Accidental Encounters Read online

  For Dave Bigelow, the day had started out well. His business meetings at Europa Bank had gone smoothly, and he had toyed with the idea of leaving early on Friday afternoon to fly back to New York for the weekend. He and his wife, Melanie, had not had a weekend alone together for what seemed like months.

  But some of his business associates had suggested that he stay around because they might need his advice for meetings that they had scheduled for late afternoon. That meant he would miss the last flight to New York. He had agreed, provided that they wound up their business trip with a festive dinner at a Mexican restaurant before flying home on Saturday morning. He had called his wife and justified his delay in coming home as an exercise in team building. Melanie had been understanding.

  That was when things had started going wrong. First, there was that totally unexpected meeting with his estranged brother, Bob, in a restaurant in a city far from home. He was in the Mexican capital for a legitimate reason. But his brother? He worked in New York City for a trading firm and, as far as he knew, had no reason to be in Mexico. After the initial confusion at their chance encounter, his brother had seemed reticent and distracted, volunteering no explanation.

  When Dave had steered the conversation toward Bob’s upcoming marriage, his only response had been that the engagement to Andrea was broken off. Again there was no explanation. Dave felt sorry for his brother, who was recently divorced and, he suspected, desperately trying to restore stability to his life. They had not touched on the other matter—the loan that Dave had recently obtained for Bob to help him out of his financial difficulties. Dave had expected at least some expression of gratitude, but he had waited in vain.

  After Dave had returned to his own table to explain to his curious companions that he had been having a drink with his brother, whom he had discovered sitting at a table nearby, the waiter had come up.

  “Pardon, senor, do you know the gentleman who was sitting at the table over there? He appears to have forgotten his phone. It was underneath his napkin.”

  “Thank you, waiter. Give it to me and I will take it to him.”

  Dave grabbed the phone out of the waiter’s hand and hurried to the men’s washroom, sticking his head through the door. “Bob?” he called out. There was no answer. If his brother had taken the main stairs to the first level, he would have seen him. Bob must have taken the back stairs.

  At ground level, Dave made a second decision. Would Bob have walked through the crowded dining room to the front entrance, or would he have taken the back exit, readily accessible and marked by a bright sign? Again he made the right choice, exiting to the back alley only to glimpse a passenger (who could have been Bob) in the back seat of a black BMW that was pulling away.

  “Bob!” he cried out, running after the car and waving the mobile phone in his hand. But he could not keep up. He saw the BMW turn onto Galileo. If reason had prevailed, he would have given up the chase at this point and decided to return the phone to Bob in New York. However, Dave did not give up easily once he was engaged in pursuit of a goal. Loitering on the curb on Galileo was a yellow Volkswagen beetle taxi, the kind of gypsy cab that the concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel had warned him against using. Jumping into the taxi, Dave ordered the driver to follow the black BMW.

  “Si, senor,” said the driver, not believing his good fortune that a gringo businessman had so easily fallen into his trap.

  Unaware of the attention he had attracted, Dave fumed in the back seat of his taxi, which had followed the black BMW but then had lost it in the traffic. It was now dark, and the chances of finding it were slim. But the driver seemed nonchalant.

  “Don’t worry, amigo. I know a shortcut.” He turned off the Avenida Horacio, and for the next ten minutes, Dave was taken through a maze of side streets and back alleys until the taxi came to rest at a Banamex location with a drive-up ATM at an office building that had been emptied of its workers hours before. The location was deserted—no pedestrians and no cars.

  “Why are you stopping here?” asked Dave. His unease of the last few minutes had now turned into alarm.

  When the driver turned to answer, he was no longer smiling. There was a gun in his hand. “I hope that you brought your ATM card with you, senor. Go over to that machine and withdraw the maximum that you can take out in a day. Believe me, I will not hurt you. All I want is your cash.”

