The Infinity Tattoo (8 page)

“Wow,” Jack said. “Where did you learn to drive like that?”

Colonel Richard Parker hung up the phone and stared at it. Jack Cunningham had finally resurfaced. Richard knew he would sooner or later, but he didn’t expect it to be so easy. One of Augusto’s foot soldiers had run across him in Sedona. Jack was working for a landscaping company. Richard smiled. Maybe this whole thing would finally be over.

He had certainly cursed Augusto repeatedly since he’d got that call a couple of months ago. Augusto had said he was calling in a favor. He needed to get a man out of his territory. A guy in the US Army Corps of Engineers at Soto Cano by the name of Jack Cunningham. Augusto had pulled some strings to get Cunningham redeployed back to the States.

As it turned out, Cunningham was stationed at Luke Air Force Base. Was that mere coincidence or had Augusto somehow orchestrated it? It was certainly convenient for Augusto that Cunningham just happened to be posted where Richard was. Augusto had known Richard way back. And Richard owed him a favor. He’d asked Richard to keep an eye on Jack.

Richard wasn’t happy about it. The last thing he needed was a babysitting job. But Augusto had a hold over him: he could end his military career or worse.

Things had changed since he began his career. Some of the things that would have been conveniently ignored in the past could come back to bite a guy in the ass in today’s political climate. The information that Augusto had on him could very well lead to a court martial. That meant he could kiss his pension goodbye.

He should have retired a lot sooner. He was never going to make the coveted promotion to general. It just wasn’t on the cards. At least not the cards he was dealt. He had risen through the ranks at a steady pace. But he had reached his limit when he advanced to colonel. Promotions to general were far too competitive, and he just didn’t have the kind of drive it took to make it. So he was just pegging time until he reached mandatory retirement age.

Meanwhile, he ended up having to do this stupid job for Augusto: babysitting Cunningham. When Cunningham first arrived, Richard gave him a desk job, working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the safety advisory group, conducting studies and writing reports. He figured that ought to keep him out of trouble. As part of Richard’s efforts to keep an eye on Cunningham, he arranged to monitor the guy’s internet activity, just to be on the safe side.

The first thing he noticed was that Cunningham still had an inordinate amount of interest in Honduras. He continued to correspond with colleagues at Soto Cano, the joint US-Honduran military base, and searched the internet every day for news about Honduras. The emails seemed innocuous enough, just chit-chat about daily life both there and here.

And the news that filtered into the public domain about Honduras didn’t seem to be a big deal. Now that the elections were over and relationships were normalized between the US and Honduran military, things had pretty much settled down.

Then one day, purely by chance, he walked into Cunningham’s office. Cunningham had a file open on his computer. It was a picture of Richard having a beer with a couple of other men. Richard couldn’t believe how young he looked. With his blond hair and blue eyes, he stood out from his two Honduran colleagues, both with dark hair and olive complexions. He had a bright, alcohol-enhanced smile on a rapt face. He looked naive as hell.

“Where on earth . . . ?” Richard started to say.

“Sir,” said Cunningham.

“Tell me where you got that picture.”

“I was just surfing the net, you know. And one news article was linked to another and another and suddenly, there was this picture. It is you, isn’t it, sir?”

“Yes, but what’s it doing on the internet. Christ, that picture was taken before the internet existed.”

“It’s on this site, here. Some ex-military guy is building a website with old photos.”

“Interesting. Do me a favor and send me that link. I’d like to take a look at it.”

Richard returned to his office and closed the door. He lifted the phone and told his staff sergeant not to put any calls through. Then he got on his computer and opened the link Cunningham had sent him. As he stared at the photograph, he could feel his blood pressure rising. Of all things, he did not need this photo coming to light. Not now. Not ever.

He picked up the phone and asked Lieutenant Marsh to come to his office. Richard didn’t know a damn thing about the internet and he didn’t want to know. But Marsh did. He was a computer nerd par excellence.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” said Marsh.

“Yes, Marsh, come in. Have a seat.”

