He tapped the file.
‘Code name Avenger. Age around fifty. Height, build . . . it’s all there in the file. There is a brief description. Now masquerading as US citizen Alfred Barnes. That was the man who chartered the deeply unfortunate Mr Lawrence to fly him over our friend’s hacienda. And there is no Alfred Barnes matching that description on State Department files as a US passport-holder. Find him, Kevin, and stop him. In his tracks.’
‘I hope you don’t mean terminate.’
‘No, that is forbidden. I mean, identify. If he uses one false name, he may have others. Find the one he will try to use to enter San Martin. Then inform the appalling but efficient Colonel Moreno in San Martin. I am sure he can be relied on to do what has to be done.’
Kevin McBride retired to his own office to read the file. He already knew the chief of the secret police of the Republic of San Martin. Any opponent of the dictator falling into his hands would die, probably slowly. He read the Avenger file with his habitual great care.
Two states away, in New York City, the passport of Alfred Barnes was consigned to the flames. Dexter had not a clue or shred of proof that he had been seen, but as he and charter pilot Lawrence had flown over the col in the sierra, he had been jolted to see a face staring up at him; close enough to take the Piper’s number. So, just in case, Alfred Barnes ceased to exist.
That done, he began to build his model of the fortress hacienda. Across the city, in downtown Manhattan, Mrs Nguyen Van Tran was myopically poring over three new passports.
It was 3 August 2001.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Voice
If it is not available in New York it probably doesn’t exist. Cal Dexter used a sawn-timber shop to create a trestle table with a top of inch-ply that almost filled his sitting room.
Art shops furnished enough paints to create the sea and the land in ten different hues. Green baize from fabric shops made fields and meadows. Wooden building blocks were used for scores of houses and barns; model-makers’ emporia provided balsa wood, fast glue and paste-on designs of brickwork, doors and windows.
The runaway’s mansion at the tip of the peninsula was made of Lego from a children’s store and the rest of the landscape was down to a magical warehouse providing for model railway enthusiasts.
Railway modellers want entire landscapes, with hills and valleys, cuttings and tunnels, farms and grazing animals. Within three days Dexter had fashioned the entire hacienda to scale. All he could not see was that which was out of sight to his airborne camera: booby traps, pitfalls, the workforce, security locks, gate chains, the full strength of the private army, their equipment and all interiors.
It was a long list and most of the queries on it could only be solved by days of patient observation. Still, he had decided his way in, his battle plan and his way out. He went on a buying spree.
Boots, jungle clothing, K-rations, cutters, the world’s most powerful binoculars, a new cellphone . . . He filled a Bergen haversack that finally weighed close to eighty pounds. And then there was more; for some he had to go out of state to places in the USA with more lax laws, for others he had to dive into the underworld, and others were quite legal but raised eyebrows. By 10 August he was ready and so were his first ID papers.
‘Spare a moment, Paul?’
Kevin McBride’s yeoman face came round the edge of the door and Devereaux beckoned him in. His deputy brought with him a large-scale map of the northern coast of South America, from Venezuela east to French Guyana. He spread it out and tapped the triangle between the Commini and Maroni rivers, the Republic of San Martin.
‘I figure he’ll go in by the overland route,’ said McBride. ‘Take the air route. San Martin City has the only airport and it is small. Served only twice daily and then only by local airlines coming from Cayenne to the east or Paramaribo to the west.’
His finger stabbed at the capitals of French Guyana and Surinam.
‘It’s such a God-awful place politically that hardly any businessmen go and no tourists. Our man is white, American, and we have his approximate height and build, both from the file and what that charter pilot described before he died. Colonel Moreno’s goons would have him within minutes of debarkation. More to the point, he’d have to have a valid visa and that means visiting San Martin’s only two consulates: Paramaribo and Caracas. I don’t think he’ll try the airport.’
‘No dispute. But Moreno should still put it under night and day surveillance. He might try a private plane,’ said Devereaux.
