Authors: Phillip Finch
“I met them thirteen years ago,” Santos said. “They came to me. They said they knew me through mutual friends.”
“Who were the friends?” said Totoy.
“I never figured that out.”
“You never asked them?”
“They aren’t the kind of people you ask a lot of questions.”
“You think they would have been angry?”
“I think they would have disappeared.”
Totoy had taken Santos to a vacant apartment. At first Santos was relieved. It could have been police headquarters: possession of a firearm without a permit was a serious crime in the Philippines. It could get you years.
Then, alone in the apartment with Totoy, Santos realized that the headquarters might have been safer.
He also was not sure that they were alone. Santos got the sense of someone else in the next room, behind him. He didn’t hear or see anyone, but something in the way Totoy spoke—something intangible—gave Santos that idea.
Totoy was standing, Santos seated in a chair, the only piece of furniture in the place.
Totoy held out the passports.
“Where did you come up with these names?”
“I used their names. That’s what they call themselves.”
Totoy took out photocopies of the passports from the hotel check-in, and gave them to Santos.
“What about this?” Totoy said.
Santos studied the photocopies. ”I never heard those names before.”
“What are the true names of the other two?”
“To the best of my knowledge, they are Jules and Roberto. I never ran a background check.”
Santos had decided that he would give up only so much. His story would be a half-true concoction of fact and lies. Plausible lies, he hoped. With each answer, he was weighing how much to yield, how to camouflage the truth with realistic fabrication.
Part of this was loyalty. He wasn’t close to the Americans, but they had trusted him, put their lives in his hands. His life and business relationships were built on discretion, and if his disloyalty became known, he would lose the trust of all who dealt with him. Betrayal was bad for business.
And there was an element of pride. He disliked being coerced. He believed that he was better than Totoy Ribera, smarter and more solid if not as vicious.
This was a high-wire act, but he wouldn’t be bullied by a lesser man.
“What was the nature of their activity when they came here thirteen years ago?”
“I never knew for sure, but I believed that it was clandestine.”
“Clandestine? Like spies?”
“They’re an odd sort of spy. But yes, I guess so.”
“Spying for who?”
“I never knew. I told you, they’re pros.”
“And why did they return?”
“I think they were here mostly on a holiday. But they had some small business to attend to. I have no idea what it was. I think they ran into some difficulty, though.”
“How did you know that?”
“When someone asks for weapons and forged documents, you can usually guess that they’re in some trouble.”
“When were you supposed to deliver these goods?”
“About an hour ago.”
“Where?”
This was the big one, Santos told himself. If he could put this one over, he might get out of the jam with honor intact. About the gun charges … he knew that Totoy most likely would keep the guns for himself, and without the guns there was no evidence of a crime. Whatever difficulty remained could be smoothed over with a large dollop of cash.
He said, “They were supposed to call me to arrange a meeting.”
He knew that his phone—now in Totoy’s possession—had been ringing, and he guessed that it was Favor or one of the others.
Totoy said, “I want to ask you a very important question. But before I do, I want you to look out that window, down in the street.”
Santos went to the window. They were on the third floor, and he looked down. At first he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to see, but then a light came on in a car at the curb, and he saw Anabeth in the backseat, with one of Totoy’s goons up front.
This changed everything.
“She’s at Assumption, I understand,” Totoy said. “Not bad for the daughter of a cheap little chiseler.”
“What do you want to know?” Santos asked.
“Where are they?”
“They’re in a bodega in Tondo. They’re waiting for me.”
“That’s much better. Now, you think about this. What should I know about these people? What can you tell me that will give me some advantage in dealing with them?”
“I can tell you, but you won’t accept it,” Santos said.
“Tell me.”
Santos cleared his throat. He made sure to speak clearly, so that he could be heard by anyone else who might be listening.
He said, “I have no idea why they’re here. I have no idea what’s at stake. But I can tell you this. I wouldn’t want them against me. If I had something they wanted, I wouldn’t fight them over it. I would smile and I’d hand it over, and I would pray to God that they would just take it and go away.”
At 9:15, Favor said, “We might as well be getting over there.”
