"What?"
Blancanales answered. He pointed to his pages of notes. "We can understand his Spanish and English. But he lapses in and out of German."
"You get a location? Names? Places?"
"No address." Blancanales shook his head. "Names and places and scenes. All flashbacks. But we can't ask him questions. He doesn't even know we're here..."
"Whatever Vatoman made," Gadgets added, "that stuff is rough."
"You mean we dragged this Nazi across a thousand miles of Mexico and we can't get the information?"
"Be cool!" Gadgets tapped a stack of cassettes. "I think we got something interesting here. It's a mystery, but it's a very, very interesting mystery."
Lyons snorted with bitter frustration. "We didn't come here to play Agatha Christie. We're here to find and destroy."
"Patience," Blancanales said. "We'll relay all these tapes to Stony Man. They can do the translation. We'll continue the search until..."
"We can't," Lyons told his partners. "The International has people in the DEA and the NSA. If we report to Stony Man, the International will monitor it all."
"Don't sweat it, hardguy." Gadgets looked at Coral. "Miguel knows this city. We came up with a cool scam. No embassy contact, no trip to the DEA office, no satellite interlock. Simple, direct."
"What?"
"We just call home."
As the pilot guided the piper cub through the still morning air, Lieutenant Soto scanned the forested hills. The optics of his binoculars compressed the distances and perspective, reducing the misted landscape to patterns of green and gray and black. He focused on the rectangles of fields and pastures any clearing larger than fifteen meters, the diameter of a UH-1 troopship's rotor blades.
But he saw no helicopter.
The lieutenant had received the report of the unauthorized helicopter the afternoon before. After calling the army units in the region to check the information, he had flown to Mexico City with two platoons of his soldiers. Now his soldiers waited in trucks while he circled in the spotter plane.
Again the helicopter eluded him.
This time, however, he had a confirmed sighting. An ex-air force officer, working on his ranch in the mountains, had seen it. The helicopter passed so close to him that he'd seen Mexican soldiers and North Americans riding inside with rifles in their hands. The retired officer had even noted that the doors of the troopship had been removed. The officer, suspicious because of the North Americans with the Mexican soldiers, reported what he saw.
No one else had reported the helicopter. The night before, the lieutenant had alerted all the police in the area. He had expected any information immediately.
Then came the killings on the Viaducto...
The lieutenant did not believe the events to be only coincidental. Mexicans and North Americans, in a stolen Mexican army helicopter, with automatic rifles, had been sighted in the mountains outside the capital. That same night, Mexicans and North Americans had killed other Mexicans and foreigners on an expressway in the city.
Lieutenant Soto had pledged himself to break this mystery. He would not fail.
Lyons watched Blancanales and Gadgets enter the Oficina de Telefonos Larga Distancia. Sharing the first floor of the side-street office building with a bank, the oficina offered long-distance telephone and telegraph services to walk-in customers.
No equivalent commercial service existed in the United States, nor did it need to. In the States, every desk and table and kitchen wall features a telephone. It is not necessary to leave the house to place a long-distance call or to send a telegram. But in Mexico, a developing nation, the telephone companies cannot yet provide that universal telephone service. Nor can the companies ensure dependable service. The people of Mexico City tell a joke. "Want to talk to a stranger? Telephone a friend."
Coral explained that the Oficina assured correct connections for personal and business calls. Every office featured working, static-free telephones and long-distance lines, and important to Able Team private booths, each with a chair and a writing table.
"There will be no problems," Coral assured them. He had taken the address of a long-distance office from the telephone book and given them directions. Coral stayed to sleep. He had sat with Blancanales beside Gunther all night, taking notes and recording his monologue. Coral would catch up on his sleep while the North Americans posed as businessmen relaying the recordings of their important meetings to their headquarters.
Now Lyons and Vato sat in one of the rented tourist cars, watching the street. Lyons held his fourteen-inch Atchisson under a newspaper. Vato concealed the sawed-off Remington in a flight bag. Ahead, Jacom waited behind the wheel of the other compact, an Uzi near his right hand. They took no chances, despite Coral's assurances. If the NSA monitored the Stony Man telephone lines, the International would know of the call from Mexico City before Gadgets switched off his tape player.
Blancanales and Gadgets talked with a clerk at the counter. Through the plate-glass windows, Lyons watched his partners give the clerk a slip of paper. The clerk pointed. They went to a booth.
On the street, a Mexican in a gray business suit approached the parked tourist cars. The middle-aged man, dapper, gray haired, carried a briefcase and an umbrella. Lyons watched the man. Several manufacturers of submachine guns offered briefcase adaptations of their weapons. The dapper Mexican businessman would pass within an arm's distance of Lyons. Lyons turned to Vato.
"Can you go to the other side of the street? And watch there?" Lyons pointed to the shadowed doorways opposite the telephone office.
Vato nodded. Taking his flight bag, he left the compact car. He jogged through the early-morning brilliance and slipped into a doorway.
A step away from Lyons, the businessman stopped. Lyons watched the hand that gripped the briefcase handle as he slid his own hand under his coat. He wore his modified-for-silence Colt Government Model in a shoulder holster under his left arm. He touched the pistol's checked plastic grip.
The businessman put his umbrella under his other arm and pulled out a handkerchief. He blew his nose, stuffed the handkerchief back in his coat pocket. He continued past Lyons.
Lyons opened the car door. He put the newspaper-covered Atchisson on the seat, then gathered up newspapers and a brightly colored tourist map of the city. Crossing the sidewalk to the entry of a travel bureau, he made a pretense of studying the ads of Mexican and European resorts displayed in the window. But he watched the street reflected in the plate glass. He held the newspapers and map under his left arm to cover the shape of the Colt holstered beneath his jacket.
A woman passed, a plastic-net shopping bag on one arm and her teenage daughter clutching the other. The girl glanced at Lyons, their eyes meeting for an instant, the girl averting hers when she saw the strange North American smiling at her. Her mother looked at Lyons and scowled. Lyons laughed out loud.
Across the street, Vato continually scanned the neighborhood. Lyons watched the Yaqui leader. The young man's eyes always moved glancing to the traffic on the boulevard, watching a truck pass, studying a teenager who roared past on a motorcycle. Vato saw everything. Yet he appeared at ease, unconcerned with the passing people and cars, like a bored young man waiting for a shop to open. Vato had natural abilities, the gift of grace despite stress.
Footsteps behind Lyons interrupted his thoughts.
"Mr. American!" a voice called out. "Where do you want to go?"
Lyons took his hand out of his coat as an elderly travel agent motioned him to enter the office. "Pase adelante, por favor. We have a beautiful country. You have come to the correct place to arrange your tour of our natural wonders."
"No thank you, sir. Love your country, but I'm here on business. And I've got to get to it." Lyons walked away toward the windows of the telephone office. He saw Gadgets and Blancanales inside one of the booths. Continuing to the corner, he glanced down both directions on the boulevard.