‘I’ll brief him on that. Next, the sea. There is just one port: San Martin City again. No tourist craft ever put in there, just freighters and not many of them. The crews are Lascars, Filipinos or Creoles; he’d stand out like a sore thumb if he tried to come in openly as a crewman or passenger.’
‘He could come in off the sea in a fast inflatable.’
‘Possible, but that would have to have been hired or bought in either French Guyana or Surinam. Or he is dropped from a freighter offshore, whose captain he has bribed for the job. He could motor in from twenty miles off the coast, dump the inflatable, puncture it, sink it. Then what?’
‘What indeed?’ murmured Devereaux.
‘I figure he will need equipment, a heavy load of it. Where does he make landfall? There are no beaches along San Martin’s coast, except here at the Bahia. But that’s full of the villas of the rich, occupied in August, with bodyguards, nightwatchmen and dogs.
‘Apart from that, the coast is tangled mangrove, infested with snakes and crocs. How is he to march through all that? If he gets to the main east – west road, what then? I don’t think it’s on, even for a Green Beret.’
‘Could he land off the sea right on our friend’s peninsula?’
‘No, Paul, he couldn’t. It’s girt on all seaward sides by cliffs and pounding surf. Even if he got up the cliffs with grapnel irons, the roaming dogs would hear the noise and have him.’
‘So, he comes in by land. From which end?’
McBride used his forefinger again.
‘I reckon from the west, from Surinam, on the passenger ferry across the River Commini, straight into the San Martin border post, on four wheels, with false papers.’
‘He’d still need a San Martin visa, Kevin.’
‘And where better to get it than right there in Surinam, one of the only two consulates they run? I reckon that’s the logical place for him to acquire his car and his visa.’
‘So what’s your plan?’
‘The Surinam embassy here in Washington and the consulate in Miami. He’ll need a visa to get in there as well. I want to put them both on full alert to go back a week and from now on pass me details of every single applicant for a visitor visa. Then I check every one with the passport section at State.’
‘You’re putting all your eggs in one basket, Kevin.’
‘Not really. Colonel Moreno and his Ojos Negros can cover the eastern border, the airport, docks and coast. I’d like to back my hunch our interloper will logically try to get all his kit into San Martin by car out of Surinam. It’s far away the busiest crossing point.’
Devereaux smiled at McBride’s attempt at Spanish. The San Martin secret police were known as ‘black eyes’ because they and their wraparound black sunglasses struck terror into the peons of San Martin.
He thought of all the US aid heading in that direction. There was no doubt the Surinam embassy would cooperate to the full.
‘OK, I like it. Go for it. But hurry.’
McBride was puzzled.
‘We have a deadline, boss?’
‘Tighter than you know, my friend.’
The port of Wilmington, Delaware, is one of the largest and busiest on the east coast of the USA. High at the top of the long Delaware Bay that leads from the river to the Atlantic, it has miles of sheltered water, which, apart from taking the big ocean liners, also plays host to thousands of small coastal freighters.
The Carib Coast Ship and Freight Company was
an agency handling cargoes for scores of such smaller ships and the visit of Mr Ronald Proctor caused no surprise. He was friendly, charming, convincing, and his rented U-Haul pickup was right outside with the crate in the rear.
The freight clerk who handled his enquiry had no reason to doubt his veracity, all the more so when, in response to the query, ‘Do you have documentation, sir?’, he produced precisely that.
His passport was not only in perfect order, it was a diplomatic passport at that. Supporting letters and movement orders from the State Department proved that Ronald Proctor, a professional US diplomat, was being seconded to his country’s embassy in Paramaribo, Surinam.
‘We have a cost-free allowance, of course, but what with my wife’s passion for collecting things on our travels, I fear we’re one crate over the limit. I’m sure you know what wives are like? Boy, can they collect stuff.’
‘Tell me about it,’ agreed the clerk. Few things bond male strangers like commiserating about their wives. ‘We have a freighter heading down to Miami, Caracas and Parbo in two days.’