“It’s about that time,” Mendonza said. “Traffic—you never know when you’ll get hung up.”
They took both vehicles. Mendonza and Favor rode in a Mitsubishi Montero SUV with darkened windows. In the backseat of the Mitsubishi were the two large canvas bags from Eddie Santos. Stickney took the other car, a Hyundai sedan. Arielle opened the steel roll-up door and they drove out, and when
they were gone, she pulled the door down and locked it.
She sat by the laptop, at the steel table inside the bodega, and she waited.
About fifteen minutes later, her phone rang. Favor. Her phone rang again. Stickney. She set it up as a three-way conference call, then called Mendonza to set up the fourth leg of the call.
They were all connected.
Stickney parked the Hyundai on Amorsolo Street, across the street from the villa. Seconds later, the Mitsubishi pulled up beside him. Mendonza was driving, with Favor in the backseat.
Mendonza left the Hyundai. Favor swung open the door to let him in, and they drove off, around the block, and parked at the cross street beside the Impierno building.
The time was now 9:47. They waited six minutes. At 9:53, Mendonza took out another phone, purchased the day before from a street vendor, and he called a number that he had programmed.
It was the City of Manila, Emergency Services.
In rapid Tagalog, he said, “I want to report a fire. Impierno nightclub, corner of Amorsolo and Salas streets. Better hurry, it’s a bad one.”
They sat and watched the building. Everything was normal. The valet attendants took away cars and delivered them. The doorman opened the front door for men who casually came in and out.
Favor lowered his window by a few inches. At
9:59, the first faint wail of emergency sirens drifted in through the opening.
Favor said, “Stick, you’re on.”
Stickney got out and crossed Amorsolo. He was carrying a cloth shoulder bag; inside the bag were half a dozen bricklike objects wrapped in black paper. He passed in front of Impierno, walking briskly to the corner of the high concrete wall, about where the old woman sold newspapers during the day. The sidewalk was empty now, and Stickney stopped and looked up, directly into the security camera that was fixed at the top of the wall.
He took out one of the black bricklike packages, sparked a flame on a disposable cigarette lighter that he carried in one hand, and lit a paper fuse that extended from the black paper.
Stickney threw the packet over the wall. He walked briskly along the sidewalk, lit another black package, and threw that one over the wall too.
The sirens were louder now in the Mitsubishi. Mendonza pulled out from the parking space, and he drove across Amorsolo Street, parking on the sidewalk beside Impierno.
The time was now ten o’clock.
In Impierno, in the air-conditioning vent of the Ultimate VIP Safari Suite, the device that Favor had planted came to life at its programmed time. It sparked and began to emit clouds of gray smoke through the holes that had been drilled in the PVC pipe. At first the smoke was thin, curling out of the perforations, but within a few seconds it blew out
thick and heavy. This was the low point of the main cooling duct—Favor had looked for it when he scouted the building—and the airflow carried it up and into the main room of the Impierno stage.
Out on the sidewalk along Amorsolo, Stickney lit one more black brick and tossed it over the concrete wall. Then he crossed the sidewalk, looking for an opening in traffic, and he ran cross the street to where the Hyundai was parked.
As he started the car, Stickney spotted a white man emerging from the side gate, onto the walkway between the villa and the Impierno building. Stickney slammed the door of the Hyundai and pulled out into Amorsolo, disappearing up the street.
A ripping explosion erupted at that moment on the grounds of the villa, a rolling, continuous series of detonations inside the wall.
The noise came from the first of the three bricks that Stickney had lit and tossed over the wall. The bricks were five-hundred-count packages of ladyfinger firecrackers, fitted with a forty-five-second delay fuse. Even before the first one had finished, the second one ignited and began to explode.
In Impierno, smoke billowed from vents into the main showroom and the private rooms at the back. It was faint at first, and few noticed it. What hit most people then was the smell. It was the stench of rotten eggs, hydrogen sulfide. It immediately permeated the rooms, followed by the smoke, causing patrons and employees to panic.
Three fire companies arrived: two pumper trucks and a hook and ladder. They met the crowds that came streaming out the front door and the side emergency door.
