This was a talent that obviously served Gruber well. Julio arranged use of the cabin, procured the dump truck, the sand, and the Jeep. After leaving the Señora's house yesterday, he had obtained a Chevrolet van. Now he had set up one of the more crucial phases of the operation. When the caravan of Ford truck and Chevy van departed the barranca, they headed east through Guadalajara, then continued on into the Mexican heartland, known as the Bajío. A vast, fertile basin ringed by mountains whose silver deposits had attracted the Spaniards, the region produced a wealth of fruits and vegetables for shipment to the tables of hungry norteamericanos.
Alexandria , Virginia
48
As soon as he was settled in his motel room, Roddy Rodman called the number Lila had given him. He hoped his daughter would answer. After the brief but torrid affair with Elena Castillo Quintero, he had mixed emotions about facing the woman he had lived with for half a lifetime but had not seen for several years now.
"Hello." It was not delivered in Lila's brash, outspoken tone but in the unmistakably mellow voice of Karen Rodman.
Roddy took a deep breath. "Guess who's here six days early for the Fourth of July?"
There was a brief pause. "Roddy? Where are you?"
"At a motel just off I-395. Near Little River Turnpike."
"Then you're not too far from here."
"I hoped I wouldn't be. Did Lila tell you I might come?"
She sounded a bit nonplussed. "I never know when to believe that girl, particularly when it concerns her Daddy. She assured me you would be at her graduation."
The words stung like the aftermath of a wasp's visit. "I hate I missed that," he said. "I've got no excuses. If you know the way to Oz, please draw me a map. I've been as bad as the Cowardly Lion."
"Are you telling me you've been afraid to come back?"
"That's as kind a way to put it as any, I guess."
There was a plaintive note in her voice. "Why?"
"Afraid of being rejected. Of course, it would serve me right. I wouldn't have anybody to blame but myself."
"It's hard to believe what that crash did to you," she said.
"Oh, I'm over all that."
"No, Roddy. Not all of it. Not if you're still afraid to come back to those who loved you the most. Incidentally, I had a visitor a few days ago asking about you."
"Oh? Who?"
"Dutch Schuler. He had been through Gainesville and found that Lila and I had moved up here."
"I knew he was back in the Air Force. What's he doing?"
"He's here on temporary duty at the Pentagon. Doing some sort of tests or demonstrations. Something to do with using the Pave Low in conjunction with law enforcement. Like riot suppression, I think. I told him Lila had said you might be here for the Fourth, but frankly I doubted it."
"Can't blame you. Did Dutch say anything about me?"
"He told me you seemed to have completely recovered from your alcohol problem, and your leg was about as good as ever. But he said inside you were still hurting badly. He didn't think you had ever gotten over what they did to you at that court-martial."
"I'm about over it now, Karen. Really. I've just learned the full story. Say, could I take you and Lila somewhere for breakfast?"
"We've already eaten," she said in that soft, melodious voice he remembered so well. "But if you want to come over here, I'll put the coffee pot on."
The traffic was mostly headed in the other direction as Burke came through Falls Church. He didn't normally drive home during morning rush hours, and he found the effect a bit strange. His was a quiet street flanked by large, fashionable homes. He turned into the long, paved driveway and parked beside the garage in back. He found the alarm system disarmed and the door to the kitchen unlocked.
"Daddy!" a small bundle of energy named Cameron shouted as soon as he stepped inside.
"Hi, there, Cam," Burke said, scooping him up. "Where's Mommy?"
"In the famby room with Punk."
Burke shook his head. "You'd better quit calling your sister that, boy. You'll wind up in deep trouble."
He found Lori and their bright-eyed daughter, a greatly reduced carbon copy of her mother, sitting on the sofa reading a Dr. Seuss book. He deposited his son on the floor and bent down to kiss Elizabeth and his wife.
"The patients appear in pretty good shape," he said with a grin.
"If they get any livelier, I won't be able to stand it." Lori looked up with a worried frown. "What's this all about?"
"Remember my telling you about being tapped for membership in the Foreign Affairs Roundtable?"
"Right. Sounded like a feather in your cap."
"Well, I'm not sure it's a feather I want after what I heard down in Mexico."
"What on earth did—"
"I accidentally ran onto something that looks mighty shady, and the Roundtable appears to be in the thick of it."
"How shady?"
Burke turned toward the kitchen. "I'm starving. Come on. I'll tell you while I get something to eat."
The taxi deposited Roddy Rodman at a modest brick home in a subdivision of near look-alikes, all on small lots, some with a few trees, others bare of anything but a determined stand of bright green grass. Each house was butted up close to its neighbor as if they were dominoes laid out on a table. He walked up to the front door and rang the bell, feeling as uneasy as a cold-calling insurance agent on his first day out. After a moment, the door was opened by a softly-smiling Karen Rodman. Just behind her came his spirited daughter, Lila.
"The prodigal father has returned," he said with a hesitant grin.
"Daddy!" Lila shouted, darting past her mother and throwing her arms around him.
Roddy hugged her and kissed her on the cheek, tasting the salty tears that had begun to flow. "Hey," he said, "I didn't expect this kind of welcome."
