“All we need is a ship, Inspector,” O’Doull said. “Heard from Meyers?”
“No. I called Flaherty, and he hasn’t been in touch with her, either. He hasn’t been in touch with his own goddamn office. Maybe somebody iced him. Or maybe he’s not the great hotshot that Flaherty claimed.”
“The Sat-Track has to be installed in the battery-charging compartment on the ship,” O’Doull said. “I’d like to do the wiring myself, if you’ll send me to Colombia.”
“We’ll cross that bridge later. Tell me, Theo, can we also hook into a ship’s radio? Can we bounce their radio transmissions off the satellite?”
“Not the Nimbus-6,” O’Doull said.
“Why not?”
“Wrong type of satellite. We’d have to buy some time on a communications satellite.” O’Doull was in thought, staring down at the floor. Some men stare into space, Mitchell thought; O’Doull stares at his feet.
“We could intercept their radio. I could put something together, Inspector. Can we get NASA clearance through EPIC?”
“Why not? That’s what we pay EPIC for.”
The RCMP was one of a group of North American policing agencies subscribing to the El Paso Intelligence Center, which coordinated all major continental operations, including smuggling investigations. The DEA, FBI, CIA, the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. and Canadian Customs, and the Coast Guard were all on a feed from EPIC by way of teletype messages that unscrambled on receipt.
“Call EPIC, Theo, and see what you can do.”
***
On Day Sixteen of Operation Potship, Rudy Meyers finally materialized. Telephonically, as O’Doull would put it.
“Twenty-Nine G-K in Miami,” he said.
Mitchell was in a controlled fury. “You’re not a one-piece band, Twenty-Nine G-K. I’ve got sixty other full-time people on this case. Everyone’s sitting on their butt and chewing their nails waiting to find out what you’ve got for us. Why the hell haven’t you been in contact?”
“Inspector, I could spend half my working time talking to you on the phone. But I wouldn’t be getting much done that way.”
If only Meyers were a member of the force. Mitchell would ream him out hard.
“Things got a little more intricate than I had expected,” Meyers said. “The targets lost their connection. I had to arrange an introduction with some other people. I have expended a great deal of energy on behalf of this operation, Harold, a great deal of energy. This is going to cost me dearly in the long run, because when this is over, I will have lost a very important connection on the Caribbean coast. They will not trust me after this.”
Mitchell had no tears to shed over it. “Just tell me what’s happening. Where are you?”
“Colombia. Don’t be impatient, Harold. You see, I have news that will please you. There is a ship. There are goods to be put into the holds of the ship. The load will start moving in one week exactly if we are not thrown off schedule by accidents of fate.”
O’Doull rapped on Mitchell’s door and poked his head inside. Mitchell waved him in, pointing to a chair.
“How much goods?” Mitchell asked.
“I have a nice fat one for you, Harold.”
“How much?”
“Oh, maybe a hundred thousand.”
Mitchell sagged. “A hundred grand, is that all they could afford? They can’t buy spinach with that.”
“A hundred thousand pounds, Harold. P-O-U-N-D-S. If I have to make myself that clear, I hope your line is absolutely safe.”
Mitchell put his hand over the phone. “A hundred thousand pounds of pot, Theo! We’ve hit pay dirt!”
“What about the Sat-Track transmitter?” O’Doull asked.
Mitchell relayed the question to Meyers, explaining the satellite-tracking concept.
“It may be impossible at this stage to get something like that on board,” Meyers said. “The vessel is under guard twenty-four hours. If I send some of my technicians on board, there are going to be too many questions asked.”
“We’ve got to track them,” Mitchell said. “There’s a million square miles of ocean out there.”
“I may have something just as good,” Meyers said. “First, air observation. They will think it’s air cover for them. We’ll have eyes on them as far up as northern Florida. Second, Harold, I may just be able to put someone on board.”
“Good. Who?”
“It won’t be me. I have a thing about the water. I never did learn to swim,” Meyers chuckled.
