“Of course not.”
“We’re going to become rich men.” For the first time Lang allowed his feelings to intrude beyond the stiffly formal. “Very rich men indeed.”
“That’s what we both want,” said Farr.
He drove slowly toward the island’s tiny capital. He’d stumbled at lunch, certainly; but Lang appeared to have accepted the explanation. Against his blunder, there was a lot of success. He had the names, confirmation enough that they were on the right track, and written instructions to go ahead.
He thrust hopefully into the office, smiling broadly to Harriet, who looked fixedly back at him.
“You alone? Has he gone?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“You alone?” she insisted.
“Yes.”
“Christ!” she said despairingly, as Mann emerged from the second office, followed by the cautiously waiting Brennan and Seymour. Behind them, finally, came Batty and Jones.
“What is it!” demanded Farr.
“Let me have your cassette,” demanded Batty in return. “I want to check it.”
Farr turned, self-conscious again, while the technician extracted the cassette, pushing it immediately into a playback machine and pressing the start button. The result was a screeching whine—an unintelligible, electronically created sound.
Farr stood gazing down at the pointlessly revolving tape, bewildered.
Batty turned it off impatiently and said, “Shit! I knew it was going to be like that but somehow I hoped. Shit!”
“What the hell happened?”
“We knew he was careful,” said Brennan, dulled by disappointment. “But not this careful. He carried a baffler: an electronic device that defeats any effort at tape recording.”
“It’s not particularly complicated,” took up Batty. “Works on a system of magnets and electronic impulses.”
“You mean he guessed what we were trying to set up!” said Farr, his eyes moving from one to the other in the room. “That they know!”
“Not necessarily,” said Brennan. “If he’d known, he wouldn’t have come in the first place. Just careful, like I said. We were set up for everything and now we haven’t got a thing. Son of a bitch!” he finished viciously.
“Oh yes we have,” argued Farr. “He confirmed Scarletti to me. And gave the other name as José Herrera Gomez. He entered into a contract with me, a contract of which we’ve got a copy and which shows he’s got power of attorney for both of them.”
“It’s an in-house notarization,” said Seymour patiently, blinking sadly behind his thick spectacles. “We’d have a hell of a difficulty proving it in court, if Lang denied it.”
“What about the films? And the photographs?” persisted Farr desperately. “Surely he couldn’t have interfered with those!”
“The films are OK,” agreed Brennan. “But what do they prove? He’s a bona fide lawyer and you’re a bona fide investment broker. He’s got every right—every legal right—to come here to talk to you, if he wants to.”
“Where’s a bona fide lawyer going to get hold of one hundred million dollars he daren’t risk declaring to the IRS?” said Farr, refusing to share their dejection. “When we get the money and place it for them, we’ll be embarking on a criminal enterprise. He won’t be able to deny that.”
“We don’t want Lang,” pointed out the FBI supervisor. “We want Gomez and Scarletti and whoever else in the drugs world he’s working for.”
“You confirm that Gomez is a dealer?” asked Farr.
“We checked it out through Washington, although we didn’t really have to because we came across the name recently …” Brennan hesitated, stopping short of disclosing the circumstances. “José Herrera Gomez is a large-scale trafficker who works out of Medellin in Colombia.”
“It all fits,” said Farr. “The man I met in Lang’s office was Latino, remember?”
“Not enough fits: not enough for a court,” bemoaned Seymour.
The elements continued to refuse to mesh as smoothly as they’d hoped. On the last flight that night—the aircraft which the New York lawyer was originally scheduled to catch—Washington hurriedly flew in their file pictures of José Herrera Gomez. They were only three. The first was a blurred, distorted shot, seemingly taken through the window of a moving car. The second was a photographic reproduction of an already poor newspaper picture. The third was not a grown man at all, but an already fading photograph of a youth, hardly little older than eighteen.
“Well!” exclaimed Brennan.
Farr took his time, knowing the importance of the question and refusing to be affected by the supervisor’s urgent tone. “Are you asking me if I could swear to this in court?”
“Of course,” said the FBI man.
