by Kyle Mills
“How was your trip?”
“Productive.”
“Good. You ready for a tour?”
Hobart checked the bottom of his suitcase for dirt, then laid it on one of the sofas. “Sure.”
Swenson led him into the back office. It was furnished in the same style as the reception area, though a large desk stood in the place of the sofas. A new-looking computer took up most of the top. A map of the United States was framed over a small love seat opposite the desk. Colored pins were stuck in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Baltimore. A plaque on the desk was engraved with the words JOHN SEVEREN, PRESIDENT, CLIPPER CITY ANTIQUES AND ODDITIES. A crystal tray held business cards with the same inscription.
“Looks pretty good.”
“Yeah, they just finished. I’d rather deal with ten pissed-off coke dealers than one Baltimore contractor.” He sat down behind the desk. “I’ve barred all the windows and replaced the doors with steel. We’ve got motion detectors in the reception area, the office, and the warehouse. All the windows and doors are wired.” He threw Hobart a key chain. “The small key opens the panel on the keypad out front—you probably noticed it as you came in the door.”
Hobart nodded.
“The large gold one opens the front door. You can’t open the loading dock from the outside. The two silver keys are to the apartments upstairs. You’ve got the one on the second floor. The boxes you wanted me to pick up at your house are in the bedroom.”
Hobart fished his keys out of his pocket and added the new ones to the ring.
“So when do we get the mushrooms?”
“They tell me December fifth.” Hobart took a piece of paper out of his wallet and tossed it on the desk. “Give this guy a call and tell him you’re working for Professor Stapleton. He’ll let you know if the shipment’s going to be on time. It’ll be coming into Norfolk.”
“Where’re you gonna be?”
“Bogotá. I’m flying out in a couple of days.”
Swenson’s eyes moved across the piece of paper. “No problem, I’ll take care of it.”
“How’re our guys doing?”
“Better than we expected, actually. I got them all their IDs within a couple of days and they’re all on location. The guy in New York has a lead on a warehouse owned by Anthony DiPrizzio. Word on the street is that he ships a lot of stuff through there. He’s trying to get hooked up with a job. Miami’s actually set up a bogus trucking company and is putting the word out that they don’t much care what they ship. They seem pretty sharp.”
“They are,” Hobart replied. “I figured we’d send our best two guys to Miami. Should be some opportunities to hit big shipments.”
Swenson nodded his agreement and continued. “Let’s see … The guy in D.C. has set himself up as a supplier to street dealers. Not a real sexy operation but he says he’s done some deals already. Chicago set up a lab and is making designer stuff—speed and acid mostly. They say they’ll probably start doing deals in about a week. The guys in L.A. are setting themselves up as midlevel operators. They say things are moving along but that it could be a couple of months before they get things really rolling.”
“How are the finances holding up?”
“Pretty good so far. The warehouse cost us a few bucks, and your last-minute plane tickets are a hell of a lot more expensive than I thought, but we should be okay. Look, I’ve got a full report for you on the computer. Let me reel it off the printer and you can go through it tonight. The shredder’s out in the warehouse.”
Hobart sat quietly as his associate punched at the keyboard. Swenson gave a sharp push on the front of the desk, sending him and his chair rolling to the printer which had just come alive. “Oh, I almost forgot, the security code on the door is HEAT. The one on the computer is TIME. I think words are easier to remember than numbers. He pulled the pages off the printer and handed them across the desk. “Why don’t you go check out your apartment and get some sleep.”
The apartments hadn’t been renovated to the degree that the office had. The carpet was clearly new, and there was a new coat of paint on the walls, but the appliances, cabinets, and bathrooms were vintage 1970s Baltimore. On the positive side, the rooms were spacious and well lit, and the furniture was comfortable, if not luxurious. Even better, his partner had stocked the refrigerator with food and beer. Hobart screwed the top off of a Budweiser and settled onto the sofa. The TV remote was on the coffee table and he used it to flip to CNN. Settling back, he scanned the report in his hand. It was headed CCAO, Clipper City Antiques and Oddities.
