Текст книги "The Execution"

Автор книги: Dick Wolf

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

CHAPTER 52

Fisk sat at his desk for a while, waiting for the usual thoughts of resigning to subside, so he could focus on the task at hand.

A couple of days ago, Dubin was singing his praises, worried Fisk might leave for another intelligence agency. Today Fisk was a liability, apparently.

He should have followed his gut. He should have quit after the Freedom Tower incident. After catching Jenssen and losing Gersten.

He should have walked away then. This was so obvious to him now.

“Hey, Nicole?”

He called to her from his desk. In a moment, she was in his doorway.

“Will you please get me the Mexican president’s full itinerary for today?”

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out. She went away, then came right back. “Don’t you want your schedule for the day?”

Fisk said, “Dubin spoke to you, too?”

She shared a pained expression with him. Fisk was not angry with her.

“President Vargas’s itinerary. I know he’s got a stop at the Mexican Cultural Institute sometime this morning, then a stop in El Barrio, then the independence parade and festival and the dinner tonight.”

Nicole nodded. “And you have a field briefing at the UN at eleven thirty this morning . . .”

“No,” said Fisk. “I won’t be going to that.”

“You won’t be . . . ?” She waited for further instructions. “So I should cancel you.”

“No, you can keep it on the books. I just won’t be there.”

“Okay,” she said, looking a little sick.

“Don’t worry, Nicole,” said Fisk. “You tell me what I’m supposed to be doing, and if I don’t do it, it falls on me, not you.”

CHAPTER 53

President Umberto Vargas’s motorcade exited from the garage beneath the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel and rolled south down Seventh Avenue. Cecilia Garza was in the first SUV with General de Aguilar and two EMP agents. President Vargas rode in the middle car with a reporter for The New Yorker who was doing a long-range article on the bold new Mexican administration. More support rode in the third SUV, and an NYPD motorcycle cop led the way.

The streets were busy that morning, faces turning toward the dark-windowed motorcade of shiny black and silver SUVs but nobody reacting with anything more than a passing curiosity. The motorcycle cop up ahead bleated his siren at traffic lights and slow crossings so that the SUVs did not get held up. At the Fortieth Street intersection, Secret Service agents had shut down traffic so the motorcade could turn left without stopping. The SUVs drove to Park Avenue, where they turned right, then right again onto Thirty-ninth.

The Mexican Cultural Institute was located at the Mexican consulate, just off Park Avenue, across the street from a row of low-rise brick buildings and brownstones. The institute had been founded in the early 1990s as part of a “Program for Mexican Communities Abroad,” in order to nurture a sense of national identity among people of Mexican origin living in the New York metro area. They ran programs to strengthen awareness of Mexico’s history and rich traditions “as a democratic, plural, and creative nation,” read the press release in her hand.

A press release. She crumpled it. Why was the consulate publicizing Señor Presidente’s visit? Were they not aware of the security threat? Or were they just so overly confident of security in and around the consulate?

Blue wooden NYPD sawhorse barricades had been set up at Park Avenue, but sidewalk traffic was allowed to pass across the street from the consulate, behind a barricade fence. The barricades had evidently been up for some time, because a small crowd had gathered across the street from the consulate, drawn by the promise of an event of some sort.

Garza reviewed on her iPad a surveillance video taken from the second floor of the consulate, panning the faces in the crowd they were about to encounter. Garza went over it once very quickly, looking for Yankees caps, then admonished herself for looking for the obvious, the expected. She went back through each face, looking for anyone who might resemble the Chuparosa from the Montreal airport and Queens traffic cameras. She spotted a cluster of photographers wearing press credentials camped behind some TV news cameras on tripods, and saw that the headlines in the morning newspapers were going to dog them all day long—exactly as President Vargas feared. The antitrafficking-treaty signing might be overshadowed by the usual narrative of Mexico’s drug cartel violence.

Garza checked her phone one last time. No contact from Fisk. She had expected to see him with the security contingent as they left the hotel, but he was nowhere to be found.

She accepted this. Upon further reflection after a night’s sleep, perhaps he realized that her past marked her as too complicated. She had to admit that, upon waking, the night before in the hotel lounge seemed to her like a dream, in which a different version of herself unburdened her personal side to a man she had only recently met.

