Wet Work

by Christopher Buckley

  "As I say, business is busy."

  "Yes, it's in the news."

  "What is?"

  "Your business. Anyway, it wouldn't be nearly as complicated as Mannheim. It's in a private collection in the U.S. I'm sure the owner can be persuaded to sell."

  "Let me think about it."

  "Of course. I'll be out of town for a few weeks."

  "Where are you off to?"

  "Florence. I have a client who's crazy for Quattrocento."

  The fax from Yayo wasn't the best quality but the face in the two photographs was the same. He stared from one to the other as he listened to the lawyer in Miami.

  "He left DEA after that. Then he went to work for G. Gordon Liddy. You remember him? The Watergate guy. He had a firm down here called Hurricane Force, sort of a private commando team that was supposed to rescue kidnapped executives overseas. That folded, and he went to do security for Marcos, in Hawaii. After that-"

  "Yes, good, but where is he now, Ruben?"

  "I spoke to his ex-wife, the most recent one. He's got four. She told me he's a mercenary and he kills people and doesn't report the income."

  "She told you that? Why?"

  "She hates him. He owes her alimony. In fact, she asked me to help her find him."

  "Who did you say you were?"

  "The IRS. They always cooperate when you say you're the IRS."

  "Good thinking. What about Becker?"

  The lawyer went through what he had, mostly from Who's Who and the business publications.

  "… 1981, formed buyback partnership with 3M Corporation and bought back all public shares of Zacatecas Petroleum, turned around and sold company to T. Boone Pickens for $1.2 billion… 1982 received Knight of Maltahood, or Knighthood of Malta, in recognition of services to-"

  "Ya ya, okay, he's rich, he steals from the poor, gives a little back and gets a medal from the Pope. What else?"

  "There's not very much on him. He keeps himself inconspicuous. This is all from business magazines. He… was in the papers last year."

  "Yes?"

  "There was… an incident involving a granddaughter."

  "What incident?"

  "She, well, it's-"

  "Ruben, this scrambler costs forty dollars a minute."

  "She had a little… OD."

  "Of…"

  "Yes, but obviously it's her own fault. You don't blame General Motors if you drive a little too fast and go off the cliff, right?"

  The howlers and the capuchins were screeching at each other in the canopy beyond the perimeter. Beyond them the toucans complained and somewhere beyond that he heard the death commotion between a jaguar and a peccary.

  Soledad lay naked on the bed, asleep with her thumb in her mouth. He looked from her to the slatted windows and imagined the noises had shapes that came through the window and surrounded her like Fuseli's nightmare creatures. He found himself wishing, for the first time since he had been here, for the reassurance of a city sound, a passing bus, a car horn, a truck, the shout of a cigarette vendor.

  He turned to the picture of the gringo on his yacht. His yacht was registered with Lloyd's as Conquistador. Well, it showed he wasn't deaf to the nuances. But Esmeralda was a little clumsy. The conquistadors came also for emeralds.

  Well, billonario, do I hand you over to Espinosa? They'll promote him to general, and that's good for me, too.

  But does Espinosa deserve you? Espinosa, who wouldn't know a Manet from a Monet, or for that matter, a Manet from a Mapplethorpe.

  And you're not the type to put your hands in the air and give up, obviously, since you've come all this way. We don't want bullet holes in "The Absinthe Drinker."

  But why bring your Manet on a trip like this, billonario? I can understand the Dufy, the Vlaminck, the Cocteau. But the Baudelaire "Absinthe Drinker"? You don't go into battle with Manets-it's irresponsible!

  A light touch is needed. Eladio is needed. Eladio, who can walk across a floor of wet paint and not leave a track. Eladio, who floats on the air of his own beliefs.

  "Eladio," he said. "I have dreamed a great white canoe and a kurinku pataa, a pistaco who comes for the grease of your people to make fuel for his rockets."

  26

  "Obviously I wasn't going to bring it up this morning in front of everyone."

  "I appreciate that, Dick."

