White Cargo

by Stuart Woods

  The boy’s face contorted. “You bastard. I should kill you now.”

  “Maybe you should,” Cat replied, evenly. “You might be doing me a favor, and it shouldn’t bother you much. After all, in your business, people get killed every day.”

  “I simply supply a consumer need, just like you,” Dell said.

  “Sure, Dell, you go on telling yourself that. Never mind the human misery you and your kind cause. The money’s all that matters.”

  “What about the misery you caused my mother and my sister?” he spat back.

  “What about the misery you caused them?” Cat asked. “For two years your mother never went to sleep without fear of being wakened in the night by the police announcing your arrest or your murder. Your sister never mentioned your name outside the family, for fear of causing embarrassment to whoever might hear it. Your gifts to them were great—constant pain and suffering. The last night of their lives I sat at dinner and saw tears come to the eyes of both of them when your name was mentioned. To their credit, they both believed there might be something in you worth saving. I haven’t shared their hope for a long time now.”

  “Well,” Dell said, “you needn’t devote any more of your time to thinking about me. You can think, instead, of how they would still be alive and well if you hadn’t been so stupid.”

  “I’ll do that,” Cat said. “For as long as I live.”

  “I’m moving to Miami,” Dell said. “You won’t be hearing from me again. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

  “Finally, some good news,” Cat said, bitterly.

  “Yeah, I’m moving on up,” Dell replied. “I’m plugged in at the source now; no more low-level dealing—I’m in management. I’ll bet I make more money this year than you do.”

  “No bets on that,” Cat replied, trying hard to keep from running to the other end of the pool and beating his son to death. “Dealing in human misery has always paid well. All you have to do to win your bet is to live until the end of the year. From what I hear about your business, that won’t be as easy as you think.”

  “We’ll see,” Dell spat at him, then turned and walked away toward the garden gate.

  “We’ll see,” Cat echoed quietly to himself. He slipped into the pool again and began swimming long, slow strokes. Breathe deeply, he said to himself. Bleed the anger into the water. The boy was lost; forget about him.

  It didn’t work.

  • • •

  Cat spent the evening sitting, staring uncomprehendingly at the bedroom television set. The flight manual lay in his lap, open and unread. His flight test the next day, something that he had been eagerly anticipating, seemed remote and uninteresting. He went to bed at midnight, wide awake, longing for oblivion, but he remained conscious for a long time. Much later, when he had slipped into a light and troubled sleep, he suddenly jerked awake. Something had wakened him, but what? There had been no noise.

  Almost immediately, the telephone rang. He must have anticipated it, he thought. He glanced at the bedside clock: just after 4 A.M. Who the hell? He felt an unexpected stab of panic. The phone rang again. Fully awake now, unreasoningly frightened, he picked up the instrument. “Hello,” he said, rather unsteadily. He was greeted by a wave of static, coming, it seemed, from a great distance. “Hello,” he said again, this time more strongly.

  Then, faintly but clearly, came a voice he would have recognized anywhere on earth, at any time of the day or night, awake or asleep, a voice he had given up hope of ever hearing again.

  “Daddy?” the voice said.

  Cat felt a great rush of adrenaline, a tightening of the chest and throat; he seemed unable to exhale.

  Before he could speak, there was a turbulent scraping at the other end of the line, followed by a loud thud, then a distant, electronic chirp as the connection was broken.

  He spoke repeatedly into the telephone, shouting, begging, until finally he was quieted by the persistent sound of a dial tone coming from the instrument.

  He was left alone again, bereft, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

  7

  “THE SENATOR IS SORRY HE COULDN’T BE HERE TO SEE YOU, Mr. Catledge. He’s chairing an intelligence committee hearing right now. I’m counsel to the committee, and I should be there myself, but the senator is very grateful for your past support, and he wanted to know what we could do for you.”

  They were in the small conference room adjacent to the office of Senator Benjamin Carr, Democrat, the senior senator from Georgia. Carr’s chief administrative assistant sat across the table from Cat.