She needed to get back to Mexico. To get out of New York. She wanted to return to the familiar confines of the PF, to go about her business and leave the concerns of presidential politics and security behind.

But first she wanted to get Chuparosa.

Her lead car pulled just past the limestone front of the five-story consulate building. There were two entrances. One faced the sidewalk, beneath a giant black globe housing the consulate’s security cameras. The other was inside a very small, gated courtyard, not much larger than a limousine. That was the public entrance, reserved for consulate business, such as visas, passports, immigration paperwork, and the like.

They idled and waited for the second and third vehicles to fall in behind them. An EMP agent in the backseat was monitoring the radio.

Garza grew anxious, watching more bystanders arrive, drawn by the police presence and the idling motorcade. What was taking so long?

“Visto bueno,” said the EMP agent.

Garza was out of the vehicle quickly, striding around to the rear, ready to escort President Vargas over the few yards to the entrance, which was controlled by security from inside the consulate. A small knot of consulate employees, including Consul General Francisca Metron, awaited him near the entrance.

Vargas exited through the door to the sidewalk, as planned, buttoning his jacket once he emerged and turning to wave blindly at the gathered crowd. Voices were raised, questions being shouted by reporters across Thirty-ninth Street, a one-way street with two traffic lanes and a parking lane. A number of Mexicans in the crowd cheered, and Vargas slowed to further acknowledge them, flashing the smile.

The gathered media misconstrued this action as an opportunity to shout more questions, which frankly neither Garza nor Vargas could hear above the din. Garza was sweeping her eyes over the crowd on the other side when she heard a voice yelling.

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”

A man wearing a heavy black backpack had hopped the barricade fence and begun striding quickly across the street toward the president. The perimeter EMP agents were the ones yelling at him to halt.

The man wore a dark ball cap with no insignia on the crest. As he came, he readied a Nikon camera strung around his neck, as though to get a picture.

At the same time, he swung his backpack forward off one shoulder, as though he were about to throw it.

Garza perceived all of this as happening in extreme slow motion.

Both items—the camera and the backpack—were potential weapons.

Her reaction time lagged just a second. Because to her eyes, this man did not match the video image of Chuparosa she had been playing and replaying in her mind since yesterday evening.

A Secret Service agent broke from the rear SUV of the idling motorcade and drew his weapon, a SIG Sauer P229. Into his suit jacket cuff, he shouted, “Breach! Breach!”

Garza was also drawing, her Beretta coming out of her shoulder holster as she jumped in front of President Vargas. She shouted, “Amenaza! Amenaza!” Threat! Threat!

A third individual sprang from the crowd behind the side barricade, wearing a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and dark pants. He was aiming a Glock at the man and shouting, “Get to the ground! Get on the ground!”

The man with the camera stopped, momentarily mystified by the triumvirate of armed people yelling at him. Then he recognized the weapons in their hands. He went down to one knee, then the next, half collapsing, half complying.

The Secret Service agent was on him first, grabbing a free hand and driving his knee into the photographer’s back.

The gunman from the crowd was a close second. The Secret Service agent, not knowing this man, pointed his gun at him.

Fisk’s hands went up quickly. “Fisk! NYPD Intel!”

“Jesus!” said the agent.

Garza kept her grip on Vargas, watching the photographer grunt and try to explain himself on the ground. When the Secret Service agent rolled him over, there was a wet spot on the pavement where the photographer’s groin had been.

Garza did not remain to watch any more. She turned and pushed President Vargas’s head down and ran him to the consulate entrance, past the stunned greeting party, getting him inside as fast as possible.

Once safely inside, she scanned the interior of the consulate entrance. She began to relinquish her grip on the president’s suit jacket when she felt it pull away from her.

“It was only a goddamn photographer!” he said behind her.

Garza turned. She saw the flash of anger cross the president’s face as he fixed his jacket. It stunned her.

“Have we not had enough bad press!” he said. “A photographer. Not an assassin!”

Garza was stunned. It was all she could do to walk away from him, quickly, before she said something back to him. She left him to the watchful eyes of her EMP compatriots, striding back out through the door to the sidewalk.

The photographer was being led to a police car by two uniformed officers. Every photographer in the media throng was still snapping away.

