Green Ice (41 page)

It was a lead. At least a sniff. They had to be either very experienced amateurs or former paratroopers.

The window-washing apparatus. Its motor was still on. He rode the scaffold down and stopped at the glassless window of the vault room. He guessed a low-gauge shotgun had been used to blow the pane out.

Conduct Section specialists had already dusted for fingerprints throughout the vault room and vaults one and two. The only prints that came up were Argenti’s. Vault number three was closed. Argenti had had the presence of mind to close it right after the initial shock.

Kellerman examined the pinpoint openings in the wall where Argenti had kept his private skim. He’d noticed them before, but they were worth two million now. The robbery could be his good fortune.

He found no clues in the vaults or the vault room, no signs of the vaults being forced. How the thieves had managed the latter, Kellerman couldn’t even speculate. That was one of the few things Argenti had been able to keep from him—the combination.

He rode the elevator down to Argenti’s floor, took the other one down to his own office on thirty-three. He phoned Argenti, who sounded surprisingly calm. To keep Argenti out of the way, Kellerman said he already had a significant lead and he promised to have much more within forty-eight hours. Insinuated by that time the emeralds would be recovered and everything would be business as usual. Argenti pressed for details, but Kellerman got away with leaving it vague.

He set his organization in full motion. Personally placed calls to the key positions in his network. When he was through, no one could make a move with those emeralds anywhere in the world without his knowing it inside of ten minutes.

This was going to be too easy, he thought.

By nine o’clock the following day, Kellerman had ten arrests. Six of those arrested were sidewalk dealers along Calle 14 who had three times more stones than normal in their possession. The others arrested were poor, frightened
hombres
looking to sell a few stones of fine quality for whatever they could get. After brief, intense questioning, it was obvious they knew about as much about where the emeralds had come from as they did their value.

By noon a hundred and fifty people had been picked up and brought in. By late afternoon over three hundred.

Some were sidewalk dealers.

The rest had one puzzling thing in common. They were
campesinos
who lived in the
barrio
.

The interrogation of Geraldo Morales was typical.

“How old are you?”

“They say seventy-one.”

“Where did you get these emeralds?”

“I did not steal them.”

“Where did you get them, old man?”

“I found them.”

“Where?”

“I was sleeping.”

“You found them in your sleep?”

“No. I found them in my shoe.”

“How do you think they got there?”

“I ask myself the same question.”

“Who put them there?”

“I believe God.”

That first day nearly ten thousand carats were recovered. Certainly they were emeralds from the robbery, but it was frustrating to have so many suspects who were so obviously unqualified. Not for a minute did Kellerman believe any of those people capable of engineering such an intricate theft, and he doubted they knew any more than they were telling. He didn’t even bother to hold them.

Reflecting on that first day’s efforts, Kellerman came to the conclusion that the thieves had salted the market, somehow put a sizeable amount of stones into circulation as a distraction, to cover up their own activity. It was damn clever. He was sure now he was dealing with hard, extremely experienced professionals.

The following day, from the earliest hour, Calle 14 was a scurry of buying and selling. The sidewalk dealers were so numerous and eager to get in on the good thing they overran the sidewalks and the street. It got so that the section between Carrera 5 and Carrera 7 had to be blocked off by the traffic police. The price per carat for all classifications of emeralds, from ordinary to fine, had dropped to half and would probably go lower. Ten thousand carats changed hands between ten o’clock and noon.

By day’s end five hundred arrests had been made. Kellerman had decided not to bother with the sidewalk dealers. Otherwise trading would go underground and the chance of turning up a lead would be that much hindered.

Conduct Section didn’t let up on their interrogations. It was a laborious task, trying to get anything out of
los pobres
, the poor. There was still that common factor. The
barrio
.

At quarter to four one of the interrogators was presented with an incongruity.

“Where did you get these emeralds?”

“I found them.”

“Where?”

“In the
barrio.”

To that point nothing.

