by Tom Clancy
They motored in, powered by a ten-horse outboard. The quartermaster took note of the tidal flow, following what appeared to be a channel that meandered generally in the direction indicated by their marked-up chart. It was quiet in here, and Oreza remembered his tour of duty for Operation MARKET TIME, the Coast Guard’s effort to assist the Navy in Vietnam. He’d spent time with the brown-water guys, running Swift boats manufactured right in Annapolis by the Trumpy Yard. It was so similar, the tall grass that could, and often did, conceal people with guns. He wondered if they might be facing something similar soon. The cops were fingering their revolvers, and Oreza asked himself, too late, why he hadn’t brought a Colt with him. Not that he knew how to use it. His next thought was that this would have been a good place to have Kelly with him. He wasn’t quite sure what the story was on Kelly, but he suspected the man was one of the SEALs, with whom he’d worked briefly in the Mekong Delta. Sure as hell he’d gotten that Navy Cross for something, and the tattoo on his arm wasn’t there by accident.
“Well, damn,” Oreza breathed. “Looks like a Starcraft sixteen . . . no, more like eighteen.” He lifted his portable radio. “Four-One Alpha, this is Oreza.”
“Reading you, Portagee.”
“We got the boat, right where they said. Stand by.”
“Roger.”
Suddenly things got very tense indeed. The two cops exchanged a look, wondering why they hadn’t brought more people out. Oreza eased his launch right up to the Starcraft. The cops got aboard gingerly.
Freeland pointed to the back. Joy nodded. There were six cement blocks and a rolled-up section of nylon netting. Xantha hadn’t lied about that. There was also a rope ladder going up. Joy went first, his revolver in his right hand. Oreza just watched as Freeland followed. Once they got to the deck, the men wrapped both hands around their handguns and headed for the superstructure, disappearing from view for what seemed like an hour, but in reality was only four minutes. Some birds scattered aloft. When Joy came back, his revolver wasn’t visible.
“We have three bodies up here, and a hell of a large quantity of what looks like heroin. Call your boat, have them tell my barracks that we need crime lab. Sailor, you just started running a ferry service.”
“Sir, fish-and-game has better boats for this. Want me to call them to support you?”
“Good idea. You might want to circle around this area some. The water looks pretty clear, and she told us that they’ve dumped some bodies hereabouts. See the stuff in the fishing boat?” Oreza looked, noticing the fishnet and blocks for the first time.
Jesus. “That’s how you do it. Okay, I’ll motor around.” Which he did, after making his radio call.
“Hi, Sandy.”
“John! Where are you?”
“My place in town.”
“There was a policeman in to see us yesterday. They’re looking for you.”
“Oh?” Kelly’s eyes narrowed as he chewed on his sandwich.
“He said you should come in and talk to him, that it’s better if you do it right away.”
“That’s nice of him,” Kelly observed with a chuckle.
“What are you going to do?”
“You don’t want to know, Sandy.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Please, John, please think it through.”
“I have, Sandy. Honest. It’ll be okay. Thanks for the information.”
“Something wrong?” another nurse asked after she hung up.
“No,” Sandy replied, and her friend knew it was a lie.
Hmm. Kelly finished off his Coke. That confirmed his suspicion about Oreza’s little visit. So things were getting complicated now, but they’d been pretty complicated the week before, too. He headed off to the bedroom, almost there when there came a knock at the door. That startled him rather badly, but he had to answer it. He’d opened windows to air the apartment out, and it was plain that someone was here. He took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Wondered where you were, Mr. Murphy,” the manager said, much to Kelly’s relief.
“Well, two weeks of work in the Midwest and a week’s vacation down in Florida.” he lied with a relaxed smile.
“You didn’t get much of a tan.”
An embarrassed grin. “Spent a lot of my time inside.” The manager thought that was pretty good.
“Good for you, well, just wanted to see if everything was okay.”