  “I understand, of course,” Cat said. “I’ve taken too much of his time already.”

  “Not at all,” the man replied. “He’s been very concerned about your situation.” The younger man, fortyish, Cat thought, placed his elbows on the table, folded his fingers together, and rested his chin on them. “I’ve been doing all the liaising with the State Department, though, so it’s just as well that you and I should talk. You’ve just come from Foggy Bottom, have you?”

  Cat nodded. “I saw the head of the Colombian desk.”

  “Barker?”

  “That’s the one. He was very sympathetic.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But he says he’s done all he can. The Colombian police are unwilling to open a new investigation on the basis of a single word spoken on the telephone from somebody who’s been confirmed dead.”

  “I was afraid of that,” the assistant replied. “After all, you saw her dead yourself, and the Coast Guard frogmen confirmed what you saw.”

  Cat shook his head. “What I saw was only for a fraction of a second, not long after I’d taken a shotgun blast in the chest. I wasn’t a very reliable witness. I know I saw Katie; she was lying on her back on the port settee, but Jinx . . . the girl I thought was Jinx . . . was facedown on the saloon table, naked. I haven’t seen Jinx naked since she was nine or ten, I guess, and as I said, I looked away immediately. Since we were the only three on the boat, I naturally assumed she was Jinx.”

  “Who was the girl you saw, then?”

  “There was a girl on the boat with the Pirate, Denny’s accomplice. Maybe she was somehow substituted for Jinx—I don’t know, I know it doesn’t make any sense. I only got a glimpse of her—I think she was probably older than Jinx and that she was Latin, but in the state I was in when I came to—well, it’s the sort of mistake I could easily have made.”

  “I can understand that.”

  Cat leaned forward. “What I didn’t make a mistake about was the voice on the telephone. It was Jinx. She said, ‘Daddy.’ It was almost the first word she ever said to me, and I’ve heard her say it all her life, at least until she started to grow up and decided to call me Cat. I’d know Jinx’s voice anywhere, and I’d know it especially well saying that particular word. It was Jinx.”

  The assistant was staring down at his reflection in the table. “I believe you,” he said finally. “What are your plans now? Are you going back down there?”

  The mere thought of returning to Colombia filled Cat with panic. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Barker, at State, advised against it in the strongest terms. He says I’m not equipped to conduct my own investigation, and God knows that’s true. He won’t give me assistance of any kind if I do go. Says the department won’t take any responsibility.”

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked, watching him closely.

  Cat leaned back and sighed. “I’m going to go back down there,” he said. “It’s all that’s left, and I could never live with myself if I didn’t do everything I possibly could to find Jinx.”

  The man seemed to search Cat’s face for doubt. “That’s your final decision, then? You won’t be dissuaded?”

  “No. I’m going. I’ve got some money; maybe I’ll go to the newspapers and offer a reward.”

  A twitch of alarm seemed to cross the assistant’s face. He stood up. “Will you excuse me for a few minutes? Don’t leave; I’ll be right back.�
� He left the room.

  Cat walked to the window and looked out toward the Capitol dome. There really was nothing else left to do. He dreaded the thought, but he would have to go back to Colombia, to Santa Marta, and make a start. Somebody, somewhere in that country knew something. Maybe he could buy the information. The money was all he had left. They could have it all if they’d give Jinx back to him. He watched people enter and leave the Capitol, his mind growing numb with the fear of what was ahead of him.

  Ten minutes passed. The assistant walked back into the room. “Sit down, will you?” he said.

  Cat dragged himself back to the table.

  The younger man placed his hands on the table in front of him and opened his fingers, as if to spread out some invisible map. “Let me be sure you understand this,” he said. “Our conversation ended when I left the room a few minutes ago. I expressed my sympathies, said there was nothing further the senator could do, we shook hands, and you left.”

  Cat snapped back to the present, puzzled.

