Chapter 15
The message at the hotel desk advised Glenn Anders to call a phone number between four and six. He took it to be the number of a public telephone. He made the call from a booth in the lobby of the Sheraton; Harry Crobey answered on the fourth ring.
“We heard about Rosalia.” It was, in its tone, sufficient expression of shared sorrow. Crobey’s voice went on: “We should meet.”
“I agree. Where and when?”
Crobey gave him instructions and Anders broke the connection. He made another call immediately, to the Department of Agriculture office where they’d given him a desk. The GS-8 on the front desk, a pale man whose name he kept having trouble remembering, exchanged identifying greetings with him and said, “We’re all awful sorry about that young lady, Mr. Anders.”
“Did Langley call back after I left?”
“No sir.”
“No messages of any kind from O’Hillary?”
“There’s a Telex, sir. Plain English. It’s only a confirmation.”
“Read it to me anyway.”
“Yes sir. Message reads, ‘Prior instructions remain in effect until further notice. No change in orders.’ That’s it, sir — just the signature.”
“All right. Thanks.”
He went outside with his hand on the flat automatic pistol in his pocket. There were taxis at the curb; he boarded the first one and rode it to the north gate of the university and paid it off there and walked through the campus, stopping twice to check behind him. Students milled about the lawns and a couple was necking under a palm tree; a fat youth sat on the grass reading a comic book. Anders drifted aimlessly among the buildings, going in and out, upstairs and down, from one building to another, staying within crowds when he could; he kept an eye on his watch and at exactly half past five he emerged from the south gate of the campus and walked a block to Calle de Diego where a taxi was just pulling up: Anders stepped in and the car pulled away and Crobey, on the other side of the seat, twisted around to look back through the window.
“Nobody came with me,” Anders said
“All right.”
Crobey dismissed the taxi and they walked together through a dusty passage, bordered with scrubby bougainvillea and oleander; Crobey led him erratically through the turnings and kept looking back. No one was following them; Anders was beginning to be annoyed by the excessiveness of the precautions when Crobey led him out onto a paved street where a Ford Bronco waited at the curb with Carole Marchand behind the wheel. Anders tipped the passenger seat forward and climbed into the back; Crobey got in and Anders said, “Good evening.”
“My condolences,” she said, “and I mean that.”
“Were you two followed last night?”
“Yes,” Crobey said. “We shook them.”
His hands wrenched at each other; he turned his stare out the window because he didn’t want to cry again, not in front of them. “You know she was a little wacky, all right, she was far too young for the likes of me, none of it made any sense anyway — just a kid from the office they assigned to run errands for me. She was Cuban herself, you know. For a while I even suspected she might be a plant. Then after a while I didn’t give a damn.”
“Now you know she wasn’t a plant,” Carole Marchand said mildly.
No, he thought, actually he didn’t know that at all. Maybe Rosalia had been the target after all — how could he be sure they weren’t afraid she’d expose them? Maybe they’d known she was falling in love with Anders. Maybe they’d killed her to keep her silent.
What he said was, “They’re going to pay for it. I don’t much care why they did it.”
Then he thought, Pull yourself together, you’ve got to be cold now. He needed dispassion. He said, “This bastard Cielo — presumably Rodriguez — bought some fairly heavy weapons from a dealer in Mayaguez. Mainly mortars and a couple of small artillery pieces. They were delivered to a farm. That’s all the dealer knew about it — he took the money and delivered the merchandise. I ran a check on the serial numbers of the banknotes. They match the numbers on some of the ransom bills — if we need more confirmation of that kind. I had a look at the farm where he delivered the guns. Nothing there now, they’ve cleared out. Most likely they used it just once and they’ll never use it again.”
“Do you mind coming to the point?”
Anders said, “I reported to O’Hillary. A few hours later he got back to me. This is off the record now. Officially we’re still engaged in the hunt for these terrorists. But unofficially my orders, as of noon today, are to lose the file down behind the file cabinet somewhere. You see the connection?”
“Right,” Crobey said. “The arms buy makes our boy respectable.”
“Spell it out for me,” Carole Marchand commanded.
“They’re picking up heavy ordnance,” Anders said. “This buy will be one of dozens, I imagine. They’ll spread the purchases around to avoid drawing too much attention. It begins to look like a major paramilitary operation. You can buy a lot of weapons for ten million dollars. O’Hillary’s analysts likely have it sized up that Rodriguez shows every sign of intending to mount a well-equipped mobile striking force for an attack on Castro’s headquarters.”
“With a handful of men?”
“We don’t know for sure how many men there are, do we. Anyhow look what the Israelis accomplished at Entebbe with a handful of troops. It’s not numbers that count in a palace coup — it’s tactics and planning. They could wipe out the Cuban leadership if they handle it with enough sophistication.”
She said, “That’s a farfetched extrapolation from a few flimsy clues, isn’t it?”
“The agency works that kind of scenario all the time.”
“In other words O’Hillary thinks Rodriguez may have a chance of overthrowing Castro so he’s ordering you to keep hands off?”
“It’s one possibility.”
“It’s what I thought all along,” she said, “more or less.”
“There’s another possibility,” Anders said. He felt so weary he could hardly get the words out. “Your idea that there had to be someone here in San Juan with enough political clout to sic the local police on Harry — somebody with that much clout might also have enough influence in Washington to put pressure on the agency to soft-pedal the investigation.”
She said, “And the murder of Rosalia — one of your own agents — doesn’t even put a dent in those policies. You folks sure are expendable.”
Anders managed a lopsided hint of a smile; and Crobey said, “Are you filing for a divorce from O’Hillary?”
“Not yet. Officially I’m still under orders to locate the terrorists. Locate ’em but keep hands off. Those are the orders I’m obliged to obey, aren’t they? After we locate them — we’ll see.”
Crobey said to Carole Marchand, “The first rule is cover your ass. Glenn doesn’t think of himself as a bureaucrat but it rubs off on everybody.”
“As opposed to Harry here, who’s of pure and noble character,” Anders said without heat. “You’re both missing the point. If I can show legitimate orders then I can maintain my freedom of action. There’s no point going out of my way to shut off communications. I may as well keep making use of the apparatus as long as it’s available to me. And to hell with O’Hillary’s private instructions.”
“Watch closely, ducks, and you’ll notice that amazingly enough, at no time do his hands leave his arms.”
“As of now,” Anders went on, feeling the anger rise within him, “I’m in this right up to my hairline. No more reservations. I want to nail these bastards and to hell with Fidel Castro. Put a gun in my hand and Rodriguez in the sights — that should settle the question quick enough.”