[b]Mexico City, Distrito Federal[/b]
[i]July, 1955[/i]

	The morning commute for these employees was just as routine as any other. A bus stopped at its station halfway down the street, outside of the wrought-iron fencing reinforced with brick columns that secured an imposing compound of office buildings. The employees, like most other government men, marched towards the entrance of the gates dressed in drab suits of black, grey, and blue while carrying leather briefcases. They queued on the sidewalk as guards checked their paperwork and badges, another traffic jam in a day full of them. Simple entrance signs next to the guardhouses of the bored policemen displayed the names of their workplace: the [i]Departamento de Investigación Politica y Social[/i].

	The DIPS was born from security concerns following the revolution, being descended from Venustiano Carranza’s [i]Sección Primera[/i]. Throughout years of name changes and reorganizations, the [i]Sección Primera[/i] provided an organized intelligence service to hunt down lingering revolutionaries and insider government threats that showed themselves after the conclusion of Adolfo de la Huerta’s failed 1923 uprising. As the world regained its footing and international relations became a central focus of Mexican government policy, the mission of DIPS expanded to handle the onslaught of challenges. Responses to American border incursions, spy missions in the glitzy embassies of Havana, and rooting out Brazilian economic espionage all became daily activities in the DIPS’s foreign branch.

	It was on the fourth floor of the foreign branch’s headquarters where a young man sat some time later in the morning, sullen faced, hands clasped in his lap. He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked down at his half-shined shoes. The sound of typewriters clacking away in the open-aired office in front of him wasn’t enough to drown out the thoughts that swirled around in his brain. His mind, albeit scrambled, formed one coherent message again and again that poked and prodded at his psyche: [i]I fucked up. I really fucked up.[/i]

	He hated waiting, but this was worse. He had just been bailed out of a Mexico City prison on Saturday night by his supervisor and was called in to report to Arturo Urbano himself, the director of the DIPS Foreign Service. The agent tried to steady himself but still jumped when Director Urbano emerged from the wooden door. “Valdés, Enrique,” Urbano called out sternly, eyeing the young man’s name on an index card. Agent Valdés jumped to his feet, standing straight up to the director. “Yes, sir,” he answered.

	“Get your ass in here,” the director barked, stepping back through the door.

	Valdés moved quickly, shaking as he stepped inside the office. Urbano had already returned to his massive upholstered chair behind the oak wood desk, staring intently at a printed out record atop a brown personnel file. The door shut, blocking out the typewriters and conversations in the office behind it. Only a ticking clock broke the silence.

	“Agent Valdés, what project are you working on?” Urbano asked, eyes never looking up to the anxiety-riddled man in his office.

	“The, uh, Jamaica analysis, sir,” stammered Valdés. “Local political factions that would be friendly to us there.”

	“I don’t really care about the specifics,” Director Urbano said, putting the paper down. He stared at Valdés from behind a thick mustache. “Did something outstanding happen that I didn’t know about?”

	“What, sir?” asked the young agent.

	“Outstanding, you know. Cause for celebration. Because it sure looks like you were celebrating,” chastised the director. Before Valdés could respond, he went down the rap sheet in front of him. “Drunk in public, fighting a motherfucker, punching a goddamn cop, and trying to make a getaway in your automobile despite being drunker than a vagrant on the street. And this isn’t the first time this has happened. Your supervisor wants you off the team, and he kicked you all the way up to me. You’re in a shitload of trouble, kid.”

	Urbano stood up from the desk, walking around it while still glaring menacingly at Valdés. He opened up a small humidor that sat beside a wooden bookshelf and took a cigar from its top shelf. A small yellow and green Cohiba label wrapped around the thickly rolled tobacco leaves. The director paused to light it, puffing smoke out into the room. Whatever he was doing, if it was a deliberate intimidation tactic or not, Valdés felt like it worked. He had removed his shirt jacket and was now directly in front of the young agent with his hands on his hips, puffing on the cigar.

	“I should fire you and let you go get a shit job with the tax office,” he said, shaking his head. “You know how much of a pain in the ass people like you cause me?”

	“No, I-”, stuttered the young man, trying his best to stay straight as the director leaned his face forward into his. Despite being shorter in stature, Urbano seemed like he could just as easily snap Valdés’s neck as sign a memo ordering his employment terminated.

	“I wasn’t asking,” Urbano cut him off. He looked out towards the city street. Just a few blocks away was the famous [i]Paseo de la Reforma[/i] with its fancily-embellished banks, high rises, and offices. He turned back to Valdés: “But you have one saving grace in this department, and that’s purely because God must love you or something.”

	Urbano went back to his desk, withdrawing another, thicker folder from a filing cabinet adjacent to his humidor. Like most other documents in the DIPS office, it bore a red “[i]SECRETO[/i]” classification stamp. He tossed it onto the desk in front of Valdés where it landed with a heavy thud.

	“There were some developments at our Cuban embassy last week, a bunch of ragtag guys have decided that they wanted to take a stab at the Dominicans and Haitians… they call themselves the [i]Guarda Costa[/i] of Hispaniola. Whatever the hell that means: I haven’t seen that word in print since my old history textbooks. Here’s everything we know about them. You’re the new project lead.”

	Valdés was speechless. His fear turned to confusion, expressed in his face while he restrained his body to keep standing up. Urbano blew a puff of smoke at the agent. “You have questions?” he asked sardonically.

	“I, uh, where is the workplace?” was all Valdés could say.

	“Your workspace?” snorted Director Urbano. “It’s down in the basement, next to the boiler room. You have a crew of five. All of them are kind of fuckups like you. You’ll get along great. I’ll send you off that way with the deputy to give you your specific orders later. You’re dismissed.”

	Valdés hesitated, the urge to click his heels together and salute washing over him. He had spent two years in the service like most men and had been in trouble many times as a young eighteen-year-old. DIPS, however, was nominally civilian even if most of the staff were former military men: there was no rigid procedure like he had to perform in uniform. But he simply nodded, grabbing the folder in front of him and turning for the door. Director Urbano called out his name as he pushed open the heavy door separating the office from the working floor.

	“Valdés,” he said. “Just don’t fuck this one up.”