  “This part of our conversation never happened,” the assistant said, seriously, “and no one—not the senator, or anyone else—is ever to be told about it, do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Cat said, his pulse accelerating. “Of course.”

  “You’re staying at the Watergate?”

  “Right, though I’d planned to check out before lunch and go back to Atlanta.”

  “Stay another night. Sometime tomorrow, probably in the afternoon, you’ll get a phone call from someone who will introduce himself as Jim. Just Jim.”

  “Jim. Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Maybe sooner. Don’t leave your room until you hear from him. Don’t expect too much, but he will probably have some advice for you. I can’t promise you’ll like the advice, but this is the only other thing I can think of to help you.”

  Cat stood up and offered his hand. “Thank you for believing me. Nobody else has.”

  The man took his hand. “Mr. Catledge, I only wish I could do more,” he said.

  • • •

  Cat was asleep when the phone rang. He hadn’t slept much the night before, and late in the afternoon he had dozed off in front of the TV. It took him two rings to orient himself. He glanced at the bedside clock as he picked up the phone. Just after six.

  “Hello?”

  “My name is Jim. I believe we have a mutual friend.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Come to 528 now.”

  “Where?”

  “Room 528, here, in the hotel.” The man hung up.

  Cat threw some water on his face and slipped on a jacket. He rode the elevator down to the fifth floor, found the room, and knocked. The man who opened the door was in his late fifties, nearly completely gray-haired, and was dressed in a three-piece suit, button-down collar, and a paisley tie. He didn’t look very fresh. He was wearing a day’s growth of beard, his shirt collar had a sweat ring, and his hair was greasy. He beckoned Cat into the room and pointed at one of a pair of wing chairs.

  “Take a pew,” he said, walking to the other chair.

  Cat sat down and glanced around the room. It didn’t look occupied. “Thanks for seeing me,” he said.

  “Any friend of the senator’s,” the man said.

  Cat relaxed a little. “Let me tell you about my problem,” he said.

  Jim held up a hand. “I’m acquainted with your problem,” he said. “I read the newspapers. Just let me do the talking for a while.”

  Cat nodded.

  Jim opened a briefcase, the smaller of two beside his chair, and took out a file folder. “Let’s see,” he said, flipping through pages. “Born Atlanta, Northside High, decent fullback—not good enough for college, though; Georgia Tech, Class of ’53, missed Korea with a student deferment—smart move, let me tell you. Naval ROTC, took your commission in the Marines. Why?”

  “I was young and stupid,” Cat said, honestly.

  Jim laughed. “Didn’t you like it at Quantico?”

  “Can’t say that I did,” Cat said.

  “I was there a few years ahead of you,” Jim said. “I guess I didn’t like it much, either.” He looked at the file again. “Still, you did okay. They had a nice word or two for you on your efficiency reports.”

  “I kept my mouth shut and did as I was told.”

  “That’s not what it says here,” Jim said, consulting the file. “Says here, ‘Extensive use of personal initiative, tends to improvise.’ That’s Marine-ese for maverick, or sometimes just pain in the ass.”

  Cat shrugged. “Guess I wasn’t cut out for the military.”

  “Is that why you turned down the Agency?” Jim asked. “You thought it would be too much like the military?”

  “The Agency?”

  “The Central Intelligence Agency. You’ve heard of that,” Jim said dryly.

  Cat’s eyebrows went up. “Jesus, is that who that guy was? I thought he wanted me to reenlist! He kept going on about service to my country. I told him to get stuffed.”

  Jim laughed. “Recruiters in those days were a little too subtle, I guess.”

  “Is that what you are? CIA?”

  Jim ignored the question and returned to the file. “Let’s see; out of Tech you worked for IBM, then Texas Instruments, then went off on your own with your financial whiz brother-in-law. Not cut out for the corporate life, either?”

  “I guess you could say I made extensive use of personal initiative, tended to improvise. Big business didn’t like it any better than the Marines did.”

