October's Ghost (42 page)

“The stories were true, it would appear,” Ojeda commented, his eyes still on the American. “Eh, Captain?”

Captain Manchon nodded as he, too, surveyed the face. “It would appear, sir.”

“What stories?” Antonio asked. The visual contest ended with his question. The midday sun blazed down around the shade tree that they stood under, and a pervasive wetness had invaded every crevice of the CIA officer’s body. He undid three more buttons on his sweat-darkened uniform before his wondering was answered.

“Of the missile,” Manchon began. “For many years there have been rumors of such a weapon. They began after the Russians left. At first we disregarded them as nothing. Soon they began to die away, except among many officers. Officers of rank and privilege.”

“General Ontiveros himself often mused on the effect such a weapon would have on the Revolution, in private, of course,” Ojeda revealed. “I asked him once if the stories were true.” The colonel paused and remembered the moment. “He looked away and said nothing. The general was an honorable man.”

Paredes knew he could not judge the man Ojeda respected above his many other superiors. Much had been said of General Eduardo Echevarria Ontiveros by the briefers from Langley, none of it very flattering. He was a staunch Communist, in opposition to the president because of his disastrous policies that had destroyed the nation’s economy. Whether he could have done better with his own brand of the same ideology was highly unlikely. But he had imparted something to the men he commanded, something beyond even loyalty. It was a wisdom of sorts, one that challenged his subordinates to challenge the ideas given them as gospel in search of a better way. Ojeda had done so, and had come to the conclusion that the ways championed by the general were not the ways of the future. In one spark of realization he had become Ontiveros’s most loyal critic, an act of quasi-treachery that might have earned him a date with the firing squad under men of less character. From the general it had won him the highest respect an officer could give a man under his command. How could he judge right and wrong in such an unconventional mating of ideals? Antonio wondered. If Ontiveros had done nothing else, he had made Colonel Hector Ojeda the man that he was.

“The retreat toward the plant makes sense, now,” Manchon said.

“As does the presence of the Russian your government inquired about,” Ojeda added. “Now they ask for another thing.”

“Yes, we do,” Paredes affirmed, his choice of words very careful.

“The map.” It was handed to Ojeda by Manchon. The colonel studied it for a moment, his eyes surveying the options of advance for his new mission. “Captain, you will move the brigade as planned toward Guilermo Moncada. The loyalists will be forced to advance toward you. If not, it would allow you access to the coastal roads. They will come to a fight. As you do this, I will take three companies to Juragua. We will skirt the swamps and be in position to do as our American friends wish.”

“The swamps, Colonel,” Manchon said, biting his lip. “Even if you do not enter them, you will have no roads, no vehicles to carry heavy weapons.”

“We will carry what we need.” Ojeda looked to Antonio. “Will we not, Papa Tony?”

I had to say ‘we’
. “Yes, we will.”

“Get the men ready, Captain,” Ojeda ordered. “We have a long walk ahead.”

* * *

“From the lab, sir,” the director’s secretary said as she handed over the report. “Plus a UID from Miami. And your mail.”

“Thank you, Sally,” Jones said politely, not wanting another scolding from the person who kept his office— and the Bureau, sometimes—in order. He paged through the workup the Audio/Visual Section had done on the tape. “Ninety-two percent probability that it is Castro speaking,” he read aloud. Any doubts that he or anyone might have still harbored had just gone out the window.

All the Bureau could do now was try and find the guys who had killed the keeper of the tape—and of one of his agents. That search was about to swing into high gear according to the latest briefing from the Deputy A-SAC of the L.A. office. Jones’s role was limited to waiting. He had become proficient at that over the years but had never come to enjoy it.

Miami. Jones turned his attention to that. It looked as though the tap team might have come up with something. He opened the envelope that had been sealed down in the crypto room and read the summary first. A D.C. number. A name. Samuel Garrity. Referred to...
What? ‘The director’s desk’!
He flipped through the transcription of the conversation, reading it only once. Greg Drummond was gonna love this. So would a jury in the near future, Jones thought, if this Garrity guy didn’t cop a plea bargain. The director wondered who the guy was to have access to the head of the CIA. He’d know soon enough, after a quick call to the DDI. Arrest warrants would be issued soon after that.

