The Dogs of Mexico Read Free

retirement, Duane was wrestling with the specter of financial ruin. He hated the damn house, he hated the faggy Marie Antoinette French Provincial furniture, and at the moment he hated his wife and his two sons. Bankrupting him. His wife by way of Saks and Bergdorf’s, the boys by way of Yale and Purdue.  
    Shouldn’t you be getting dressed? Susan said.  
    She had stepped out of her bedroom into the hallway, tilting her head as she attached antique pearl earrings. At forty-three Susan was still a beautiful woman, especially striking tonight in a new black dress. Hewent a little mushy against his will. Truthfully, it wasn’t Susan he hated but the weakness he fell prey to in her presence. To his way of thinking, every relationship had its dominant partner. That was the guiding principle on which he had built his career within the confines of the CIA—you were either in charge or someone else was. And while it had been suggested that he might not be a team player, he hadn’t gotten this far by playing subservient. Susan was the only human alive capable of manipulating him, and then only because he cared too much for her. In his weakness he indulged her, then struck out at her in resentment. Susan. His Achilles heel.  
    He lifted the Easter basket with its mound of bills. “Just how the hell do you expect to pay for all this?”
    Susan hesitated, her expression falling, beggarly. “Please. Not tonight. Let’s do try to enjoy the evening.”
    He tossed the basket back on the secretary. “You enjoy the evening. I’m not going.”
    “Not going? But…the mayor, he’s expecting you.”
    Duane appraised her, remote, willfully cruel. “You may be interested to know that your VISA and MasterCard are cancelled. Maxed out.”
    She paused. “What’re you saying?”
    “We’re flat on our ass broke. That’s what I’m saying.”  
    She went pale, her whole stance suddenly altered. “Duane, what’re we going to do?”
    “I have no idea what you’re going to do. Me, I’m going back to the office.”
    “But, the mayor, Violet…they’re expecting us…”  
    “Screw the mayor. Screw Violet too.”

    THE OFFICE , as Duane called it, was a studio apartment in the Kensington District of Inner City Philadelphia, not all that far from Society Hill in terms of distance, but eons in every other sense. In spite of Philadelphia’s model program for the homeless, derelicts still panhandled the streets and slept in doorways. An inordinate number of the old buildings were boarded up. Even so, the studio had become more of a home—more of a refuge, actually—than the big Georgian with all its baggage.  
    Duane felt a small stab of guilty pleasure at having left Susan to attend the fundraiser by herself. On the other hand, he had prepaid the tickets and Susan did enjoy that sort of thing—the mayor and Violet, and the rest of that snobby crowd. A thousand bucks a plate? Who the hell did they think he was, Bill Gates?  

    ONE OF THE six dedicated phones near Duane’s office bedside rang. A nearby computer screen lit up. The green line. North Africa. That would be Abda Mufi—Eduardo Agustino, as Duane had known him at Georgetown University and then later as a fellow operative. Eduardo’s mother was Lebanese, his father a Mexican diplomat. Eduardo had managed to embed himself in a North African terrorist cell under his uncle’s name on his mother’s side.  
    Duane saw now that the call wasn’t from the Cairo sector after all, but was registering Cartagena on the coast of Colombia. His pulse quickened. He dug one knuckle at the sleep in his eyes, touched the incoming scrambler and picked up. “Flax,” he said.  
    “Flax is fine but cotton is the thing in Cairo,” Eduardo replied.
    “You’re out of pocket.”
    “Get back to me.”
    “Your number?” Duane jotted it down, though he had it on the screen. “Fifteen minutes,” he said. He hung up and entered the number in the Company’s database. He hardly had