“No problems here,” Kelly assured the man, closing the door before he could ask anything else. He needed a nap. It seemed that all of his work was at night. It was like being on the other side of the world, Kelly told himself, lying down on his lumpy bed.
It was a hot day at the zoo. Better to have met in the panda enclosure. It was crowded with people who wanted to gawk at this wonderful goodwill gift from the People’s Republic of China—Chinese Communists to Ritter. The place was air conditioned and comfortable, but intelligence officers usually were uncomfortable in places like that, and so today he was strolling by the remarkably large area that contained the Galapagos tortoises, or turtles—Ritter didn’t know the difference, if there was one. Why they needed so large an area, he didn’t know either. Certainly it seemed expansive for a creature that moved at roughly the speed of a glacier.
“Hello, Bob.” “Charles” was now an unnecessary subterfuge, though Voloshin had initiated the call—right to Ritter’s desk. to show how clever he was. It worked both ways in the intelligence business. In the case of a call initiated by the Russians, the code name was “Bill.”
“Hello, Sergey.” Ritter pointed to the reptiles. “Kind of reminds you of the way our governments work, doesn’t it?”
“Not my part of it.” The Russian sipped at his soft drink. “Nor yours.”
“Okay, what’s the word from Moscow?”
“You forgot to tell me something.”
“What’s that?”
“That you have a Vietnamese officer also.”
“Why should that concern you?” Ritter asked lightly, clearly concealing his annoyance that Voloshin knew this, as his interlocutor could see.
“It is a complication. Moscow doesn’t know yet.”
“Then don’t tell them,” Ritter suggested. “It is, as you say, a complication. I assure you that your allies don’t know.”
“How can that be?” the Russian demanded.
“Sergey, do you reveal methods?” Ritter replied, ending that phase of the discussion. This part of the game had to be played very carefully indeed, and for more than one reason. “Look, General, you don’t like the little bastards any more than we do, right?”
“They are our fraternal socialist allies.”
“Yes, and we have bulwarks of democracy all over Latin America, too. Did you come here for a quick course in political philosophy?”
“The nice thing about enemies is that you know where they stand. This is not always true of friends,” Voloshin admitted. That also explained the comfort level of his government with the current American president. A bastard, perhaps, but a known bastard. And, no, Voloshin admitted—to himself—he had little use for the Vietnamese. The real action was in Europe. Always had been. Always would be. That was where the course of history had been set for centuries, and nothing was going to change that.
“Call it an unconfirmed report, check up on it, maybe? Delay? Please, General, the stakes here are too high for that. If anything happens to those men, I promise you, we will produce your officer. The Pentagon knows. Sergey, and they want those men back. and they don’t care a rat-fuck about détente. ” The profanity showed what Ritter really thought.
“Do you? Does your Directorate?”
“It sure will make life a lot more predictable. Where were you in ’62, Sergey?” Ritter asked-knowing and wondering what he’d say.
“In Bonn, as you know, watching your forces go on alert because Nikita Sergeyevich decided to play his foolish game.” Which had been contrary to KGB and Foreig
n Ministry advice, as both men knew.
“We’re never going to be friends, but even enemies can agree to rules for the game. Isn’t that what this is abou?”
A judicious man, Voloshin thought, which pleased him. It made for predictable behavior, and that above all things was what the Russians wanted of the Americans. “You are persuasive, Bob. You assure me that our allies do not know their man is missing?”
“Positive. My offer for you to meet your man is still open,” he added.
“Without reciprocal rights?” Voloshin tried.
“For that I need permission from upstairs. I can try if you ask me to, but that also would be something of a complication.” He dumped his empty drink cup in a bin.
“I ask.” Voloshin wanted that made clear.
“Very well. I’ call you. And in return?”
“In return I will consider your request.” Voloshin walked off without another word.
