King of All I Survey
Chapter 99: Did you Really Mean to Declare War?

Chapter 99: Did you Really Mean to Declare War?

A few seconds later, courtesy of an implanted memory from Joe, I remembered the entire meeting 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 claimed 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 name 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 me 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 meeting, your preliminary objective is to secure me as an asset, yes? I am freely offering to work with you, providing you with some 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 men 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 members of the drug-trafficking gang formerly headed by a Mr. Rafael Camal de Leon. To receive amnesty, they must agree to perform community service on a full-time 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 member of the community. You may have heard there was a brief disturbance at their initial meeting."

"It was not witnessed by any members of the media, 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 seemed 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 momentary 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 seemed intent on killing Rafael Camal de Leon and Maria Isabel Flores, but seemed 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 mercenary... 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 me that you are not a CIA Field Operative, Mr. Vargas. We’ve already been over that. What I do want you to tell me 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 me add some more information. We both know you are here to make me 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 meetings 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 me you did not know that someone 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 me one more thing. Did you know there was another man inside the meeting, 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 time. 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 some other faction or operation within the CIA that hasn’t seen a need to share their plans with you or your department. Certainly there might be those who want to see what’s going on here, especially because of our involvement in ending the drug cartels. Did you know, however, that the call to send that assassin, a CIA contractor, to Guatemala came from Colombia, a known cartel compound not far from Medellin. I ask myself, why would a cartel member have access to a CIA hitman. It must be that the cartel member in question is either also an agent of the CIA, undercover in the cartel, or perhaps he has simply reached some arrangement with the agents sent to infiltrate his organization. I mean, the cartel money could fund a number of covert operations completely off the books with no record of government funding at all, don’t you think? Ideological or greedy agents might see that as a fair trade for protecting the cartels to some 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 camera man inside the meeting did not see."

"When taken altogether, these incidents have one of two possible solutions. Either an unauthorized rogue element within the CIA, perhaps in league with the now defunct drug cartels, has undertaken some private mission to overthrow Guatemala’s democratically elected government, 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 fragmentation 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 meeting was about to take place."

"Do you have photos of those men? Are they dead?" Vargas asked.

"We have apprehended them all. But there’s more. In addition to this armed 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 meeting. Their plan, which we overheard them discussing, was to use the car’s loudspeakers to announce that the Guatemalan government was not going to tolerate political gatherings, before opening fire on the building and anyone trying to exit once the grenades started landed. In times of war, combatants dressed in uniforms of the enemy to engage in such activities are deemed spies and often subject to capital punishment. These actions look very much like an act of war to me, Mr. Vargas. Tell me, is your government’s intention to start a war with a democratically elected government that has just recently been instrumental in the eradication of the drug cartels that have so longed plagued your country?"