“How long have you been in Colombia?”

“Three weeks.”

“Your passport, please.”

The black face in the photograph matched the black face across the desk.

“Did you serve in the military in Cuba?”

“Is that a pertinent question?”

“It is a question.”

“I served in the military.”

“Perhaps you are still in the military?”

“Perhaps.” The Cuban bristled and then tried to smile his way out of it.

“Have you ever used a parachute?”

“No.”

“You realize, of course, we know how it was done. Before long we will have those involved.”

The interrogator read the Cuban’s eyes carefully.

“The first we bring in will be the lucky one,” the interrogator said.

“Why lucky?”

“He will be able to give testimony in exchange for exoneration. And then there is also the reward, a quarter of a million.”

“I am not interested in money.”

The interrogator called Kellerman.

The Cuban was taken to a different room.

Relief showed on Kellerman’s face the moment he saw the Cuban. He would take over the questioning, do something to earn his keep.

It was as though Kellerman had an anatomical chart in his head. The nervous system. He seemed to know precisely where the ganglions crowded. The zones for pleasure, of course, corresponded with the zones for pain. Usually he took more time, made use of the victim’s anticipation, fear that eventually he would get to the genitals. Good painmaking was much like good lovemaking in that respect.

The Cuban did not break easily. An average man would have lasted an hour at most. The Cuban broke at half past seven that night, after nearly three hours.

But then he told it all.

Kellerman did not let on that he knew any of those the Cuban named and described. When he learned Wiley and Lillian were involved, he was momentarily surprised. That told him even more than what he was getting from the Cuban. Kellerman was not interested in motives, although he wondered how Argenti would react when he learned he’d been so neatly used. It was the worst sort of insult.

The Cuban revealed the address of the Kennedy City house where the others, and the emeralds, had been since the robbery.

He asked for a drink of water and also wanted to know about the reward.

Kellerman told one of his men to see that the Cuban got his reward. In Barbosa.

Twenty minutes later twelve Conduct Section agents and twenty-five army troops were in Kennedy City. Carrera 74 and the other streets in the vicinity of the house were blocked off by the troops. The agents, armed with automatic rifles, took up surrounding positions.

There were lights on; however, the windows of the house had been sprayed with black paint, so there was no way to see in. There was the smell of something cooking. Whoever was inside could not possibly escape.

The agents moved in, cautiously.

On signal they broke simultaneously through the front and back doors and every window.

They found three parachutes and some other equipment, several photographs of Argenti. And a huge pot of zuki beans and rice close to scorching on the stove.

30

At that moment Wiley and Lillian were in the fifth car from the engine on a train. Headed north for Cartagena, the old Colombian port on the Caribbean.

They were in second class. In first or third they would have been too obvious. Also, they had taken seats apart from one another. From where Wiley sat he could see only the back top of Lillian’s head. She was reading a paperback edition of
Confessions
by Jean Jacques Rousseau. Every so often, in a natural, passive manner, she glanced around and caught on Wiley’s eyes, just the briefest sort of snags, but he believed it said a lot. Wiley wondered on what page she would desert Rousseau. He bet himself the forty-some thousand dollars he had in his socks that it would be within ten, one way or the other, from page 178. It was one of those things about her that he would have to learn to live with.

At least, he thought, Bogotá was behind them. They were on the way,
their
way, at last, he felt. He wouldn’t worry that they hadn’t settled on an eventual destination. There hadn’t been time to discuss that. It was just good to be going with her.

The day before yesterday, after the robbery, they had gone to the Kennedy City house. A sheet was spread on the floor and the emeralds were dumped on it.

A pile about two feet high.