“Who have you got?” Mitchell spoke with impatience.
“I’m not telling, Harold. Not over the phone.”
O’Doull spoke to Mitchell in urgent tones. “What does he say about the Sat-track? Can he get access?”
Mitchell looked up at him. “No. Sorry, Theo.”
O’Doull struck his forehead. “You mean after all that work?”
“The transmitter,” Mitchell said into the phone. “It’s important, Rudy. I trust machines more than people. Let’s try for double protection.”
“Send it to me in Miami, Harold. I’ll give it some thought.”
Chapter Eighteen
Johnny Nighthawk
Pete’s ego has been punctured. Marianne has run off for a few days with the flashy Latin Romeo.
“That bastard, he kidnapped her,” says Pete. He mopes around all day, staring at a blank wall, a bottle of scotch at his elbow, his eyes like hot coals. “I am in love, Johnny. I am in love.”
He is in lust. He plays the role of wounded martyr well. I don’t know about Marianne. I wonder about her heart. She has played Pete as Pete Townshend plays an electric guitar.
But after two days in this gilded cage, we are all going crazy.
We play a lot of poker — dealer’s choice. Billy Lee is down three hundred bucks to Pete. I am down fifteen hundred.
On the third night, we heard distant melodies of fiesta. We see happy people, brightly dressed, walking towards the source of music that tinkles up the street, to our aerie.
We crack.
That night we spend a thousand dollars in the city. We do the fiesta. Nighthawk, like his namesake, beats around the city after dark and makes a lot of noise. (Incidentally, I gave the name Nighthawk to myself. Johnny Little was the name that was forced on me at birth, presumably by some agency. What kind of Indian name is Johnny Little?)
At midnight, we are lost, loaded, loafing in the maze of thin streets. People swim by. Tinny music comes at us from a hundred portable radios. It is a raunchy, muggy ass-end of an April night, with a moon slipping furtively behind clouds that roll in from the sea.
We are arm in arm, singing shanties, trading easy taunts with the pimps and the hustlers and the dealers.
“Hey, man, you want some grass?” A street dealer approaches us.
Billy Lee says, “No grass. No feelty pictures. No cheeks.”
The little dealer bustles up to him. “Hey, man, where you from? You from the States? Hey, man, I been to America. I got a cousin in New York. Hey, I got some really far-out grass, really outrageous shit, man. Hey, you want to come to my place, do some coke?”
We tell him we are tired.
“Aw, hey, man, buy some grass. I got a cousin in New York. I live in the States for five years, man. Come on, I’m really low on bread. I got a sick kid. In hospital.”
Billy Lee slips him a five-thousand-peso note. The guy hands him a bag of weed. Billy Lee does not want to take it, so the guy stuffs it into his jacket pocket.
And then he yells to someone behind him in Spanish. “He bought the marijuana. Can I go now? Will you let me go now?”
This is one of those setups — fairly common — where the local cops force street dealers to set up tourists whom they then blackmail for some mordida.
The cop comes running up to Billy Lee. “Depar
timento Administrativo de Seguridad,” he says. “You have papers, señor?”
Billy Lee is really pissed off, just keeps walking down the street, the cop waddling after him. “Why don’t you go off and pound your beat? Pound your meat, while you’re at it.” He says this in English, which the bull does not understand.
“Pasaporte?” The cop is bristling. “Pasaporte!” He gets in front of Billy Lee, stopping progress. Pete, Kevin, and I stand around and watch this spectacle.
Billy Lee starts screaming at him in Spanish. “Passport?” he says. “Passport? I don’t need no fucking passport. I am here at the personal invitation of the Minister of Tourism! I am a correspondent with Time magazine!” He grabs a bunch of papers from his wallet and flashes them. They are the usual dope dealer’s bullshit papers. Colombians really love paper.
The cop obviously cannot read, but he makes a gallant show of pretending. Billy Lee has him worried and presses his advantage.
