a pawn. Perhaps there is a way."

"Tell me."

"If the UDYCO in Madrid were to discover a corrupt baggage handler and he were to give a full and witnessed confession that he chose a suitcase at random after the usual security checks and inserted the cocaine to be retrieved by a colleague in New York, then your lawyer could ask for an emergency hearing. It would be hard for a New York judge not to drop the case. To go on would be to refuse to believe our Spanish friends across the Atlantic. I honestly believe that is the only way."

There was a low rumble, as if storm clouds were gathering out of a blue sky.

"This… baggage handler. He could be discovered and forced to confess?"

"He might. It depends on you, Senor Cardenas."

The rumble grew louder. It separated into a rhythmic whump-whump. Cardenas repeated his demand.

"What do you want, gringo?"

"I think we both know that. You want a swap? That is it. What you have in return for Letizia."

He rose, tossed a small pasteboard card to the carpet, walked through the patio doors and turned left. The snaking steel-cord ladder came around the corner of the hotel roof, flailing in the downdraft.

He jumped to the balustrade, thought, I'm too goddamn old for this, and leapt at the rungs. He could sense above the roar of the rotors that Cardenas was coming out onto the terrace behind him. He waited for the bullet in the back, but it never came. At any rate, not in time. If Cardenas fired, Dexter would not have heard it. He felt the rungs bite into his palms, and the man above leaned back hard and the Black Hawk went up like a rocket.

Seconds later, he was lowered to the sandy beach just beyond the walls of the Santa Clara. The Black Hawk settled as two or three dog walkers gawped; he ducked into the crew door, and the helicopter rose again. Twenty minutes later, he was back inside the base. DON DIEGO ESTEBAN prided himself on running the Hermandad, the supreme cocaine cartel, like one of the most successful corporations on the planet. He even indulged in the conceit that the governing authority was the board of directors rather than himself alone, even though that was palpably not true. Despite the huge inconvenience to his colleagues of spending two days dodging the tailing agents of Colonel Dos Santos, he insisted on quarterly meetings.

It was his custom to name, by personal emissary only, the hacienda, one of fifteen he owned, where the conclave would take place, and he expected his colleagues to arrive un-followed. The days of Pablo Escobar, when half the police were in the cartel'spocket, were long gone. Colonel Dos Santos was an unbribable attack dog, and the Don both respected and loathed him for it.

His summer meeting he always held at the end of June. He convened his six colleagues, omitting only the Enforcer, Paco Valdez, El Animal, who was summoned only when there were matters of internal discipline to be attended to. That time, there were none.

The Don listened with approval to reports on increased production from the peasants but without any rise in price. The production chief, Emilio Sanchez, assured him enough pasta base could be grown and bought in to meet any needs from other branches of the cartel.

Rodrigo Perez was able to assure him that internal thievery of the product prior to export was down to a reduced percentage, thanks to several hideous examples that had been made of those who thought they could cheat the cartel. The private army, mainly recruited from the jungle-living former terrorist groups known as FARC, was in good order.