by Stuart Woods
“Of course, señor.”
“And I’d like to make a call to Atlanta.” He gave her Ben’s number. “I will have to place the call with the international operator, and that will probably take at least an hour,” she said.
“Fine, I’ll either be at the pool bar or in the dining room.” He hung up and got into a shower.
• • •
She was wearing a white silk sheath this time, and she looked even better, the whites of her eyes startling against her tanned skin. “Let’s go straight to the dining room, shall we?” he said, taking her arm. “It suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, with all that’s happened.” He took her arm and guided her to a table, noticing how pleasant her cool skin felt to his touch.
When they had ordered drinks and dinner, she took a sip of her martini and put it down. “Before you tell me what’s happened, there’s something I must tell you,” she said.
“I’m all ears.”
“I’m a television journalist—free-lance. I sell my stuff to the American networks. My proper name is Maria Eugenia Garcia-Greville, but I use Meg Greville for my work.”
A light went on in Cat’s head. “Of course, I’ve seen some of your stuff—on the Today show, wasn’t it? Something about Central American guerrillas?”
“That’s me.”
“But you never appear on camera, do you?”
“No. I was working at a local television station in Los Angeles during the early seventies, and I talked them into sending me to Vietnam with a cameraman and sound man—not for war reporting, but for human-interest stuff—talking to kids from L.A. in hospitals—‘Hi, Mom’—that sort of thing. We had hardly arrived when there was an attack on Saigon. My cameraman and sound man and I took a mortar shell behind a wall where we were hiding. Both my crew were killed, but I wasn’t badly hurt. I salvaged some of the gear and did my own shooting, narrating it as I went. I kept it up through the whole attack, and when I got back to L.A. it ran—first on the local station, then on the network. I got a Peabody for it.
“After that, I never worked any other way. The subjective camera, voice-over, turned into a personal trademark for me, and over the years the equipment has shrunk and gotten a lot lighter, so it’s easier than it used to be.”
“You’re free-lance, you say? You don’t work for a network?”
“Nope, I like my independence. It pays well, and I can pursue whatever interests me. Mostly I’ve reported from South and Central America and from the Philippines. I came down here the first time to do a story about an Indian family in the Amazon who run their own little cocaine factory—just a man, his wife, and two sons. I met some people, established some sources, fell in love with the country. I bought a little piece of property near Cartagena and built a beach house. I keep an apartment in New York, but the house is where I come when I’m tired. I heard about the gamines in Santa Marta, and I’ve been up here for a little over a week, shooting stuff on them. It’ll make a good piece for the Today show, I think. I’m all wrapped up now; I was shooting my last footage when I ran into you yesterday on the street.”
“Sounds like an interesting life.”
She nodded. “It is.” She paused. “I like to be up front on a story. I wanted you to know, going in, that I’m a reporter.”
“You want to do a story on what I’m doing here?”
She shook her head. “No, I wasn’t around to shoot any tape, so for me there’s no story. You’re going home, anyway, you said. No, I’m just curious, having landed in the middle of all this. But I am a reporter, and I want you to know that if you tell me something, it might end up in a story sometime.”
“Fair enough. I’ll skip the part about losing the yacht, since you’ve read the reports on that, anyway.”
“What I read was the Time story. I was in Honduras at the time.”
“That was accurate reporting, so I’ll start a few months after that, in fact, less than a month ago.” Cat took her from the phone call to the present, giving her as much detail as he could, remaining vague about his contact with Jim. He found that telling her the story was helping to put the whole thing into perspective. If he had had any doubts that he was at the end of his rope, they dissolved as he recounted the details.
“And exactly how did you meet Bluey Holland?”
“Friend of a friend. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that.”
“And now you feel that your daughter is really dead?”
Cat sighed. “I’m not sure about the voice on the phone anymore,” he said, “and apart from that, I don’t have the slightest shred of evidence that she might be alive. I do know, thanks to you, that one of her murderers is dead, though, and that’s half the job done.”
“Would you finish the job if you could find Denny?”
A little flash of anger went through him as he thought about Denny. “If he were sitting here right now, I don’t think I could answer for myself. But I wouldn’t know where to start looking for him. Would you, in the circumstances?”
She shook her head. “It’s a big country, and he might not even be in it. I wish I could suggest something.”
Dinner came, and they ate slowly, making small talk about Central America and Colombia. As the busboy took away the plates, a waiter appeared.
“A telephone call, Señor Ellis,” he said.
Cat rose. “Excuse me, I placed a call to my brother-in-law earlier. I’ll be right back.” He followed the waiter to a phone. The connection was excellent.
“Jesus, I’m glad you’re alive,” Ben said. “We’ve been worried sick.”
“I’m just fine, Ben, and I’m coming home tomorrow. Everything here has come to a dead end.”
There was a short silence, then Ben said, “Listen, a guy in Senator Carr’s office called here a couple of days after you left.”
“Yeah? What did he say?”
“He said he had a message from Jim. Do you know a Jim?”