“Have I done something wrong, sir?” he asked. Richard noticed the huge rings of perspiration under his arms and the sweat on his brow.

“No, no. Nothing like that. In fact you have been doing everything right. That’s why I asked for you to come talk to me. I have a small task I’d like you to do for me.”

“Oh, well, I’m happy to help you in any way I can, sir.”

“You see, I’m not exactly what you would call an expert on computers.”

“No, sir,” said Marsh.

Richard looked up sharply. Then he smiled, congenially. “I guess you know that, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it has come to my attention that someone has put a photo on some internet site. It’s a picture of me with some other guys. And, well, it was taken in another time and there are some people in the photo that have become political. I don’t want some prior association with these people to pop up, in the current political environment. You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Marsh. But Richard could see he really didn’t fully understand what he was saying, which was all the better for Richard.

“So, if I send you this link, do you think you can arrange to have that photo removed?”

“Oh, no problem, sir. I’ll just find out who owns the website and ask him to take it down.”

“Well now, Marsh, I appreciate that, but I was wondering if there’s a way to do it, you know, without anyone knowing about it.”

Marsh’s eyes lit up. “You want me to hack into it, sir?”

“Er, yes,” Richard said.

“Sure, I’ll get right on it.”

“Good, good. And mum’s the word. Remember this is politically very sensitive.”

“Yes, sir,” said Marsh.

Richard watched as Marsh retreated from his office, closing the door softly behind him. At least that took care of one problem. But not the other. Jack Cunningham. How much did he really know? Did he really not recognize anyone in the photo but Richard?

Richard realized that he couldn’t take that chance. The ramifications were too far-reaching. He had no choice but to let Augusto know what was going on. He picked up his personal cell phone and made an international call.

A familiar voice answered. “Hola, Richard, my old friend. How are you?”

“I’m fine. And yourself?” Richard said.

“I’m good,
muy bien
. And your family? They are well?”

This prattle went on for a few minutes, and then Richard got to the point. “Listen, you know that personnel issue you asked me to keep an eye on? Well, I think we may have a problem.”

“Tell me,” said Augusto.

“It could be nothing, but I just wanted to let you know. He isn’t letting go of the issue.” Richard went on to explain about Jack’s continued interest in the subject of Honduras. He didn’t say that Jack had seen a photo of himself with Augusto. Augusto didn’t need to know that.

When he’d finished, Augusto said, “Thank you, my friend, for letting me know. I will get back to you.”

Richard hung up and pondered the conversation he’d just had. Augusto had been pretty cagey, not telling him exactly what he had in mind. And that didn’t sit well with Richard. What was that bastard up to?

The next day, Augusto called back. “I need you to help me locate a package.”

As Augusto went on to explain what he wanted, Richard felt his blood run cold. Augusto was up to his dirty tricks again, just like the old days. And now he was pulling Richard into his machinations. But such was Augusto’s hold over him that he had no choice.

Richard made the arrangements as requested. Then, several days later, Cunningham came to him claiming that his office had been searched. Richard was unnerved. He had used his best subordinates for the job. They were trained in stealth operations. Cunningham should never have suspected that they had been there. And worse, they hadn’t found the package.

So he arranged for Jack’s apartment to be searched. This time, Richard used a couple of guys based on Augusto’s recommendation. Richard didn’t know what their relationship was to Augusto, and he didn’t want to know. Augusto had a very long reach, what with his connections to the drug cartels on both sides of the border. Hell, as far as Richard knew, he probably had other contacts in the US military besides Richard.

But the guys had botched the job, and the package still hadn’t been found.

Then, Richard got a call early one morning from Augusto. His boys had lost Jack in the desert.

“What do you mean, lost him? What is going on?” Richard exploded.

“I had arranged for some of my guys take him out to the desert and make him disappear. But not until after they got some information out of him.”

“What kind of information?”

“The whereabouts of the package for one thing. And it’s possible Jack knows other things. That’s what the boys were supposed to find out.”

“Christ,” said Richard. “What kind of a mess have you gotten me into?”

