“Will you tell me which areas?” Partridge asked.
“I do not believe that would be wise. In any case it would not be possible to go there yourself. Or do you, perhaps, have some such plan?”
Although Partridge did have a plan, he replied negatively.
The remainder of the interview went much the same way, neither participant trusting the other and playing cat-and-mouse, attempting to obtain information without revealing all of his own. In the end neither succeeded, though in a summary for the National Evening News, Partridge did use two quotes from General Ortiz—the one about Peru’s “vast spaces where it is possible to hide armies” and the cynical observation that alleged human rights violations were “a one-day news trifle, forgotten twenty-four hours later.”
Since there was no recording, New York used both quotes in print on-screen, beneath a still photo of the general.
Partridge did not, however, regard his visit as productive.
More satisfying was an interview later in the day with Cesar Acevedo, another longtime friend of Partridge’s and a lay leader of the Catholic Church. They met in a private office at the rear of the Archbishop’s Palace on the Plaza de Armas, official center of the city.
Acevedo, a small, fast-talking, intense person in his fifties, had deep religious convictions and was a theological scholar. He was involved full-time with church administration and had considerable authority, though he had never taken the ultimate step of becoming a priest. If he had, friends were apt to say, by now he would be a bishop at the very least, and eventually a cardinal.
Cesar Acevedo had never married, though he was a prominent figure socially in Lima.
Partridge liked Acevedo because he was always what he appeared to be, as well as unassuming and totally honest. On an earlier occasion when Partridge asked why he had never entered the priesthood, he replied, “Profoundly as I love God and Jesus Christ, I have never felt willing to surrender my intellectual right to be a skeptic, should that ever happen, though I pray it never will. But if I became a priest I would have surrendered that right. As a young man, and even now, I could never quite bring myself to do it.”
Acevedo was executive secretary of the Catholic Social Action Commission and was involved with outreach programs which brought medical help to remote parts of the country where no doctors or nurses were regularly available.
“I believe,” Partridge asked early in their meeting, “that from time to time you have to deal with Sendero Luminoso.”
Acevedo smiled. “‘Have to deal’ is correct. The Church does not, of course, approve of Sendero—either its objectives or methods. But as a practical matter a relationship exists, though a peculiar one.”
For reasons of its own, the lay leader explained, Sendero Luminoso did not like antagonizing the Church and rarely attacked it as an institution. Yet the rebel group did not trust individual Church officials, and when some anti-government action or other insurrection was intended, the rebels wanted priests and other church workers out of the area so they could not witness it.
“They will simply tell a priest or our social workers, ‘Get out of here! We don’t want you around! You will be told when you can return.’”
“And your priests obey that kind of order?”
Acevedo sighed. “It does not sound admirable, does it? But usually yes, because there is little choice. If the order is disobeyed Sendero will not hesitate to kill. A live priest can go back eventually. A dead priest cannot.”
A sudden thought occurred to Partridge. “Are there any places, right at this moment, where your people have been told to leave, where Sendero Luminoso doesn’t want outside attention?”
“There is one such area and it is creating a considerable problem for us. Come! I will show you on the map.” They walked to a wall where, under a plastic cover with crayon markings, a large map of Peru was mounted.
“It’s this entire area right here.” Acevedo pointed to a section of San Martín Province, ringed in red. “Until about three weeks ago we had a strong medical team in here, performing an assistance program we carry out each year. A lot of what they do is vaccinate and inoculate children. It’s important because the area is part of the Selva, where jungle diseases abound and can be fatal. Anyway, about three weeks ago Sendero Luminoso, which controls the area, insisted that our people leave. They protested, but they had to go. Now we want to get our medics back in. Sendero says no.”
Partridge studied the encircled section. He had hoped it would be small. Instead it was depressingly large. He read place names, all far apart: Tocache, Uchiza, Sion, Nueva Esperanza, Pachiza. Without much hope he wrote them down. In the unlikely event of the captives being at one of those places, it would do no good to enter the area without knowing which. Effecting a rescue anywhere would be difficult, perhaps impossible. The only slim chance would be total surprise.
“I suspect I know what you are thinking,” Acevedo said. “You are wondering if your kidnapped friends are somewhere in that circle.”
Partridge nodded without speaking.
“I do not believe so. If it were the case I think there would have been some rumor. I have heard none. But our church has a network of contacts. I will send out word and report to you if anything is learned.”
It was the best he could hope for, Partridge realized. But time, he knew, was running out and he was no closer to knowing the whereabouts of the imprisoned Sloane trio than when he had arrived.
The thought had depressed him while in the Archbishop’s Palace. Now, in his hotel room, remembering that and the other events of the day, he had a sense of frustration and failure at his lack of progress.
Abruptly, the bedside telephone rang.
“Harry, is that you?” Partridge recognized Don Kettering’s voice.
They exchanged greetings, then Kettering said, “Some things have happened that I thought you ought to know about.”
Rita, also in Cesar’s Hotel, answered her room phone on the second ring.
“I’ve just had a call from New York,” Partridge said. He repeated what Don Kettering had told him about discovery of the Hackensack house and the cellular phones, adding, “Don gave me a Lima number that was called. I want to find out whose it is and where.”
