The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6

by B. Hesse Pflingger

  Why not? Lupe brought the glasses and ice, along with cut limes and a cold bottle of Coca-Cola, and Bond introduced us. She was in her twenties, I’d guess. Butterscotch skin, long, straight brown hair, face shaped around Indian features. Bond thanked her in Spanish. She smiled warmly at both of us and left, and Bond filled our glasses from the half-emptied liter bottle on the table. A brand of rum I’d never seen before, local I assumed. They make a lot of it down there. I splashed in some Coke and squeezed lime juice into the mix.

  “So, what’s the deal?” he asked. I gave him an edited version of the last several days, skipping over a lot of detail and stressing that I’d left George Town without my passport and was now carrying items that parties unknown were willing to kill me for. “So, what do you want?” he asked. “You looking for a buyer? You want protection? What?”

  “Right now, just dispose of this stuff and get back to the States safely,” I said.

  “Let’s have a look at what you got,” he said.

  I hesitated. I didn’t know this guy from a fire hydrant. On first impression, he wasn’t somebody I’d naturally pick for a friend, much less as point man on patrol. I scoped out his place. We sat on leather chairs in a spacious room, tidy and tastefully decorated. “Nice place you have,” I remarked. “Not what you’d expect, just looking at it from outside.”

  “It suits me,” he said. “The location’s affordable and convenient, and it’s easy to keep a low profile here. I don’t live down to the appearance of the neighborhood, by any means. You’d be surprised at what’s inside some of the houses here. Not everybody in a slum is poor.”

  “You’re working here in Santo Domingo? What’re you doing these days?”

  “Mmmm, a little of this, a little of that. Targets of opportunity, you might say.”

  “You’d been in field ops for the OSS, you said? I was a Ranger, myself. Did a year’s tour with the LRRPs in Nam, late 60s.”

  “Good outfit, tough service. I didn’t do a lot of combat. They had me working as a go-between with the Partisans in Yugoslavia, arranging things, monitoring arms drops. Talk about tough, man, them Serbs, you won’t find anybody tougher. So, what’s Ev up to these days? We haven’t really kept much in touch. Somebody in the Network must have put him onto me. Not many of our kind of guys here to choose from, I guess.”

  “He’s an international lawyer. He does all right, gets around. Has a lot of contacts in surprising places.”

  “Ev was okay. Yeah, he was a lawyer back then, fresh out of Harvard Law. Did his work mostly in the office, a desk job, though not paper-pushing. I’m not surprised he stayed with lawyering. He was good.”

  “How about you? After the war, what?”

  “Followed my nose. I was good at field ops, got along with indigs. Liked the adrenalin rush. Worked for the government for a few years, then went freelance in the earliest days of Nam, when we moved in after France hung it up. No place for me in that, leave it to the young fellows, I thought. Saw opportunities here in the Caribbean, been here ever since. So, tell me more about this stuff you’re carrying.”

  I’d have to eventually. I gave him more details about the BCCI robbery, Driffter, Jamaica, Haiti. “You were flying with Clyde Driffter?” he asked, surprised. “Jesus.”

  “What about Driffter?”

  “He’s well known in certain circles. You say he was hit in the dogfight, injured in the crash, dying? And when you went back he was gone?” He guffawed. “That bastard has more lives than a cat. I think he’s pulled that possum act before. Let’s take a look at your parcels.”

  I sat my pack on the coffee table before us and pulled out the ledgers. Bond riffled through one. “Bank records,” he muttered. “Looks like deposits, transfers, withdrawals, chronologically. English and Urdu. And people are chasing you for this? What kind of people?”

  “So far I haven’t been able to ID anybody. Maybe even the U.S. government.” I told him about being locked up in the Haiti Consulate. “Maybe this is a clue, this gun I took off the gang of blind men in Kingston. I’ve never seen one of these before.”

  I fished the automatic out of the pack. He looked it over. “It’s a CZ 75,” he said, hefting it. “Czech. Good weapon. It’s Iron Curtain gear. Those guys all had these? They use any language you could recognize?” He turned it over, this way and that, sighted down the barrel.