Jones dialed the DDI’s office and waited, paging through his mail as Drummond’s secretary checked to see when he was due back. He came upon the other report from Miami, the one he should have read after his wonderful night of sleep in the lounge. He scanned the summary, which always preceded any verbatim transcription of a recorded conversation, and stopped cold on the mention of a single name: Portero. Jones read further, then on to the transcription.
My God
. These were the murderers of his agent, and they were being...
controlled?
... by the same person who...

“What the hell is going on here?” Jones asked the air.

“Director Jones, Mr. Drummond should be back from the White House in five minutes.”

“Thank you.” Jones punched up a clear line. “Get me L.A.”

He looked down at the transcription again. An address, even. “Stupid sons of bitches.” Whatever was going on, however it was connected to the CIA leak, at least he knew exactly where the killers of Special Agent Thom Danbrook were, and he cursed himself for not reading the report when it came in. It would have saved L.A. a lot of legwork, among other things.

*  *  *

“Damn the fool!” General Alexander Shergin swore. The loudness echoed through the antiquated secure telephone system that connected the underground headquarters of
Voyska PVO
to Moscow.

“His intelligence prostitute no longer seems so credible,” the interior minister said from his fourth-floor office near the Moscow Ring Road. Sixty kilometers away, the commander of the nation’s air-defense forces grunted angrily.

“A fucking R-12 left in Cuba,” Shergin scoffed, using the old Soviet designation of the missile known to NATO as the SS-4. “And a new
Chinese
booster. Hah! And Castro has it pointed at us! What other fairy tales did the American tell?”

“None of consequence. Of course, he promised to provide
evidence
that his fantasy is true.” Bogdanov stubbed his cigarette out and swung his chair to face the window. Flecks of white pierced the darkness as he looked to the city center, toward the lighted ornate spires of the Kremlin. “He and Yakovlev are sitting there now trying to convince themselves that the Americans’ story is somehow possible.”

“With the evidence, no doubt.” Shergin laughed. “The Central Intelligence Agency is adept at uncovering ‘evidence.’ ”

“Yes,” Bogdanov agreed. He took another cigarette from the case on his desk and lit it, using the lighter his father had given him. He had “liberated” it from a dead German at Stalingrad half a century before. “But this will not end in their favor. The time to move has come.”

There was a surprising pause from the general. “When?”

“Before the sun rises. Before the Americans have a chance to play out this little scenario they have concocted in order to lay blame on Castro.” Bogdanov blew the smoke from his lungs loudly. “Before that
missing
submarine has a chance to loose its missiles. Yes, Aleksandr Dimitreivich, before that can happen, we will be in power, and the Americans will learn that even though the Motherland is blind, that does not mean even for a second that she is without strength, or without the resolve to use it.”

“And Marshal Kurchatov? He could be a problem, even from where he is.”

Bogdanov laughed. “A man with no voice is as dangerous as a child. Cut him off.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

BEST LAID PLANS

Art watched from his Bureau Chevy parked half a block from motel number three, an inviting sort of place that had no name, just a price listed in faded neon. In his early days with the Bureau, when stakeouts and tails were procedures still to be learned, he had wondered why bad guys, especially the ones who could afford not to, would choose places like these to hide out in. The answer came not in the accommodations, but in the management, who ran their businesses with a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil attitude. Literally anything could go on behind the numbered doors, and as long as the bills were paid—in cash, up front—there was no need to question the activities.

“She’s going in,” Andy Harriman reported from the passenger seat next to Art. He lifted the binoculars to his eyes for just a second and checked the front of the motel. “No visual. It’s a bad angle.”

Art took the mic from its clip on the dash. “King Eight to King Six and King Four.”

“Go, Eight.”

“Go.”

“Frankie’s in.”

