Edison Kiley was telling the truth.
“What about identifying marks?” she prodded. “Any visible scars, tattoos, skin blemishes?”
Kiley shook his head. “I simply can’t answer that question. There was nothing that stood out to me, but again, due to the distance between the two of us, and the dim lighting in the hallway, I can’t tell you for certain that she didn’t have any identifying characteristics. All I know is that I didn’t see any.”
“I understand,” Tracie said, nodding. “What about—”
The door to Aaron Stallings’s study opened with a bang as the CIA director strode into the room. He must have turned the knob and then kicked the door open. He was reading something written on a piece of paper as he walked, and he started talking without lifting his head or apologizing for the interruption.
“These autopsy results are unofficial and only preliminary,” he said. “The official autopsy won’t be released to law enforcement for quite some time yet. But I have sources in the DC Medical Examiner’s office, and I was able to get some early findings on cause of death for Allan Nesbitt.”
Tracie was by now well used to Aaron Stallings’s annoying habit of stringing her along, of forcing her to dig for information instead of just giving it to her. It was something new for Edison Kiley, though. He remained silent, but raised his eyebrows and spread his hands as if to say, “Well?”
Stallings reached the middle of the room and stopped walking. He raised his eyes from the paper for the first time and looked at them both. “Allan Nesbitt was poisoned.”
“With what?” Tracie said.
“He had been ingesting cocaine just before his death. The amount of the drug in his system was staggering, according to the autopsy. But that wasn’t what killed him. He was killed by strychnine. It had apparently been mixed with the coke. The autopsy revealed enough strychnine in his system to drop a circus elephant.”
Tracie ran a hand through her hair, tucking it behind her ear as she considered this development. She turned to Kiley. “Didn’t you say Nesbitt was a serious drug user?”
“He didn’t share that part of his private life—or any other part, for that matter—with me, but I heard enough rumors from people in a position to know to answer with a reasonable amount of certainty. Yes.”
“So, wouldn’t he have been able to detect that something wasn’t right with the cocaine?”
Stallings shrugged. “Who knows? He had a lot of champagne in his bloodstream as well. Maybe his first few hits of coke weren’t altered, or maybe he was so drunk by the time he started into the drugs that he just didn’t notice. But it’s reasonable to assume he didn’t mix the rat poison in with the coke himself. There are easier and far less painful ways to commit suicide than by ingesting strychnine.”
He raised his eyebrows and shook the paper at Tracie for emphasis. “Allan Nesbitt was murdered, just as certainly as the rest of the NCC management team was murdered. It’s time to stop sitting around and get to work.”
Stallings turned to Kiley. “Edison, I’ll have to ask you to move to the den. I need a word with my agent alone. Once we’re done here, I’ll have someone bring you back to your quarters at Langley to pick up your personal belongings.”
“That won’t take long,” Kiley said ruefully. “I lost everything.”
“I’m sorry,” Stallings said perfunctorily. Empathy was not his dominant personality trait. “Once you’ve had an opportunity to get your things together, an agent will transport you to the appropriate DC police precinct. All the authorities need to know about the last eighteen hours is that you were detained by the CIA on a matter of national security. I’ll give you a number they can call to verify the truth of the statement.”
Kiley nodded unhappily.
“The police will, of course, question you as to your whereabouts since the attack on you last night. They’ll also want to know what was discussed here. It goes without saying that everything we talked about is classified, as is the assistance you received from our operative last night at your home. All of that is on a need-to-know basis only.”
“And law enforcement has no need to know,” Kiley said wryly.
Stallings either missed the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. “That’s right,” he said. “The police will provide you with protection, and we’ll be in touch if we need to follow up on anything we discussed.”
Kiley struggled to his feet and reached for his crutches. He looked old and defeated and Tracie felt a stab of sympathy for him.
“Don’t worry about that,” Kiley said wearily. “I’ll be fine.”
11
“That poor man,” Tracie said as the door closed behind the departing Edison Kiley.
“Focus, Tanner,” Stallings said. “You have a lot of work to do and not a lot of evidence to go on. Plus, you’re starting out behind the power curve. The police and the FBI both have nearly a twenty-four hour head start on you.”
She felt an instant flash of annoyance. “And here I thought we were all on the same team.” She knew her comment would get under Stallings’s skin, and she couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to tweak her boss.
“Get real,” he said. “The DC police want to arrest these terrorists, and so does the FBI. Your assignment is simply to neutralize the threat. By any means necessary. An arrest would be ideal, but your assignment, first and foremost, is to make this threat go away.”
“I understand that,” she said. And I also understand that if I’m caught or killed, it will be like I never existed. She didn’t bother speaking the words. What would be the point?
Stallings eased into his desk chair to the accompaniment of a whoosh of air escaping the overmatched leather cushions. “I said you don’t have a lot of evidence to go on, but I do have a starting point for you. It’s clear, based on the letters Dr. Kiley received, that the motivation for this attack was the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Someone in Cuba, likely inside the Castro government, has gone to a lot of trouble to take revenge on the management team at NCC for their part in that invasion.”