  “Never uttered a peep. No ID on them. I kept the gun, figured it might come in handy.”

  “Well, they could be from a Red terrorist outfit. Or somebody’s secret police. Maybe the KGB? Or they could be from some outfit Moscow supports—Shining Path in Peru? Sandinistas in Nicaragua? Castro? The PLO? Doesn’t narrow it down much. And you and Driffter were taking this to… who?”

  “Robert Vesco, in Cuba.”

  Bond guffawed again. “Clyde Driffter meets Robert Vesco! That’s a horror movie title for you! Jake, you do keep some A-list company. Why did Vesco want this stuff?”

  “He claimed $70,000,000 of his money disappeared, and he believed he could trace it into BCCI with these records. What’s the deal with Vesco?”

  “Deal is the right word. The guy is deals personified. Came out of Detroit, scuffled and scrambled his way up. Through mergers, and leverage, and smoke and mirrors he assembled what on the surface was a major conglomerate—International Controls, ICC. Made the Forbes list of ‘Richest Americans,’ got his picture on the cover of Fortune, while still in his 30s—’The Bootstrap Kid,’ somebody called him. Smart, hardworking, a quick mind for figures and an instinct for weakness. But also manipulative, evasive, aggressive, abrasive. Nobody you wanted to have working against you. As Bernie Cornfeld found out.

  “Cornfeld put together Investors Overseas Services in the 50s. The idea was to sell mutual funds to GIs in Europe in small increments. ‘I’ll make you a millionaire’ and ‘Do you sincerely want to be rich?’ were his catchphrases. His idea took off; he put a huge, aggressive sales force to work, and pretty soon he was raking in dough with both hands. And spending it just as fast, the original jet-setter. I mean, the guy was brilliant, but a flake. Lived large, hung around with Hugh Hefner, always had half-naked, gorgeous broads draped over him. Where was he getting his spending cash? Good question. Some was borrowed money, some came off the top of the funds, some came out of the stockholders’ pockets. Other People’s Money. good old OPM.

  “In the 60s IOS started coming apart. The SEC got on his case, looking into fraudulent claims and schemes. The IRS took an interest in overseas Americans using IOS to evade taxes. IOS started hemorrhaging money, investors redeeming their funds and heading for the hills. In the early 70s Vesco saw all those millions of dollars just sitting there, saw that IOS was going under, so he elbowed his way into control through his company, ICC, claiming he could rescue it.

  “Now, by that time, Vesco had moved his headquarters to Nassau, in the Bahamas, offshore operations being, let’s say, more ‘flexible’ than under U.S. jurisdiction. Plus he liked to gamble on Paradise Island. The SEC came after him. When he decamped to Norman Cay, the FBI suspected drug dealing, that being a narcotics center. Everybody was trying to extradite him. Money was flying around all over the place. It’d take an army of investigators, attorneys and accountants to have any hope of making sense of it at this point. Vesco himself had a legion of lawyers and spies, even mounted a machine gun on his yacht to fend off the Coast Guard if it tried to board. He found refuge in Costa Rica for a few years, was a pal of their president, played the public benefactor, had armed bodyguards. Lived the life there, but last year he had a falling out, or maybe ran out of ready cash, and moved on to Cuba. The intriguing question is, why did he want the BCCI stuff?”

  “Wanted to track down some missing money, is what he said.”

  “Maybe. Maybe he had something else in mind. You said there were some disks. Could I take a look? I’ve got a little computer in my office.”

&
nbsp; What the hell? I was curious too. I pulled the case of disks out of my pack, and we went to a back room. He turned on his computer and let it warm up, then slipped a floppy into the slot.

  The system refused to read it. Tried another one. Same result.

  “I don’t think they’re blank. Could be locked. Could be in some strange code. God only knows what Pakistanis would use.”

  I put the disks back in the pack, and we returned to the living room for rum and war stories. Lupe sat quietly and politely, didn’t have much to say. Finally, I’d had it. Between the day’s travel and my case of the squirts, I was bushed. Bond showed me to a guest room. I stowed the pack under the bed and didn’t last a minute after I hit the sheets.

