The Debriefing by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver [Deaver, Jeffery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

Six

Manuel Santos had the blackest eyes, the smoothest skin and the calmest manner of any man one might ever meet.

He was not good looking, by any means, nor was he tall but these conditions were not troubling to him. Physical flaws were significant only to those with egos.

And Santos—known more commonly by his nickname La Piedra, the Stone—had none.

An ego was in itself a flaw, and he did not tolerate flaws in anyone, himself included.

Santos was walking along a sidewalk from a municipal garage where he’d left his SUV. He wore tight black jeans and a yellow shirt with blue piping and patterned across the chest with images of sailors’ knots. He bought the shirt solely for the splendid knots, though he had been on a boat only twice in his life, and the only knots he’d ever tied were improvised hangman’s nooses and tidy bindings around wrists and ankles.

His outer garment was a white silk jacket, this with gray piping and wide lapels. It had a dandy quality but Santos liked it because the cloth didn’t overheat him and it concealed his weapon efficiently; the Sig Sauer was secreted in a holster inside his back waistband. His boots were marvels of tooling and silver inlay and were sharp enough to puncture skin with a muscled kick. He’d always wanted to try this but never had.

Unless circumstances required otherwise, Santos was of the habit of walking slowly, as today. He would not be hurried. Whether he was painting his murals in the style of Diego Rivera—a hobby from childhood—or grilling steak for himself and Raphael and their cat, Boppo, or torturing a man or woman or child to death, he never rushed. When you hurried, you made mistakes.

Calm, slow.

Not so the man walking beside him. Garcia was far from serene. Tall and broad, with a pocked face, he was constantly looking around, as if with a nervous tic. He would pace, he would flick finger against thumb, he would grind teeth. These habits would have irritated Santos were Garcia not so good at his job.

Garcia also wore a jacket. This one cheap and beige, which was unfortunate because sweat was already darkening the cloth at the pits. The garment was longer than Santos’s because its job was to conceal a submachine gun and three long, heavy magazines of ammunition. Bullets weighed a great deal. Lead and copper, of course. People often forgot that.

Ah, the heat. Santos looked up. His smoky aviator sunglasses were thick and, with a squint, he could actually gaze toward the sun if only for a few seconds.

Garcia, ever aware of his boss, looked up too, perhaps thinking: drone.

But, no, Santos had merely been looking at the sun.

Then he continued calmly on his way and Garcia, twitchily, did too.

They walked into another garage, nodded to one of Santos’s crew and climbed into the back of a vehicle parked inside. Garcia slammed the doors shut, and the two panels, joined, made a word on the back: Ambulancia.

They pulled from the garage and began the five-mile drive to their destination.

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