He gave the capital of Surinam its shorter and more common name. The consignment was agreed and paid for. The crate would be seaborne within two days and in a bonded warehouse in Parbo docks by the twentieth. Being diplomatic cargo it would be customs-exempt when Mr Proctor called to collect it.
The Embassy of Surinam in Washington is at 4301 Connecticut Avenue and it was there that Kevin McBride flashed his identity as a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency and sat down with an impressed consular official in charge of the visa section. It was probably not the busiest diplomatic office in Washington and one man handled all visa applications.
‘We believe he deals in drugs and consorts with terrorists,’ said the CIA man. ‘So far he remains very shady. His name is not important because he will certainly apply, if at all, under a false identity. But we do believe he may try to slip into Surinam as a way of cutting across to Guyana and thence to rejoin his cronies in Venezuela.’
‘You have a photo of him?’ asked the official.
‘Alas, not yet,’ said McBride. ‘That is where we hope you might be able to help us if he comes here. We have a description of him.’
He slipped a sheet of paper across the desk with a short, two-line description of a man about fifty, five feet eight inches, compact, muscular build, blue eyes, sandy hair.
McBride left with photocopies of the nineteen applications for visas to Surinam that had been lodged and granted in the previous week. Within three days all had been checked out as legitimate US citizens whose details and passport photos lodged with the State Department fully matched those presented to the Surinam Consulate.
If the elusive Avenger of the file Devereaux had ordered him to memorize was going to show up, he had not done so yet.
In truth, McBride was in the wrong consulate. Surinam is not large and certainly not rich. It maintains consulates in Washington and Miami, plus Munich (but not in the German capital of Berlin), and two in the former colonial power, The Netherlands. One is in The Hague but the bigger office is at 11 De Cuserstraat, Amsterdam.
It was in this office that Miss Amelie Dykstra, a locally recruited Dutch lady paid for by the Dutch Foreign Ministry, was being so helpful to the visa applicant before her.
‘You are British, Mr Nash?’
The passport she had in her hand showed that Mr Henry Nash was indeed British and his profession was that of businessman.
‘What is the purpose of your visit to Surinam?’ asked Ms Dykstra.
‘My company develops new tourist outlets, notably resort hotels in coastal situations,’ said the Englishman. ‘I am hoping to see if there are any openings in your country, well, Surinam, that is, before moving on to Venezuela.’
‘You should see the Ministry of Tourism,’ said the Dutch woman, who had never been to Surinam. From what Cal Dexter had researched about that malarial coast, such a ministry was likely to be an exercise in optimism over reality.
‘Precisely my intention, as soon as I get there, dear lady.’
He pleaded a last flight waiting at Schiphol Airport, paid his thirty-five guilders, got his visa and left. In truth his plane was not for London but for New York.
McBride headed south again, to Miami and Surinam. A car from San Martin met him at Parbo airport and he was driven east to the Commini River crossing point. The Ojos Negros who escorted him simply drove to the head of the queue, commandeered the ferry and paid no toll to cross to the San Martin side.
During the crossing McBride stepped out of the car to watch the sluggish brown liquid passing down to the aquamarine sea, but the haze of mosquitoes and the drenching heat drove him back to the interior of the Mercedes and its welcome cool air. The secret policemen sent by Colonel Moreno permitted themselves wintry smiles at such stupidity. But behind the black glasses the eyes were blank.
It was forty miles over bumpy, pot-holed, ex-colonial road from the river border to San Martin City. The road ran through jungle on both sides. Somewhere to the left of the road the jungle would give way to the swamps, the swamps to the mangrove tangle and eventually to the inaccessible sea. To the right the dense rainforest ran away inland, rising gently, to the confluence of the Commini and the Maroni, and thence into Brazil.
A man, thought McBride, could be lost in there within half a mile. Occasionally he saw a track running off the road and into the bush, no doubt to some small farm or plantation not far from the road.
