The Venezuelan

by Bill King

  “How did it go?”

  “It’s hard to trust someone with his past, but I think the inducement we are offering is sufficient to make him a willing and enthusiastic participant in our adventure.”

  “So you think he’ll do his part?”

  “I do.”

  “Excellent. Excellent. It won’t be long now,” said General Trujillo, pulling a Cuban cigar from a protective case tucked in his uniform shirt pocket. “Twenty years from now, children will read about us in school and consider us to be heroes of the nation.”

  He lit the cigar and smiled.

  ◆◆◆

  “Yes, this is Ryan Carpenter calling for Margaret Donovan,” he said, the agitation in his voice unmistakable. “I am the chief of station in Brasilia.”

  Carpenter had called Donovan every day for the past three days without ever getting to talk to her. Each time, he left a message with Donovan’s assistant, but had never received a call back. To say he was concerned about this obvious snub was putting it mildly.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Carpenter, but Mrs. Donovan left instructions not to be disturbed.”

  “I’ve left messages the past three days. Has she been receiving them?”

  “Yes sir. All I can tell you is that she is not available to speak with you.”

  “Can I leave another message?”

  “Of course, you can, sir,” said the assistant, maintaining a pleasant, businesslike tone.

  Carpenter asked the assistant to have Mrs. Donovan return his call at her earliest convenience and then hung up the phone.

  Damn, he thought to himself. I’m definitely being frozen out of whatever the heck is going on, and that’s never a good thing in this line of work.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 28

  Brasilia, Brazil

  Clarice Robideaux was sitting in her office in the embassy, reading through the online editions of various key newspapers from cities throughout Brazil. Even though the Agency had people to do that for them, she found it relaxing, as well as an opportunity keep her Portuguese reading skills sharp.

  She looked up at the sound of footsteps entering the room. It was Ryan Carpenter.

  “Do you have a moment, Clarice?”

  “Sure thing, Ryan,” she said, closing out of the browser with that day’s O Globo newspaper. “You’re looking awfully somber this morning. What’s up?”

  He closed the door behind him and walked over to the chair beside her desk.

  “It’s Margaret Donovan,” he said, sitting down. “Every alarm sensor I’ve ever developed over the years is going off right now. Clamoring…like in a five-alarm fire.”

  “I’ll be honest with you, Ryan. I had that same reaction the first time I ever met her, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s prompting your concern?”

  He told her about his repeated efforts to contact Donovan.

  “And she never called you back?”

  “Never. Not once.”

  “Did you do anything in particular, or maybe say anything, that might have prompted her current behavior toward you?”

  “No, not that I can think of,” he said. “Ever since Dominic D’Angelo made his unannounced appearance several weeks ago, it’s been radio silence. Nothing. It’s like she went totally off the grid…at least as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Well, I haven’t heard even a peep from her, either, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  He was silent for a few moments, his eyes revealing that his thoughts ran deeper than mere hurt feelings, before he spoke next.

  “I think she’s up to something…and I think she’s setting us up to take the fall in case anything goes wrong with whatever it is she’s planning,” he said, his eyes locked on hers.

  “What, exactly, is it that you think she’s up to?”

  Again, he said nothing for what seemed like ages, but was actually only a few moments.

  “I’m not sure…but I do think it has something to do with the breakout of Calderón,” he said finally. “And I also believe that the police armory raids and the high-profile refugee caravans are all related.”

  Now it was Clarice’s turn to remain silent, as she mulled over how much she should tell him. She was convinced he was very concerned. However, she was not convinced he was telling her the whole truth. She would need to proceed carefully.

  “What do you really know about Dominic D’Angelo?” she asked.

  “In my opinion, D’Angelo is the key to the puzzle,” said Carpenter, his facial muscles relaxing just a bit. “If we can figure out where he is and what he’s up to, I believe the rest of the picture will quickly come into focus.”

  “And what about this Marco character? The contract worker who escaped with the people who broke out Calderón.”

  “I think he’s clearly the link to Mateo Calderón, and D’Angelo is clearly the link to Donovan,” he said. “What we need to figure out is how are Marco and D’Angelo linked, and even if they are linked, what does it all mean? What are they up to?”

  Robideaux smiled. Time to roll the dice.

  “I think I might be able to help you with that,” she said.

  ◆◆◆

  Dominic D’Angelo was standing at the edge of the lawn, a rum punch in his left hand as he waited for the helicopter carrying Zachery Jellico and Paulo Mendes Almeida to touch down on the open expanse of grass in front of his hillside home on the island of Tobago.

  The two men hopped down from the chopper. Heads ducked, they walked toward him.

  “Welcome to my humble abode, gentlemen,” D’Angelo said, a broad smile across his face. “Let’s talk indoors, where there are no prying eyes.”

  He turned and led them up to the front porch and into the house, where an elderly black man with a white beard, dressed in a white tuxedo jacket, stood at the door to the front parlor and motioned for them to enter.

  “Don’t be misled by appearances,” said D’Angelo, as the old man closed the door behind them. “He worked for me thirty years ago, mostly doing wet work in a variety of third world hell holes. He was the best I ever knew. I’d rather have him watching my back than most of the people half his age that I know.”

