Power and Empire

“This is weird,” Jack said, “Asian girl has broken off. Doesn’t look to be a factor. I can’t tell if this one is doing a really basic SDR or just zigzagging her way to wherever she’s going. So far she hasn’t even checked behind her.”

“Watch your ass,” Midas said. “Maybe she’s not alone. Your Asian woman could turn up again soon and stick a knife in your fourth point of contact.”

“That’s a nice thought,” Ryan said, watching the woman trot across Avenida del Libertador. Risking one’s life against ten lanes of aggressive Argentine drivers made for the perfect method to shed a tail.

Ryan tried to keep the woman in his peripheral vision as he continued up the street toward the crosswalk, willing himself to remain at a normal pace. The signal turned green just as the brunette disappeared into the trees.

No one would think twice about someone running to beat the crossing signal on such a wide street, so Ryan made up some time sprinting toward the park. He slowed when he reached the grass, staying parallel to what the brunette’s route would be if she went straight after entering the trees.

The park was a fairly narrow one, and a railway yard with numerous tracks, switches, and uncoupled train cars lay directly on the other side, spilling out of Retiro Station to the south. This yard formed a natural line of demarcation between the upscale Recoleta neighborhood and the shantytown of broken brick dwellings in a warren of narrow streets known as Villa 31—one of many such slums in Buenos Aires collectively, and appropriately, called villas miseria. Nearly fifteen city blocks long and more than five blocks wide at is widest point, the Villa — Argentines pronounced it “vizha”—was a gray swath of nothingness next to the tracks on most maps. Tourists might think it was just part of the train yard. Close enough that its residents could smell meat cooking from Recoleta restaurants if the wind was right, Villa 31 was home to many of the hardest-working people in Buenos Aires — as well as some of the city’s most violent criminals.

Maids and service workers who lacked the proper references to rent an apartment in the city often paid half as much to rent a room with a communal bath and pirated electricity in a crumbling departamento from one of the neighborhood bosses who ran everything from rent collection to dispute enforcement inside the Villa. Villa 31 was a city within a city, but few people admitted to living there. Police braved the streets only in well-armed squads, and then only during daylight hours. If someone needed an ambulance at night, as Ding Chavez put it, “forget about it.”

Ryan caught sight of the brunette a moment later, a hundred feet away and walking in his direction. He sat down on a bench across from a weathered older man who was throwing pistachios to a chattering flock of bright green parrots about the size of small pigeons. Ryan put his back to a gum tree but used the man’s eyes and expressions to help guard his six o’clock. It wasn’t an optimum setup, but human beings usually reacted in some way to danger, and Jack couldn’t very well keep looking over his shoulder all the time. The birds and the man ignored him.

The brunette worked her way through the waist-high grass and weeds along the railyard fence until she found what she was looking for, a gap in the chain-link. Jack imagined the same makeshift gate was used by commuters from Villa 31 each morning and evening to and from their jobs so they didn’t have to walk all the way to the other side of Retiro Station to get over the tracks. If the brunette had seen Ryan, she showed no sign of it. Instead, she turned sideways to slip through the gap, and then, checking both ways for oncoming trains, trotted across multiple sets of railroad tracks. Ryan couldn’t help but think she looked like pictures he’d seen of East German refugees fleeing the no-man’s-land to get over the Wall. Reaching the far side, she ducked through a second gap in the railway fence to enter the slums.

If it was difficult to follow her through the park, it would be impossible for Jack to follow her into the shantytown. Aside from the prospect that she might see him, venturing into Villa 31 without knowing someone on the inside was a good way to get yourself dead in a hurry.

Ryan gave a nod to the man feeding the parrots and headed back toward Midas. He bought a choripán—chorizo sausage on a bun — from a guy in the park, because he didn’t know when he’d get to eat again. He’d give Midas a break when he got there.

“Lost her,” he said, eating as he walked. “I’ll explain when I…”

“Say again,” Midas said. “You cut out.”

Ryan lowered his voice and dropped the barely eaten choripán into a trash can along the path. “It’s her,” he said. “The Asian woman. Looks like she’s picking the lock on some kind of tool shed or utility building in the park.”

“Copy,” Midas said.