by Warren Adler
XIX
Dobbs closed the file on his desk. His eyes stung and he pressed thumb and middle finger into the lids, gently massaging them. Information! It had rolled off the papers like a moving oil slick, drowning him finally. There were facts, supposition, speculation, conclusions, theories, a hodgepodge of bureaucratic justification, heavily layered with the manure of intelligence.
He had, he knew, ignored all that, seeking beneath the surface, into the heart of it. And he had found nests of maggots crawling beneath his own skin. Because he was dead, the fire of life cold, he did not foresee what was coming. What did he know of a woman's ecstasy and how close it was to scorn? Love, he knew now, could be fashioned into a deadly weapon. It was something Eduardo had understood, and that understanding had bested him.
Had he really pieced together the essence of the man from all this litter? Why hadn't he done it before? He had known what was happening. Eduardo's every move was known. The women were also in the net. Had he deliberately let them kill him? He looked around his familiar office, felt Eduardo's presence again. I killed you, you bastard, he hissed. And I would have given anything to have lived and died in your place.
He had, of course, reached the official conclusion immediately, as he had watched them cart off the remains. Now he was the CIA man again, the professional.
The official line, spinning now in Dobbs' brain, was that Palmero was wasted by the DINA because of his influence in this country. What an absurdity! The man was a bungler, although the missions he had instigated were quite clever. Yet they could have been aborted by a single word from Dobbs. Let them do it, Dobbs had decided at the time. Shake things up a bit. Sooner or later they would have to intercede anyway.
He looked over the FBI on-scene, quick report. No strange prints. The bomb was traditional, the usual plastic job with the battery operated clock. Simple. Direct. A bit messy, but programmed for overkill, not one of these noisy, just-for-warning pops.
Viewing it dispassionately, Dobbs concocted a number of dead-end theories he could project to the FBI, although he knew he detested the waste of money and manpower. The investigation would be interminable and the poor agents would be put upon, castigated by both their superiors and all those gullible lefties who would beat their breasts and insist that the fellow was done in by the Junta. Wonderful, he decided, shaking his head at the stupidity of it all. He sat down again and studied the photographs of the man under the light, the smooth face, the small moustache, the intense, obsessed look. Then his eye wandered to the photographs taken that morning, the mutilated remains, the abused flesh. Surely, he knew we were watching him? Did he also know what the women would do? And were they really all Miranda?
The instrument was passion, and the death weapon was passion, the double-edged sword. Which explained nothing to him, since he could not feel it, had not ever felt it. Just give me that power for one week, Dobbs pleaded, mocking himself, and I would submit to the ritual of death.
It was getting late. In the distance, over the treetops, he could see the relentless lights of the rush hour traffic. There was work still to be done. The destruction of records, the death of the information, the reshuffling of personnel, the obliteration and recycling of facts. It annoyed him that he could not do the same with his own brain. He hoped he would forget it someday, but he knew that was now impossible.