  Bond’s cement pills held firm, leaving me in decent fettle when I woke up, even had an appetite. Lupe put out a breakfast of eggs and fried local salami with sweet rolls, and I had a feeling everything would stay in where it belonged. Just a quick case of overnight trots, not something more permanent like amoebic dysentery.

  Bond and I chased breakfast with mugs of hot, spiced coffee, and he told me a little more about his situation. “I segued into the CIA after the OSS disbanded, but never really felt at home there, Yalies took the place over, and I was just a fullback from Ohio. At war’s end that pipsqueak Tito shut us out of Yugoslavia, so no place for me there. Did one thing and another for The Company. The last straw was Guatemala, where the CIA helped throw out Arbenz in ‘54. Supposed to be preventing a communist takeover, but it seemed like we were really protecting United Fruit’s banana plantations from land reform. I didn’t like pushing peasants around for government salary. Nam was the last straw. Word reached me that Trujillo paid good money for foreign advisors, so I came over here, been here ever since. Trujillo was a bastard, no doubt about it, but he was our bastard, as they say, a staunch anti-communist. He was dictatorial and brutal, but under him this was one of the best-run islands in the Caribbean. Put in infrastructure, built up the economy, established law and order. Corrupt as hell, of course—it’s the game they all play in these parts. Worth mega-millions by the time I arrived.

  “The opposition took him out in 1961, shot him up in his Chevy Bel Air. Rumor had it that the CIA was behind the plotters. Don’t know about that, but it was bad news for me, had to scramble for a few years. Things picked up when Balanguer won the election in ‘66; I’d known him through Trujillo. That put me back in business, lasted until ‘78. Since then, I’ve had to scratch up work elsewhere. Nobody wanted any part of Trujillo’s people anymore. Can’t complain, it was gravy while it lasted.

  “I did learn one thing, though. Job security. You can have a good run freelancing for a while. But watch out. When that well ran dry, I found myself out of the loop, a has-been, watching the new fellows step in and take over. It’s like people I know who dreamed of being writers, or artists, or dancers, or actors, or rock stars. A miniscule few make it big in those fields. Most get nowhere, quickly realize they’ve no future in it and take up something else. The unlucky ones have just enough talent to rise a few rungs up the ladder, make a living, nurture their dreams until they’re too old to get into some other line of work. Oh, most are capable people, so they don’t wind up living on dog food, but they find the last half of their lives a struggle against diminishing returns, spending their nights wondering where they took the wrong turn. That’s where I’m at right now. A few irons in the fire, but I’m having to stretch harder to find income.”

  “Times get tough, but something always turns up,” I remarked, for the sake of saying something, though I hadn’t a clue what I was talking about. That angle hadn’t occurred to me before. Was I hearing an ominous warning about me and my career as a freelance whatever-it-is-that-I-do? So far, so good, up to then. Was I one of the lucky ones? Or one of those others? I’d think about it tomorrow. Right now I have more immediate problems to solve. “I need to take care of a few errands. How’s the city center here? Good banks, stores, etc.?”

  “It’s about the best spot in the Caribbean, prosperous, safe and orderly, has a solid middle class. Coming from Port au Prince, you’ll think you died and went to heaven. Walk down to the busy avenue at the bottom of the hill—get a cab into town, about a half hour ride.”

  I washed up, got my gear in order and told Bond I’d be back in the afternoon. “You can leave your pack here if you like. It’ll be safe,” he suggested.

  “I’d just as soon keep it with me,” I said. “Do you know of a good bank in town?” He gave me a couple names, and I set out down the hill. He was right: compared to Port au Prince, Santo Domingo was paradise on earth. Downtown was spacious, clean and modern. Whatever he’d done wrong, Trujillo had done a lot right. My first errand was changing my travelers cheques into currency. No problem. The official currency was pesos, but U.S. dollars were popular. I signed the cheques and emerged with about $800 in my pocket, plus a fistful of pesos. Next on the to-do list: clothing. I’d been living in the same pants and underwear too many days. In addition to cheap street wear, I picked up a black, long-sleeved pullover and black trousers. I blended in well, strolling among the Santo Domingo crowd, but the way things had been going, I thought it prudent to have some night-stalking duds on hand, just in case. Then I dropped in at a clean-looking café for lunch.

