24 Declassified: Storm Force 2d-7

by David S. Jacobs

  Modest and unassuming at best, most of the businesses lining the square were going concerns: that is, they were concerned about going out of business. There was a furniture store specializing in selling factory seconds, off-brands, and more than slightly damaged goods. An E-Z Loan finance company. A combination cut-rate drugstore and gift shop. A Salvation Army thrift shop. A shoe repair store. A coin-operated Laundromat. A storefront church. A corner convenience store and smoke shop.

  The Supremo Hat Company seemed a happy exception to the general air of shabbiness and neglect. It occupied a single-story building, a shedlike rectangle whose short end fronted the square.

  The brown brick structure featured a tan cornice, window and door moldings. It was divided into two sections, a display and office space occupying the front third of the space, with the other two-thirds taken up by a work and storage area. At the rear of the building was a loading platform, and beyond that, a company parking lot. The gravel lot was bordered by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence topped with three strands of barbed wire. A company panel van and a half-dozen or so vehicles belonging to employees were parked in the back lot.

  At the front of the building, a display window showcased the various styles of hats made by the company. In the bottom corners of the window, a pair of signs proclaimed the same message in two languages: POR LA MEJOR and FOR THE TRADE.

  No casual customer could just walk in off the street and buy a hat. It wasn't that kind of a setup. The showroom was closed to the general public and reserved for garment industry professionals; even for the latter, it was preferred that they make an appointment in advance to see the line. The showroom was almost a formality, since company policy was to send its salesmen directly to the stores to display their wares for the buyers.

  New Orleans takes its fashion seriously. Part of living well is dressing well. Hats are a necessary accessory.

  Supremo made and sold men's hats only. Its specialty was handmade and woven straw hats. These were not crude things but works of art, with fine-mesh weaves. Panamas, Borsalinos, stingy brims, porkpies, planters, and other classic styles. Not cheap, either. Supremo made a quality product, with prices to match.

  A couple of administrative staffers worked up front in the showroom and office area. At any given time, anywhere from eight to a dozen employees were at work in the back rooms.

  The showroom featured a central display stand, stepped and velvet draped, covered at all levels with hats. Each hat bore a white, plastic-encased card with the style name and number. There was a quaint, old-timey feel to the decor, with its wicker-bladed overhead fan and array of globe lights.

  To one side, a reception desk guarded the closed-door entrance to a private office.

  Within, seated behind a dark wooden desk the size of a compact car, was the company's owner/manager, Felix Monatero.

  He was in his fifties, well-groomed, with an athletic build. His face was long, rectangular, with a hawklike nose, arched eyebrows that came to a point in the centers, and a mustache that looked like it had been penciled in, but wasn't. Hair, brows, and mustache were all dyed jet-black, so black they had blue highlights.

  Monatero sat behind his desk, examining an open ledger, going over some accounts. He peered at the entries through a pair of reading glasses.

  A knock sounded on the door, one whose cadence and rhythm was familiar to him. He took off his glasses, slipped them into the breast pocket of his shirt, and said, "Come in."

  The door opened and in stepped Mrs. Ybarra, his receptionist and confidential assistant. She was fortyish, matronly, short, chubby, with a large bust and wide rear. A heart-shaped face showed wide dark eyes and a red-painted Kewpie-doll mouth with a beauty mark to one side of it. She wore a cocoa-colored dress and dark brown leather shoes. Earrings, necklace, bracelets, and watchband were all made of heavy gold.

  Closing the door behind her, she crossed to his desk, a sheet of paper held in one hand. She said, "This just came in over the fax."

  She handed it to him. It was a printed circular, an ad whose heading said, "Red Sail Travel Tours" in such bold letters and oversized print that he could make it out without his glasses. He frowned at it. "Just came in, you say?"

  "This very minute," she said. "I knew you'd want to see it right away."

  "Indeed I do. Thank you, Mrs. Ybarra."

  "You're welcome, Mr. Monatero."