He handed her a packet. “Inside this envelope are copies of the letters Kiley received, the letters you just studied, as well as the name of a contact in South Florida. This contact is a man we’ve used in the past who is as familiar as anyone you’ll find inside this country with the…unofficial…workings of the Castro government. Find him and talk to him. With any luck, he will have heard or seen something that can serve as a starting point for your investigation.”
Tracie opened the envelope and thumbed through the documents until she found the one she was looking for. “Juan Gonzalez?” She looked up at Stallings and shrugged. “Who is he?”
“Juan Gonzalez is a Cuban expatriate who has been active in the anti-Castro movement in south Florida stretching all the way back to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. As I said, he is as familiar with the unofficial workings of the Castro government as anyone you’ll find, probably including any official sources in the State Department.”
“By ‘unofficial workings,’ I assume you mean…”
“That’s right. Terrorism.”
“You’re sending me, alone, to meet with a known terrorist.”
“You know how this game works, Tanner. You should, you’ve played it long enough in and around the Soviet Union. We deal with unsavory characters all the time. That’s our job. It’s how we develop sources and mine information, the kind of information that the straight-arrows who follow all the rules don’t have access to.”
“I understand how the system works, Director. I was simply asking for clarification.”
“That’s not how it sounded. If you don’t feel you’re up to the mission, let me know and I’ll find someone else to do it.”
Tracie chuckled without a trace of humor. As dangerous as many of her assignments around the globe had been, at least they had been in keeping with the CIA’s charter: intelligence-gathering outside the borders of the United States. If she were apprehended in the company of a
known terrorist inside the U.S., Stallings would cut her loose without a second thought and she would be alone, facing prison time or worse. Charges of treason would not be out of the question, depending on how bad this guy Gonzalez really was.
So Stallings was full of shit when he intimated that this mission was in any way similar to anything she had done overseas. Tracie knew it, and furthermore, she knew that he knew it.
Unfortunately, none of that mattered. If she wanted to remain in the agency’s employ, she would set off immediately for South Florida to meet with this Juan Gonzalez.
She ignored Stallings’s sarcasm and said, “How much coordination do you expect on this assignment?”
“I don’t expect to have to hold your hand, if that’s what you’re asking. My expectation is that you will do your job: find out who is murdering high-level executives and single-handedly destroying American corporations that have a history of working with the defense community, and put a stop to it. By—”
“I know,” Tracie said. “By any means necessary.”
She looked again inside the packet of information, flipping through the documents. “I see a name written in Spanish next to Juan Gonzalez’s name. Is that the street he lives on?”
Stallings snorted. “Come on, Tanner, you know better. It doesn’t work that way. The address is of a bar in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. There’s no guarantee you’ll find Gonzalez there, of course, but his organization has a history of using that establishment as a sort of unofficial base of operations. If he’s not in the wind, that’s as good a place as any to start looking for him.”
12
The name of the bar was Noches Habaña, and despite Tracie having the address it wasn’t easy to find.
She wasted nearly an hour driving around Miami, even after stopping several times to get directions. The first couple she asked, a youngish man and woman dressed oddly, in shorts and flip-flops with mismatched shirts and multicolored neckties, stared at her blankly before wandering off without answering. The second and third responded, although neither had ever heard of the tavern and both claimed to have lived in the area for years.
Finally, she hit pay dirt when she asked an older, Hispanic-looking man. The man stepped out of a corner store wearing a sharply creased white suit over a snow-white dress shirt and white tie, and he looked her up and down for what felt like a full minute, eyes narrowed, before answering. “What business do you have at Noches Habaña, little girl?”
Tracie returned his gaze evenly. “I’m thirsty.”
“There are plenty of other tabernas in the city you would be more…comfortable…in, I assure you. Now go on your way, little girl.” The man spun on his heel and began striding briskly toward his car.
“Do you know where it is or don’t you?” She put steel in her voice and the man stopped short.
He hesitated, and then turned slowly to face her. “You don’t want to go to Noches Habaña, believe me.” His voice was soft, his tone neutral, but the menace in his words was clear.
“Thanks for your concern, but why don’t you let me be the one to decide that?”
The man looked as though he’d just bitten into a lemon, and Tracie had the absurd thought that he looked exactly like Aaron Stallings, despite the fact he looked nothing like Aaron Stallings. I seem to have this effect on a lot of people, she thought.
A long moment passed, and Tracie was certain the man was going to tell her to pound sand. Or whatever the Spanish equivalent might be. Then he smiled acidly. “It’s all the same to me, puta. You want to take your life in your hands, you go right ahead.”
She smiled and waited for him to continue.
“Go to First Street,” he said, inclining his head to the left. “Turn West on First and drive into the heart of Little Havana. Turn left on Twelfth Avenue and drive until you see a Catholic church on the corner of Twelfth Avenue and Sixth Street. Noches Habaña will be about a half block south of the church.”