  Dave slowly got out of the car, silently cursing himself for his stupidity. The driver walked two paces behind him. He inserted the card, punched in his pass code, and withdrew his daily maximum of a thousand dollars, denominated in pesos. He handed the cash to the driver.

  “Gracias, senor. Your wallet as well.”

  “Look, leave me at least one credit card,” pleaded Dave. “I need to get back to my hotel.”

  “Sorry, amigo. I am treating you generously. You still have your life. Eventually, you will find help.” The driver clambered back into his Volkswagen beetle and began backing away from the ATM location toward the street.

  Mugged in Mexico City! Dave struggled to contain his panic and his fury as he watched the receding headlights of the taxi. But then cool reason began to return. He realized how lucky he had been. The driver had not frisked him. He still had his phone and Bob’s as well.

  Before Dave could place a call to his hotel to explain his predicament, unexpected help came from a minivan, which blocked the exit of the taxi onto the street. Dave could see two men questioning the taxi driver, and their gestures seemed threatening. Light from a streetlamp glinted on the guns they held in their hands. Perhaps they were plainclothes police officers.

  Dave began walking toward the taxi until he could see the terrified expression on the driver’s face. One of the men interrogating him stepped away from the taxi to watch Dave’s approach, his gun held ready. The other waited calmly for the driver to surrender his ill-gotten gains of the night—the wallet and the cash. He turned toward Dave and asked, “These are yours, senor?”

  “Yes. Thank you for coming to my rescue. This man robbed me at gunpoint,” he said, pointing toward the taxi driver.

  “You were at the Villa Maria earlier tonight, were you not?”

  “Yes, I was. How did you know?”

  He did not receive an answer, only another question. “And your name is …?”

  “Bigelow.”

  This seemed to arouse the interest of his questioner. He spoke rapidly in Spanish to the second man, who placed a call to Pedro Guerra. Brief consultations followed. The first man motioned Dave toward the minivan.

  “Get in the van. You will need to come with us for further questioning.”

  It soon became obvious to Dave that his captors were not plainclothes police officers. They had not arrested the man who had robbed him. His wallet and cash were not returned to him. Instead, he was thoroughly frisked before he got into the minivan, and he gave up his passport and the two phones. They did not take him to a nearby precinct for questioning, as would have happened in New York. They drove for what seemed like hours, frequently reversing direction, until they arrived at a motel on the outskirts of Mexico City. During that entire ride, one of the two men sat beside him, pointing a gun at him as if he were a dangerous criminal.

  If Dave had known about the app on Bob’s mobile phone, which enabled his location to be traced, he would have felt less desperate over his situation. The police officers in the two Ford Explorers pursuing the black BMW had been informed about the app by Miguel Rodriguez, the agent at the US Drug Enforcement Agency who had contacted them. At first, the BMW and the signal emitted by the phone had headed consistently in the same direction. Then they had diverged, confusing the drivers of the two police vehicles. They had prudently decided to split, one following the BMW and the other tracing the signal. The BMW had eventually evaded its pursuer on the Bulevard Manuel Avila Camacho, but the signal had been a reliable guide, leading, after three hours, to t
he Guadalajara Motel on the western outskirts of Mexico City.

  Dave braced himself for an interrogation when they arrived—for what purpose, he did not know. It was already late, and he felt exhausted. But Pedro Guerra had decided to visit his mistress that night, so Dave was spared.

  The two units occupied by his captors were at the back of the motel, secluded and screened from the view of other guests by trees. The two men in the minivan escorted him to one of the units, where they were greeted by an armed guard who rose sleepily from a sofa bed in the sitting area. Beside him were empty cans of beer, an unfinished takeout dinner, and an ashtray filled with cigarette stubs. The room reeked of sweat, stale cigarette smoke, and rotting food.

  “We have another guest for you, Hernando.”