Karen led him back to the kitchen, where he found familiar-looking black cups on the table. He picked up one and stared at it. "Haven't I seen these someplace before?"
Lila was grinning now and wiping the tears away. "They just came yesterday. Thanks, Dad. You could have brought them with you."
Raising an eyebrow, he said slowly, "I don't think so."
Karen, who was dressed in white shorts and a flowery shirt that clearly showed the years had been kind to her, came over with the coffee pot and started pouring. "Sit down, Roddy. If you haven't had your morning coffee, I'm surprised you're in such an upbeat mood. You're really looking good, though."
As he sat down, Roddy glanced up at her and said as frankly as he knew how, "You've never looked better, Karen."
Her face aglow with a beaming smile, Lila looked from one parent to the other. "I'll leave you two to get reacquainted. I need to go finish getting ready."
"Where are you headed?" Roddy asked. "School hasn't started yet, has it?"
"Of course not. I have an appointment for a physical exam this morning."
He shrugged. "I thought it was the little kids just starting to school who needed physicals, not the teachers."
"I'm a little teacher just starting to school," she said brightly as she headed for her room.
As he sat in the comfortably-furnished kitchen sipping coffee, now alone with Karen, Roddy suddenly felt ill at ease, almost like being on a first date. His former wife sat across from him, looking as lovely as ever. She hadn't changed one bit since the last time he saw her.
"How's the dress shop coming?" he asked, breaking the silence.
"We're supposed to open in another week. The building is ready. We still have to move most of our stock in and set up the displays."
"You always knew what looked good on people. It'll be a success."
She gave him a rueful grin. "Nothing's guaranteed. But I don't need to tell you that. What did you mean on the phone by the full story about the court-martial?"
Roddy lowered his voice. "I'll tell you after Lila leaves. I don't want to get her upset."
She eyed him curiously. "It won't upset me?"<
br />
"You know what I mean. She's a lot more emotional. You were always the strongest one around here. If you hadn't been, you couldn't have put up with me as long as you did."
"Well, tell me about Mexico. When you first went down there, Lila came home from the library with an armload of guidebooks. She read me all about Guadalajara. Sounded like an interesting place."
Roddy told her about the breathtaking view where the road south from Guadalajara topped the hill to reveal a parnoramic view of Lake Chapala, about the American community around the lake and about some of his ex-Air Force cronies.
"Don't go anywhere," Lila admonished him as she came through the kitchen on her way to the car. "I'll be back as soon as I can."
When she was gone, Roddy put down his second cup of coffee and looked soberly at Karen. His voice had a bitter ring. "General Wing Patton is the bastard who was responsible for what happened to my aircrew. For reasons I don't yet know, he never told Major Bolivar about the change in that alternate frequency."
Karen stared at him incredulously. "Patton never...why did the Major testify the way he did?"
Roddy told her what he had learned from Chief Master Sergeant Clinton Black.
"Okay," Karen said, "granted Bolivar was dead and the sergeant couldn't prove anything. He still could have reported to someone what the Bolivar had told him. He could have testified to it under oath."
"Sure, he could have. But if the testimony of a chief master sergeant and a four-star general are in direct conflict, who do you think they're going to believe? The other thing was that Clint Black knew what Adam Stern had threatened Colonel Bolivar with. He didn't want to risk his good name and his family on something where he was bound to lose."
She stared at him with anger in her eyes. "But it shouldn't work that way."
"Agreed. And I should never have been court-martialed in the first place."
"What do you plan to do?" she asked. "Could this Stern cause you trouble?"
During the ride over in the taxi, Roddy had debated whether to tell her the whole story about what had taken place in Guadalajara. He knew he couldn't admit what had happened between Elena and himself. But now that Karen had confronted him with the question of Adam Stern, he decided to tell all. Or at least a slightly sanitized version.
"You're damned right, Karen," he admitted in a slow, deliberate voice. "Adam Stern scares the hell out of me."
By the time he had related the details about Janney and Stern, Karen was wide-eyed. "He came to the airport looking for you?"
"Right. He even talked to my next-door neighbors. I got the hell out of town. Spent a couple of days at Morelia visiting an old colonel who's retired."
"Do you really think he would have—"
"I don't just think, I know. His buddy Romashchuk tried to do it yesterday. That part of the story began when I got back from Morelia. There was a message on my answering machine from General Wackenhut, Dutch's father-in-law."
It was nearly noon when he finished his story. Karen sat there looking limp, leaning her forehead against one hand, propped up on her elbow. "I can't believe the police think you killed that woman."
"They knew I was there. They knew I took her Mercedes. I appeared to be on the run, getting Pablo to fly me to Mexico City."
"This Burke Hill, the former FBI man, what does he think?"
"He said he had some friends looking into Romashchuk's activities. He's to call me back sometime today. My only hope is that we can get enough evidence on Romashchuk and Stern to have them arrested. Then maybe we can tie the Major into Elena's death and Stern into General Patton's alibi."
After giving Lori an abbreviated version of the events reported by Colonel Rodman and Investigator Shumakov, Burke called Nate Highsmith to let him know the twins were no worse, that nothing definite would be known until the test reports were in. Then he stretched out on the bed for a short nap.