“Give it to me,” Rita said.
He repeated it: 28-9427.
“I’ll try to get that Entel guy, Victor Velasco, and start him working on it. Call you back if there’s any news.”
She did in fifteen minutes. “I managed to get Velasco at home. He says it isn’t something his department handles and he may have a little trouble getting the information, but thinks he can have it by morning.”
“Thanks,” Partridge said and, soon after, was asleep.
9
It was not until midafternoon on Wednesday that the Lima telephone number relayed through Don Kettering was identified. Entel Peru’s international manager was apologetic about the delay. “It is, of course, restricted data,” Victor Velasco explained to Partridge and Rita, who were in CBA’s Entel editing booth where they had been working with the editor, Bob Watson, on another news spot for New York.
“I had trouble persuading one of my colleagues to release the information,” Velasco continued, “but eventually I succeeded.”
“With money?” Rita asked and, when he nodded, she said, “We’ll reimburse you.”
A sheet torn from a memo pad contained the information: Calderón, G.—547 Huancavelica Street, 10F.
“We need Fernández,” Partridge said.
“He’s on his way here,” Rita informed him, and the swarthy, energetic stringer-fixer arrived within the next few minutes. He had continued working with Partridge since his and Minh Van Canh’s arrival at Lima airport and now assisted Rita in a variety of ways.
Told about the Huancavelica Street address and why it might be important, Fernández Pabur nodded briskly. “I know it. An old apartment building near the intersection with Avenida Tacna, and not what you would call”—he
struggled for an English word—“palatial.”
“Whatever it is,” Partridge told him, “I want to go there now.” He turned to Rita. “I’d like you, Minh and Ken to come along, but first let me go inside alone to see what I can find out.”
“Not alone,” Fernández objected. “You would be attacked and robbed, maybe worse. I will be with you and so will Tomás.”
Tomás, they had discovered, was the name of the burly, taciturn bodyguard.
The station wagon Fernández had hired, which they now used regularly, was waiting outside the Entel building. Seven people including the driver made it crowded, but the journey took only ten minutes. “There is the place,” Fernández said, pointing out of the window.
Avenida Tacna was a wide, heavily traveled thoroughfare, Huancavelica Street crossing it at right angles. The district, while not as grim as the barriadas, had clearly fallen on bad days. Number 547 Huancavelica was a large, drab building with peeling paint and chipped masonry. A group of men, some seated on ledges near the entrance, others standing idly around, watched while Partridge, Fernández and Tomás stepped out of the station wagon, leaving Rita, Minh Van Canh and the sound man, Ken O’Hara, to wait with the driver.
Aware of unfriendly, calculating expressions among the onlookers, Partridge was glad of Fernández’s insistence that he not go inside alone.
Within the building an odor of urine and general decay assaulted them. Garbage was strewn on the floor. Predictably, the elevator wasn’t working so the men had no choice but to climb nine flights of grimy cement stairs.
Apartment F was at the end of an uncarpeted, gloomy corridor. At the plain slab door Partridge knocked. He could hear movement inside but no one came to the door and he knocked again. This time the door opened two or three inches only, halted by an inside chain. Simultaneously a woman’s high-pitched voice let loose a tirade in Spanish—her speech too fast for Partridge to follow, though he caught the words, “¡animales! … ¡asesinos! … ¡diablos!”
He felt a hand touch his arm as Fernández’s heavyset figure moved forward. With his mouth close to the opening, Fernández spoke equally fast, but in reasonable, soothing tones. As he continued, the voice from inside faltered and stopped, then the chain was released and the door opened.
The woman standing before them was probably around age sixty. Long ago she might have been beautiful, but time and hard living had made her blowsy and coarse, her skin blotchy, her hair a mixture of colors and unkempt. Beneath plucked, penciled eyebrows her eyes were red and swollen from crying and her heavy makeup was a mess. Fernández walked in past her and the others followed. After a moment she closed the door, apparently reassured.
Partridge glanced around quickly. The room they had entered was small and simply furnished with some wooden chairs, a sofa with worn upholstery, a plain, cluttered table and a bookcase roughly fashioned out of bricks and planks. Surprisingly, the bookcase was full, mainly with heavy volumes.
Fernández turned to Partridge. “It seems that just a few hours ago the man she lived with here was killed—murdered. She was out and came back to find him dead; the police have taken the body. She thought we were the people who killed him, come back to finish her too. I convinced her we are friends.” He spoke to the woman again and her eyes moved to Partridge.
Partridge assured her, “We are truly sorry to hear of your friend’s death. Have you any idea who killed him?”
The woman shook her head and murmured something. Fernández said, “She speaks very little English,” and translated for her. “Lo sentimos mucho la muerte de su amigo.¿Sabe Ud. quién lo mató?”
The woman nodded energetically, mouthing a stream of words ending with “Sendero Luminoso.”
It confirmed what Partridge had feared. The person they had hoped to see—whoever he was—had connections to Sendero, but was now beyond reach. The question remained: Did this woman know anything about the kidnap victims? It seemed unlikely.