“I don’t know,” confessed the broker. “I know how important it is. I want it to be the man and it’s logically got to be him. But if I were on oath in a court of law—without seeing anything more, I couldn’t in all honesty testify that this was the man whom I met in Lang’s office.”
“Damn!” said Seymour, driving one fist into the palm of the other. “Damn!”
“I need more!” pleaded Farr.
“I’ll get it for you,” promised Brennan. “Whatever it takes, I’m going to make this case.”
Gomez was pleased. Primarily because Ramos had brought me the information to him, which meant that the man on whom he relied so heavily remained loyal. Also because he now knew who it was within his organization who’d taken the bribe and gone over to Julio Navarra.
“No doubts?” he pressed.
“None,” said Ramos. “I became suspicious when Rodriquez was anxious to make more than his usual share of collection flights to Bolivia. So I put in as a copilot someone I knew I could trust. He said that as soon as Rodriquez landed in Beni, he’d always find a reason for going into town—without company. Yesterday we followed him, to Magdalena, actually saw him meet Navarra there.”
Gomez thought, in passing, that he would be sorry to lose Miguel Rodriquez: the man was one of his most experienced pilots, someone who’d never lost a shipment either from the point of collection or the point of delivery.
“Want me to have him killed, as an example like the others?” asked Ramos.
“Of course not,” said Gomez irritably. “While we know who it is, there’s no danger. We don’t have anyone in Navarra’s organization, so we can’t move against him. Let’s wait until there’s an advantage in it for ourselves.”
“It would make me nervous having to wait too long,” said Ramos, hand to the knife-scar.
“Maybe we won’t have to.”
Even the Colombian couldn’t have anticipated just how quickly the opportunity would arise: that night, the instruction was routed from the Cayman Islands, via Washington, for a photographic surveillance on José Herrera Gomez. Harry Green got the assignment, of course.
19
Gomez did not evolve the plan at once. His initial reaction at discovering Rivera’s treachery had been one of apprehension. It was automatic caution to have a watch maintained on the American FBI agent and his movements from the Bogotá embassy after the episode with the Colombian lawyer. When Green caught the internal flight to Medellin, Gomez’s watchers telephoned from the capital, and there was independent warning from one of the immigration officials on Gomez’s payroll attached to the airport. Although it was only a short flight, little more than an hour, it gave Gomez sufficient time to have his people in place when the FBI man arrived. Green was followed to the Intercontinental hotel, where he booked in. Then into the center of the town—to Calle 52, where the Drug Enforcement Administration had their offices—and back again, escorted this time by a known Enforcement agent named Kip Colby, toward the Intercontinental and the finca beyond which Gomez regarded as his primary home and where, ironically, José Rivera had been killed.
Gomez wasn’t there, of course. He had already flown north out of Medellin before the American’s arrival, taking on
e of his three helicopters away from the central mountains, up to the coast near Riohacha. He had an expansive villa there, set into the hillside with an uninterrupted view of the Caribbean, from the veranda of which, on more relaxed occasions, he would enjoy watching the distant scurrying ships and overflying aircraft and fantasizing how many of them were carrying his product even further northward, to America.
Now was not the time for fantasy. Now was the time fully to recognize that Green and Rivera had talked about him, and that the Americans were continuing the investigation despite Rivera’s death. The situation was worrying but there was no need for panic. The FBI could have learned nothing about his current involvement with Scarletti because he’d never discussed it with the lawyer. What was the danger then? Realistically Gomez had long accepted that the authorities might know of him by name. What he was sure they didn’t have was a face to go with that name. That confidence was confirmed three days after his arrival in Riohacha, when he heard from Medellin that Green was occupying his time around the finca with an elaborate camera. The information—further assurance that he was handling things properly—pleased Gomez.
It was then that Gomez started to think of Miguel Rodriquez and his betrayal to the Bolivian. Gomez knew he had sufficient people in authority—passports, immigration, police—to make it possible. The preparation might be more difficult, but Gomez determined that at the speed he intended to work it didn’t matter if Rodriquez became suspicious. He summoned Ramos at once to Riohacha, setting out his proposal in detail and demanding that the other man be as critical as he could, to expose the flaws.
