by Tom Clancy
“It appears the plane soon will be on its way, Harlan,” Rojas said, taking a sip of his chilled guapuru.
DeVane looked at him from under the brim of his white Panama hat. His skin was tightly stretched over his cheeks and almost colorless. His eyes were a frozen shade of blue set deep in their sockets. He wore a white double-breasted suit that had been custom-tailored from some lightweight fabric, probably in Europe. The collar points of his blue silk shirt were neatly buttoned down under blue-and-yellow pinstriped suspenders. Unbothered by the torrid weather, he seemed to occupy his own still pocket of space, putting Rojas in mind of the lion-fish that floated in the waters of the Carribean — so illusively delicate in appearance, so serenely poisonous.
“And you, Francisco?” he said, speaking Portuguese although Rojas was proficient in English. “Will you be leaving with it? Or can I assume you’ve made other arrangements?”
“You know it is my habit let the perico fly on separately,” Rojas said. “As a precaution.”
DeVane was inwardly amused by his choice of words. The cocaine made you manic and talkative. Like a parrot, perico in Spanish. It was a term of low slang he might have expected from some street-level dealer in San Borja, not a Brazilian police official of considerable rank. But Rojas was of a type. A gutless, corrupt, lazy little south-of-the-equator bureaucrat trying to affect the manner of an outlaw. Light a firecracker outside his office window and he would hide quailing under his desk.
“I’ll have my driver take you back to the airport in Rurrenabaque when we’re finished,” he said. “You’re entitled to feel safe.”
Rojas heard the note of derision in DeVane’s voice and held his hands apart.
“Things happen,” he said. “I expect no problems, but as always will be relieved when the shipment reaches its destination.”
In fact, Rojas thought, his relief would begin the moment he was out from under the hard eyes of DeVane’s bodyguards. And away from Kuhl. Kuhl seemed less a human being than a cold precision weapon… and how dangerous it was for such a murderous instrument to be controlled by someone with a boundless appetite for wealth and power. Kuhl had acquired a forbidding reputation on his own, but there was no doubt that his association with DeVane had enhanced his innate capacity for violence and given it a chance for its fullest, bloodiest expression.
Yes, it would be good to be elsewhere.
Rojas reached for his glass again and took a long drink. This was not the first time he had met with these men, and by now he ought to be able to curb his uneasiness. The trick was to steer his attention away from Kuhl and the armed guards. Concentrate on his physical surroundings. He would try, and be satisfied if he were halfway successful. Certainly the scenery was pleasant. They were at a table shaded by a flowering mimosa in the foreyard of DeVane’s impressive ranch house, a place of rambling sunbaked walls and a tiled roof that might have been built for a Spanish Don — some descendent of the Conquistadores perhaps — with only the swimming pools and tennis court on its desultory grounds betraying its far more recent vintage. Quite grand indeed, and just one of many lavish homes DeVane kept around the world, traveling continuously between them as he oversaw his far-reaching business empire.
Out across the grassland, the camiones had reached the tarmac and lumbered to a halt in the shadow of the waiting plane. Rojas watched as their ragtag Quechua drivers began to unload the backs of the trucks and carry their bundles toward the Beech’s cargo bay.
“Your ability to keep the Indians loyal is extraordinary, Harlan,” he said. “I’d never ever have expected it.”
DeVane studied his face.
“How so?” he said. “They’ve traded with Americans before.”
Rojas tried to make his shrug look casual. “Yes, but not on the terms you have set. It is a singularly unusual arrangement. Buying from the Peruvians, employing the local cocaderos only for refining and distribution…”
He let the sentence fade.
DeVane kept his eyes on him.
“Go on,” he said. “Please.”
Rojas hesitated, then said, “The laborers are poor and the Chapare crop is their main resource. A hundred kilos might bring three million dollars in greenbacks if they handled production from beginning to end. Instead, they must either find other buyers for their plants or have them rot in the field.”
Devane smiled, his small, even white teeth showing suddenly and briefly. “Give your people too little and they resent you. Too much and they no longer need you. The secret of holding onto their loyalty is to let them have just enough, Francisco.”
“I would still think that your dealing with outside growers would cause resentment,” Rojas said, his curiosity momentarily overbalancing his caution. “And that the Sendero Luminoso would have its own reasons to balk. They have long had their own processing system in place, and are adamant about protecting their interests.”
“No more so than I am, and they know it,” DeVane said. “I have my reasons for keeping the leftist rebels part of the operation. And they have their unprecedented earnings to make them happy.”
Rojas decided to back off, feeling vaguely as if he’d been maneuvered.
“As I say, you have my admiration,” he said. “It is a dance of devils that I could never manage.”
DeVane didn’t seem inclined to end the conversation. “The devil can be the best of partners once you know his steps,” he said. “You are aware, I’m sure, that the nickname he has been given by the tin miners in the southern mountains is El Tio. The Uncle. On Sunday mornings they attend church with their families, make their genuflections, and sing the praises of Jesus and his saints. But before going down into the mine shafts, they pause at their entrances to leave offerings before statues of El Tio—alcohol, cigarettes, and coca leaves.”