She spoke again in Spanish, less rapidly, and this time Partridge understood. “Yes,” he said to Fernández, “we would like to sit down, and tell her I would be grateful if she will answer some questions.”
Fernández repeated the request and the woman replied, after which he translated. “She says yes, if she can. I have told her who you are and, by the way, her name is Dolores. She also asks if you would like a drink.”
“No, gracias,” Partridge said, at which Dolores nodded and went to a shelf, clearly intending to get a drink for herself. But when she lifted a gin bottle she saw that it was empty. She seemed about to cry again, then murmured something before sitting down.
Fernández reported, “She says she doesn’t know how she will live. She has no money.”
Partridge said directly to Dolores, “Le daré dinero si Ud. tiene la información que estoy buscando.”
The mention of money produced another fast exchange between Dolores and Fernández who reported, “She says ask your questions.”
Partridge decided not to rely on his own limited Spanish and continued with Fernández translating. Questions and answers went back and forth.
“Your man friend who was killed—what kind of work did he do?”
“He was a doctor. A special doctor.”
“You mean a specialist?”
“He put people to sleep.”
“An anesthesiologist?”
Dolores shook her head, not understanding. Then she went to a cupboard, groped inside and produced a small, battered suitcase. Opening the case, she removed a file containing papers and leafed through them. Selecting two, she passed them to Partridge. He saw they were medical diplomas.
The first declared that Hartley Harold Gossage, a graduate of Boston University Medical School, was entitled to practice medicine. The second diploma certified that the same Hartley Harold Gossage was “a properly qualified specialist in Anesthesiology.”
With a gesture, Partridge asked if he could look at the other papers. Dolores nodded her approval.
Several documents appeared to concern routine medical matters and were of no interest. The third he picked up was a letter on stationery of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine. Addressed to “H. H. Gossage, M.D.,” it began, “You are hereby notified that your license to practice medicine has been revoked for life …”
Partridge put the letter down. A picture was becoming clearer. The man who had lived here, reported to have just been murdered, was presumably Gossage, a disgraced, disbarred American anesthesiologist who had some connection with Sendero Luminoso. As to that connection, Partridge reasoned, the kidnap victims had been spirited out of the United States, presumably drugged or otherwise sedated at the time. In fact when he thought about it, yesterday’s discoveries at the Hackensack house, described by Don Kettering, confirmed that. It seemed likely, therefore, that the former doctor, Gossage, had done the sedating. Partridge’s face tightened. He wished he had been able to confront the man while he was alive.
The others were watching him. With Fernández’s help he resumed the questioning of Dolores.
“You told us Sendero Luminoso murdered your doctor friend. Why do you believe that?”
“Because he worked for those bastardos.” A pause, then a recollection. “Sendero had a name for him—Baudelio.”
“How did you know this?”
“He told me.”
“Did he tell you other things he did for Sendero?”
“Some.” A wan smile which quickly disappeared. “When we got drunk together.”
“Did you know about a kidnapping? It was in all the newspapers.”
Dolores shook her head. “I do not read newspapers. All they print is lies.”
“Was Baudelio away from Lima recently?”
A vigorous series of nods. “For a long time. I missed him.” A pause, then, “He phoned me from America.”
“Yes, we know.” Everything was fitting together, Partridge thought. Baudelio had to have been on the kidnap scene. He asked through Fern?
?ndez, “When did he come back here?”
Dolores considered before answering. “A week ago. He was glad to be back. He was also afraid he would be killed.”
“Did he say why?”
Dolores considered. “I think he overheard something. About him knowing too much.” She began to cry. “We had been together a long time. What shall I do?”
There was one important question left. Partridge deliberately hadn’t asked it yet and was almost afraid to. “After Baudelio was in America and before returning here, was he somewhere in Peru?”
Dolores nodded affirmatively.
“Did he tell you where that was?”
“Yes. Nueva Esperanza.”
Partridge could scarcely believe what so suddenly and unexpectedly had come his way. His hands were shaking as he turned back pages in his notebook—to the interview with Cesar Acevedo and the list of places where Sendero Luminoso had ordered the Catholic medical teams to stay out. A name leapt out at him: Nueva Esperanza.
He had it! He knew at last where Jessica, Nicky and Angus Sloane were being held.
He was still first and foremost a TV news correspondent, Partridge reminded himself as he discussed with Rita, Minh and O’Hara the video shots they needed—of Dolores, the apartment, and the building’s exterior. They were all in the tenth-floor apartment, Tomás having been sent down to bring the other three from the station wagon.
Partridge wanted close-ups too of the medical diplomas and the Massachusetts letter consigning Gossage-cum-Baudelio to the medical profession’s garbage heap. The American ex-doctor might have gone to his grave, but Partridge would make sure the vileness he had done the Sloane family was forever on record.
However, even though Baudelio’s apparent role in the kidnapping was important to the full news story, Partridge knew that releasing it now would be a mistake, leading others to the information that his CBA group possessed exclusively. But he wanted the Baudelio segment prepackaged, ready for use at a moment’s notice when the proper time came.