Swenson had used clever euphemisms for their operation, and the report ended in a cash flow statement and balance sheet. Hobart had no difficulty understanding the real contents of the pages, but anyone picking it up would read a rather confusing antique company financial report. Clever. He was lucky to have Swenson on board.
He took a last gulp of beer and headed for the shower. It was early, but he knew that he should get sleep when he could. Things were going to start moving pretty fast.
“Howdy, ma’am,” Mark Beamon said with a deep Southern drawl.
The young woman sitting at the desk in front of him leaned forward to get a better look at the ornate silver plates adorning the toes of his boots. Then she leaned back, taking in the enormous ten gallon hat perched on his head.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I’m the new deputy marshal in town. Marshal Beamon.”
You’re Mark Beamon?” She jerked to her feet.
Beamon pulled a long piece of hay from his pocket and began chewing it. “I shorly am. And you’re Christie—my new secretary, right?”
She stuck out her hand. “Welcome to Houston, Mr. Beamon.”
“Mark, please.” He pointed behind her.
“So is this my office?”
“Yes, sir. Let me give you the tour.” He followed her into the small office. She stood in the center of it and spread her arms wide. “Here it is.”
Beamon tossed his hat at a picture of the President, attempting to hook it on the edge of the frame. Both the picture and the hat fell to the carpet.
“Great tour, Chris. Have a seat.” He tested his chair like a bather trying to sit in water that is too hot. Finally he settled into it, satisfied. He looked across the tidy desk at his new secretary. He had checked her out before he came. Top scores from all polled.
“So do I have anything to do today, Chris?”
“Yes, sir. Steve said he wanted to see you as soon as you got in. He should be in his office. Straight down the hall. Last door on the left.”
“How’s his mood?” Beamon asked out of habit. Director Calahan’s emotional state was always in question. Realizing he wasn’t in Washington anymore, he held up his hand. “Never mind. Do I have lunch plans?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you?”
“No, sir.”
“Inexplicably, I was passed over by the Queen for a knighthood. Just Mark, please.”
She smiled. “Okay, Mark.”
“Better.” He rose from his chair and headed for the door. “What say you and I do lunch around noon?”
Beamon peeked his head around the doorjamb of his new boss’s office. “Steve! How you doin’?”
Steve Garrett stood up from behind his desk and walked across the room. They shook hands warmly.
“It’s been a long time, Mark.”
“Five years?”
“It’s gotta be.”
Beamon headed for a sofa in the corner. Garrett closed the office door and sat down on the love seat across from his new ASAC.
“So how’s your first day so far, Mark?”
“Good. I just met Chris—she seems great.”
“Yeah, you lucked out. She’s one of the best.”
There was an awkward lull in the conversation. Beamon wanted a cigarette but resisted. Garrett’s move.
“So where do we stand, Mark?”
Garrett wasn’t going to
get off that easy. “Whatever do you mean, Steve?”
Garrett looked down at this thumb and began cleaning imaginary dirt from under the nail. “A high flyer like you can’t be too happy about being banished to Houston to work for a … conservative guy like me.”
Beamon shrugged. “I’m not gonna bullshit you, Steve. Was this my first choice? Nope. I thought I was due an SAC slot. But Tom Sherman disagreed. Probably for good reason—he’s a lot smarter about stuff like that than me. So here I am.”
Garrett nodded thoughtfully. “And how are you gonna play it?”
Beamon smiled. “Any way you want me to, boss.”
“I’m serious, Mark. Tom tells me you live up to your reputation as the best investigator in the Bureau. But I also hear you can be …”
“Go ahead and say it, Steve.”
“I don’t need a lot of problems, Mark. I’m getting old.”