“Yes. What was the message?”
“There were two pieces of information he wanted passed on to you when we heard from you. First, he said that a guy you were in the Marines with, named Barry Hedger, is working in the American Embassy in Bogotá. He thought that might be a good contact for you if you had problems.”
Cat remembered Barry Hedger well. He had been a fellow platoon leader in the company, a gung-ho, straight-arrow Naval Academy man who none of the ROTC officers had liked very much. “Well, I guess that information won’t be of much use now,” he said. “What was the other thing?”
“The other thing,” Ben said, “was the phone call you thought you got from Jinx.”
“What about it?” Cat asked.
“This guy, Jim, says it was traced to a hotel room in Cartagena—”
“What?”
“He was very emphatic about it, said it was confirmed that the phone call came from”—a paper rustled—“from the Caribé Hotel in Cartagena.”
Cat grabbed a nearby chair and sank into it, his knees weak.
Ben was still talking. “I don’t know how the hell a thing like that could be confirmed,” he said, “but the senator’s aide said you could take it as gospel. Listen, Cat, I owe you an apology. I thought you were hallucinating or dreaming or something.”
Cat’s heart was pounding, his mind racing. He thought for a moment he might faint.
“Cat? Are you there?”
Cat got hold of himself. “Yes, Ben, I’m sorry, I was just having a little trouble absorbing that information.” He dug into his coat pocket for Bluey’s notebook. “Listen, Ben, I want you to do something for me, something important, okay?”
“Sure, anything.”
He gave Ben the address of Bluey’s daughter and ex-wife. “I want you to confirm that Marisa Holland is the daughter of one Ronald Holland, and I want you to tell her mother that Holland was killed in a mugging in Colombia, all right?”
“Sure, all right. You didn’t get mugged, did you, Cat?”
“Sure, Cat, I’ll get on it tomorrow. Anything else?”
“That’s it for now. I’ll call you when I’ve had a chance to check out the Caribé Hotel. And, Ben, thanks so much for this news.”
He hung up and returned to the table. “I’m not leaving tomorrow,” he told Meg. He explained what he had just been told.
Meg leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table. “Do you know anybody in any of the American intelligence services?” she asked.
“Sort of. Why?”
“Well, that phone call is the sort of thing that only the National Security Agency could track down. They’re constantly recording all sorts of international telephone calls.”
Cat nodded. “Maybe that’s how it was done. You say you’re finished in Santa Marta?”
“Yes, all I’ve got to do is edit my videotape when I get back, then lay a voice track over it. No rush about that, though. I haven’t sold the piece yet.”
“Will you come to Cartagena with me tomorrow, then? I could really use the help of somebody who knows the territory.”
“Can I come as a reporter? Can I shoot if I want to?”
“All right.”
She offered him a firm handshake. “You’ve got a deal. If I can help you find her, I will. I just want it all on tape.”
It seemed a small price for her help, Cat thought. And quite apart from that, he was glad she would be around for a while longer.
16
WITH MEG GREVILLE’S HELP, CAT MANAGED TO FILE A FLIGHT plan for Cartagena and get a weather forecast. He was relieved to have good flying weather, since, in spite of the instrument rating on his forged license, he didn’t want to have to make an instrument approach.
On the taxiway, he went slowly and carefully through the checklist, doing the procedure as Bluey had taught him. “Listen,” he said to Meg, “the international language of air traffic control is supposed to be English, but if I get into trouble, jump in and save me, okay?”
“Sure. I don’t fly, myself, but I’ve got a lot of hours as a passenger in light planes in Latin America. I know the drill pretty well.”
Cat called the tower and reported ready for takeoff. He was relieved to get permission in clear English. He taxied onto the runway, noting the time, glad to have the Rolex back on his wrist where it belonged, and shoved the throttle forward, watching the airspeed indicator carefully. At sixty knots, he pulled back on the yoke and the airplane rose into the air. He climbed to his filed altitude of four thousand, five hundred feet and turned southwest, working through his checklist. He leaned out the engine, set a course, and switched on the autopilot and altitude hold. He relaxed a little, feeling as if Bluey were still seated beside him, issuing instructions.
Cat chose to fly over the sea, a mile or so offshore, to get a better view of the coast. In an emergency, he could always set down on the beach. The coastline looked ordinary enough. There was an occasional tiny village, hard against the beach, and the large city of Barranquilla with its VOR beacon. He hardly needed radio navigation, though. It was simply a matter of hugging the shore until Cartagena hove into view.
Just before Barranquilla, Meg pointed ahead and down. “Can you make out a twin-engine airplane just inshore of the beach?”
Cat looked for a moment and found it. The aircraft was sitting only a few yards from a house.
“Drug runner inbound from the States,” she said. “Probably aiming for the Guajira, got lost, and ran out of fuel. He put it down on the water, skipped a couple of times, plowed across the beach, and came to rest in somebody’s front yard.”