“Rodriquez will be suspicious,” said Ramos, at once.
“I’ve anticipated that,” reminded the trafficker. “What can he do, if he is? He won’t be able to run, because we’ll be watching him too closely. He won’t be able to go to the authorities. Only to Navarra. Which is where I want him to go anyway.”
“Certainly passports are easy enough to replace,” agreed Ramos, exploring the proposal further. “We’ll never know, of course, whether they already have photographs of you.”
“If they did, then why would they have a man here trying to get more?”
“Better ones, perhaps?”
“If they need better ones, than Rodriquez’s won’t conflict.”
“It’s an uncertainty,” persisted Ramos.
“One I’m prepared to risk.”
“How long do you think it’ll take you to spread the story?”
“Little more than days. We can guarantee the word getting back through the officials we control. We can fix people whom the Americans will believe are informers—and independent corroboration, too.”
“When do you want Rodriquez brought here?”
“At once,” ordered Gomez. “He’s got to accept—as much as we can make him accept—the sudden deference.”
The defecting pilot arrived early the following morning. Gomez greeted him effusively. They took coffee and drinks—and at Gomez’s urging shared some good, uncut cocaine, because Gomez wanted it and he knew that Rodriquez would see it as a failing he could communicate to Navarra. On the veranda overlooking the Caribbean, Gomez said he was considering some changes in his operations, which the pilot must know by now from the increased frequency of the flights. Ramos was not being replaced, the man was to understand, but merely complemented by the appointment of an equal number two in the organization. Rodriquez would be that appointee. Gomez saw the greed in Rodriquez’s eyes and wondered if the man was registering how simple his liaison with the Bolivian would become. One reflection led to another. Gomez convinced himself there were even physical similarities between him and the other man—height and general coloring, for instance. Certainly not enough for any direct comparison, but then it would not be done that way.
“I’m very grateful,” said Rodriquez. “And I’m aware of the trust. I won’t fail you.”
“I know you won’t,” said Gomez, enjoying his own private joke.
“There won’t be resentment from Ramos—any thought from him that he is being usurped?”
“I’ve told him already,” said Gomez. “And I’ve told him I don’t want any friction. I think it’s important, though, that you get to know each other better. I want people working with, not against, each other. If I find that it’s not working, there’ll have to be changes.”
“You won’t have any problems from me,” assured Rodriquez ingratiatingly.
“Ramos is at the main finca, in Medellin. I want you to go there for a few days. Get to know the proper layout of the place. How everything operates.”
“Of course.”
“Then I think you’d better make a visit to Navarra. I’ll call him, naturally. But I think you should personally explain what you’re going to be doing in the future—you won’t, for instance, be making so many collections. That can be left to others now.”
“Whenever you say.”
The rumors started—just as Gomez intended them to—before Rodriquez’s return flight reached Medellin. The carefully instructed and corrupt police and narcotic officers on Gomez’s payroll filed official reports that Jorge Herrera Gomez, according to their informants, was expanding his cocaine operation and considering a big shipment. And the carefully fed informants supplied their own, matching reports independently, direct to the Drug Enforcement Offices in Medellin. Because Green was in the city and investigating Gomez himself, Colby naturally shared the information with him, which together they passed on to Washington, through their respective Bogotá offices. Green already had his instructions but from Washington came orders that Colby had to liaise with him completely and also concentrate upon Gomez.
There is a magnificent restaurant in the foothills of Medellin, built by drug money and owned, for its money-washing facilities, by a drug runner. It was to this restaurant, according to the information from all the planted sources to which Green and Colby eagerly listened, that Jorge Gomez would come to finalize arrangements for the shipments with members of the Bolivian organization run by Julio Navarra. The deception worked. The real Jorge Herrera Gomez made contact with Julio Navarra and asked for a meeting of emissaries, for a necessary discussion. Independently, Miguel Rodriquez sent a message to Navarra saying that something extremely important had happened.