Fisk had turned his face away in an attempt to avoid them, but it was much too late. The Secret Service agent was huddling with his compatriots. One of them held an M4 carbine.

Garza went to Fisk, pulling him behind the president’s SUV, blocking them from view.

“What are you doing here in disguise?” she said.

He billowed out his shirt, trying to air out his sweat. “It’s not much of a disguise. I left my jacket in the car and rolled up my sleeves.”

“Why weren’t you at the hotel this morning?” she asked.

Fisk frowned. “I’m not supposed to be here at all. Dubin—my boss—thinks I’m spending too much time on one visiting dignitary. I think he got a complaint from Dukes about us. And if I’d gone to the hotel first, I would have had to check in with them.”

Garza said, “They know you’re here now.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s not good. Thanks to that idiot with the camera.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know,” said Fisk. “Got any openings in Mexico?”

Garza smiled. “Depends. Can you be corrupted?”

“Only by red wine,” he said.

Garza grinned, then backed off.

“What is it?”

She shook her head. “Vargas. He didn’t like the way that looked.”

Fisk sighed. “Believe me, he would have loved it had that idiot had an explosive device in his backpack.”

Garza was steamed.

“Interesting start to the day,” said Fisk.

“Was that urine I saw on the road?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said Fisk. “Looking into the business end of a handgun does that to people.”

Garza took a moment to scan the crowd. They were starting to disperse now that the show was over.

“I was feeling good about having an image of Chuparosa,” she said. “But now suddenly I feel we are no closer to him. No how, or where, or when.”

“He’s killed off everybody who could answer those questions.”

“He couldn’t have killed everybody,” said Garza. “He is staying somewhere. Someone is helping him.”

Fisk said, “I had a look at the seating plan for the dinner tonight. Obama and Vargas are seated at separate tables, which I guess is a power hosting thing. It gives the gathering two prime tables for guests to sit at, and by guests I mean donors.”

Garza nodded. “So?”

“Obama’s seatmates were all named on the diagram. As were Vargas’s seatmates . . . except for one. One was left empty.”

“Why?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Garza shook her head. “I haven’t seen the chart.”

“Well, then two other things came to mind. One was the mysterious presence of a U.S. marshal at the security review. I recognized her on the way out. She gave me a very vague nonanswer about what she was doing there. As you may know, they handle fugitives and federal witness relocation. And where was the restaurant owner? Two heads of state are coming to your establishment for an important dinner, and you’re not present at the security review? You’re not overseeing every little detail?”

“Fair point,” she said. “Who is the owner?”

“A limited partnership. Some shell corporation. But even shell corporations have to file legal papers and tax forms.” Fisk crossed his arms, looking down at her over his sunglasses. “I think we need to go pay this fellow a visit, Comandante.”

Garza nodded. “I think we do, too.”

CHAPTER 54

Chuparosa entered the garage dressed in a pair of light coveralls. He lifted the rear door of the fish truck with the Teixeira Brothers logo on the side and loaded in the deep tray of finely chopped ice.

He opened the four cases of shellfish, kneeling on the floor of the van. Blue Points, Chincoteagues, littlenecks, and Wellfleets, one box each. He spread the fresh ice in and around the oysters.

Packed in the ice beneath several layers of Wellfleets were the plastic frames of two Glock 17s. The trigger guards of each frame had been ground off, and all of the straight edges of the frame and handgrips had been modified with a Dremel tool in order to mimic the shape and roughness of an oyster.

Both guns had been fieldstripped, their slides and magazines distributed in the lining of a box of oyster knives. Each handle of the sixty-eight knives contained a single 124-grain 9mm Hydra-Shok hollow-point round sealed inside a lead lining so that they could not be detected by X-rays.

The barrels of the Glocks had been inserted inside the handle of a hand truck he had bought at the Home Depot on DeKalb Avenue in Brooklyn.

Silencers were the easy part. The two AAC Ti-RANT cans were top-of-the-line military-grade suppressors, slightly modified. Each had been disassembled, the tubes and pistons painted the same color as the hand truck and attached to the cross member, the baffles disassembled and slid onto the handles of the truck in place of the original rubber grips and painted matte black.