Rojas’s discomfort was escalating again.
“Appropriate gifts for the Lord of Hell,” he commented.
“Precisely.” DeVane flashed his quick, icy grin again. “Their reasoning is wonderfully pragmatic. If you’re going to work where it’s dark and hot, you must learn how to get by. And appease the gods whose bounty you seek.”
There was a long period of silence. The sun had climbed into the center of the sky and hammered the livestock across the field into immobility. Rojas glanced around at the young guards standing near the table with their Kalashnikovs in plain view, then turned his attention back toward the airstrip and the workmen moving heavily between their trucks and the plane. He felt tired and depleted, and once more wished he were somewhere else.
DeVane took a small sip from his glass, then placed it carefully down on the table.
“I’d like your assistance with something, Francisco,” he said. “A matter of considerable importance.”
Rojas had been waiting for this moment. In most instances he would have sent a courier along with payment for a shipment of product, but when DeVane had insisted on his presence today he’d obliged without asking for an explanation — aware the American wouldn’t offer one until he was good and ready.
“If it concerns the Guzman fiasco, then you may be pleased to know I’ve gone ahead and intervened,” he said. “Give me another day and I’ll have him out of his prison cell and back across the border.”
“I appreciate that and will provide whatever funds are necessary to secure his release,” DeVane said. “But this has nothing to do with him.”
Rojas lifted his eyebrows. Eduardo Guzman was a bottom runner in DeVane’s organization, an errand boy whose arrest on suspicion of narcotics and weapons trafficking had resulted from his involvement with a prostitute who was cooperating with the anti-drug police. In ordinary circumstances he would have been beneath DeVane’s notice, a scrap to be thrown to the wolves, but because it was widely known that his uncle was one of DeVane’s major executives in Sao Paulo, Rojas had assumed the American would want him pulled out of his own shit, and made discreet overtures to the prosecutors getting ready to arraign him on formal charges. Little
to his surprise, nearly all of them had hinted they might be influenced into changing their minds for a price.
However, DeVane had just made it very clear that he did not want to talk about Guzman. Leaving what he did want to talk about a mystery.
“Forgive my confusion,” Rojas said. “I’d thought—”
“There was an incident last night in the Mato Grasso, a break-in of sorts at an American industrial site,” Kuhl interrupted. It was the first time he’d spoken since Rojas’s arrival. “Did you hear anything about it before starting out this morning?”
“I don’t think so,” Rojas said. In fact, he knew that he hadn’t. But as a rule, it paid to stay out of the water until you knew which way it was flowing.
“Rest assured, you will before too long,” Kuhl said. “What you should know is that a number of the intruders were captured or killed by this facility’s private security force. I can’t tell you how many survived, or even if they’ve been turned over to the gendarmerie. But that is certain to occur. When it does, you must see that these men are never interrogated. I don’t care whether they are freed or executed or simply disappear. My sole interest is making sure that they do not talk to their captors.”
Rojas looked at him, trying to think of a response. Eight months ago his relationship with DeVane had begun with a straightforward purchase of cocaine, but almost before he knew what was happening, it had grown into a complicated tangle of affairs. He had helped DeVane to cloak transactions that might otherwise have attracted the unwanted interest of the Brazilian government. He had been a conduit to political and law-enforcement circles. He had been a small link in a very long chain, a tiny drop of oil in an immense machine, and he’d been handsomely rewarded for it. There had been money and women, stays in extravagant hotel suites, and trips to foreign countries.
Only in recent weeks had Rojas awakened to how deeply he was enmeshed in DeVane’s affairs. The things he was being asked to do were becoming riskier, and the pressure to carry them out increasingly direct. But there were limits. There had to be limits. And it sounded as if the problem he was being asked to fix went beyond any he could have imagined.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The Mato Grasso is outside my jurisdiction. I could ask some questions. Find out the status of the prisoners without too much difficulty. But if the regional authorities want to conduct an interrogation, I can’t think of how to stop them.”
Kuhl was staring at him.
“You’ll cope with it,” he said. “There is no other choice.”
Rojas looked into his eyes and was quiet for close to a full minute. The sun seemed suddenly hotter. His palms and underarms were moist with sweat. It had been mad to believe he could link himself to DeVane without losing his independence. Completely mad. He had been bought and paid for in regular installments, and was now expected to obediently jump to his master’s wishes.
At last he turned to DeVane and said, “You understand that I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.”
“Nor would we want that, obviously,” DeVane said. “All we expect is that you give it your best.”
Rojas raised his drink to his lips and drained it. The mimosa’s shade had dwindled, making the heat almost intolerable. For an irrational moment he pictured himself spontaneously erupting into flames while DeVane and Kuhl looked on without expression.
“Is anything wrong, Francisco?” DeVane said. “You seem disconcerted.”