Beamon’s tone turned serious. “You’re not gonna have any, Steve. Look, I need some latitude to do my best work, I’m not gonna deny that. The whole solemn dignity thing never worked for me. But give me a little rope and I can be a hell of an asset to you. I’m looking forward to working here. I really am. Calahan’s a thousand miles away, and I get to help a bunch of young energetic FBI agents turn into top-notch investigators.”
Garrett frowned. “Try to impart the skills and not the attitude. I can live with one Mark Beamon, but fifty’d be a bit much.”
Beamon laughed and pantomimed spitting in his right palm. He stuck out his hand. “That’d be too many even for me. Friends?”
Garrett stared at his hand with mock suspicion for a few seconds, then reached out and grabbed it.
7
Above Bogotá, Colombia,
November 26
At the request of a pretty Hispanic stewardess, John Hobart put his seat in the upright position for the final approach into Bogota’s Eldorado Airport. He watched with mild interest as her ample bottom swayed gracefully through the narrow aisle, jiggling seductively as the plane shuddered through the Andean turbulence.
He hated flying. It wasn’t that he was afraid of crashing—irrational fear was not one of his failings. It was the inactivity that put knots in his stomach. Most people could put their flying time to good use, but there was something in the white noise that wouldn’t let him think. He could only wait until the wheels touched the ground and the dull hum of the engines faded into the rustling of the passengers reaching for their belongings.
He looked out the window for the thousandth time. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The captain promised a temperature of sixty degrees and a light westerly breeze.
Hobart hadn’t been to Colombia in almost fifteen years, but little had changed. A cabby dropped him in front of his hotel, still trying to convince him that he knew of places more suitable. It could have been the same man who had chauffeured him around the city in the early eighties.
Hobart stood for a moment on the sidewalk and ran his hand through his newly colored jet-black hair. A combination of sunlamps and dyes had darkened his skin considerably. Contacts turned his eyes brown.
The effect was marginal. Between his European features and accented Spanish, he would pass as a half-breed at best.
His two large black bags had sailed through a disinterested Colombian customs checkpoint without so much as a glance from the officers on duty. He hated leaving things to chance, but sometimes it was unavoidable. Had he been unfortunate enough to have been stopped, the officials would have undoubtedly been very interested in their contents. Fortunately, people were not generally in the practice of smuggling things into Colombia.
The hotel was far worse than the one in Warsaw. Buildings on the Continent aged more gracefully than their counterparts in other parts of the world. Cracked plaster and broken tiles just seemed to add character—a reminder of Europe’s colorful past. In South America, run-down was just that, run-down. The hotel looked like it had been built ready to fall down.
The room was about what he’d expected. A filthy cubicle with no furniture other than a twin bed with a single blanket and a folding chair. A mirror hung across from the bed. Judging from the discoloration on the wall, it had at one time adorned the top of a bureau.
Hobart shoved his suitcases under the bed and pulled a crumpled street map out of his back pocket. As near as he could tell, the bar that his friend had suggested for their meeting was about twenty blocks from the hotel. He had two hours before they were to meet, so he decided to walk. It would give him a chance to acclimate to his surroundings. The air and exercise would do him good. Bogota’s eighty-seven-hundred-foot altitude was giving him a splitting headache.
It was almost four o’clock by the time he left the hotel, but the winter sun was still powerful. It heated his black T-shirt, making the jacket he was carrying unnecessary. Pulling a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket, he began his hike across town.
Bogotá seemed to be trapped in time. The feeling that he had stepped back to the early eighties grew in him as he walked. The streets were bursting with people in clothes that hadn’t been in style for years. The small houses that lined his route were painted with little thought to the color of the houses next door. Garbage was piled high in the yards of many of the homes that would have looked abandoned had it not been for the people sitting on the porches.
Every few blocks or so a group of dirty children surrounded him, begging for pesos. He noticed that he was one of the few people being mobbed, making him feel self-conscious about his disguise.
