The Last Line by Anthony Shaffer Page B

fairly good one, we think, that Los Zetas and Sinaloa have buried the hatchet and are now working together.”
    A black-and-white surveillance photo came up on the screen, next to Mexico City on the map. Four men stood on a city sidewalk, apparently getting into a car. “This was taken a month ago. The one on the right, behind the open door—that’s Carlos Guevara Alvarez, one of the top lieutenants in Los Zetas. The one next to him, holding the door open, is Ernesto Mendoza Flores, a high-ranking member of Sinaloa who specializes in smuggling both drugs and people into Arizona and New Mexico. The one in the back, he’s Hector Gallardo, and he’s important—the chief lieutenant, aide, whatever you want to call him of one of the real big fish. Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán. Head of Sinaloa Cartel, and by conservative estimates now with a personal worth of around one billion dollars. Forbes magazine listed him as the nine hundred thirty-seventh richest man in the world—and the sixtieth most powerful.”
    â€œSo if a senior Guzmán aide is hanging out with Alvarez,” Wentworth said, “then there’s got to be a truce on, and a pretty solid one.”
    â€œAnd the fourth man?” Teller asked. “He doesn’t look Mexican. More Middle Eastern, I’d say.”
    â€œ That is the one who really worries us,” Chavez said. “You’re right. He’s not Hispanic. He’s Persian. His name is Saeed Reyshahri. He’s Republican Guard and probably VEVAK. Until recently he was an Iranian adviser with Hezbollah in Syria.”
    â€œWhat the fuck are the Iranians doing in Mexico?” Procario demanded.
    â€œThat’s what we would like to know,” Larson said, “very, very badly. We’ve known for several years that Hezbollah has people in Mexico working with the cartels—and Hezbollah, of course, has ties to Iran. We have the Mexican state in virtual anarchy, the possibility that a couple of small nukes have arrived in Belize on board a Mexican freighter with cartel ties, and now a VEVAK agent turns up in Mexico City with high-ranking members of Mexico’s two largest and most vicious drug cartels. That’s not good.”
    â€œAnd right at that moment,” Chavez added, “someone pulls the plug and our Mexican network goes down. It’s not exactly a good time to be in the dark.”
    â€œCan you explain to me,” Teller said, “what Hezbollah’s interest in Mexico might be?” He spoke quietly, his voice and manner wooden. His emotions were still churning after the sight of the severed head, and he was having trouble controlling them.
    Wentworth shrugged. “We’ve known they’ve been there for several years,” he said. “Mostly, they seem to be using the cartel smuggling networks—especially Sinaloa—to bring their own drugs across the border into the U.S. in order to finance their operations in the Middle East. But they’re moving people across as well.”
    â€œThe cartels,” Chavez added, “don’t just bring drugs into the country. Over the last decade, they’ve been more and more involved in smuggling illegals across the border as well. The operators are called coyotes, and it’s pretty lucrative for them. They bring in between eighteen hundred and twenty-five hundred dollars per person, and lots of times they manage to extort more from the families. Sometimes a lot more, usually by locking up the illegals once they’re in the States and threatening to torture or kill them. Since they have well-established conduits—a network of underground railways—Hezbollah has been using them to move its own drugs and undocumented people across as well.”
    â€œSo we need to find out what a known VEVAK agent is doing here, too,” Procario said.
    â€œOur first order of business,” Larson said, “is to get our