Rojas shook his head. He heard the noisy rumble of the Beech’s engine starting up, and looked out toward the head of the airstrip. The cocaderos had emptied their trucks and were moving them back onto the dirt road as the plane prepared for takeoff. His general practice of never traveling with a shipment aside, he almost would have preferred to be on board. He did not think his nerves could stand the company of these men much longer.
“I should be leaving,” he said. “There are very few flights out of the country and their schedules are erratic.”
DeVane nodded, then signaled to one of his bodyguards with a wave of his fingertips. The guard nodded slightly and spoke into a handheld radio.
“Your car is on its way,” he said. “We wouldn’t want you to be stranded here.”
Rojas manufactured a smile.
“Muito obrigado, you are most kind,” he said, sickened by his own toadying subservience, and thinking with disgust that the example of the tin miners was one he had followed for some time without allowing himself to acknowledge it.
Like them, he had ventured into a place where it was hot and dark, and learned all too well how to appease its gods.
SEVEN
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA APRIL 18, 2001
The thing was, she never played music before having her morning coffee, and that puzzled him.
In the veranda of his Palo Alto home after many long hours on the telephone, Roger Gordian sat with an untouched plate of scrambled eggs and toast on the table in front of him, a steaming cup of coffee near his right hand, and his cordless within fast reach of his left. Making decisions was for him an adaptive reflex, a coping mechanism that pressure only honed and energized, and he’d reacted to the news from Brazil as he would to any emergency, gathering whatever information was available, then digesting as much of it as circumstances allowed before settling upon a logical and systematic plan of action.
In this instance, the information-gathering process had kept him in his study all night. There had been a string of updates from Cody, interspersed with his own calls to advisors and political contacts, including one to a high-placed official in the Department of State, and a subsequent late-night conversation with his close friend Dan Parker, who had been the congressman from California’s 14th District until his recently lost reelection bid, and was somebody whose opinion Gordian never failed to solicit in times of crisis.
With each of them pursuing intelligence about the Brazilian situation through his own respective channels, Gordian’s next order of business had been to contact Charles Dorset, the top executive at NASA. The call had had two purposes. The first was to inform Dorset of events at the ISS compound before news reached him from other, unpredictable sources whose accuracy might be questionable — the media being foremost on Gordian’s mind. The second involved a slew of matters relevant to the Orion investigation, which Gordian was continuing to view as a separate affair for the present, although the close timing of the episodes in Florida and Brazil, and the fact that both would have damaging repercussions for the ISS program, made it impossible to avoid the possibility of some connection between them. While he was not about to jump to conclusions, he was also unwilling to push such thoughts aside. Distressful as they might be, the Machiavellian conspiracy to bring UpLink down the year before had been a costly and agonizing reminder that they were never to be ignored.
Thus, his final call of the morning had been made to Yuri Petrov, Dorset’s counterpart at the Russian Space Agency, through a Sword translator, its purpose having been to keep him abreast of unfolding developments and strongly advise that security around the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — and other RKS complexes in his directorate — be placed on heightened alert.
Right now, however, his phone had gone silent, giving him a chance to poke his head out of his study and sample the morning. Dorset had promised to get back to him within the next hour with word on an especially important issue, and Gordian had delayed heading out to the office until then, wanting to be certain he was absolutely free to take the call.
He looked over his plate, shifted around a forkful of eggs without raising it to his mouth, then decided to wait for Ashley’s return before getting started on breakfast.
He sat back, noting that his daughter Julia had fared just slightly better than himself in working up an appetite. Across from him were the vestiges of her own half-eaten meal — a picked-apart blueberry muffin and a cold and mostly full cup of coffee. Tied up in knots, she’d rushed off for her first painful meeting with a divorce attorney just as he’d st
epped into the sunlight, leaving her dishes where they were, and her grayhounds in his and Ashley’s care. Actually, Gordian’s exclusive care at the moment, since his wife had sprung up from the table and gone into the house to put a CD into the stereo, something that he could not for the life of him recall her doing in over twenty-five years of marriage, and which was particularly baffling because of the abruptness with which she’d abandoned him, her muffin, and her coffee to do it.
Wondering what had gotten into her, wishing he could clear his mind of distractions and relax, Gordian glanced to one side of him, then the other, and frowned at the utter impossibility of it. The dogs tended to favor him at mealtime, and were flanking his chair like bookends, staring up at him with their bright, brown, pleading eyes.
He reached for a wedge of his toast, broke it in half, and gave each of the dogs a piece. As usual Jack, a brindle male and the larger of the two, sucked his down whole and went back to staring at him. Considerably more high-strung, Jill excitedly sprang onto all fours and spun in a full circle while gobbling her portion, slamming her backside into the legs of the table.
Gordian’s breakfast settings rattled and bounced, coffee sloshing over the rim of his cup and flooding the saucer underneath it.
He released an aggravated breath.
“That’s how you always get yourself in trouble, you know.”