“I am a secret agent with the FBI. See this?” He shows him a business card from an aircraft spare parts company, which the das cop holds upside down. “Cristo! I am a special guest of the mayor of Cartagena. Read that — you will see.” He swears at him. “Cerdo! Guevon! Bacilo de gonorrhea!” Then he shoulders past the bull, stabs a finger at the crooked little street dealer who had tried to set him up. “Arrest this trafficante.” He hands the cop the bag of dope, grabs back his five-thousand-peso note, and gives it to the lawman. “You keep the evidence, of course, Officer.” Billy Lee takes back his papers and stalks off to where we are standing around.
Afterwards, we are walking down the street, laughing, making obscene noises, and another guy steps out of the gloom.
“It is good you paid off the cerdo, señor. I do not want to have to shoot a police. It causes much problems.” He is a heavy with scars, as in the movies.
“Señor Meyers wishes you to stay in the hotel,” he says. “Señor Meyers says if you do not stay in the hotel, we must step on toes, maybe break them.”
This man is very professional. We had no idea he had been tailing us. We tell him “Gracias” and return to the hotel.
There is a pretty puta outside looking for customers.
“Deseas un buen rato?” she says to Billy Lee.
“No hablo espagnol,” he says.
“You wan’ good time, meester?”
“No hablo ingles,” he says.
***
On the seventh day in this luxury prison Meyers arrives.
“The merchandise is on the river,” he says. “It will arrive tomorrow in Barranquilla. Perhaps you might authorize Mr. Juares to allow my men on board. We will load it during the night. You gentlemen, of course, need not run the risk of being present.”
Pete shakes his head. “No, it’s my ship. I’m the captain. I’ll supervise.”
“I’m afraid that will simply not be possible. Señor Paez wishes to entertain you tomorrow night, at his villa. A going-away dinner. It would be quite indelicate to refuse this invitation.”
“Why does he want to dirty his hands?” Pete asks.
“I am sure you do not hold yourself in such low regard, Peter. El Patrón has heard of the famous Captain Kerrivan. He would feel honored.” Meyers has found the direct pathway to my friend’s vain heart.
“Okay, I’ll go. My boys can oversee the loading. Johnny, you’re in charge.”
“But everyone is invited, Peter,” Meyers insists.
“Naw,” says Pete, “these boys wouldn’t know how to handle themselves in such fancy company. They don’t know the difference between a gravy boat and a finger bowl.”
“Our people can handle the loading,” Meyers says.
“Uh-huh. Johnny, Billy Lee, and Kevin will look after it.”
“Do you have a suit?” Meyers asks.
“No.”
“Buy one.”
“Where’s Marianne?”
“She’ll be there.”
Chapter Nineteen
Costumed in a stiff, white polyester suit, Kerrivan sat slumped in Meyers’s station wagon as it pulled up at the gates of the Paez villa, south of Cartagena.
A uniformed guard nodded to Meyers, raised the barrier, and waved them through. The walls were of brick, three feet thick, topped with a layer of cement and broken glass and four lines of barbed wire. Dobermans strained at their leashes near the guard hut.
The road weaved grandly through a jungle thicket that opened near the sea. Gardeners were mowing grass and pruning ornamental shrubs on a flat, five-acre oval, part of which served as a putting green, part as a polo field. Behind the oval was a manse in the Victorian style, of red brick and tinted marble.
And sitting on the terrace, her green eyes dazed, was Marianne Larochelle, her lips puckered around a plastic straw that dangled in a frosted glass of piña colada. She was wearing riding breeches. The fingers of her right hand were resting on the upturned palm of the left hand of Colonel Augustin Escarlata.
Kerrivan thought the man’s smile was proprietary, as if he had purchased her. He was wearing a bright green ascot. This guy was once a Cuban revolutionary? He didn’t seem to fit the image of beard, khaki fatigues, and fat cigars.
