A few seconds later, courtesy of an implanted mory from Joe, I rembered the entire eting as seen by the invisible, sensor-equipped drone we had positioned in Arroyo’s office in the Presidential Palace.
President Arroyo sat at his desk, glancing through a sheaf of papers in his hand. He was interrupted by a short beep from the intercom on his desk. His secretary’s voice said, "He’s here" through the device from the reception area outside the office.
Arroyo smiled, "Good, send him in, please." He put the papers in a manilla folder, closed it and slid it to the side. The door opened, the man who claid he was Pablo Rodriguez entered and shut the door behind him.
Arroyo gestured to the chair in front of his desk, "Please have a seat, Mr. Vargas. We have much to discuss."
The man whose real na was Raul Vargas, carefully pulled the chair back and sat down, keeping his eyes on Arroyo. "I am being recalled from the Embassy to return to the United States. It seems the Ambassador doesn’t believe I’ll be an effective assistant if the President of the Country believes to be a spy."
Arroyo shrugged apologetically, "Yes, especially if the President of the country’s belief is correct. However, I think perhaps I can change the opinion of whoever is recalling you from this operation. As we discussed at our first eting, your preliminary objective is to secure as an asset, yes? I am freely offering to work with you, providing you with so confidential information that your ’embassy’ will find quite interesting."
Vargas’s face showed a sudden interest, his brows rising, "Oh?"
Arroyo reached for the folder. He opened it and pulled out the first four sheets. They were 8 x 10 portraits of four n in Guatemalan police uniforms. He did not hand the photos over to Vargas. Instead, he shuffled through them, looking at them intently as he spoke. "As you may have heard, I have offered a conditional amnesty to many of the low-level and least violent mbers of the drug-trafficking gang forrly headed by a Mr. Rafael Camal de Leon. To receive amnesty, they must agree to perform community service on a full-ti basis. They will be paid for their work, but they must show up to work, and they must attend regular counseling sessions to help... show them the error of their ways and the value of being a contributing mber of the community. You may have heard there was a brief disturbance at their initial eting."
"It was not witnessed by any mbers of the dia, but I understand you had a direct live-stream from the cell-phone of an uninvited attendee."
There was the barest flicker of surprise on Vargas’s face, if I hadn’t been watching closely, I wouldn’t have noticed it.
"So you saw a man inside stab another attendee after a scuffle broke out. Depending upon your own training, you may have noticed that he seed quite skilled with the knife, beyond a typical street criminal. It looked very much like elite military training to my people. Fortunately, Maribel’s elite security forces were able to handle him easily, but not before his unfortunate victim was badly wounded. Don’t worry, I’m told he will survive."
Again, a montary flicker of surprise. I knew the video had shown the blood spurting from the victim’s chest in huge amounts from the wound directly to his heart, a mortal wound by all appearances.
"The man who attacked seed intent on killing Rafael Camal de Leon and Maria Isabel Flores, but seed to have chickened out at the last minute. Rafael has many enemies, many deadly enemies, as you may imagine, but we have reason to believe this man was a paid rcenary... or to use the term your agency uses, a contractor."
Arroyo paused to let that sink in. He stared directly into Vargas’s eyes, "Don’t tell that you are not a CIA Field Operative, Mr. Vargas. We’ve already been over that. What I do want you to tell is that you had no idea that such a man was being sent by your agency to commit murder in my country."
Arroyo continued to stare at Vargas as the seconds stretched on with no reply or overt reaction from Vargas.
"Very well, let add so more information. We both know you are here to make an asset, to influence my decisions, to learn our secrets, to guide our policies toward the United States and others. I am willing to give you that opportunity, Agent Vargas, to prevent you from being recalled and replaced here. We can set up regular etings at your convenience, and I can give you a hotline number for direct access. However, I would need to know that you are not in the habit of arranging the murder of prospective Guatemalan presidential candidates, for obvious reasons. Are you interested?"
"I’m listening," Vargas replied, agreeing without admitting that he was agreeing.
"Good, now tell you did not know that soone in the CIA was sending this hitman to my country."
"I didn’t know anything about it," Vargas replied.
"Did you use your contacts to find out his identity? I did. I even know where he trained. Now, tell one more thing. Did you know there was another man inside the eting, also uninvited, who was streaming the proceedings with his cellphone? Just as we traced the signal to you at the embassy, we traced the other man’s signal to these locations despite it being routed through several encrypted servers." Arroyo slid a piece of paper across the desk to Vargas. Vargas looked at it. His reaction as he recognized the locations and the identified servers was not so well hidden this ti. Vargas looked up from the paper at Arroyo and shrugged noncommittally.
"I believe that you didn’t know anything about that or the knife-wielding assassin, Mr. Vargas. That’s why you’re here. Perhaps there is so other faction or operation within the CIA that hasn’t seen a need to share their plans with you or your departnt. Certainly there might be those who want to see what’s going on here, especially because of our involvent in ending the drug cartels. Did you know, however, that the call to send that assassin, a CIA contractor, to Guatemala ca from Colombia, a known cartel compound not far from dellin. I ask myself, why would a cartel mber have access to a CIA hitman. It must be that the cartel mber in question is either also an agent of the CIA, undercover in the cartel, or perhaps he has simply reached so arrangent with the agents sent to infiltrate his organization. I an, the cartel money could fund a number of covert operations completely off the books with no record of governnt funding at all, don’t you think? Ideological or greedy agents might see that as a fair trade for protecting the cartels to so extent, I suppose."
Vargas’s stone face had returned, deliberately covering any reaction he might be feeling.
"Conjecture? Maybe. It’s quite possible that Camal de Leon, as a known drug-trafficker was targeted as an international criminal by legitimate authorities within the CIA." Arroyo shrugged. "But there are things that your cara man inside the eting did not see."
"When taken altogether, these incidents have one of two possible solutions. Either an unauthorized rogue elent within the CIA, perhaps in league with the now defunct drug cartels, has undertaken so private mission to overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected governnt, or the United States has declared war on my country with a significant military incursion."
"Do you recognize this weapon? It is, as I suspect you know, a grenade launcher. The rounds next to it are rocket-propelled anti-personnel fragntation grenades. They are designed for mass casualties of a clustered enemy force. We recovered six of these from six more known CIA contractors, also mobilized by that call from Colombia, arrayed outside the warehouse where the eting was about to take place."
"Do you have photos of those n? Are they dead?" Vargas asked.
"We have apprehended them all. But there’s more. In addition to this ard military incursion seeking the mass murder of civilians in Guatemala, sent by a CIA operative working from a Colombian cartel compound, we found four more, dressed as Guatemalan police officers in a stolen Guatemalan Police car outside the eting. Their plan, which we overheard them discussing, was to use the car’s loudspeakers to announce that the Guatemalan governnt was not going to tolerate political gatherings, before opening fire on the building and anyone trying to exit once the grenades started landed. In tis of war, combatants dressed in uniforms of the enemy to engage in such activities are deed spies and often subject to capital punishnt. These actions look very much like an act of war to , Mr. Vargas. Tell , is your governnt’s intention to start a war with a democratically elected governnt that has just recently been instruntal in the eradication of the drug cartels that have so longed plagued your country?"
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