“See? Now was that so hard?”
“You’re welcome, puta. But it’s not too late to turn around and go back where you came from. Go to one of the bars all of the other tourists visit.”
“I’ll take it under advisement. And thanks.”
Tracie spun on her heel and walked to her rental car, conscious of the man’s eyes burning a hole in her back. She started the car and eased down on the gas and accelerated away. The man in white never moved.
As she drove, she watched the man shrink in the rearview mirror. He wore a pensive expression, and he tracked her progress until eventually he disappeared behind a gaggle of pedestrians on the busy sidewalk.
***
There was no parking available for Noches Habaña; or if there was, Tracie couldn’t find it. The bar was located exactly where her reluctant tour guide had told her it would be. She slowed as she drove past and then continued along Twelfth Avenue, eventually pulling a U-turn and passing the tavern again from the other direction.
Santa Barbara Old Catholic Church seemed aptly named. It was tiny by church standards, especially by Catholic Church standards, and had been constructed of red brick, with black wrought iron bars protecting the one tiny window she could see, and a wrought iron railing lining the concrete steps leading to the front door.
On one side of the steps was a tiny courtyard, and on the other, a small driveway. At the street the driveway appeared wide enough to accept two cars, but then it narrowed steadily until it looked as though even a single small vehicle would scrape the side of the church if it tried to drive all the way to the end.
And that was the extent of the on-site parking for Santa Barbara Old Catholic Church. Apparently, Little Havana’s Catholics all walked to church on Sundays.
Impatient, Tracie yanked the wheel to the right and nosed into Santa Barbara’s miniscule lot. She hoped she wouldn’t get towed, but decided that if anyone might be inclined to put up with an illegally parked car for an hour or so, it would be the priest in charge of this little church.
She killed the engine and climbed out. Locked the door and pocketed the key. A steady stream of people passed by on the sidewalk just a few feet away. While most of them gazed at her curiously, nobody challenged her or questioned why she had just parked in the church lot.
She fell into the flow of foot traffic, moving at a brisk pace toward Noches Habaña. As she approached, she crossed Twelfth Avenue and walked past the entrance, examining the bar from the other side of the street and trying to get a feel for the place.
The way Mr. White Suit had made it seem, Noches Habaña would be filled with cutthroats and backstabbers, the Miami equivalent of Rick’s Café Americain from the old Humphrey Bogart film, Casablanca. The place she observed as she walked past looked like any one of a thousand similar bars she might have encountered in any American city.
Out of date, slowly going to seed, but with a distinctly Spanish flair, Noches Habaña featured a neon sign hanging in its dirty front window advertising Bucañero, presumably a Cuban beer. The bar’s interior was so weakly lit that Tracie had no way of knowing as she gazed through the plate glass how many people might be inside the place, much less what those people might be up to.
She strolled along the sidewalk for another fifty feet. It was obvious she had learned all she was going to learn from outside the place and while the prospect of entering unprepared for what she might find inside was daunting, it seemed there was no way to avoid doing exactly that.
She took a deep breath and strode briskly back to Noches Habaña. At the bar’s entrance, she didn’t hesitate. She pulled open the door and walked inside.
Salsa music was playing softly from speakers hidden somewhere in the ceiling. A few men sat at tables scattered randomly around the bar’s interior, and a couple more men were perched on stools at the bar.
Tracie’s first thought was, desultory. All the patrons seemed to be drinking, but no one looked all that enthusiastic about it. A few conversations were taking place, but the men who were speaki
ng were doing so in hushed tones. The atmosphere was expectant, as if everyone in the place was just passing the time, waiting for…something.
She wasn’t sure what she had expected to find inside Noches Habaña, but this wasn’t it. She had been prepared for noise and activity, and had instead gotten what looked like a funeral mass at Santa Barbara Old Catholic Church up the street.
And there was something else.
As far as she could tell, Tracie was the only female in the place.
Every head turned in her direction, and all eyes tracked her as she crossed the room. The bartender was a middle-aged man who seemed every bit as unenthusiastic as his customers, and he took his sweet time ambling over.
Tracie waited patiently. Finally the man wiped his hands on a dirty apron and said, “You are lost, miss? You require directions?”
The hostility in the man’s heavily Spanish-accented English was clear. She noticed also that not one of the drinkers inside Noches Habaña seemed to have returned his attention to his drink, or to his conversation, or to anything besides the new female arrival.
“No, I don’t require directions, thank you. I’m exactly where I want to be.” She kept her tone as coldly neutral as the bartender’s.
“Then what is your business here?”
“Maybe I’m thirsty.”
“In that case I suggest you find a tavern where you will be welcome.”
“Are you saying I’m not welcome here?”
The bartender regarded her distrustfully. “What is your business at Noches Habaña? Look around you, niña. You do not fit in here.”
“I’m looking for Juan Gonzalez.” She kept her eyes locked onto his, aware that she was still the focus of every man’s attention inside the bar.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 57