Gotcha! Ritter thought, heading towards where his car was parked. He’d played a careful but inventive game. There were three possible leaks on BOXWOOD GREEN. He’d visited each of them. To one he’d said that they actually had gotten a prisoner out, who had died of wounds. To another, that the Russian was badly wounded and might not survive. But Ritter had saved his best piece of bait for the most likely leak. Now he knew. That narrowed it to four suspects. Roger MacKenzie. that prep-school-reject aide, and two secretaries. This was really an FBI job, but he didn’t want any additional complications, and an espionage investigation of the Office of the President of the United States was about as complicated as things could be. Back in his car, he decided to meet with a friend in the Directorate of Science and Technology. Ritter had a great deal of respect for Voloshin. A clever man, a very careful, methodical man, he’d run agents all over Western Europe before being assigned to the Washington rezidentura. He’d keep his word, and to make sure he didn’t get into any trouble about it, he’d play everything strictly by the exacting rules of his parent agency. Ritter was gambling big on that. Pull this one off in addition to the other coup in the works, and how much higher might he rise? Better yet, he’d be earning his way up, not some fair-haired political payoff, but the son of a Texas Ranger who’d waited tables to get his degree at Baylor. Something Sergey would have appreciated, in good Marxist-Leninist fashion, Ritter told himself, pulling onto Connecticut Avenue. Working-class kid makes good.
It was an unusual way to gather information, something he’d never done before, and pleasant enough that he might even get used to it. He sat at a corner booth in Mama Maria‘s, working slowly through his second course—thank you, no wine, I’m driving. Dressed in his CIA suit, well-groomed and sporting a new businesslike haircut, he enjoyed the looks of a few unattached women, and a waitress who positively doted on him, especially with his good manners. The excellence of the food explained the crowded room, and the crowding explained why it was a convenient place for Tony Piaggi and Henry Tucker to meet here. Mike Aiello had been very forthcoming about that. Mama Maria’s was, in fact, owned by the Piaggi family, now in its third generation of providing food and other, less legal, services to the local community, dating back to Prohibition. The owner was a bon vivant, greeting favored customers, guiding them to their places with Old World hospitality. Snappy dresser, too, Kelly saw, recording his face and build, gestures and mannerisms, as he ate through his calamari. A black man came in, dressed in a nicely cut suit. He looked like he knew the place, smiling at the hostess and waiting a few seconds for his reward, and Kelly’s.
Piaggi looked up and headed to the front, stopping only briefly to shake hands with someone on the way. He did the same with the black man, then led him back past Kelly’s table, and up the back stairs to where the private rooms were. No particular notice was taken. There were other black couples in the restaurant, treated the same as everyone else. But those others did honest work, Kelly was sure. He turned his thoughts away from the distraction. So that’s Henry Tucker. That’s the one who killed Pam. He didn’t look like a monster. Monsters rarely did. To Kelly he looked like a target, and his particulars went into Kelly’s memory, alongside Tony Piaggi’s. He was surprised when he looked down and saw that the fork in his hands was bent.
“What’s the problem?” Piaggi asked upstairs. He poured each of them a glass of Chianti, good host that he was, but as soon as the door had closed, Henry’s face started telling him something.
“They haven’t come back.”
“Phil, Mike, and Burt?”
“Yes!” Henry snarled, meaning, no.
“Okay, settle down. How much stuff did they have?”
“Twenty kees of pure, man. This was supposed to take care of me and Philly, and New York for a while.”
“Lot of stuff, Henry.” Tony nodded. “Maybe it just took them a while, okay?”
“Shoulda been back by now.”
“Look, Phil and Mike are new, probably clumsy, like Eddie and me were our first time—hell, Henry, that was only five kees, remember?”
“I allowed for that,” he said, wondering if he’d really be right about that or not.
“Henry,” Tony said, sipping his wine and trying to appear calm and reasonable, “look, okay? Why are you getting excited? We’ve taken care of all the problems, right?”