Cat was thankful he’d been with somebody as capable as Bluey on his inbound trip.
An hour or so after leaving Santa Marta, Meg pointed again. “There’s Cartagena Airport.”
They were five miles out, and the single long strip was easily visible. Cat started a descent and called the tower. Shortly, he was on final approach, running through the last of his checklist. He bounced once, then settled the airplane down. Soon he wished he’d aimed for the middle of the ten-thousand-foot runway. It was a long taxi to the terminal. A lineman guided him to a parking spot, and Meg ordered fuel. A policeman appeared, but the forged papers and a smile from Meg got them cleared quickly. A teenage boy turned up with a cart to carry their luggage.
“Where do we get a cab?” Cat asked Meg.
“My car’s in the parking lot,” she said.
The car was a dusty, elderly Mercedes sedan, from which the radio had apparently been stolen. Soon they were entering the city, driving along a high, stuccoed wall.
“What’s behind the wall?” Cat asked.
“The Old City. I’ll show you later.”
They came to a stretch of beach rimmed by a string of high-rise hotels disappearing into the distance. Modern Cartagena, at least the beach portion of it, looked very like a Florida resort city. The Caribé stood out among the modern hotels, an older, lower building of pink stucco. Meg pulled into the driveway and under a portico. A doorman took the car, and they entered the cool lobby of the Spanish-style building and approached the front desk.
“May I speak with the manager, please?” Cat asked a woman at the front desk.
“He is occupied, señor,” she replied. “Will you wait a few minutes?”
“We’ll be at the pool restaurant,” Meg said quickly. “Mr. Ellis is the name.” She turned to Cat. “I’m hungry. Let’s get a sandwich while we’re waiting.”
They walked out of the lobby, through a densely gardened area, and up some stairs to the pool.
Cat was impressed. “I wasn’t expecting anything quite like this in Colombia,” he said, gazing at the large, handsome pool and the beautiful bodies surrounding it. “This reminds me of the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
“Oh, this can be a very pleasant country,” Meg said, sitting down at a poolside table. “This hotel is my favorite in Cartagena. It was designed by a Cuban just after World War II, and I think it must be a bit like Havana before Castro.”
As they were finishing their lunch, a young man in a suit approached them. “Excuse me, Mr. Ellis? The manager will be occupied for some time. My name is Rodriguez, may I be of assistance?”
Cat offered the man a chair. He had his story ready. “Earlier this month, I believe my niece may have been staying here. I had a brief telephone call from her—a very bad connection—and then we were cut off. I was unable to get through that day, and when I finally did I was told that she was not registered. I’d like to locate her; her mother is worried about her.”
“What was your niece’s name, Señor? I will check my records.”
“Her name is Katharine Ellis, but I think she was travelling with friends, so she may not have been registered. I think if I could learn who she was travelling with, I might be able to contact her through her friends.”
Rodriguez looked puzzled.
“What I wonder if you could help me with is, would it be possible to check your telephone records for the date and learn from which room the call was made? Then we would know to whom the room was registered. The call was made on the second of this month.”
Rodriguez now looked doubtful, and not a little suspicious.
“I am afraid this is irregular, señor. We do not divulge the names of our guests to informal inquiries. In any case, the hotel was filled to capacity on that date, and that would mean searching the records of more than two hundred rooms.”
Cat jotted a number in his notebook, ripped it out, and pushed it across the table, covering two one-hundred-
dollar bills. “Here is the number she telephoned. It is in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. I know this is a great imposition, but I wonder if you might take the time to have a look through your records?”
Rodriguez glanced quickly about him, then pocketed the number and the bills. “Well, perhaps I could take a look through the telephone records this evening, when I am off duty.”
“Thank you so much,” Cat said.
“Where may I reach you, Señor Ellis? This may take a few days, unless I am lucky.”
Meg cut in and gave the man a phone number.
Rodriguez stood and bowed. “I shall be in touch as soon as possible, Señor Ellis,” he said.
“Thank you,” Cat replied. “I will be equally grateful when you have found the information.”
The young man smiled and left.
“What was that number you gave him?” Cat asked.
“My place. You may as well stay out there. There’s a lot of room.”
“You’re sure I’m not putting you out? I could get a room here.”
“Not at all,” she said.
They finished lunch and left the hotel, driving along the beach.
“We’ll take a turn through the Old City,” she said, maneuvering through cars, brightly painted schoolbuses, and horse-drawn carriages. She drove through a gate in the fifty-foot-thick walls, and the character of Cartagena changed dramatically. Suddenly, they were in an earlier century. They wandered through narrow streets and elegant squares. The buildings were beautifully restored and maintained, made of the same masonry and stucco, with the same tile roofs. There was a harmony of design that grew from centuries of tradition and slow change.
“This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen,” Cat said. “I expected this whole country to be one great big hovel, but I was wrong.”
“This part of the city goes back to the early sixteenth century. This was the strongest fortress in South America, the port from which most of South America’s treasure was hauled away by the Spanish.”