Carter held his silence.
"We sent a man to Salto with orders to kill Hauptmann. He has been a thorn in our sides. He was to be arrested and put into the cell next to our man. Then a knife was to be slipped between the pig's ribs while everyone slept. It was all arranged. But then Hauptmann escaped."
"How? Did he have help?"
Again the boy shrugged, a loose, careless gesture that Carter was beginning to find irritable. "The man with the monocle."
"Who?"
"He is a European. He is always there when Hauptmann or men like him need help. Buys their way out of jail if possible, or shoots their way out."
This was something new. Carter had not seen anything about such a man in AXE files.
"I've never seen the man, but others have. They said his eye behind his monocle is as cold as the winter wind. He is said to have no heart."
"A name?"
Braga shook his head.
"How about your man… the one you sent to Salto to kill Hauptmann? Perhaps he saw this European? Perhaps he can give me a description?"
The priest crossed himself. "Pepé Morales is dying. Cancer. There is not much time."
"Did he see him?"
"I don't know," Braga said. "When he came back he was sick. He didn't say anything. We didn't ask."
"I would like to ask him. It is very important," Carter said.
Braga started to say no, but the priest held him off. They went out into the corridor for a minute or two, and when the door opened again, the boy was gone.
"It is best this way," Father Wilfredo said.
"That was easy money," Carter said bitterly.
"It was all he knew, believe me. But I will tell you how to get to Pepé. Perhaps he will be able to help you," the priest said. "He is back in Salto, there is a cantina…"
During the cab ride back to his hotel, Carter vacillated between wanting to disbelieve what he had been told and wondering if Braga hadn't been straight with him after all. It was possible that neither AXE nor the CIA, nor Interpol, nor even the Argentine Federal Police had any idea Hauptmann was in jail. It was also possible that another organization could have found out — if Hauptmann had sent out word — and decided to buy Hauptmann's freedom in return for services rendered.
When he reached his hotel he made arrangements to rent a car. Twenty minutes later they brought it around, a white 67 Chevrolet with eighty thousand miles on the odometer. It looked rough, but the tires were good and it was reasonably clean.
Another half an hour of haggling produced the necessary insurance and registration papers, and he was on his way northward on the Avenida Eduardo Maredo with a road map open on the seat beside him.
Salto was a two-hundred-mile trip, but the roads were good, and by five forty-five that afternoon he had stopped for directions to the cantina the priest had told him about. By six he was parking in front of the place, which was just off the square in a very sleepy, dusty little village with only one main street. The square held an open-air market.
There were very few people about, and the cantina seemed to be closed, so Carter went over to one of the stalls in the market, where a man was just bundling up his pots and pans.
He looked up hopefully.
"Do you know a man who is very sick named Pepé Morales?" Carter asked. He pulled out a few pesos.
The man looked Carter over. He eyed the money, but he made no move to reach for it.
Carter sensed the mistrust. "Father Wilfredo from St. Dominic's in Buenos Aires sent me. He said I could find Pepé here."
The man nodded slowly and pointed down a side street. "The last house," he said. "In the back." His Spanish was very thick, very difficult to understand.
Carter handed him the money, then went back to his car. From his things in the trunk, he pulled out a thin, black briefcase containing a portable Identi-Kit. He had brought it along on a hunch, and he hoped it was about to pay off. He drove up the narrow street.
The house was little more than a dirt-floored shack. Carter knocked at the door.
"Who is it?" a woman asked impatiently.
"I have come to see Pepé."
"Go away!"
Carter gently pushed open the door. The light was dim, but in the darkness he could make out a mattress on the floor. A man was lying there, an old woman bent over him. The whites of her eyes flashed up at him.
"Go away!"
"I am sorry, but I must speak with him. It is very urgent."
The woman began to struggle to her feet, but the man reached up, gently laying his hand on her arm, stopping her. "It doesn't matter," he said softly.
The woman stood, and with a furious look retired to the other side of the room.
Carter crouched beside the man on the mattress. "Are you the one they call Pepé?"
"Yes," the man said, his voice hoarse and soft.
"José Braga sent me. He says you were the man in prison with Victor Hauptmann."
Pepé nodded. His breathing was labored. He was obviously in great pain.
"A man came to get him out of the prison. The man with the monocle. Did you see him? Did you see his face that night? Clearly?"
Pepé nodded again.
"I must find this man with the monocle. Hauptmann is dead, but I must find his friend. Do you understand?"
Tears leaked from the man's eyes. But once again he nodded his understanding.
"I need this man's description, and I have something with me that will help." Carter opened the briefcase and took out a notebook with interchangeable plastic pages. The overlays were divided into sections, each section containing a facial feature of a different type. By flipping the various pages back and forth, and by interchanging the proper overlays, one could put together almost any combination of features.
"Do you feel up to helping me?"
Pepé's face was grayish-white. He lay with his mouth open, his lips white and dry, his eyes narrowed to slits. "Yes," he whispered.
"Do you have a lamp?" Carter asked the woman.
She lit a kerosene lamp and brought it over. Carter set it on the floor and propped the notebook on his knee. "Was he bald?" he asked. "Short hair? Shorter than this? And the nose, long or short?"
The process took three-quarters of an hour. Carter worked steadily, not wanting to rush the dying man but fully aware that the man's strength was limited. What began as nods and shakes of the head became, after a time, little more than eye movements and an occasional grunt toward the end. Nevertheless, a picture began to take shape.
Carter's quarry turned out to be apparently a large man whose head was either shaved or naturally bald. He was thickly built with ridges of muscle along his bull neck. His face was squarish, the mouth grim, the eyes blue and penetrating. He was about sixty, perhaps a bit more or less.
When they were done, Pepé was completely exhausted. He lay with his eyes closed, his breath coming more irregularly than before. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words were too faint to be heard.
"Do you know what he's trying to say?" Carter asked the woman. He felt a great amount of pity for these people, but there was little if anything he could do for them.
She came over and knelt down beside the mattress. Pepé spoke again. She looked up. "He wants to know who you are," she said. "He wants to know if you will kill this man."
Carter crouched back down and looked into Pepé's eyes. "I think this man is trying to have me killed. I may have to kill him."
"Good," Pepé croaked. Then he closed his eyes and appeared to fall asleep.
Carter got slowly to his feet. "Has he seen a doctor?"
"Who has money for such things?" the woman snapped.
Carter put the Identi-Kit composite back in the briefcase. Then he pulled out several hundred dollars and held it out to the woman. But she did not reach out to take it, so Carter put it on the floor beside Pepé.