“Something’s wrong, man.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Want to get a boat and go down there to see?”
Tucker shook his head. “Takes too long.”
“The meet with the other guys isn’t for three days. Be cool. They’re probably on their way here now.”
Piaggi thought he understood Tucker’s sudden case of the shakes. Now it was big-time. Twenty kilograms of pure translated into a huge quantity of street drugs, and setting it already diluted and packaged made for sufficient convenience to their customers that they were for the first time paying top dollar. This was the really big score that Tucker had been working towards for several years. Just assembling all the cash to pay for it was a major undertaking. It was an understandable case of nerves.
“Tony, what if it wasn’t Eddie at all?”
Exasperation: “You’re the one who said it had to be, remember’?”
Tucker couldn’t pursue that. He’d merely wanted an excuse to eliminate the man as an unnecessary complication. His anxiety was partly what Tony thought it was, but something else. too. The things that had happened earlier in the summer, the things that had just started for no reason, then stopped with no reason—he had told himself that they were Eddie Morello’s doing. He’d managed to convince himself of that, but only because he had wanted to believe it. Somewhere else the little voice that had brought him this far had told him otherwise, and now the voice was back, and there was no Eddie to be the focus for his anxiety and anger. A streetwise man who’d gotten this far through the complex equation of brain and guts and instinct, he trusted that last quality most. Now it was telling him things that he didn’t understand, couldn’t reason out. Tony was right. It could just be a matter of clumsiness in the processing. That was one reason they were setting their lab up in east Baltimore. They could afford that now, with experience behind them and a viable front business setting up in the coming week. So he drank his wine and settled down, the rich, red alcohol soothing his abraded instincts.
“Give ’em until tomorrow.”
“So how was it?” the man at the wheel asked. An hour north of Bloodsworth Island, he figured he’d waited long enough to ask the silent petty officer who stood beside him. After all, they just stood by and waited.
“They fed a guy to the fuckin’ crabs!” Oreza told them. “They took like two square yards of net and weighted it down with blocks, and just sunk his ass—practically nothing left but the damned bones!” The police lab people were still discussing how to recover the body, for all he knew. Oreza was certain it was a sight he’d take years to forget, the skull just lying there, the bones still dressed, moving because of the water cur
rents . . . or maybe some crabs inside. He hadn’t cared to look that closely.
“Heavy shit, man,” the helmsman agreed.
“You know who it is?”
“What dya mean, Portagee?”
“Back in May, when we had that Charon guy aboard—the day-sailer with the candystripe main, that’s who it was. I’ll bet ya.”
“Oh, yeah. You could be right on that one, boss.”
They’d let him see it all, just as a courtesy that in retrospect he would as soon have done without, but which at the time had been impossible to avoid. He could not have chickened out in front of cops, since he, too, was a cop of sorts. And so he’d climbed up the ladder after reporting on the body he’d found only fifty yards from the derelict, and seen three more, all lying facedown on the deck of what had probably been the freighter’s wardroom, all dead, all shot in the back of the neck, the wounds having been picked at by birds. He’d almost lost control of himself at that realization. The birds had been sensible enough not to pick at the drugs, however.
“I’m talking twenty kilograms—forty-some pounds of the shit-that’s what the cops said, anyway. Like, millions of bucks,” Oreza related.
“Always said I was in the wrong business.”
“Jesus, the cops look like they all had hard-ons, specially that captain. They’ll probably be there all night, way it sounded.”
“Hey, Wally?”
The tape was disappointingly scratchy. That was due to the old phone lines, the technician explained. Nothing he could do about that. The switch box in the building dated back to when Alexander Graham Bell was doing hearing aids.
“Yeah, what is it?” the somewhat uneven voice replied.
“The deal with the Vietnamese officer they got. You sure about that?”
“That’s what Roger told me.” Bingo! Ritter thought.
“Where they have him?”
“I guess out at Winchester with the Russian.”