  Jim nodded. “Then you got rich. Invented that printer, Ben took the company public. You paid all your debts, built a new house, built a boat. Net worth of a little over sixteen million, mostly in your remaining shares in the company, some real estate, money market, stocks. You’ve got a smart brother-in-law.”

  “You’re pretty well informed,” Cat said, squirming a little. “Do you know where my daughter is?”

  Jim shook his head. “Sorry. You seem to think she’s alive somewhere in Colombia, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re determined to go down there and look for her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Colombia can be a very dangerous place,” Jim said. “Is there anything I can say to talk you out of it?”

  “Not unless you can tell me another way to get my daughter back.”

  Jim shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t,” he said, “and if she were my daughter, I’d go after her, too.” He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “Listen,” he said, “why the hell not go down there? You’re just as smart as the State Department guys and the Colombian police, who’ve done all the looking so far. Hell, smarter—you’re rich! Your problem is, you’re a little short of resources. But you can buy resources.”

  “Such as?”

  “You’re going to need some help down there, somebody who knows the territory. You don’t speak any Spanish, do you?”

  “No. None.”

  Jim opened the larger of his two cases and took out a hefty camera. He got up and removed a picture from the wall. “Stand over here,” he said, taking off his necktie, “and put this on.”

  Cat did as he was told.

  Jim continued talking while he snapped a picture, pulled a tab on the back of the camera, and glanced at his watch. “There’s a guy who might be just the man, and fortunately he’s in Atlanta. He’s an Australian, name of Bluey Holland; he’s lived in this country for a while—well, off and on, anyway. He’s spent a lot of time in Colombia, and he knows all the wrong people, if you know what I mean.”

  “Do you think he might be free?” Cat asked.

  “Well, not exactly,” Jim said. “He’s in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. But he’s up for parole soon. I can see that somebody puts in a favorable word for him. You’ve changed a lot since your last passport picture was taken,” he said, holding up a sheet of four photographs of Cat.

  “Well, apart from the beard and haircut, I’ve lost about
fifty pounds.”

  “That’s good. Nobody’s going to recognize you as the man who had his picture in all the papers a while back.”

  “What’s Bluey Holland in for?” Cat asked.

  Jim returned to his chair, fished in the large case, and came up with some sort of small machine. “Old Bluey is a hotshot pilot—Australian outback, bush flying in Alaska, that sort of thing, and he’s made not a few runs between this country and various strips in South America.”

  “I see,” Cat said.

  “This last time, though, Bluey got mixed up with some Cubans on a deal—Jesus, nobody should get mixed up with Cubans these days—and they stuck him in Atlanta with them.”

  “Is this guy a hard criminal?”

  “Well, let’s just say that old Bluey has always taken a liberal view of U.S. Customs regulations. He doesn’t hit people over the head and take their money, doesn’t do contract killings. Bluey loves flying, preferably low and fast, and he prefers small, dark airports to big, brightly lit ones. He’s a pretty capable sort of fellow, and as I’ve said, he knows the territory down there.”

  “How can I contact him?”

  “I’ll have him contact you when he’s out. He won’t know where the message came from. Tell him Carlos pointed you at him.” Jim snipped the four photographs apart, took a small blue booklet from his case, and, using the machine in his lap, sealed a photograph into the booklet. “There’s not a hell of a lot more I can do for you, except give you some thin cover.”

  “How do you mean, thin cover?” Cat asked.

  Jim tossed him the booklet.

  Cat opened it to find his photograph in the United States passport of one Robert John Ellis.

  “You’ll need this, too,” Jim said, tossing something else.

  Cat caught a well-worn wallet. Inside were half a dozen credit cards, a social security card, a Georgia driver’s license, and other cards, much like the ones in Cat’s pocket.

  “Sign them and the passport.”

  Cat started signing.

  “Ellis is a salesman with your company,” Jim said. “Other than having a different name and address, he’s a lot like you. His passport expires on the same date and it has the same stamps as yours, the same travel history. In fact, since you’ve lost so much weight and shaved the beard, his passport information is more like you than yours is.”