Winston Stickney, having made a loop of three blocks, pulled onto Amorsolo Street again and back into the parking spot that he had left less than a minute earlier. From there he had a view of the walkway and the door at the side of the building, the Optimo entrance.
He said, “Got your back.”
He heard Favor’s response in the Bluetooth earpiece: “Coming out.”
Favor and Mendonza stepped out of the Mitsubishi. They were dressed, head to foot, in firefighters’ turnout gear: helmet and balaclava and jacket and pants and bunker boots.
It was the gear from the canvas sacks, Eddie Santos’s second delivery.
Each wore a breathing mask to cover their faces. Favor carried a fire ax. Mendonza carried a firefighter’s wooden pike pole, with a gaff hook at one end, and a large crowbar. They walked along the sidewalk, crowded now with firefighters and customers and employees of Impierno, including several squealing, near-naked young women.
Inside the villa grounds, the third brick of firecrackers began to bang and snap.
Favor and Mendonza made their way through the
crowds, around the corner and down the walkway, up to the door in the side of the building. With a single swing of the ax, Favor knocked off the doorknob. Mendonza poked the damaged door with the end of the crowbar. He pried, giving it his weight, and the door popped open.
They went up the stairs, two at a time. At the top, Mendonza stopped and took out another of Stickney’s smoke bombs from inside his turnout coat. It needed no timer; he ignited it with a nine-volt battery, and set it on the top step.
He took up position at the top of the stairs, holding the pike pole ready for use.
Favor stood before the thick glass door at the landing, the entry to the offices. He swung the ax, and the glass exploded. He cleared the remaining large shards with a few swipes of the ax, and he stepped inside.
Just before ten p.m., the security staff at the villa was down to two Filipino guards, one at the walkway gate, the other manning the vehicle gate at the back alley. Two of the five Russians were at work in the lab in one wing of the house, as they always were at this time, after the arrival of the airfreight shipments. Ilya Andropov was in his office. Anatoly Markov was at the security console, idly checking the monitors, with the fifth—a gaunt, sharp-featured young man named Vladimir—dozing on a sofa in the room.
Markov noticed Winston Stickney tossing the
first of the bricks over the wall. Markov got a good look at him and recognized him.
He shouted: “Goddamn, it’s the American. Vlad, go get him!”
Vladimir Raznar woke on the sofa, uncomprehending.
Markov was still shouting, yelling for Andropov and the two in the lab, yelling about intrusions in the perimeter. He shouted again at Raznar, and this time Raznar understood and ran out to the side gate and up the walkway and the sidewalk, looking for the American.
The two from the lab came out, and Markov sent them onto the grounds to find whatever had come over the wall.
For a few minutes, events overtook them. There were the firecracker explosions, and the fire trucks, and the customers and the girls filling the sidewalk, mingling with the firefighters who struggled to hook up hoses. Markov and Andropov watched all this on the monitors, until Andropov noticed the two firefighters on the inside stairs, up at the top of the landing.
He pointed out the shot. “Toly, something’s wrong here.”
“It’s a fire,” Markov said.
“Go see what’s happening.”
“Boss, it’s a burning building.”
“I don’t see any fire,” he said. “Go! And take this.”
It was a pistol, a 9mm automatic.
Markov took it, tucked it into his waistband, and hurried out the door.
——
Favor ignited another smoke bomb when he entered the Optimo offices, and placed it under one of the desks.
Using a flashlight, he went to a PC at one of the nearby desks and turned it on.
Smoke filled the office as he waited for the machine to boot.
He said, “Ari, you ready?”
“I’m waiting.”
He found a USB port at the front of the machine and plugged in the flash drive. “It’s in.”
Stickney said, “Al, one coming your way. With pistol.”
Mendonza was on the landing, waiting at the top of the smoke-filled stairway. He held the pike pole at the ready, blunt end forward. As a figure emerged from the billowing smoke, Mendonza swung the pike at shin level, taking the man off his feet. The pistol flew as the man smacked hard into the floor, face-first. Mendonza swung the pike again, down across the man’s back, knocking the breath from his lungs.