An Acceptable Sacrifice

Friday, commemorating the latest war against the cartels. The event would include speeches by the country’s president and an American official from the DEA. More drug killings in Chihuahua. He shook his head.
    In a half hour the food arrived and he sat down at the table, removed his tie—he dressed for work, even when staying home—and stuffed a napkin into his collar. As he ate, his mind wandered to the Dickens that his book dealer, Señor Davila, would be delivering tomorrow. He was delighted that it had arrived early, but pleased, too, that he was getting it for a lower price than originally agreed. The seller whom Davila had found apparently needed cash and would reduce the price by five thousand if Cuchillo paid in U.S. dollars, which he immediately agreed to do. Davila had said he would reduce his percentage of the finder’s fee accordingly, but Cuchillo had insisted that he receive the full amount. Davila had always been good to him.
    There was a knock on the door and his security chief, José, entered.
    He could tell at once: bad news.
    “I heard from a contact in the Federales , sir. There is intelligence about this bus attack on Friday? The tourist bus? The reports are linking you to it.”
    “No!”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    “Dammit,” he muttered. Cuchillo had uttered only a few obscenities in his life; this was usually the worst his language got. “Me? This is absurd. This is completely wrong! They blame me for everything!”
    “I’m sorry, sir.”
    Cuchillo calmed and considered the problem. “Call the bus lines, call the security people, call whoever you have to. Do what you can to make sure passengers are safe in Sonora. You understand, I want to be certain that no one is hurt here. They will blame me if anything happens.”
    “I’ll do what I can, sir, but—”
    His boss said patiently, “I understand you can’t control the entire state. But use our resources to do whatever you can.”
    “Yessir, I will.”
    The man hurried off.
    Cuchillo finally shrugged off the anger, finished dinner and, sipping his wine, walked up and down the aisles enjoying the sight of his many titles.
    22,000 …
    He returned to his den and worked some more on the project that had obsessed him for the past few months: opening another auto parts fabrication plant outside of town. There was a huge U.S. automobile manufacturer here in Hermosillo and Cuchillo had made much of his fortune by supplying parts to the company. It would employ another 400 local workers. Though he benefitted from their foolishness, he couldn’t understand the Americans’ sending manufacturing away from their country. He would never do that. Business—no, all of life—was about loyalty.
    At ten p.m., he decided to retire early. He washed and walked into his large bedroom, thinking again of The Old Curiosity Shop he would receive tomorrow. This buoyed his spirits. He dressed in pajamas and glanced at his bedside table.
    What should he read now, he wondered, to lull him to sleep?
    He decided he would continue with War and Peace , a title that, he thought wryly, perfectly described a businessman’s life in Mexico.

     
    In the living room of the apartment with the complicated ownership, P.Z. Evans was hunched over his improvised workbench, carefully constructing the bomb.
    The care wasn’t necessary because he risked getting turned into red vapor, not yet, in any event; it was simply that the circuits and wiring were very small and he had big hands. In the old days he would have been soldering the connections. But now improvised explosive devices were plug and play. He was pressing the circuits into sheets of especially powerful plastic explosive, which he’d packed into the leather cover after slicing it open with a surgeon’s scalpel.
    It was eleven p.m. and the agents had not had a moment’s respite today. They’d spent the past twelve hours acquiring the key items to the project, like the surgeon’s instruments, electronics and a leather-bound edition of the play The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller, which their new partner—book dealer Señor Davila—had suggested because Cuchillo liked the German author.
    Through a jeweler’s loupe over his right eye, Evans examined his handiwork and made some small adjustments.
    Outside their door they could hear infectious norteño in a nearby square. An accordion was prominent. The windows were open because the evening air teased that it was heading toward the bearable, and the A.C.