Escarlata began to tamp out some white powder onto a small silver spoon. A cocaine-snorting ex-Cuban revolutionary? Or had he discovered that the quickest route to Marianne’s heart was through her nose?
Kerrivan, steeling himself, walked up the stairs to them.
“Hi,” she said.
“Obviously,” he said.
“Care for a blort of stardust?”
“No. It makes me too happy.”
***
Senator Publio Victor Paez was stout, ruddy, affable. About mid-sixties. He was as genial in touring Kerrivan about the estate as Kerrivan was glum in looking it over.
The senator walked with a limp — a wound, Kerrivan assumed, from his early days. He had heard that Paez had gained his power base during La Violencia, the Colombian civil war which had spent two hundred thousand lives three decades earlier. The Colombian family gangs were spawned during that turbulent time and had grown affluent on the corruption and wealth of the country.
Smuggling was the foundation stone of the power of these families: guns, coffee, radios. Cocaine, Quaaludes, cannabis. The only South American country with ports on both oceans, Colombia sits on the equator at the axis of the new world. It had become, under the reign of the smuggler barons, an international pivot with spokes connecting it to all the nations of the Americas.
Kerrivan wondered: Why, with his people, his money, his power, had Senator Paez chosen a cold-seas sailor from Newfoundland?
“The main thing is trust,” Paez said, switching at clusters of white flowers with his cane. “One loses millions of dollars of merchandise each year because of misfeasance, Captain Kerrivan. Sadly, we have created a nation where theft and disloyalty are the rule, trustworthiness the exception.”
He turned and faced Kerrivan, squinting his eyes at him. “I want a man I can trust. They say you are reckless. I am not happy with that. They say you are also lucky. That pleases me. But they say you are an honest man. You drive a hard bargain, but you will not steal. This shipment is very important to us. It is the single most valuable shipment of merchandise that has ever left the shores of Colombia. There are thousands of marijuaneros to choose from. We have chosen you. If you succeed, you will be able to work for us for many years.”
“Senator,” Kerrivan said, “I don’t normally work for others. I have my own business.”
“A small business, Captain Kerrivan, and a business that is doomed, as all the small people are doomed. You grow or you die. That is the rule of all business. I want you to think about this one. I want you to think of joining us when this endeavor is done.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“You must face some fact
s, my friend. The day of the small entrepreneur is over. The market has grown too large. The competition has become too strong. But for the aggressive young man who knows how to make profitable alliances, there will be a future. Soon these products will be legalized. I am preparing our family for the day when it is legal, in this country and in America. Remember the lessons of history — some of the great distillers of our country were once men who were lowly bootleggers, smugglers of alcohol. They prepared themselves, waited for the laws to change. Now they own empires. Perhaps one day you could share in such an empire, Captain Kerrivan.”
They had stopped walking, but Paez began picking his way again along the path.
“In any event, Captain Kerrivan, whether you work for me or whether you free-lance on contract, as you prefer, I will say this once, and then we will get on to more amiable topics of conversation. What I must tell you is that if you try to steal this merchandise, or if you attempt to swindle me in any way, I will have you killed.” It was stated calmly, matter-of-factly.
“Perhaps it is unnecessary for me to say that,” Paez continued, taking Kerrivan by the elbow as they came to the waterside. “As a professional, no doubt you understand the rules. But please know there is that unwritten term to our unwritten agreement. As my lawyers would put it, it is an implied term of contract — because in this unhappy country, where larceny is such a way of life, deterrents must be effective.”
He seemed to contemplate the vastness of the sea.
“I have read a statistic,” he said. “Across these waters, in America, there are fifty million who enjoy an occasional — what is the word? — toke. There was a time during the last decade when it appeared that my country would become quite wealthy in supplying this great market. Five years ago, we were the world’s greatest supplier of marijuana to America and to Canada. But we have not progressed. And the market no longer grows as fast.”
“So you are doing something about it,” Kerrivan said.
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