The locking blocks of the Glocks, too, had been painted and attached unobtrusively to the frame of the hand truck with Loctite. All that was left of the Glocks were the trigger groups, the trigger bars, the sears, and the trigger connectors—all of which were small pieces containing little more metal than a ballpoint pen. They were installed inside a tablet computer labeled ORDER TRACKING MODULE, effectively immune from detection.

The most distinctive parts—the gun barrels—had been set aside. They would have the most distinctive X-ray profiles, and so they would have to go in through an entirely different route.

Chuparosa heard footsteps and grasped the handle of the knife he carried in his belt, just as a precaution. He turned and waited.

Tomás Calibri came around the corner carrying two formal-looking outfits on hangers, wrapped in dry cleaner’s clear plastic. Tuxedo shirts and black pants.

Servers’ uniforms.

From his pocket Calibri pulled out two black bow ties.

“I hope you know how to tie a real bow tie, patrón?”

CHAPTER 55

Fisk and Garza spent some time out of his vehicle at the security station before the gate built into the twelve-foot-high stone wall. It was a beautiful, blue-sky day on Long Island. Their respective credentials were examined by a security guard while a second guard, a backup, remained inside the booth, watching them carefully.

The first guard carried their identification into the guard booth and spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone. He finally returned, again checked their faces against their identification cards, and only then signaled the second guard to roll back the gate.

When they were back inside his car and rolling up the wide driveway, Fisk said, “Getting on an airplane is easier than that.”

The lawn was beautifully landscaped, the main house not coming into view until the wide driveway took a leftward turn.

The mansion was slate roofed, with multiple dormer windows set symmetrically between red-trimmed gables. It was three stories and wide, fronted by a large circular driveway ringed by perfect green shrubs, offset by a pond with a fountain in its center. Picture perfect against a clear blue sky on a warm September day.

“My goodness,” said Fisk.

“How much would you say?” asked Garza.

Fisk said, “Seven million. The upkeep alone would be beyond any cop’s reach.”

“All from one tiny restaurant?” said Garza.

They parked outside the front door. The door was opened by a butler, who welcomed them inside. He was Mexican by appearance, stern looking, in his fifties. “Comandante and Detective, Don Andrés insists upon a strict no-gun policy inside his home,” said the butler.

Fisk said, “That is simply not possible.”

“I am afraid I will have to insist. Or else Don Andrés will not be available to sit with you today.”

Fisk checked with Garza to be sure he was speaking for both of them. “You tell your boss that we wear our weapons wherever we go.”

A woman stepped into the entrance from one of the three rooms that fed into it. “Then I will have to insist,” she said.

Fisk smiled. “Marshal Graben.” The U.S. marshal he had seen at the restaurant during the briefing.

“Good to see you again, Fisk. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s no concern of yours. But since Andrés León does not object, I am making it happen. But not with your service pieces. Again—his house, his rules.”

“Fine,” said Garza, unsnapping her holster and removing her Beretta.

Fisk, after a moment’s consideration, pulled out his Glock.

The butler was waiting with an open box. They laid them inside.

“And any electronic devices,” added the butler.

Fisk glanced sideways at Graben before relinquishing his phone. Garza laid hers inside the box next to Fisk’s.

The butler closed the box and set it on a table near the door. “Thank you,” said the butler. “Now, if you don’t mind . . .”

He did not give them a chance to mind. The butler frisked Fisk, thoroughly and professionally. As a courtesy, Graben walked over to pat down Garza.

Garza stared at the marshal during the frisking.

“Satisfied?” said Fisk.

Graben said, “He is on the patio in back.”

Fisk said, “Care to draw us a map?”

CHAPTER 56

Through an open glass door in the back, they stepped down onto a brick patio arranged in a wide circle with inlaid tiles set to resemble a glowing sun. Beyond the patio, trees rose before the wall that circled the property. Above the patio was strung a thin netting that did little to block out the sun.

From one of three deck chairs set before a table containing the remains of a fine breakfast, Andrés León set down his iPad and stood. He was an older man, his hair long, held back in a gray-black braid that came halfway down his back. He wore loafers with no socks, linen pants, a loose, long-sleeved shirt, and a wide straw hat. He smiled in a grandfatherly way, greeting them.

