"I've already ordered from room service. Left the little card on the door. Should be here in about five minutes."
"What time did you get in?"
"About two thirty."
"Where did you go?"
"Checking on some things."
Westland took a deep, exasperated breath. "Are we going to play twenty questions? Are you going to let me in on the plan? We are—"
She was interrupted by a knock on the door. Riley got up and squeezed past her. "Excuse me."
He opened the door and relieved the bellboy of his tray. He carried it past her and laid it on the table. Westland stared at him while he prepared his coffee and took a satisfying sip. "Ah. I'm not worth a damn until I get some coffee in me." He waved at the other chair. "Care to join me?"
Westland gave up. She slumped down into the chair and poured herself a cup.
Riley took another drink and then turned to her. "All right. I'll tell you as much as you need to know. First off, like I told you last night, I don't think Powers is dead. Finding him is my number one priority. I wouldn't even be telling you that if I didn't think I could trust you not to squeal on me.
"Second, I'm going to have a hell of a time trying to take out the Ring Man the way things stand right now. He's sitting in a defensive position. I have to go attack him. In military terms it's considered appropriate to have a force superiority of three to one when attacking someone in an established defensive position. In case you haven't noticed, we don't quite have that, so I figure we have to try another approach."
"What's the plan?"
Riley shrugged. "Haven't quite figured that out yet. Depends on what happens. We're going to have to play this by ear and react quickly when we get an opening. There's a lot of forces in motion down here and we have to try to arrange them in our favor as much as possible. I'm going to do some pushing and see what pushes back.
"I pushed the first button last night, and we'll see today if there's any reaction. The information you can hopefully get from your contact this morning will be a big help and fill in some of the missing pieces. That should give us some more buttons to push.
"As far as agenda goes, all I know right now is that you go to a meet in a half hour. I go to another meeting at one today with someone who might give us a link to the woman Stevens was seeing. Tonight I head into the hills to take a look at Ring Man's villa."
Riley took another sip of his coffee. "By the way, you look pretty good early in the morning."
Ponte acted as chief of staff for Ring Man. Everything going in and out went through him. In performing this role he also accrued a certain degree of power in that he could, within limits set by the Ring Man's volatile temper, screen that information as he saw fit and take action in the name of the Ring Man.
The story of the strange American in the Embassy Cafe was just one of many intelligence reports forwarded to Ponte's desk by a network of informants this morning. Ponte puzzled over it for a few seconds. He decided that the Ring Man had more important things to worry about. Ponte would take care of it himself.
He called in one of Ring Man's sicarios. Pablo was a little smarter than the average gunman and Ponte felt he could trust him with some simple instructions on how to deal with the American. The Americans had started the war by attacking them. It was time for some more payback.
Kate threw her bag in the corner of the room and dropped into the armchair with a sigh. Riley raised an eyebrow from where he was reclining on the bed. "Get anything good from the contact?"
She nodded. "He didn't have answers for all your questions, but he did give me some information."
"Were you stopped or followed?"
"No."
"You sure?"
Westland gave him a hard look. Riley raised his hands in surrender. "OK, OK. I believe you."
Westland began to relate the events of the morning. "The contact was the local embassy rep, Jameson. I knew him up in Virginia when he was stationed there."
"Shit!" Riley cursed. "That's great. I'm willing to bet better than even money that he was followed."
"He said he wasn't. From what I could see we weren't being watched. Also, if he was followed, it would make sense that they would try to follow me from the meet, and I'm sure I wasn't."
Riley waved at her to go on. "All right, I get the picture and I trust your judgment."
"Anyway. We met at the restaurant near the cemetery and all the safe signals were in place. Jameson said the area was secure. He also complimented me on my legs."
"Well, they are nice legs," Riley confirmed playfully.
Westland rolled her eyes. "He's an asshole. He tried hitting on me when we were stationed together in Virginia and I was still married. Not that any of that matters now.
"He said they had no leads on Stevens. They presume he's dead and the body was sunk out in the ocean somewhere or buried deep in the jungle. As for the video of the bodies, he says it's going to be released to the local media this afternoon and we can watch it just as well on TV as his getting us a copy. Plus there is a certain lack of a VCR in this room," Westland pointed out. "Local news comes on at six.
"As for Powers, Jameson said that his body was not shown on the video but they're pretty certain he was killed that same night."
"Oh, now it's 'pretty certain,' " Riley snorted. "Sounds like the story is changing. And they're up the creek without a paddle if he shows up alive. Sort of blows their cover story, which probably isn't doing too well now anyway."
Westland threw a copy of a local paper on the bed. "The official reply by Washington has been that your guys were killed in an aircraft crash, but obviously it was over land instead of water and that's how the bodies were recovered. Apparently the aircraft mistakenly strayed over land while on a training flight."
Riley rubbed his eyes. The government still wouldn't change their story and admit the truth. He wasn't sure what they were afraid of. Probably admitting they had lied. The media would jump all over that. There could be no such thing as a covert operation in the United States. The freedom of the press to keep the people informed guaranteed that. Of course, Riley always wondered why there was never any mention of the need for the press and media to make money by getting a scoop. News people rarely talked about money and ratings, but that was the bottom line for them.
"What about the hit? Any further intel?"
Westland shook her head. "Nothing other than the fact that Ring Man is still holed up in his villa."
"What about the guerrillas? Any information on how I can contact them?"
"Jameson thought that was the craziest idea he ever heard."
"I don't care what Jameson thinks. I want to know if there's any way I can make contact with them."
Westland shook her head. "He said he didn't know of any."
Riley didn't believe it. "You're telling me the CIA has no way to contact the guerrillas in a country? I'd think they'd be bosom buddies."
Westland got as sarcastic as Riley. "I think in this country the U.S. party line is to support the government. The guerrillas are somewhat communistic at times here."
Riley scratched his head. That avenue wasn't looking too promising. "Did you get the car?"
"It's out back in the hotel lot, fueled and ready to go."
"Good. Anything else?"
She reached inside her shirt and produced a piece of paper. "I've got the location of the cache with the equipment you wanted," she said, handing the paper to Riley.
"When did you put it in there?"
"I had to go to the bathroom. I can't make much sense out of it but I'm sure someone else might be able to. Figured it would be safer there if I was stopped."