  The guard grunted, pulled out his key, and unlocked the bedroom door. Dave was pushed into the darkened room and saw, huddled against the wall, the figure of his brother. The light from the sitting room also showed a second man lying on a single cot in the corner. Then the door was shut, and Dave heard a key turning the lock. The room was completely dark again.

  Chapter Seven

  Dave’s relief at being reunited with his brother lasted only seconds. Bob’s whisper broke the silence.

  “Dave, is that you? What are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same of you. All I wanted to do was return the phone you forgot in the restaurant. As a result, I have been mugged and taken captive by some Mexican thugs. Why is it that no good deed ever goes unpunished?”

  “I have wondered that myself sometimes.”

  “What kind of business are you in, if you don’t mind me asking? You hurried off to a meeting after dinner and now you are a prisoner of these criminals.”

  “Have you been following the local news? I was delivering the ransom for Demir Ozmen, an employee of my company kidnapped while on a business trip to Veracruz. The police found out about the plan and tried to get involved. The kidnappers think I tried to double-cross them. That’s why I’m a prisoner.”

  “This guy Ozmen is the one the terrorists in Morelia want to rescue?”

  “Yeah. The same Ozmen, by the way, is sleeping on the cot over there. When I arrived, I explained to him what had happened. Do you think he showed gratitude? No, he just started swearing at me in Turkish.”

  A roar from Ozmen’s cot interrupted Dave before he could snap that Bob was receiving some of his own treatment.

  “Will the two of you shut up? I am trying to get a few hours of sleep before I am executed, thanks to your screw-up.”

  Bob ignored him. “You said, Dave, that our bandido friends confiscated my phone?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Just asking.” Would that Mama Bear app come to our rescue? he wondered.

  “Bob, after I heard about the seizure of the cathedral in Morelia by some gang, I wondered to myself, why does a Mexican drug cartel care about an employee of your company? Got any answers?”

  “Dave, what are you getting at?”

  Bob’s evasive response was only too typical of him. Dave’s patience snapped.

  “Bob, if we ever get out of here alive, would you do me a favor? Get as far out of my life as possible. Go to some remote location—Tahiti or even Antarctica. Will you promise me that?”

  “Dave, the thought has crossed my mind too. Imagine saying ‘to hell’ to the Ottoman Trading Company, Andrea, you, and some other unnamed individuals that I would like to forget about!”

  With that final outburst, the two brothers declared a temporary truce. The room became silent—for which Ozmen, at least, was grateful.

  Chapter Eight

  Dave regretted his angry words as soon as they left his mouth. He and his younger brother rarely saw each other, yet when they did, they quarreled. They always seemed to bring out the worst in each other. He would try to make amends in the morning, which he guessed was still hours away. The small shaft of light streaming through the crack underneath the door suddenly faded. Their captors must have turned in for the night.

  He leaned back against the wall and tried to doze but could not. His mind drifted to his wife, Melanie, secure in their home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and to his daughter, Helen, a sophomore at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. Had they been informed by Jerry Braunstein—the head of the bank monitoring team with whom he had been having dinner at the Villa Maria—about his unexplained disappearance? Surely Jerry would have suspected that something was wrong when Dave failed to return to either the restaurant or their hotel and would have contacted the Mexico City police. Then he would have called Melanie. She was probably frantic with worry now, and maybe Helen too, unless his wife had decided not to call until she had better information.

  A few weeks ago, Melanie, Helen, and he had returned from an Aegean Sea cruise. Melanie and Helen had been so excited about going. As a child, Melanie had heard stories about the Greek countryside from her grandmother, who had emigrated from there to the United States. The cruise had lived up to their expectations, even exceeded them—the Acropolis in Athens illuminated at night, the excursion to mountainous Delphi, the spectacular island of Santorini, the ruins of Ephesus, and the breathtaking Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. At least the two people he loved most would have happy memories of their time together if he never saw them again.