“Welcome!” he said. He took Cecilia Garza’s hand politely, almost as though he were about to kiss it, then shook Fisk’s hand.

“Mexico City and New York, working jointly,” he said, having been appraised of their identities in advance of their appearance. “It is rarely a pleasure when police appear, but to what do I owe it?”

He offered them the other two chairs, but neither Fisk nor Garza sat.

Garza said, “We are preparing security for a special dinner tonight between two heads of state—”

León said, “Of course, of course. At my restaurant. But I believed all security matters were being seen to already.”

Fisk said, “We were curious. We hadn’t met you personally and wanted to come by ourselves.”

“Curious, I see. You won’t sit?”

They did, reluctantly.

“Anything? Orange juice? So fresh?”

“No, nothing,” said Fisk.

“I might have some,” said Garza.

“Wonderful.” He waved to a servant standing off to the side, and she departed.

“As you can see,” he said, “I live in a beautiful prison here.”

Fisk nodded. “We were going to ask you about that.”

“That was my assumption. Inspector Fisk, I followed your exploits in the news last year.”

“It’s Detective,” said Fisk.

“And you, too, Comandante Garza. I follow Mexican news most closely. You have made quite a name for yourself. I am not surprised you would seek me out here, due to my involvement in the dinner tonight. I am happy to answer all questions.”

Garza said, “Who are you?”

“Who I am now is a protected individual living under the careful watch of the United States government. A retired Mexican financier. An expatriate. A man in self-exile.”

Garza’s orange juice arrived in a crystal glass, sunlight glinting off the facets and sparkling. As the servant leaned forward to hand Garza the juice, Fisk saw the strap of a shoulder holster beneath his white jacket.

When the servant retreated, León said, “Who I was was a money manager for certain interests in Mexico, many years ago. I was heavily involved—you might say, desperately involved—in many illegal enterprises, as an accountant and a banker, laundering many millions for fifteen cents on the dollar.”

Garza said, “for the cartels.”

León tucked his chin and set his lips, looking resigned. “Corruption always begins with small things, Comandante. It comes at you sideways. I was a legitimate banker once. A long, long time ago. The movies make what I did look daring and exotic. It was hell. Daily hell. Ulcers. Paranoia. No sleep.”

“Not everyone is corrupted,” said Garza.

León opened his hands as though to concede the point. “The age I am now, I think more and more of mi papi, my poor father. I can never forget the expression on his face when he got himself out of bed every day. His back had been broken in an industrial accident. He was a wreck of a man physically. He was never treated properly and spent his life in physical agony. Still, every day he dragged himself out of bed and worked twelve hours a day selling newspapers in a little stand near the Palacio Legislativo. Every day, politicians came by his newspaper stand. They called him by name. I would see this, I would help him, hawking. This was back in the day when the PRI monopolized Mexican politics, of course. They all wore sparkling rings and fine suits. And they would flip me a ten-centavo piece because I was the broken newspaper vendor’s son. You know, ten centavos . . . it was worth less than nothing. They knew it and I knew it. And my father would always say to me, ‘That was Deputy So-and-So. He made sixty-three million pesos in bribes for putting a road across Oaxaca.’ Papi never said it, perhaps never even thought it, but to me the lesson was that, in a just world, those sixty-three million pesos would have gone to fixing the broken backs of the unfortunate men who hurt themselves in an industrial accident, and not to lining the pockets of politicians.”

His face looked almost clownishly sad, but that was his manner. León was a man of broad expression.

“But I never hated Mexico. My father made sure I would never follow his fate, and I did not. I built myself. But I was too ambitious at times. Too eager to meet with the wrong people. I had a bit of self-destruction about me. It seemed so remote, the violent source of the funds I was entrusted with moving and investing. I was willfully ignorant, I fully admit that.” He patted his knees, wanting to be done with his own story. “And so now I am trying to repay a debt.”

“You do not seem to be suffering,” said Garza.

“Not in the least. That offends you.”

“Yes,” she said.

León nodded.

“Which cartel?” she asked.

“The unofficial name was the Sonora Cartel, but these things change. People make pronouncements, naming this and that, but it is so fluid. I started low on the pole, I had my fingers in many pies. It was a different business thirty years ago, and yet very much the same. What knowledge I learned—I was always a good student—I have tried to put to good use here from the other side of the border.”