  "It didn't seem like something for the whole cabinet."

  "God no. Who's in the loop on this?"

  "It's a tight loop, John. A very tight loop. DEA, obviously, me."

  "Well, let's keep it tight until, until we can…"

  "Get a handle around it. Right."

  "As of right now, it doesn't feel, I don't think we need to take it down the hall to him."

  "We may not be there yet."

  "I don't think we are there yet, Dick."

  "Anyway, Bill confirms that he's on this river, the-"

  "Bill is in the loop?"

  "Well, it's Bill's satellite."

  "The NSA has satellites. I would have thought as far as keeping a tight loop goes, that NSA would be better."

  "Maybe. Maybe. It's just that Bill's satellites have been monitoring the compliance on the deforestation thing down there and it was on station and, anyway, they're Bill's pictures. Amazing resolution, by the way. You can actually read the lettering on the-"

  "Okay. So where does it stand?"

  "They're several miles west of the village of Shucushuyacu."

  "That doesn't mean anything to me, Dick."

  "It just means he's well on his way, basically."

  "Where?"

  "We don't know that."

  "Well, why, why can't we just call him up on the phone, he's got to have a phone, and, and say, 'Look here, we know all about this and get your ass back here on the QT.'"

  "There's an open-line problem. Our friends would be listening in."

  "Well, we don't have to spell it out. Call him and say, 'This is the AG calling and turn your butt around, buster.'"

  "Right. So your thinking is that I should make the call?"

  "Well, it is your department, Dick. I mean, DEA is under your roof."

  "Sure, but there might be a, a legal thing, a problem there."

  "What kind of problem?"

  "If I were to call him and say, 'Get back,' it might be construable as an offer, and I'm hardly in a position, oath-of-office-wise, to do that. There's another dimension. We've been kicking Peruvian butt for, for, for years over the extradition thing. Finally we're getting some cooperation and then bango, the top law-enforcement officer goes and, and in direct contravention of the convention notifies the, the perpetrator and doesn't tell GOP-"

  "GOP?"

  "Government of Peru. I mean, it wouldn't be very bilateral of us, would it?"

  "You're saying I should place the call?"

  "Not necessarily. But I am saying we need to think through the who-makes-the-call situation."

  "All right."

  "There is the argument that it would carry more weight coming from you."

  "Dick, I'm right down the hall from him, if you see what I'm saying."

  "A hundred percent. Basically you're saying you're not sure you want to be in the tent on this."

  "Well, I'm already in the tent, Dick. You've already put me in the tent."

  "Right, well, I thought you'd want to be."

  "But the essence of the thing is, is the deniability thing, as far as he is concerned."

  "Absolutely."

  "So I don't know if it makes sense for me to make the call."

  "Well, I think that's, that's a feasible position. We can always fine-tune down the line. As the thing tracks."

  "Why couldn't your man call? The one who brought this to you. Say, 'Look here, this is DEA, turn your butt around and, and, and get back here so, so…'"

  "So we can arrest you the moment you set foot on U.S. waters."

  "I see your point."

  "And we'd still have the open-line problem, Jo
hn. You can't keep a satellite conversation private. Hell, some, some, some, some kid ham operator in Detroit was listening in while Reagan was on Air Force One giving Cap the go-ahead on Grenada."

  "Why couldn't he just talk in generalities? People do it all the time, when they don't want… Husbands and wives do it. I do it."

  "Sure, but if some specifics get in… I'm not even sure the whole fact of talking to him wouldn't open us up to misprision. You might want to run that by Boyden."

  "Jesus. This is…"

  "Anyway, you see my point."

  "I don't like this, Dick."

  "I don't like it either, John."

  "It's like, I don't know what it's like, a combination tar baby and can of worms."

  "Right. It resonates that way for me, too."

  "You know he was a contributor?"

  "I didn't know that."

  "Yeah. He was a delegate from Virginia."

  "There's something else."

  "What?"

  "His company holds a contract with NASA."