“Don’t worry, my friend. We will keep looking for him. Then your problem will go away. Meanwhile, do you have any idea where Cunningham might have gone?”

“I really don’t,” Richard told him. “Cunningham isn’t from these parts, but he may have friends and colleagues on the base. Who knows?”

“Okay,” said Augusto. “Let me know if you hear from him.”

Every day that Cunningham was missing, Richard had sweated bullets. He covered for his absence by authorizing indefinite leave. That would hold for a while, but not forever. Thank heavens, the guy had resurfaced.

Richard grabbed his cell phone and dialed the international number.

“Si,” said the man on the other end.

“It’s me,” said Richard. “I have some good news for you.”

“Tell me.”

“Your guys have tracked down our man.”

“Where is he?”

“At a place in Sedona, Arizona, called Goodwin Landscaping.”

“Goodwin. Why does that name sound familiar?” There was a long silence on the other end. Then, “
Dios mio
!”

“What? What is it?” said Richard.

“There was a journalist here. During the coup. Her name was Goodwin.”

“Well, it could be a coincidence,” said Richard.

“No such thing. You find out more about this company, who owns it. Then call me back.”

“We need to talk, Jack,” Meg said staring into the black night in front of her.

“Meg, I am so sorry I got you involved in this,” he began.

“No, Jack. I mean we need to talk about Alex.”

“It’s the tattoo, isn’t it?” he said. “You’ve known all along that I was a friend of Alex’s.”

Meg nodded.

“Well, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why didn’t you? I gave you the perfect opportunity when I told you about Alex’s disappearance. Why do you think I let you stay?” she said.

“I don’t know. And at the time I didn’t care. I desperately needed a place to hide out. I was just glad that you did. And then, I didn’t want to think about it. Working for you, staying at your place . . . it was all so peaceful. I just wanted to make it last as long as possible.”

“It was because of Alex,” Meg said, bringing him back to the subject at hand. “He had always spoken so fondly about the four of you. He told me that if he was ever in need, he knew he could go to any one of you, and you would do anything you could for him. So I helped you for Alex’s sake.”

Jack lowered his head. Finally, he said, “I’m humbled. That you would love Alex so much that you would take me in on the strength of a tattoo.”

“My feelings for Alex are for another conversation. Right now, I want you to tell me everything.”

“Okay. Okay. I will. Just before I came to Luke Air Force Base, I was serving in Honduras at Soto Cano.”

Meg stared at him for a moment. Then she cuffed him on his head. “You son of a bitch,” she hissed. “How could you stay in my house, eat my food, drink my beer, and not tell me that?”

He covered his head with his arms as she continued to beat on him wherever she could land a fist. “Meg, stop,” Jack mumbled under the cover of his arms. “I’m sorry. Stop, please.”

She stopped as suddenly as she’d started. When he lowered his arms, he saw she was staring out the window again. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Meg.”

“Just . . . tell me the rest,” she said.

Jack looked up at her and felt like a complete jackass. She was right to be upset. She had taken care of him, brought him into her house, trusted him. Even though she knew he was lying to her.

“You have to believe me,” he said. “I was afraid to tell you anything. Whatever it was that got me into this mess, I didn’t want you involved.”

“It’s Alex. That’s why you’re in this situation, isn’t it?” Meg insisted.

“I . . . I think so. I just don’t know.”

“Of course you do. If you didn’t think it was Alex at the heart of this, you would have told me that you were in Honduras.”

“Maybe subconsciously, I did. But there’s just so much I don’t understand, so many missing pieces.”

“Me too,” Meg said. “So it’s time we started talking to each other, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I suppose it is.”

“You go first,” Meg said.

“Okay. I was stationed at Soto Cano for about three months,” Jack began. “After Jack disappeared, the opportunity came up and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to try going there. Maybe I could find out something. Of course when I got there I realized what an unrealistic expectation that was. I mean, where would I even start?”

“Then one day when I was hanging out at the pool on the base with some buddies, one of them noticed my tattoo. He was Honduran. He asked me about it and I told him it was from my college days. I explained about the pact that the four of us had made. You know, Alex, Sean, Peter, and me.”