They were all tired but too wound up to sleep. Besides it was impossible to be indifferent to $300 million dollars. The Cubans, although not in as much of a state of euphoria, joined in the high of it. One of them plopped himself down right on the precious heap and beamed as he sank into it. Miguel put a comradely arm around Wiley’s shoulder and they exchanged congratulations. Lillian sat by the edge and chose some emeralds, about twenty, that she intended to have made into marbles. She might as well have been picking through pebbles on a beach. Wiley kneeled beside the pile and cupped up a handful, let them drop through his fingers. He imagined a raving Argenti, furious to the foaming point, literally epileptic, throwing a fit, with Kellerman grabbing his tongue to prevent him from choking to death. Let go, Kellerman.

Finally, the flush of success subsided enough for Wiley and Lillian to catch up on their sleep.

The next day Miguel let them in on what he had planned, what the money from the sale of the emeralds would make possible.

The
incident
he had frequently mentioned.

It involved Panama.

The entire territory of Panama had once belonged to Colombia.

That fact, Wiley recalled, had been an underplayed sidelight in the news during the recent controversial treaty negotiations between the United States and Panama.

Miguel elaborated, knew his side of the story by heart: Through a deal with the Colombian government, a French company began digging a canal in Panama in 1881. The company failed, went bankrupt. The United States snatched up the French equipment and other assets at a good price and made its own treaty for a canal with Colombia. Before the ink on that treaty was barely dry, the United States started stirring up a revolution among the Panamanians. It gave encouragement, guns and money. Colombia sent troops to Panama. The United States countered with sympathy, a cruiser and a force of marines. Colombia had to back off. No contest.

Thus, the United States had a due bill from the new Republic of Panama.

Right away it got what it was after: the Canal Zone, a ten-mile-wide strip from Atlantic to Pacific that cut Panama in two. Ten million cash and a quarter million a year went to Panama. The United States got control of the Canal Zone forever. Not for just a hundred or even five hundred years but
in perpetuity
, as the agreement said. Colombia got a twenty-five-million token payment and a spit in the eye for its loss. The Colombian government didn’t formally recognize Panama or the deal till twenty years later, which was sort of like being indignant after being sodomized. Anyway, the left side of Colombian politics never swallowed it, and it was still the surest way to whip up anti-American enthusiasm.

That was why Panama was perfect for an incident, Miguel said.

The Panama Canal is forty-two miles long. In most places it is five hundred feet wide.

It takes about eight to nine hours for a ship to pass through. The average rate of traffic is thirty-five ships a day, mostly in the twenty- to forty-thousand-ton class. It cannot handle a ship exceeding sixty thousand tons.

Usually, there is a back-up of ships waiting to go through the Canal. They tie up or anchor at Colón on the Atlantic end. And at Panama City on the Pacific end. The ships in holding positions enter the Canal according to the order assigned them in advance by the chief pilot of the Canal Zone Company.

Altogether the Canal has twelve locks. Six going east, six going west. There are three sets of locks at Gatun, one set at Pedro Miguel and two sets at Miraflores.

Miguel intended to sabotage them.

All twelve locks.

In effect, wipe out the entire Canal.

And Wiley would help.

Wiley with his knowledge of electronics, would play a vital part. They had already been through much together; they would go on to share this greater glory, Miguel said.

The Canal was vulnerable.

Despite the fifteen thousand troops that guarded it.

SOUTHCOM, the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command, had fourteen bases in the Zone. Army, navy, air force. There were underground tunnels, gun and missile emplacements, landing fields and the most sophisticated security and attack warning devices. The CIA also had a large and very active base in the Canal Zone.

No matter. The Canal was vulnerable.

It would be relatively easy to buy information from someone in the Chief Pilot’s Office. Especially when the information would seem innocuous. All that would have to be known in advance was what ships in what order were scheduled to pass through the Canal on a given day.

From that, Miguel said, they would be able to work out a timetable. There was a required rate of speed at which ships traveled from one set of locks to another, and routinely, it took a ship thirty-eight minutes to make its way through a lock. Thus, they would be able to determine ahead of time precisely which ships would be in which locks at a certain moment. Twelve ships in the twelve locks. Six headed for the Pacific, six bound for the Atlantic.