  "Oh hell."

  "They make something for the shuttle."

  "God. You know how he feels about the shuttle."

  "Yes, I do."

  "The shuttle is, it's, it's an American symbol. He'd feel awful if-he'd feel betrayed."

  "I think we all would, more or less."

  "Yeah, but for him it would be personal."

  "It's not an easy call, John. I'm certainly glad it's not my call."

  "Frankly, Dick, I see this more as your buck than my buck. At least from an administrative point of view."

  "Sure, it's just, it impacts on up the chain, as you say. There's always, we might let nature take its course, though that might open us up to misprision. Again, I'd want to run that through Boyden."

  "Look, never mind Boyden. You're saying, suppose the decision was to say, in effect, to hell with it, it's a Peruvian problem, let them handle it?"

  "Right."

  "Well, that's, that's certainly an option."

  "Trouble is, parsing it out, ultimately it still ends up being our problem."

  "How?"

  "Well, he's going to be caught, I think we can take that for granted-"

  "Wait a minute, I'm not sure I'd take that for granted. I mean, if he's done all this that you say he's done, I'd say he's, he's very, he's certainly capable, in a, a horrible sort of way."

  "Sure, but, I mean, he's not in Kansas anymore, John."

  "He killed people in Kansas?"

  "No no, that's, I mean, where he is is a bad place. Even their military doesn't go in there if they can help it. Or if they do it's just for a quick in-and-out photo op, so they can say, 'We're on top of this.' This river he's on, they just floated twenty decapitated bodies down this river past a military base where we have a few people, just to let us know they knew we were there. It's a very bad place, the Huallaga. It's one of the worst places there is."

  "I'm aware of that. I read the newspapers."

  "Right. Sorry, didn't mean to, it's just, I don't see how he can't get stopped, by someone, whether it's the authorities or the other side, the Senderos or the dopers. And it'll get out. My God. Symbol-wise, we're talking Disaster City. The Latinos are unbelievably sticky about this sort of thing."

  "This sort of thing? This sort of thing has happened before?"

  "Not per se-"

  "I've certainly never heard of this sort of thing happening before, unless you want to go back to the 1850s, the filibusters, whatsisname, the one who became President of Nicaragua. Walker."

  "Right, Walker. It's just, historically, there's a heck of a lot of bad blood under the bridge, and you know, you just know, someone down there is going to stand up and say, 'This is a CIA thing, a JUNC thing, this thing was approved all the way, all the way on up.'"

  "It is certainly not an approved thing. It's an outrageous thing, a, a, a, a vile thing."

  "Right."

  "And frankly it's, it's incredible, that he would get this-to this extent up the river without being caught."

  "We did catch him. One of our men caught him, John."

  "Well, he didn't catch him. He's, he's tooting his merry way up the Amazon. I don't see how he caught him, Dick. If he caught him, he, he'd be behind bars, consulting with Alan Dershowitz."

  "Right, sure, I meant he caught him in the sense that-"

  "I don't see that, Dick. I just don't see that. Here you say this guy started killing people in New York City last year."

  "He's rich, he's got resources, he's-"

  "He's a lunatic, Dick. The man is, is a cross between Ross Perot and, and, and Charles Manson."

  "John, with all due respect, and believe me we're grateful, the appropriations support we've been getting from your shop is absolutely magnificent. I just don't think we ought to work ourselves into a shoot-the-messenger mode."

  "All right, all right. Okay. Look, we better get a working group on this. But we better get some input from various, I guess we need more input than what we have now."

  "Right. Can always use more input. Absolutely."

  "But I want a tight loop."

  "Absolutely. Tight."

  "We want Bill, then? Well, we might as well have Bill in. I mean, he's already in the damn loop."

  "We're bound to want his satellite again at some point."

  "What about State? Do we want them?"

  "My problem with that would be, they always viewfinder from the host country POV. They're just going to take the Peruvian angle and run with it. Or leak. Jim is, well, Jim is doing a superb, superb job, but, well, let's face it, John, Jim leaks."