Meg knew the names. Alex had spoken often of them.

“Later on, another soldier came to my barracks and told me that he’d heard rumors of a foreign journalist with a tattoo who’d disappeared. He said this journalist was beaten to death and dumped on the side of the road.”

“So I contacted the embassy to tell them what I’d found out, and they told me to tell it to the regional security office and so that’s what I did. I sent them a letter. I never heard back from them and there was no mention of finding Alex in the news. I thought I’d give them another week and then I would call again.”

“Meanwhile, we were sent down to San Pedro Sula on a disaster preparedness mission. You know, so that if they have another hurricane like Mitch or an earthquake, they would be better prepared. My job was to look over some of buildings that might serve as shelters to see if they were structurally sound enough. You know what I mean?”

Meg nodded.

“Okay, so we were down in San Pedro. Me and Mike and these two Honduran soldiers. Well, the soldiers wanted to go out for a beer, but Mike said he was tired, so I said I would go with them. We went to one of those cafés on the beach. We selected a table that was outside on the veranda.

“One of the guys went to the bar to order some beers and the other one said he had to use the john. So that left me alone at the table. All of a sudden, a motorcycle drove by with two guys on it. I saw the barrel of a gun and dove under the table just as it came by. I took a bullet in my leg. ”

“My buddies came back and got me to a hospital to get the bullet removed and my leg stitched up. The whole time I was there, I kept thinking there was something funny about these guys, my so-called buddies. They seemed nervous. I mean anyone would feel nervous about a drive-by shooting, but these guys kept looking at each other, like there was something they didn’t want to talk about in front of me. I thought I’d ask them about it later, when we were back at base. But the very next day, they were both transferred.”

“Didn’t you think that was a bit strange?”

“Hell yes. So I started making noise about it to anybody and everybody, American, Honduran, you name it. Next thing I know, I’m on a plane to Luke Air Force Base. So I thought, okay, I’ve learned my lesson. If I’m going to try to find anything out, I need to do it more carefully. So I kept in touch with some of my buddies at Soto Cano and kept up with the news on Honduras, but I was beginning to give up. I figured I had done what I could for Alex. And then, you know what happened after that. So I left Phoenix and found my way to your place.”

“How did you know where to go?”

“I didn’t. I just took whatever ride I could find. And then, when I got close to Sedona, I remembered Alex telling me about you. I knew your last name and that you were from Sedona. I found the listing for Goodwin Landscaping online. I didn’t know if it was your business or someone in your family. It didn’t matter. It gave me a destination. I figured if you weren’t there, I’d think of something else.”

Meg was quiet a minute. Then she said, “What else, Jack? What else aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“Then you know something that you don’t even know you know.”

“Come again?”

“You uncovered something when you were at Luke Air Force Base or more likely at Soto Cano. That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“But what? As far as I was concerned, I was just spinning my wheels. I never got anywhere, never learned anything.”

“It has to somehow be linked to Honduras and Alex. But how?” Meg said.

“I don’t know, Meg. Anyway, why don’t you tell me more about what happened when you were there? Maybe we can compare notes, find a link.”

“Well, as I told you, Alex and I were in Honduras the morning of the coup. When we woke up there were helicopters and planes flying overhead. First we checked the internet. But all of sudden it went down. We turned the TV on. There was some shaky video footage on CNN and then the TV went blank. The government had shut everything down. We spent the rest of the day watching the planes circle overhead and waiting.

“The next day was Monday, and there were protests on the streets. Like just outside of one of the major malls. Alex and I went over to see what was happening. The National Resistance Front was calling for the reinstatement of the president and burning tires in protest.

“From that day on, Alex and I did our best to cover all points of view. The whole world was outraged that the Honduran congress had removed their president. They called it a coup. Even though the ruling congress thought otherwise. I think they were a little surprised that the world turned against them. After all, they were fighting communism, weren’t they?

“But getting news wasn’t so easy. The government had shut down all radio stations in opposition to the coup and the army was always pushing us away. Still we persevered. We started getting reports of human rights abuses, protesters being beaten and the like.