Slowly the houses became more and more scarce, appearing only occasionally, sandwiched between colorful shops and bars. Music blared from the small cantinas, replacing the squeals of children playing in the streets and the cautioning shouts of their mothers. Despite the early hour, drunk patrons stood elbow to elbow in the cramped cantinas, swaying maniacally to the volume-distorted Spanish rhythms. An old man stumbled out of an open door, nearly knocking Hobart over, and finally landing on his back in a pile of bulging garbage bags. He sank deeply into their soft contents, and that, combined with his altered equilibrium, was making it impossible for him to get up. He apparently found his predicament hysterically funny and began a drunken, coughing laugh that could be heard clearly over the noise of the bar ten feet away. Eventually a woman stumbled out of the same door and pulled him to his feet. They walked off, clutching each other for support.
Hobart jogged across to the quieter side of the street, continuing his search for the place where his friend had promised to meet him.
The man that he was in Bogotá to see was Reed Corey. They had been attached to the same Special Forces team in Vietnam, and as far as Hobart was concerned, Corey was one of the finest jungle fighters in the history of the U.S. Army. Since his discharge after the war, Corey had wandered aimlessly through Asia and South America. He seemed unable to assimilate back into polite society. Hobart understood his predicament. After three tours in Vietnam where his team had made its own law, returning to the U.S. had been strangely confining. While Hobart had forced his own personal transition, Cory had resigned himself to living in the less genteel countries of the world.
Corey was prone to excesses. He always had been. Drinking, fighting, sex. One thing Corey could not abide, though, was drugs. Hobart remembered sitting idly one time in a small village not thirty miles from Saigon, watching Corey beat one of his men nearly to death—something that he couldn’t do as an officer. Corey had discovered a stash of heroin in the man’s duffel. He’d never understood other men’s need to occasionally escape the grim reality of the war. The things that drove other men to the edge—the heat, bugs, rain, brutality—all seemed to go unnoticed by him.
Why rot your brain when you could be blowing some gooks out? he used to ask. All in all, a perfect recruit for this operation.
On his second pass down the street, Hobart found what he was looking for. He turned off the sidewalk and hurried through the thickening traffic. The entrance to the Piñata Verde wa
s doorless, basically a hole cut in a galvanized metal wall. He stepped through and scanned the room. It was nearly empty. A few tired-looking patrons sat alone at tables with lines of empty shot glasses extending in front of them. The bartender sat on a stool behind a plywood bar, concentrating on an American game show dubbed in Spanish—Hobart couldn’t place which one. No one acknowledged his arrival. The only sound in the room came from the television and the bartender trying to beat the game show contestants to their answers.
Hobart padded quietly to the back of the bar, keeping his eyes on the booths to his left as he passed them. He slid into the last booth, and began reading the graffiti carved into the cheap wood table. It looked like Corey would be a little late.
A lone figure at the bar came to life. Ordering two drinks, he jumped unsteadily off his bar stool and started to make his way to the corner booth where Hobart sat. The man was clearly not native. His matted light brown hair came down straight onto his shoulders, framing a tangled full beard. The tie-dyed shirt, baggy shorts, and Birkenstocks completed the effect of a hippie-era throwback. Hobart studied him as he approached.
The man slid into the booth and pushed a full shot glass across the table to Hobart. His ample belly brushed the table.
“Almost didn’t recognize you, John. You look like a fucking spic.” Reed Corey lit a cigarette, cupping his hand needlessly in the stagnant air. As the flame briefly illuminated his face, Hobart recognized his eyes. They were watery and red-rimmed, where they had once been clear and sharp, but there was no mistaking them. He stared quietly at what was left of his old army buddy, and Corey stared back. “It’s good to see you, John. Been a long time.” He wiped at his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed loudly.
“It’s good to see you too, Reed…. You’ve changed.”
Corey laughed at the comment, patting his round stomach. “Yeah, a little too much of the good life.” He went through his nose-wiping ritual again.