  "Uh-hum. There's another Jim problem. Jim and him are, you know."

  "Right. The buddy thing."

  "Right. If we loop in Jim, the first thing he's going to do is pick up the phone and-well, okay, Jim's out, for the time being. Anyway, this is just the option-formation stage."

  "Fine, good. You probably want to get Ray in the tent."

  "Ray-?"

  "AsSecDef for SOLIC."

  "Can you reconstitute that for me, Dick?"

  "Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict?"

  "Right. Is SOLIC part of JUNC?"

  "I think JUNC is part of SOLIC."

  "Oh."

  "The Joint Unified Narcotics Command sits on SOLIC, is how I think it works. I'd have to look at the org chart."

  "So, well, do we loop in JUNC, or-"

  "I'd say, I'd say maybe not at this point. I see this more as a SOLIC thing at this point."

  "I'm getting lost here, Dick."

  "Right."

  27

  Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb.

  Charley awoke with a snort to find Prescott's History of the Conquest of Peru lying heavily on his chest, his.45 stuck inside the pages as a bookmark.

  Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb. Stopped. Charley blinked the sleep fur out of his eyes and opened the book and tried to get the pages into focus. He was only up to Chapter 2, but he already liked what he knew about Pizarro, mostly on account of his being a bastard like himself, the illegitimate son of a colonel of infantry. Charley hoped he would not turn out to be a disappointment.

  "According to some, he was deserted by both his parents, and left as a foundling at the door of one of the principal churches of the city. It is even said that he would have perished, had he not been nursed by a sow."

  Suckled by a sow, now there's a man who's starting from scratch. Charley read on.

  "This is a more discreditable fountain of supply than that assigned to the infant Romulus. The early history of men who have made their names famous by deeds in after-life, like the early history of nations, affords a fruitful field for invention."

  It annoyed Charley that Prescott would give you a wonderful detail like that and then snatch it away-sarcastically at that-but he understood that Prescott had been blinded by a food fight while he was a student at Harvard and even then had gone on to write the immense stories of
Cortez and Pizarro, so he was willing to cut him some slack. Besides, he wrote so fine, could raise bumps on your arm. And he probably had to hedge his bets in case some historian from Yale showed up with a piece of parchment signed by the owner of the sow saying it was all true and without his sow Pizarro would have starved in infancy and the official language of Peru would now be Japanese.

  Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb. The hell was that? It was coming from the bedside console somewhere. It sounded like one of those traveling alarm clocks, the small black-plastic German jobs. But he didn't own one. So what was this noise and where was it coming from? Inside the drawer? Just like Germany to make alarm clocks to wake the world out of a deep, soft sleep. There was nothing in the drawer. It was coming from under the drawer.

  Beebeeb beebeeb beebeeb. There it was again.

  "Felix," he said into the intercom, "I need you."

  Felix couldn't figure it out either. It was definitely coming from inside the console somewhere. Charley wanted to take a crowbar to all that gorgeous bird's-eye maple paneling; then it stopped. Felix said it must be a loose circuit somewhere in the intercom system. Charley went back to Prescott. The thrum of Esmeralda's twin diesels began to work on him as Pizarro and his exhausted men hacked their way and came upon "an open space, where a small Indian village was planted. The timid inhabitants, on the sudden apparition of the strangers, quitted their huts in dismay; and the famished Spaniards, rushing in, eagerly made themselves masters of their contents… The astonished natives made no attempt at resistance. But, gathering more confidence as no violence was offered to their persons, they drew nearer the white men, and inquired, 'Why did they not stay at home and till their own lands, instead of roaming about to rob others who had never harmed them?'"

  Good question, Charley muttered, eyelids getting heavy.

  "Whatever may have been their opinion as to the question of right, the Spaniards, no doubt, felt then that it would have been wiser to do so. But the savages wore about their persons gold ornaments of some size, though of clumsy workmanship. This furnished the best reply to their demand."