Two acknowledgments of the information came immediately. Art and Andy’s unit, King Eight, had the best vantage point. They were parked on Vermont south of Eleventh, and were focusing their attention farther south on the “$22.50” motel, which occupied the southwest corner of Vermont and Twelfth. Agents Dan Burlingame and Drew Smith in King Six were a half-block south of the motel, parked in a strip mall on the opposite side of the street. King Four, with agents Tina Mercer and Tim Russo, was parked on Twelfth, nosed east toward Vermont and had a very limited view of the scene. All three units, however, could be to Frankie in just seconds.

Art cupped his left hand over the small earpiece connected to the receiver. His right hand dropped down out of habit and ran across his jacket. The move did not go unnoticed to a smiling Harriman.

“Mr. Smith okay?”

“Right where he should be, Andy,” Art said unabashedly. The ready signal from Frankie sounded in his ear. “One more time.”

*  *  *

“Hi!”

The desk clerk looked to the lady across the counter with little care for her bubbly personality. “Room for two?” Were there ever any rooms for one?

“No. No. Nothing like that,” Frankie responded with mild embarrassment. “I’m returning a wallet.” She reached into her oversized purse and retrieved the item. “Mr. Flavio Alicante called our store and said he thought he’d left it there.” She flipped open the “license” and avoided holding her breath. “But he didn’t give me a room number. He just gave this address.”

The clerk eyed the picture, then the lady, then the wallet again. It was bulging with something in its recesses. Money?
Hmmm
. “You want me to give it to him.”

Yes!
“No, it’s got, you know, kinda a lot of money in it, and he made me promise to deliver it in person.” She smiled apologetically.

“Yeah. Okay.” He glanced down at the keyboard beneath the counter. “He and his buddy are in one-oh-six. Out the door and to the left.”

Frankie’s smile dissolved instantly. She dropped her bag and pulled out her shield and weapon, which was pointed upward. “FBI. Do not move, do not say anything.”

The young man’s eyes tripled in size as his hands slowly came up. “Yeah, whatever you say, lady.”

*  *  *

“Yes!” Art slapped the steering wheel, but a radio call from headquarters interrupted his celebration. He reached for the mic, looking right, and took no notice of the yellow taxi passing to his left and heading south on Vermont. He also missed the lone passenger in back.

*  *  *

“There it is,” the man said to his partner in the driver’s seat.

“Got it,” the driver acknowledged, sliding the small compact into the northbound left-turn pocket for Twelfth Street. He stopped before reaching the intersection, however, and waited for a break in the midmorning traffic coming south on Vermont. The last car in the traffic wave was a yellow taxi, which turned into the driveway immediately to his left. He cranked the wheel and followed it in. “Time to go to work.”

The man in the passenger seat undid the restraining strap on his shoulder holster. “You got it.”

*  *  *

“Art, we’ve got the address of where the shooters are staying.” It was Lou Hidalgo calling from the office.

“What? We just found them, Lou.” Art looked right to Andy, who returned the perplexed look. “How did you find out?”

“I can’t explain everything. It’d take too long. But listen, this thing runs deeper than we thought. Much deeper.”

Lou had full knowledge of the whole story, unlike the rest of the agents working on this. What the hell did “deeper” mean in this situation? What
could
run deeper? “Wait, Lou. We found them. All we do now is set up the plan to take them.”

“There may not be time, Art. A wiretap team in Miami recorded a conversation between those guys and their boss, or their contact. We don’t know exactly. But whoever it was, was sending someone out to get a tape from them.”

“A tape?
We
have the tape,” Art said.

“I know, but that’s not the point,” Lou explained with frustration. “The whole conversation, even the way they made contact, was set up to keep locations secret. The contact was
not
supposed to know where they were, but he asked directly for it,
with
full knowledge that they didn’t have
the
tape. Just
a
tape.”

“But why would the person running these guys break security procedures to...” Art froze with the realization.

“They wouldn’t. The shooters could have express-mailed the damn thing back to Miami faster than it would take to send someone out here to get it,” Lou said. “And with less risk. Whoever’s coming is not here to play messenger.”

“Goddammit!” Art keyed the radio. “Okay, I’ll get LAPD to seal off everything fast so our visitor can’t get close.”