  “So, then he’s your bodyguard?” asked Jellico, surprised at the notion.

  “Bodyguard, confidant, advisor, comrade in arms…he’s all of those things.”

  Almeida was impressed, while Jellico thought D’Angelo was just jerking their chain. In either case, they let the matter drop.

  “We won’t be here long,” said the Brazilian. “Not more than ten or fifteen minutes. That should be all the time we’ll need.”

  They had instructed their pilot to keep the engine running while they were inside talking to D’Angelo.

  “We just wanted to hear from you in person how your meeting with Colonel Bostwick went,” said Jellico.

  “Everything went well,” said D’Angelo. “I’m confident that he will do his part.”

  “Yes, but is he confident as well?” Jellico had a serious look on his face. They had a lot riding on the outcome of this operation.

  “I think that Bostwick is the least of our worries at this stage,” D’Angelo said, gulping down the last of his rum punch and setting the glass on the table beside him.

  “And what, exactly, would you say is our biggest worry, then?”

  “It’s the aftermath I’m most concerned with,” he replied. “Can we trust Donovan will be able to hold up her end of the bargain? That has always been my primary concern, truth be told.”

  “Why is that?” asked Jellico. “She seemed pretty confident when we met in Houston. Don’t you trust her?”

  “I’m not saying that she won’t move heaven and earth trying to do her part,” said Dominic. “It’s just that the whole idea of getting politicians, especially foreign politicians, to keep their word is highly problematic at best. Most of them will turn their backs on you at even the slightest hint that things may be going wrong.”

  Almeida
laughed. “I didn’t realize you Americans were so cynical,” he said.

  “It’s like trying to push snot up a wall with chopsticks,” said D’Angelo.

  “Well, it’s the first major government that’s the most critical,” said the Brazilian, trying to reassure him. “If the Americans step up and publicly announce their support, then the rest of the world will follow suit. It always works out that way.”

  ◆◆◆

  The plan for that evening was simple to express, but difficult to execute.

  Five Venezuelan National Police armories were on that evening’s target list. Instead of attacking nearby police stations in southeastern Venezuela, like El Tigre and Ciudad Bolivar, they had chosen to spread their wings throughout the vast expanse of Venezuela.

  “Tonight will be the real test,” said Mateo Calderón, stretching his long arms and legs, as if preparing for an athletic match. In truth, he would be spending the next four hours anxiously monitoring events from his makeshift command center at the old Morrison Plantation house, a dozen miles south of Georgetown.

  He had handpicked his five most trusted and experienced subordinate leaders in M-28 to organize the individual teams that would actually carry out the raids.

  More important than the weapons and ammunition they would seize in the raids, tonight would test the subordinate leaders he had nurtured and developed over the previous four years. Could they successfully carry out an important military operation without his physical presence onsite? Was M-28 really an effective revolutionary organization, or simply a personality cult?

  Tonight, they would all learn the answer.

  “They’ll do fine, Mateo,” said Marco reassuringly as he downed the remainder of his bottle of local beer. “We would have never picked you had we thought your group was simply another toothless gaggle of pseudo-intellectuals. There are plenty of those scattered throughout Latin America. We picked M-28 because we saw something special in you.”

  They had selected the largest population centers in the country: Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, Barquisimeto and Maracay. If they were successful, the attacks would send shockwaves throughout Venezuela. More than half of Venezuela’s population lived in those five cities alone.

  It would be a gut shot to the Maduro regime. It would announce that he—Mateo Calderón—was there to stay.

  Calderón and Marco waited anxiously, having done all they could to prepare. Now all they could do was wait. An hour later, they received their first situation report.

  “Maracaibo is a success. No friendly casualties. Three enemy wounded.”

  The Venezuelan let out a huge sigh of relief.

  Ten minutes later, they received a follow up report, which said simply, “Maracaibo clear.”

  That was their signal that the ten-man team had securely stashed the weapons cache at their storage facility. From there, they would wipe down the two trucks and drive them both to separate public locations. There, they would leave them parked, keys in the ignition, ready and waiting for the inevitable thief to steal them and thereby cover their tracks.

  Over the next ninety minutes, Calderón and Marco received similar SITREPS from the other four M-28 assault teams, each with similar results.

  The only notable glitch came in Caracas, where the M-28 team was confronted by a group of armed Colectivos as they were making their getaway from the police station. In the subsequent gunfight, five Colectivos were killed and eight were wounded, left lying in the street to tell the tale of their encounter with the newly-resurgent M-28.

  “Mierde,” said Marco sardonically, a smile on his face. “It looks like we may have pissed off Maduro’s little gang of thugs in the process.”

  “Yes, I’m really frightened,” said Calderón in a mocking show of bravado.

  Inwardly, though, he was concerned. That probably eliminates any possibility of coopting the Colectivos to our side, the Venezuelan thought to himself.