Lori woke him around eleven.
"The exterminators called," she said. "They're on the way over."
He sat up on the side of the bed, feeling groggy and slightly disoriented. That's what age does to you, he thought. In the "old days," he could go for twenty-four hours, take a quick nap and bounce up ready to roll again.
"The exterminators are coming?"
She nodded. "That's what I said."
The "exterminators" came around monthly, wearing white suits and driving a van painted with the name "Bugs Be Gone!" They were actually Amber Group employees of Worldwide Communications. The "bugs" they looked for were of the electronic kind rather than crawling or flying varieties. Homes of the top executives were swept regularly. Most of the wives, unlike Lori, were not aware of their husbands' double lives and accepted the "exterminators" at face value.
When they arrived and began their probing, Burke got a nasty shock. The highly sensitive equipment showed a transmitter in the family room telephone. They disconnected the phone and took it out to their van, where they carefully dissembled it to the accompaniment of loud music and located the offending transmitter. After disabling the device, they brought it back in to show Burke.
"Looks state-of-the-art," said a technician named Anderson. "It would pick up conversations in the room as well as both phone lines."
"Damn." Burke shook his head, frowning darkly. "Don't guess there's any way to tell how long it's been there?"
"We were here four weeks ago. Other than that, there's no way to tell."
"What kind of range would it have?"
"Probably about a mile. Could be monitored live. Could be a static post with a tape recorder."
"Any way you could locate the monitor?" Burke inquired.
"Not likely."
"Okay. Thanks, guys. I'd better get down to the office and tell Nate about this. I can't think of anything compromising it might have picked up, but just being here is damned serious."
After the "exterminators" had left, Lori asked, "Who could have put it there? And when?"
Burke rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "The alarm system hasn't indicated any intrusions." It was an expensive, highly sophisticated system installed by company technicians. "But how the hell could it have been done while we were home? We haven't had any strange—"
"The party!" Lori blurted. "The caterer used our kitchen as a command post."
"But Brenda was in there the whole time, wasn't she?"
"True. I'll call and see if she remembers anything unusual. Anybody using the family room phone."
Ten minutes later, Lori had the answer. Brenda recalled one of the white-jacketed waiters using the phone. A sharp observer, she also remembered the man had just come in to get a new badge made and the woman in charge, a blonde named Dolly, didn't seem to be familiar with his name.
"Call the caterer," Burke suggested. "Tell her you just discovered something missing and Brenda remembered this guy going in there. See what she knows about him."
Lori looked up the number and dialed, then asked for Dolly.
"Sorry, ma'am. Dolly's working a barbecue dinner tonight. She won't be in until just before time to leave. Around 4:30, I'd say. Be glad to have her call when she gets in."
"Okay, thanks," Lori said and left her number.
New York City
49
The Foreign Affairs Roundtable was located in a plain-looking gray stone building on Manhattan's Upper East Side near the Rockefeller Institute. Adam Stern occupied a modest office on the third floor looking toward Roosevelt Island. Besides a dark wood desk that was kept virtually bare, the room contained two drab gray four-drawer safes with combination locks, a bookcase filled mostly with assorted reference works and two odd chairs that faced the desk.
Stern had just returned from lunch with a former Mossad officer now working for the UN when he received a call from the Washington area on his private line.
"Is this Mr. Bowe?" a voice inquired.
"That's correct," Stern said. He liked the symmetry of the pseudonym, bow being the reverse of stern.
&
nbsp; "This is Sarge in Falls Church. We've been sending you the tapes by Fed Ex the last couple of days."
"Yes, thanks. I've received them." They had turned up nothing of interest. Not that he had really expected anything, but Laurence Coyne had insisted on thoroughly vetting Burke Hill. After what Hill had done a few years ago to a couple of prominent FAR members, Stern was in full agreement. Never mind that the two multinational tycoons had stupidly been caught bankrolling radical CIA and KGB elements in a plot to assassinate the Soviet and American presidents. The point was that Hill had proved himself quite adept at working outside of and, indeed, against "the system."
"You asked us to call if we picked up anything suspicious, out of the ordinary. Well, we just went through the tapes from last night and this morning. Came across some stuff you might be interested in. Hill called his wife late last night from Mexico City. Asked her to dream up something about the kids being sick. Seems he wanted an excuse that would justify asking his boss to send the company plane to pick him up. Said he would explain when he got back this morning."
Stern's interest perked up. Mexico City? No, he assured himself. There couldn't be any connection. But why was Hill in such a rush to get back to Washington that he couldn't wait a few hours for a commercial flight? And why not explain to his wife on the phone? Those were the kinds of questions that made an old spy's antennae bristle.
"Did he get back this morning?"
"Right. Want me to play you the part where he talks about what happened down there?"
"Yes, by all means."
"Hold a sec."
Stern heard a click and the recorder hum, then a male voice speaking. "Remember my telling you about being tapped for membership in the Foreign Affairs Roundtable?"
Overture to Disaster (Post Cold War Political Thriller Trilogy Book 3) Page 31