“Wasn’t it dangerous for you?”

“On some level, maybe. I mean the military was in control of the streets. There was a curfew nearly every night so the streets were dead quiet. And the government even permitted some dissent. Well, what else could they do? The entire world had condemned them for the coup and had their eyes on them. And besides, we were foreign journalists. It was the local journalists that were at risk, or so we thought.

“Anyway, one day we were at a protest in front of one of the international banks and Alex saw a friend. He was a fellow journalist, a Honduran. He beckoned Alex over to him. He told him that he had some information that he wanted Alex to smuggle out of the country. They agreed to meet at a small hotel in the late afternoon, just before curfew. And I never heard from him again,” Meg concluded.

“Poor Alex,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” she said. They were silent for a moment in tribute to the loss of their mutual friend.

“I just wish he hadn’t taken so many risks,” Meg said, interrupting the silence. “Alex would do anything for a story.”

“What I don’t get,” Jack said, “is the connection between Honduras and this gang that seems to be after me.”

“Well, there are any number of links between Honduras and the United States. I mean Honduras is a major route for drug trafficking. Then there’s the military. With Soto Cano there is a strong US military presence. How hard do you think it is to connect the dots? Didn’t you say that you kept in touch with some of your army buddies at Soto Cano? And weren’t you still keeping an eye on the news in Honduras?”

“Yes, but I never told anyone about it.”

“Maybe someone was watching you.”

“No way.”

“Why not? You don’t think everyone in the military is squeaky clean, do you? Did you use a computer on the base?”

“Yeah, sure,” Jack said. He thought for a moment, then said, “Okay, so maybe someone was spying on me. But even if they were, what’s the connection between a military base in the US and drug traffickers and Honduras?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the Iran-Contra affair?”

“I’ve heard the name, but the details are hazy.”

Meg sighed. “Maybe I was in Latin America too long. The history, the politics, our involvement. Anyway, back in the late seventies, the Nicaraguan government was overthrown by Sandinistas who had strong communist leanings. They were big on land reform and began to confiscate large estates, nationalizing them, that sort of thing.

“Needless to say that didn’t make the dispossessed landowners too happy, so during the eighties they organized themselves into counter-revolutionary forces to fight the Sandinistas. They were called the Contras and they operated out of Honduran base camps.

“The United States, of course, was also fighting communism. It was the height of the cold war. The US Administration was determined to help the Contras in their battle against communism but they didn’t have funds appropriated by congress. So, they used money from arms sold to Iran. The US operation involved both its own and Honduran military. They colluded with drug runners to pilot weapons to the Contras in exchange for shipping cocaine to the US, stuff like that. It’s one of the dirtiest covert operations in our history.”

Jack thought for a minute. “Okay, fast forward to the present,” he said. “Honduras has a coup. Alex, a journalist who is reporting on it, disappears. Several months later, yours truly is working at Soto Cano and finds out that Alex was taken out.

“He reports what he knows to the US Embassy,” Jack went on. “Shortly after that, I nearly get killed in a drive-by shooting. And when I start making noise about it, I get redeployed to the US. Then while I’m serving at Luke Air Force base some punks in a drug cartel abduct me. Does that sum it up so far?”

“Sounds about right,” Meg said. “Now let’s think about this. You reported what you knew about Alex’s disappearance to the US Embassy. Who exactly did you report it to?”

“I sent a letter to the RSO, the regional security office.”

“Who, in the RSO, did you send it to?”

“No one. I just addressed it to the RSO. I have no idea who reads their mail.”

“Hm . . . I wonder if we can find out who was working there at the time.”

“You’re not thinking that there’s a traitor or a leak or whatever at the embassy?”

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to look at it from all angles.”

“This is crazy. You’re talking about, like, international espionage or something. Like out of a spy novel.”

“Look, it happens. If we could just get online, I could show you all the stuff that came out of the Iran-Contra affair. Latin America is a small place. It doesn’t take much to connect person A to person B to person C.”