Down the highway they passed a few vehicles, mostly pickup trucks or battered Land Rovers clearly used by better-off farmers, and occasionally a cyclist with a basket of produce above the rear wheel, his livelihood on its way to market.
There were a dozen small villages along the journey and the man from Washington was struck at the different ethnic type of the San Martin peasant from those one republic back. There was a reason.
All the other colonial powers, conquering and trying to settle virtually empty landscapes, planted their estates and then looked for a labour force. The local Indios took one peek at what was in store and vaporized into the jungle.
Most of the colonialists imported African slaves from the properties they already owned, or traded with, along the West African coast. The descendants of these, usually mixing the genes with the Indios and whites, had created the modern populations. But the Spanish Empire was almost totally New World, not African. They did not have an easy source of black slaves, but they did have millions of landless Mexican peons; and the distance from Yucatan to Spanish Guyana was much shorter.
The wayside peasants McBride was seeing through the windows of the Mercedes were walnut-hued from the sun; but they were not black, nor yet Creole. They were Hispanic. The whole labour force of San Martin was still genetically Hispanic. The few black slaves who had escaped the Dutch had gone into the jungle to become the Bushneger, who were very hard to find, and deadly when they were.
When Shakespeare’s Caesar expressed the wish to have fat men around him, he presumed they would be jolly and amiable. He was not thinking of Colonel Hernan Moreno.
The man who was credited with keeping the gaudy and massively decorated President Muñoz in the palace on the hill behind the capital of this last banana republic was fat like a brooding toad, but he was not jolly.
The torments practised on those he suspected of sedition, or to be in possession of details of such people, were hinted at only in the lowest whispers and the darkest corners.
There was a place, up country it was rumoured, for such things, and no one ever came back. Dumping cadavers at sea like the secret police of Galtieri in Argentina was not necessary; it was not even required to break sweat with shovel and pick. A naked body pegged out in the jungle would attract fire ants, and fire ants can do to soft tissue in a night what normal nature needs months or years to achieve.
He knew the man from Langley was coming and chose to offer him lunch at the Yacht Club. It was the best restaurant in town, certainly the mos
t exclusive, and it was located at the base of the harbour wall facing out over a glittering blue sea. More to the point, the sea winds at last triumphed over the stench of the back streets.
Unlike his employer the secret police chief avoided ostentation, uniforms, medals and glitz; his pinguid frame was encased in a black shirt and black suit. If there had been a hint of nobility of cast of feature, thought the CIA man, he might have resembled Orson Welles towards the end. But the face was more Hermann Goering.
Nevertheless, his grip on the small and impoverished country was absolute and he listened without interruption. He knew exactly the relationship between the refugee from Yugoslavia who had sought sanctuary in San Martin, and now lived in an enviable mansion at the end of a piece of property Moreno himself hoped one day to acquire, and the president.
He knew of the huge wealth of the refugee and the annual fee he paid to President Muñoz for sanctuary and protection, even though that protection was really provided by himself.
What he did not know was why a very senior hierarch in Washington had chosen to bring together the refugee and the tyrant. It mattered not. The Serb had spent over five million dollars building his mansion, and another ten on his estate. Despite the inevitable imports to achieve such a feat, half that money had been spent inside San Martin, with tidy percentages going to Colonel Moreno on every contract.
More directly, Moreno took a fee for providing the slave labour force, and keeping the numbers topped up with fresh arrests and transportations. So long as no peon ever escaped or came back alive, it was a lucrative and safe arrangement. The CIA man did not need to beg for his cooperation.
‘If he sets one foot inside San Martin,’ he wheezed, ‘I will have him. You will not see him again, but every piece of information he divulges will be passed to you. On that you have my word.’
On his way back to the river crossing and the waiting aeroplane at Parbo, McBride thought of the mission the unseen bounty hunter had set himself; he thought of the defences, and the price of failure: death at the hands of Colonel Moreno and his black-eyed experts in pain. He shuddered, and it was not from the air-conditioning.