  ◆◆◆

  “Jack, thanks for getting back with me so quickly,” said João Carvalho, who had been restlessly waiting in his office in Lisbon for Gonçalves to return his call. The SSA had just returned from an unscheduled meeting with Morris Applebaum, the ASAC.

  “What’s up, João? Your message said it was urgent.”

  “Our person with Interpol says that a man matching the description of Olivier Gauthier boarded a flight from Mexico City to Caracas four days ago,” said the Portuguese police officer. “We had an alert out for him based upon his threat to your man, Cortez.”

  “Were the Mexicans able to apprehend him?”

  “No, unfortunately, he sailed through customs, using a French passport under the name of Marcel Ledoux. By the time they discovered it during a routine daily facial recognition review of the airport security cameras, Gauthier had already cleared customs in Caracas.”

  “Well, I think it’s safe to assume that he’s probably no longer using the name, Ledoux, either” said Gonçalves.

  “I think that’s a certainty,” said Carvalho, a touch of laughter in his voice. “There’s a reason this bastard has eluded the authorities for so long.”

  “Do they have any ideas as to whom he might contact down there for support?”

  “In Venezuela or in Brazil?”

  “Both? Either?” said Gonçalves, realizing they were not likely to pick up the Canadian’s trace until he crossed over into Brazil, which they were both certain he would do…and more likely sooner than later.

  “I don’t know the answer to that yet, but I do know that Interpol’s NCB in Brasilia is working with Brazilian law enforcement on it now.” NCB stands for National Control Board and is part of the Brazilian Federal Police.

  “Thanks for the heads up, João. I’ll let Cortez know,” said Gonçalves. “Jeez, when it rains, it pours.”

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 29

  Georgetown, Guyana

  The cool breeze coming in from the Atlantic was a welcome relief after another scorching hot day in Georgetown.

  “Gentlemen, the time is nearly upon us,” said Cedric Bostwick, wearing the dark green, short-sleeve uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the Guyana Defense Force. He removed the green beret from his head and tucked it in his back pocket before sitting down at a small table on the oceanfront terrace of the Guyana Marriott Hotel.

  Three other men were already seated at the table when Bostwick arrived, each of them also wearing army uniforms. It was early evening and the setting sun would soon disappear behind the ten-story hotel building next to them.

  “We’re just waiting for you to give us the word, colonel,” said Major Reginald Preston, Bostwick’s deputy. “Everything is in place and everyone knows what to do.”

  “Yes, sir, my men are just itching to have a go at it,” said Captain Derrick Simon, who was sitting directly across the wrought iron table from Bostwick. There was an eager tone to his voice, one befitting a young officer experiencing his first real adventure.

  “How about you, Sergeant Major?” Bostwick asked the older man sitting just to his left.

  Sergeant Major Balvinder Singh had served with Bostwick ever since the officer was a lieutenant and Singh was a young sergeant. It was not unreasonable to say that he had mentored him much as a father would a son.

  “The men will do their duty, sir,” said the sergeant major, a large, muscular man who proudly wore the traditional turban and beard of a Sikh.

  His ancestors had come to Guyana in the mid-1800s as indentured servants, and over the next nine generations, had served with distinction primarily in the military or the police. Of course, there was the occasional doctor or lawyer sprinkled among the family tree, but most on the male side were men of action who had chosen their professions accordingly.

  “I will be meeting with some colleagues over in Parliament Building in a couple of days to tidy up any last-minute details,” said Bostwick, finishing off his rum and signaling a nearby waiter to bring them another round of drinks. “I want to be sure, thou
gh, that everything on our end is ready to go before I meet with them.”

  “My brother-in-law assures me that the police union will follow our lead once we make our move,” said Preston, who was now on his third drink. “He and my sister came over at the house on Sunday for my wife’s birthday.”

  “How much does he know about our plan?” asked Bostwick, concerned that his party-happy deputy might have talked too much.

  “Don’t worry, sir, he knows none of the details,” said Preston, sensing his boss’ concern. “As you know, the prime minister is not at all popular among the rank and file police, so just realizing that the man may be on his way out will garner their immediate support.”

  “I know the Major’s brother-in-law, Colonel, and he’s a very tight-lipped chap,” said the sergeant major, who was drinking plain tonic water with a lime. Although he never drank alcohol, he did consume gallons of water just to keep his large frame hydrated in the tropical climate.

  Despite their assurances, Bostwick was still worried. Keeping a secret in Guyana, especially a secret of this magnitude, was not an easy task. He just hoped he could keep a lid on it for another couple of days.

  After that, it did not matter. School children over the next several generations would know his name and what he had done.

  ◆◆◆

  “I know it hasn’t been very long, but do you have any leads on the whereabouts of the Canadian, Olivier Gauthier?” Lucinha Baker asked her counterpart with the Brazilian Federal Police. “I realize there are a lot of places to hide in Brazil.”

  It had been less than twelve hours since they had learned of Gauthier’s presence in Brazil from Interpol.

  “Yes, but his target is here in Brasilia,” said Lucas Nascimento, a tall, skinny man who had risen through the ranks from his beginnings working drug trafficking and organized crime in São Paulo twenty-five years earlier.