  He nodded, indicating that the encounter was at an end and she should go. She took her cue with no seeming reaction, her painted face expressionless, masklike. She went out, closing the door behind her.

  Monatero put on his glasses and studied the missive. At first glance, it seemed no more than just another piece of spam, one of the many pieces of unsolicited advertising that comes in during the routine course of operation of a business fax machine.

  He squinted at it. The tour agency ad hawked their "island getaway" special, a series of price-cut packages for budget-minded vacationers seeking fun-fested Caribbean holidays. One might have thought that the timing was a little off, considering that Hurricane Everette was now churning across the waters of the Gulf on a collision course with New Orleans, and the only getaway the locals were contemplating was a run to high and dry ground.

  But this was no mere advertising circular, it was a notice of intent, a heads-up message for those such as Monatero who could read the signs.

  He rose, crossing to a corner filing cabinet, a chest-high, gray metal job topped by a decorative potted plant with big waxy green fronds that looked fake but wasn't. The cabinet's vertically stacked row of drawers was secured by a combination lock. Montero knew the combination by heart, dialing it without hesitation and unsealing the lock.

  Opening the top drawer, he reached in and took out its sole contents, a laptop computer. He quivered with alertness, experiencing an adrenaline rush that made his hands tremble.

  That's what he told himself, that it was adrenaline which made his hands shake, and not… fear.

  Carrying the machine in both hands, he set it down on his desktop, sat down facing it, lifted the lid, and booted it up. He input his password, a twelve-digit combination of letters and numbers. When it was functioning properly, he activated its wireless transceiver.

  The faxed message had been his cue to make ready for an incoming message. A prime communique.

  Red Sail — that was the code name of a contact with extraordinary authority and clout, whose word was law to Monatero and the organization of which he was the head.

  * * *

  Monatero was a deep-cover agent for communist Cuba. The Supremo Hat Company was a cover, a false front for a clandestine espionage network which had taken a decade to establish.

  Monatero, Mrs. Ybarra, and all the company employees, including the hatmakers and the delivery truck driver, were all members of the spy cell.

  That they had transformed their cover operation into a profitable business with a reputation for making a quality product was merely one measure of just how effective that camouflage was. It was a manifestation of the classic espionage resident/illegal two-step.

  Cuba and the United States maintain diplomatic relations of sorts, however strained those relations may be. There's an American Embassy in Havana and similar Cuban facilities in the United States. Each side assumes as a matter of course that all the diplomatic cadre of the other side is made up of spies. Being protected by their respective diplomatic credentials, they are immune to arrest and prosecution by the host countries.

  That's what is called the resident system. Residents possess the equivalent of a get-out-of-j ail-free card. If caught spying, the worst they can expect is to be deported back home. Of course, such residents come under relentless scrutiny by their opposite numbers in the rival intelligence services, who put them under the microscope night and day, around the clock.

  Such total surveillance is a major obstacle to carrying out acts of covert and clandestine subterfuge so vital for effective espionage, counterintelligence, and action oper
ations. The real meat and potatoes of the spy game.

  To accomplish those ends, a second parallel system or network is required. One made up of persons not diplomatically accredited and therefore not necessarily subject to total surveillance by the host country's counterespionage and counterintelligence agencies.

  These spies, who may pose as journalists, businesspersons, tourists, students, and the like, are known as illegals. If caught, they are potentially subject to arrest, interrogation, imprisonment, torture, and, in extreme cases, execution.

  Monatero and the spy cell he ran behind the facade of Supremo Hat were all illegals. They were all very good at what they did, having escaped penetration or even detection by U.S. intelligence for many years now. They carried out the real nuts-and-bolts espionage operations that the Cuban diplomatic residents, the legals, were unable to perform due to the constant surveillance maintained on them by the United States.

  An elaborate system of third-party cutouts, brush contacts, dead drops, and similar tradecraft tactics was in place to allow for two-way communication between the residents and the illegals.