  There, I pondered the question: now what? In the last couple days, I’d been on an island where they spoke English, one where they spoke Spanish, another with sort of English, another with sort of French, and now another one where they spoke Spanish. All sovereign nations, presumably they required passports, but I’d gotten by without one. I didn’t think I’d left a trail anyone could follow, but the depth of surveillance so far unsettled me, unseen eyes and ears everywhere. No point hitting the U.S. Consulate for a passport. So my only option was Puerto Rico, from where I could return to the U.S. without one. But the people tracking me could figure that out too, and by now they’d know I’d left Haiti—to where else but here? Flying out, or taking a regular ferry, I’d have to show ID. Which meant I’d need a privately operated boat. I had a taxi take me to the waterfront. It seemed mostly commercial, not much charter activity. I got out and strolled around, asking people about fishing. The consensus recommended Bayahibe on the eastern end of the island.

  I got back to Bond’s by late afternoon. I briefed him on the situation. “Well, I can get you to Bayahibe, all right. Plenty of charter possibilities there. Plus, maybe less visibility. People looking for you would have the Puerto Rico angle covered, but if we snuck you out of Bayahibe you might get a little jump on them. Leaving here before daybreak in the morning, it’s about two hours drive.”

  One point of affinity between Bond and the CIA crowd I’d met was, he did enjoy his booze. I don’t believe a liter bottle would last him two days. After dinner we sat and drank, though I didn’t try to keep up with him. Couldn’t have. He said he’d get me up early for our drive, and we hit the sack. In the middle of the night I sensed somebody in my room and snapped to full wakefulness. The intruder was down on the floor, groping under the bed. I quietly pulled my cover aside, then rolled out on top of him. I bounced off, wrenched him over on his back and lay on top of his arm, my fist at his windpipe.

  “Uncle,” he gasped. “I give. White flag. You win.” It was Bond.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  “Oh, nothing much. I just wanted to see those ledger books in your pack.”

  “Why didn’t you ask?”

  “Would have given the game away. You might have said no.”

  I got off him and let him sit up. “What’s in the ledgers?”

  “I did some business through BCCI that I’d rather didn’t come to light, and who knows where those books are going to end up. I was thinking that if I just took a page out of July 1981, and another one out of October 1980, no harm done, and I’d feel a lot safer.”

  “Well hell, why not?” I said. “Can we take care
of it in the morning?”

  Then he shushed me. I could hear a quiet, coded ticking coming from his bedroom. “Intruder at the rear of the house,” he whispered. “Get your gun, keep low, meet me in the kitchen.” He disappeared out the door. As I tied my shoes, Lupe in her nightgown passed by, slinking toward the front door pistol in hand. I crouched into the kitchen. Bond was waiting. “In the overhead cupboard, next to the back door, you’ll find a sliding panel. It’s a gun port, looks through a trellis on the outside. Cover me through that. I’ll go out and see to this.”

  He opened a door I thought was a broom closet and disappeared through it. I couldn’t see much outside through the port, no moon, no city lights, but there seemed to be somebody moving around. Then I heard a brief but violent scuffle. “Jake?” Bond asked through the gun port, “Everything’s okay. You can open the door. Come on out.”

  A disguised door on the building ell stood open. A black-dressed body was sprawled in front of the window he’d been trying to jimmy. Bond went back inside, returned with a flashlight. “Jake, go back to the end of the opposite ell and stay in the shadows. Keep that gun ready,” Bond whispered. I took my position, and he shone the light on the body. It was a Latino man. Bond switched the flashlight off and motioned me over. “No ID, but from the tattoos I’d say he’s from one of the Colombian drug cartels. Not an assassin, just a sneak thief. Doesn’t amount to a threat. Let’s get back inside.”

  He called to Lupe. She closed the front port, came into the kitchen and exchanged a few words with Bond. “Nothing out front, she said. Usually they work in pairs, so there may be another one lurking out there.”

  “Does this happen often?” I asked him. “You seem to have it down to a science.”