The Aztec Heresy Read Online Free PDF Page A

time he drank anything alcoholic.
    At five minutes to two Max Kessler finished his meal and paid for it, leaving an appropriate tip, then walked back down Cady’s Alley to M Street. At exactly 2:00 p.m. a black Lincoln Town Car slid down M Street, driving west, and pulled over to the curb directly in front of Kessler. He opened the rear door, entered the car, and sat back against the black leather seat.
    ‘‘Site Three,’’ said Max, and the car moved off. Site Three was a park bench on the Mall directly in front of the National Museum of Natural History and directly across from the red-brick Smithsonian Castle, and getting there involved some complicated maneuvering up and down Washington’s maze of one-way streets. The car dropped him off in front of the museum on the Madison Drive side, and Kessler walked across the street and turned onto the broad gravel path. As usual the grass on the Mall was spotty, brown with neglect and burnt by too much sun, dog urine, and excrement, not to mention the litter, which wasn’t surprising in a post-9/11 world, where trash containers were a potential target for hordes of brown-skinned terrorists and had all been removed years ago.
    He glanced up the Mall toward the Capitol. That, of course, was where the real terrorists could be found, in Congress and the Senate. The terrorism of Greed and Stupidity, Kessler called it. He smiled. No matter; he had files on each and every one of them and had made a great deal of money from them as clients, trading secrets of the one to the curiosity of the other.
    Kessler sat down on the designated bench, folded his small hands in his lap, and waited. Five minutes later his client-to-be sat down beside him. He was a large man, tall, broad-shouldered, and well dressed in a tailored suit that made him look like a lawyer or a banker. His skin was very tanned, his brownish hair streaked by a lot of sun, his eyes light blue and hard.
    ‘‘What do you know about Angel Guzman?’’ asked the hard-eyed man.
    ‘‘A great deal,’’ said Kessler, who’d done his research.
    ‘‘Tell me.’’
    ‘‘He’s a Mexican warlord. On his father’s side he is the illegitimate grandson of Dr. Arnulfo Arias, the three-time president of Panama. On his mother’s side he is the grandson of a puta, a whore from Mexico City. He is considered to be completely insane. He collects the mutilated sex organs of his enemies the way soldiers in Vietnam collected ears. He is the last of the great cocainistas, men like Pablo Escobar. He wants to use all his money and power to make the Yucatán a separate state, and after that he thinks he can spawn a new Mexican Revolution. The general consensus is that he wants to be king.’’ Max Kessler stopped.
    ‘‘Is that it?’’ said the man beside him. ‘‘I could have got that much off Wikipedia.’’
    ‘‘That is most certainly not all,’’ answered Kessler. ‘‘The file on Señor Guzman is a considerable one and very detailed. Sex habits, his curious concern for his bowels. His fear of escalators. His private radio codes. The names of the key people in his organization both in Mexico and in other places, the location of his headquarters in the jungles of Quintana Roo.’’
    ‘‘Jesus, you know all that?’’
    ‘‘And more.’’ Kessler nodded.
    ‘‘How do I get my hands on the information? ’’
    ‘‘By paying me a great deal of money.’’
    ‘‘How much?’’
    ‘‘Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’’ said Kessler blandly.
    ‘‘A little steep, isn’t it?’’
    ‘‘You can afford it.’’
    ‘‘That’s irrelevant. It’s still a lot of money.’’
    ‘‘Then don’t pay it.’’
    ‘‘Your father was a Nazi, right?’’
    ‘‘Three hundred thousand dollars,’’ murmured Kessler.
    ‘‘All right. When can I get the file?’’
    ‘‘As soon as you give me the money,’’ said Kessler.
    ‘‘Half when I get the file, half when I’ve read it.’’
    ‘‘Don’t be