  Monatero was part of a chain of command linking him to his masters in Havana.

  But there was a second line of authority, one whose existence was beyond top secret, linking Monatero to Havana's supreme deep cover agent operating in the U.S. Gulf Coast.

  That shadowy spymaster was General Hector Beltran, "the Generalissimo." Beltran's extraordinary status gave him top priority when it came to calling on the services of Monatero and the Supremo cell, allowing him to mobilize their full resources in support of whatever mission he desired to carry out.

  It was a measure of Monatero's effectiveness and the confidence and trust reposed in him by Havana that he had been allowed to know the nature of the Beltran connection.

  He was the only member of the Supremo cell to possess that knowledge.

  Red Sail was a Beltran cryptonym. The Generalissimo had many different ways to contact Monatero and make his wishes known to him. The fax machine cue was just one of them.

  When Beltran wanted something, it got done. Period. Monatero and his whole Supremo cell had to drop whatever ongoing operation they were engaged in, no matter how urgent it might be, even if the current op might be burned or blown by reason of neglect while they were carrying out Beltran's orders. That was how Havana wanted it; that was the way it had to be.

  Months might pass, sometimes even a year or more, between Beltran's contacts with Supremo. Months had passed since Monatero had last been required to serve the Generalissimo.

  Now Beltran had opened up communication with the cell. His encrypted message was downloaded into the laptop Monatero reserved for such communiques. Monatero went to work on the message, keying in a series of passwords that were operative for today's twenty-four-hour window of opportunity.

  Text flashed across his monitor screen, an alphabet soup of letters, numbers, and symbols that abruptly reconfigured into lines of text message:

  (begin)

  GRAND SLAM

  LITTLE BROTHER LOCAL IN VIOLATION OF CONTRACT.

  DEAL NULL & VOID.

  PROJECT CANCELED.

  SOONEST:

  FIRE CARPENTER

  TRIPLE PLAY FOR RUBI SUSPENSION

  (end)

  Decrypted, it was still opaque to those unaware of a lexicon previously worked out between Beltran and Monatero, a system of code words, private allusions, and euphemisms designed to add yet another layer of complexity to the text.

  Monatero translated the message in his head. Spying was never less than intense, but Beltran always worked at the cutting edge, demanding the near-impossible and insisting that it be done in record time.

  Monatero's nerves, already taut, underwent several more turns of the screw, keying him up to near-breathless levels of anxiety as the full import of the text took hold.

  "Grand slam": that was a priority notification putting Monatero and by extension the entire Supremo cell on a maximum security alert — basically a wartime, combat-ready status.

  What was afoot? Had the U.S. declared war on Cuba? "Grand slam" implied a crisis level of similar magnitude.

  Monatero mentally clamped down on his physical reaction, his heart rate mercifully slowing down some as he read on. "Little brother" was Venezuela's new socialist regime. To Havana's dedicated Fidelistas, late-blooming Caracas could never be regarded as anything but a junior partner in the business of world revolution.

  "Local" meant Venezuela's New Orleans consulate, specifically the spy apparatus being run out of the site.

  "Violation of contract, deal null & void" and "project canceled" were all straightforward enough: there had been a falling-out due to some perfidy on the part of the Venezuelans; the working relationship between Cuban and Venezuelan spy nets, at least in New Orleans, was over, finished. Kaput.

  "Soonest" was equivalent to "take immediate action." "Carpenter," Colonel Paz, was to be "fired" — that is, killed on sight or as soon as possible. "Triple play for Rubi suspension": "triple play" was a three-man action team. Enforcers. Wet work specialists. "Suspension" was kidnapping.

  "Rubi" contained a little private joke of Beltran's. It was short for Rubirosa. Porfirio Rubirosa had been the confidential agent of the fearsome Dominican dictator Trujillo, during the 1940s and 1950s. He'd also been an international playboy, a real-life Don Juan whose conquests included a string of movie starlets and heiresses.