Fisk said, “You are an informant?”

“Bigger than that. I know informants. I still have several well-placed contacts in Mexico. I am an aggregator of information, Detective. I have assisted the Mexican government in curtailing the cartels’ activities, inasmuch as anyone can. The United States offered me this sanctuary in exchange for my offer of help in keeping such outrageous drug violence from drifting north, over its borders. And so I defected, though that is not the word that is used between friendly countries. To this end, I have been most helpful, I think. Until these past few days, that is.”

Garza nodded. She seemed to be hanging on the man’s every word.

“That is the language of Mexican crime now, is it not, Comandante? Atrocities. Meant to shock. It is terror.”

“Chuparosa,” said Garza.

Fisk felt she was uttering his name in order to watch León’s reaction. Fisk saw nothing in the man’s face to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

“I have heard the name,” said León. “Whispered, most often. Friends speak of him as though he is not real.”

“He is real,” said Garza.

“And he is here? He brings you to New York?”

Garza gave him a very brief summation of what she knew: nothing privileged, nothing revelatory. Fisk noticed a softening in her manner here, which confused him at first. Then he began to think it was a cultural thing, brought on by a conversation with this older, grandfatherly man.

Fisk admitted that there was something impishly likable about León, his blarney and bluster. But he needed to know more.

“He sounds like quite a gentleman,” said León. “Do you have a photograph, by any chance?”

“No,” said Garza.

“One wants to see the face of a man who could do such things, no?” León swiped at his mouth with his linen napkin, tossing it back upon the table. “Do you have any insight as to why he wants to bring down President Vargas? And perhaps die in the process? It seems so . . . extreme, no?”

Garza was appropriately cagey with León. “He holds a grudge, I believe. He is wedded to the old ways, the old Mexico. The one you seem to know. This treaty could—I think—effect real change in our country.”

León nodded, deep in thought. “You give me pause, Comandante. I wonder if it is wise for me to attend tonight.” He shook his head. “Forgive me, I am not a coward. But I am certainly not a brave man either. How I would hate to miss it.”

Fisk said, “Security is going to be incredibly tight. You can feel confident.”

“But nothing is ever guaranteed, Detective Fisk. You know that as well as I. My position here is precarious. In fact, I rarely leave this home. By rarely, I mean no more than once a year. I am a paranoid man, and rightly so. The restaurant is my only commercial enterprise. I miss the tastes of home, you see. These dishes I used to have prepared here, we started serving at Ocampo. Have you read our Zagat review? I’ll have someone hand you a copy on your way out. Extraordinary Mexican seafood cuisine! Others scoffed when it opened. We have three stars from Michelin! I am sorry to brag, food is a weakness.” He patted his belly. “I live too well. Living well is addictive.”

Fisk said, “So why is it that the president of Mexico chose your restaurant for his celebratory dinner?”

“It should be obvious to you both by now,” said León. “Umberto Vargas got his start in politics as a prosecutor, after leaving academia, roughly around the time I repatriated here. He made his name going after organized crime and the cartels.” To Garza, he said, “You know that started him on his stunning trajectory toward the presidency. He has been an anticorruption, antidrug guy all the way. And I, in my own manner, have been of some help to him. Some prosecutions, I helped make possible. Even from afar. I was his secret weapon, in a sense . . . though I do not want to be thought of as taking too much credit. President Vargas is the one whose face is out there. He is a man of valor, of principles. I have been, so to speak, his counsel in the shadows. Not to overstate it, but we have become . . . I don’t know what you want to call it. Friends? Associates? Neither. Strange bedfellows, perhaps. I have been very, very useful to him, and for that I feel wonderful. I still love our country, Comandante. I love it like . . . like an ex-wife I once wronged, who is still raising my many, many children. President Vargas is . . . an expression of my penance. I supported his campaign in every way, including financially. I honestly believe that a man like him comes once a generation. Now is the time to do great things.”

León grasped Garza’s hand for emphasis.

“You must keep him well and safe. We cannot afford to let these forces of evil stop the progress we have made. This antitrafficking accord with the United States is the greatest attempt Mexico has made at stemming the tide of violence, corruption, and terror. This treaty is a great step forward. And, in many ways, I am its crux.”