By the time of the meeting at the restaurant, Green had managed to photograph Miguel Rodriquez extensively, believing the man to be the trafficking owner of the finca behind the Intercontinental. Ramos ensured, too, that other people in obvious evidence accorded Rodriquez the deference which indicated that he was someone of importance, such as always allocating him the largest limousine and standing back politely until he entered. When Rodriquez and Ramos kept the meeting at the restaurant, Rodriquez appeared to the watching Americans clearly the dominant participant.
Gomez guaranteed, through the already believed channels, that the identity and progress of Navarra’s emissaries were recorded as they passed through Bogotá and onwards to Medellin. They were, in fact, Louis Milona and Enriques Valdeblanques, and it was an advantage Gomez had not anticipated that both men were already established as members of Navarra’s organization on the records of both the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Gomez called Rodriquez back to Riohacha just before the meeting, telling the pilot that he had approached Navarra and suggesting that Rodriquez use the opportunity to explain personally his promotion to Navarra by flying the Bolivians back across the border. This was the most dangerous moment—when Rodriquez was likely to question his abrupt elevation—but again fortunately, just as the Bolivians being Louis Milona and Enriques Valdeblanques was fortunate, the renegade pilot was conceited enough to believe the promotion justified.
Gomez later regretted having to rely upon Ramos’s account of the luncheon at the restaurant. Detailed as it was, he himself wanted to have been there, to see everything unfold exactly as he had planned. Rodriquez had already indicated his superiority over Ramos, and was encouraged by Ramos’
s seeming acceptance of the relegation. Everyone got drunk—although ultimately Rodriquez was to pilot a plane—and they were later than intended descending the foothills road to regain the bottom of the valley and the airport.
Harry Green and Kip Colby lunched that day at the same place. They’d photographed the departure of Rodriquez and Ramos earlier, and had been aware of the deference shown by the two Bolivians in the restaurant where, with concealing napkins, Green succeeded in taking two pictures with a miniature camera.
Gomez’s plane was in the private section of the airfield, so there were none of the irritating formalities of an ordinary boarding—which would have been minimal anyway, because Gomez had made sure that, on this day, every customs and immigration officer on his payroll was on duty. Ramos accentuated the effusive farewells for the benefit of the watchers, and then stood back while the executive aircraft taxied out, was almost immediately cleared and then took off over the frowning brows of the surrounding foothills. To have remained might have betrayed his prior knowledge of what was to happen. So he returned to his car and drove slowly back to the finca.
Though waiting for it, Ramos never actually heard the explosion—which he always regretted. He was never to know that Rodriquez, drunk, flew the plane dangerously lower than he should have done, only clearing by feet the wraparound mountains and not gaining the required height to detonate the pressure-controlled explosive for a mile beyond the planned crash spot. So the disaster occurred much further away from Medellin than it might have, deep in the river-stitched, cauliflower-topped jungle. There was no access possible by road and none easy by helicopter either, because the close-packed jungle wouldn’t allow any landing for four miles from the scene, when the hopeful rescuers reached it by jungle trek, they found everybody dead and mutilated beyond recognition. This was intentional in the case of Rodriquez, which was why the bomb had been placed by Ramos directly in front of the pilot’s seat. Some things were found, of course. The passports of Milona and Valdeblanques were recovered from the burned and split-apart bodies. So, too, was the passport of Jorge Herrera Gomez—which was less surprising because Ramos had placed it as far back into the tail of the aircraft as he could, wanting it to survive. Sixty thousand dollars was found—which was forty thousand less than Ramos had placed aboard. The rescuers stole the rest. The flight plan to Bogotá, for onward passage to Bolivia, had been filed and signed in the name of Jorge Herrera Gomez, the signature verifiable because he’d had a control-tower employee personally bring it to him in Riohacha for the purpose, and there were three more loyal airport employees who swore in later depositions that they had personally seen Señor Gomez board the aircraft, a perjury for which they each received ten thousand dollars. El Colombiano and other newspapers duly reported the death in an aircrash of Jorge Herrera Gomez, a death officially listed as an accident because of the bribe-induced reluctance—as well as the logistical difficulties involved—to put forensic experts into the area.
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