  Rubi was Beltran's sardonic code name for Raoul Garros, Venezuelan scion and womanizer, LAGO's smooth front man in New Orleans and a vital component of Paz's organization.

  * * *

  The message was dismaying, a red alert that conditions between Havana and Caracas had undergone a 180-degree reversal, from comity and close cooperation, to enmity and virtual all-out war. It specifically concerned operations in the New Orleans area, where Paz and Beltran had been conducting joint ventures, the nature of which was unknown to Monatero, who lacked the "need to know."

  Monatero and his Supremo cell could expect an attack from Paz at any time. He was instructed to put Paz at the top of his A-list of targets marked for immediate execution.

  Raoul Garros, a vital Paz associate, had escaped being marked for death, but was instead reserved for abduction, to be taken alive — for interrogation, exchange purposes, or whatever; that was a mystery to Monatero. Beltran would be handling the Garros kidnapping himself, and required a team of three top agents to immediately be put at his disposal.

  Monatero reread the message, committing it to memory. He hit enter, and the text disappeared, winking into nothingness. Had he not hit the key, the message would have automatically deleted itself at the end of five minutes.

  Monatero decided to have a smoke. That would give him something to do physically while his brain and nervous system were integrating the import of the instructions. He took out a custom-blend, brown paper cigarette and set fire to one end of it. After a few puffs, he became restless, eager to be in motion.

  He set the still-burning cigarette in the ashtray and switched off the laptop. The screen's going black-dark gave him a start, making him flinch.

  He unlocked the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. In it were a gun and some boxes of ammo. The weapon was a short, snouty.380-caliber semiautomatic pistol, graphite-colored steel with dark inset walnut grips. It held a full clip, but the chamber was empty.

  It was legal; he had a permit for it. Also a permit to carry a concealed weapon, obtained on the basis of his being the manager of a company that frequently required him to carry large sums of money. Ordinarily he rarely went about armed.

  "Ah, well, there's no end for it but to follow orders," he told himself. Sighing, he slipped the weapon into the right side pocket of his sport jacket, then winced; the weighty pistol tended to ruin the linings of his pockets.

  He closed the laptop, toted it back to the filing cabinet, and placed it in the top drawer. He closed the drawer, the lock clicking into place, and ga
ve the combination dial a spin for further security.

  Now to notify the rest of the cell of the change in status…

  * * *

  Something nagged at him, irritating him for no discernible reason and setting his teeth on edge, even more than they already were from the devastating new developments.

  Whatever was bothering him was somewhere below the threshold of consciousness, and he couldn't put a finger on what it was, irking him all the more.

  Suddenly awareness came and he realized what it was. The source of his annoyance was external, it was in the air all around him, and must have been so for several moments.

  It was a tune, a mindlessly simple, catchy little tune that was being played repeatedly on some kind of electronically amplified, computerized music maker.

  It came from outside, from the front of the building. His window was closed, the air conditioner was on, but the music still came through, loud and clear, maddening in its infantile simplicity and mind-numbing repetition.

  It was that old folk song "La Cucaracha," rendered in the idiotically simplest, piping electronic tones.

  Crossing to the window, he fingered open two slats of the Venetian blinds and peered between them, looking out through the glass.

  The music came from a loudspeaker mounted on a lunch wagon parked at the curb in front of the building. An old, beat-up vehicle with a cab up front and quilted metal box behind. The box's side panels were hinged to open up and outward, revealing shelves stocked with plastic-wrapped sandwiches, coffee, soft drinks, buttered rolls, bags of potato chips and pretzels, and other quick snack foods.

  It was what some of the men working in the back of the building jokingly called a "roach coach," although they patronized it religiously as it made its daily stops at the hat company.

  A familiar sight, an icon, operated by Tio Rico, an oldster and well-known neighborhood character. He'd been doing business in the neighborhood for years, as far back as Monatero could remember. Supremo Hat was one of his regular stops, twice a day, six days a week. Regular as clockwork — had he ever missed a day?