  He wrinkled his brow over that grim thought. Wasn’t he being too pessimistic? His capture and that of his brother were the result of a complete misunderstanding. That would become obvious once they had explained their actions to their captors’ boss, the one to whom they referred as Pedro, and they would be released. Yet doubts gnawed at his certainty. What had the Turk said—that he now expected to be executed because of the botched ransom attempt? If he were right, why should Bob and he expect a better fate? Their captors were killers, not reasonable men.

  Dave cursed his stupidity. He could so easily have returned his brother’s phone to him when they were both back in New York City, or even left it with the management of the restaurant so that his brother could reclaim it when he realized that he had forgotten it at his table. What had possessed him to rush into the back alley behind the restaurant and then jump into an unlicensed taxi in a vain attempt to return the phone? It was a shocking lapse of judgment, which could cost him dearly.

  He knew why he had done it. He had a sense of obligation to his brother—and to his father. Dave thought about the last conversation that he had had with his father. Sitting beside his hospital bed, he had watched the man whom he revered, now reduced by cancer to a frail skeleton, breathing shallowly and apparently asleep. Then his eyes had flickered open.

  “David, take care of Robert. Will you promise me that?” he had whispered.

  Bending over his father to hear, Dave had promised that he would, not wanting to upset his father by asking the obvious question. How could he be his brother’s keeper if they were hardly on speaking terms?

  “The two of you turned out so differently. I feel that I am to blame …” His father’s whisper had trailed off until it was no longer audible. A tear had rolled down his wasted cheek.

  But it was more than his father’s dying request. There was also a sense of guilt. Because of Dave’s negligence, Bob could have died years ago when they were still boys. They had spent a summer vacation in Vermont with their parents, who had rented a house in the country far away from a town of any size. One warm afternoon, Dave had decided to go fishing at a nearby creek by himself, but his much younger brother, separated from him by eight years in age, had insisted on tagging along.

  Absorbed in learning how to use his new fishing rod, Dave had, for the most part, ignored Bob, who, left to his own devices, had wandered off into the woods by himself. Only hours later, when he was ready to return to the house, did Dave discover that Bob was missing. After a futile hour of looking and dreading that Bob had drowned in the creek, he had raced back to the house
to report to his horrified parents. A massive search had been launched involving neighbors, county police, state troopers, and dogs. Hours later, just before nightfall, after what had seemed an eternity, Bob had been discovered. He was covered with insect bites but otherwise unharmed.

  Chapter Nine

  In the darkness, Bob Bigelow also retreated into his own small world. How many hostages in Morelia would lose their lives because of tonight’s fiasco? His pride smarted from his failure to carry out the Turk’s ransom successfully. That had been the pattern of his life—reaching high to grasp the brass ring but failing to achieve victory.

  He began to brood about his past, those seemingly innocent high school parties in Greenwich years ago when he had first begun to experiment with drugs and alcohol and the brushes with the local police that had not stained his record because his father had had friends in powerful places. He had disappointed his parents, especially his father, who had once shouted at him that he would never amount to anything because of his lack of discipline. Why couldn’t he be more like his brother, Dave?

  The unfavorable comparison with his brother had bedeviled his youth. Dave had always been a class act—an excellent student, a star athlete on the high school football team, president of the student council, a well-spoken young man with whom mothers would entrust their daughters. Even when he messed up, as he had years ago on that summer vacation in Vermont, he was readily forgiven by their parents for his uncharacteristic lapse. Dave was the sort of person who could fall into a sewer hole and come up smelling like roses.

  Bob had sought to emerge from his shadow by being his opposite—taking daring risks, acting rakishly with the girls, and showing only rare flashes of brilliance in his studies in high school. What had his father called him when he had driven home from a party after drinking too much and sideswiping another car? A feckless youth who deserved to be taken to the woodshed and whipped. Except his father had never laid a hand on him. Instead, he had punished Bob by becoming aloof. The competition for his father’s affections had been over before the race started. Dave had won hands down.