Clear and Present Danger

  And the odd dealer had disappeared from time to time, his death invariably ascribed to turf wars. Many of those murders went forever unsolved.

  And that’s where Chavez is, Tim Jackson realized. There were just too many coincidences. He and Muñoz and León. All Spanish-speakers. All checked out the same day. So they were doing a covert operation, probably at CIA bequest. It was dangerous work in all likelihood, but they were soldiers and that was their business. Lieutenant Jackson breathed easier now that he “knew” what he didn’t need to know. Whatever Chavez was doing, it was okay. He wouldn’t have to follow that up anymore. Tim Jackson hoped that he’d be all right. Chavez was damned good, he remembered. If anyone could do it, he could.

  The TV crews soon got bored, leaving to write their copy and do their voice-overs. Cortez returned as soon as the last of their vehicles went up the road toward Medellín. This time he drove a jeep up the hill. He was tired and irritable, but more than that he was curious. Something very odd had happened and he wasn’t sure what it was. He wouldn’t be satisfied until he did. The two survivors from the house had been taken to Medellín, where they would be treated privately by a trusted physician. Cortez would be talking to them, but there was one more thing he had to do here. The police contingent at the house was commanded by a captain who had long since come to terms with the Cartel. Félix was certain that he’d shed no tears over the deaths of Untiveros and the rest, but that was beside the point, wasn’t it? The Cuban parked his jeep and walked over to where the police commander was talking with two of his men.

  “Good morning, Capitán. Have you determined what sort of bomb it was?”

  “Definitely a car bomb,” the man replied seriously.

  “Yes, I suspected that myself,” Cortez said patiently. “The explosive agent?”

  The man shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “Perhaps you might find out,” Félix suggested. “As a routine part of your investigation.”

  “Fine. I can do that.”

  “Thank you.” He walked back to his jeep for the ride north. A locally fabricated bomb might use dynamite—there was plenty of that available from local mining operations—or a commercial plastic explosive, or even something made from nitrated fertilizer. If made by M-19, however, Cortez would expect Semtex, a Czech-made variant of RDX currently favored by Marxist terrorists all over the world for its power and ready, cheap supply. Determining what had actually been used would tell him something, and it amused Cortez to have the police run that information down. It was one thing to smile about as he drove down the mountainside.

  And there were others. The elimination of four senior Cartel chieftains did not sadden him any more than it had the policeman. After all, they were just businessmen, not a class of individual for which Cortez had great regard. He took their money, that was all. Whoever had done the bombing had done a marvelous, professional job. That started him thinking that it could not have been CIA. They didn’t know very much about killing people. Cortez was less offended than one might imagine that he’d come so close to being killed. Covert operations were his business, after all, and he understood the risks. Besides, if he had been the primary target of so elegant a plan, clearly he’d not be trying to analyze it now. In any case, the removal of Untiveros, Fernández, Wagner, and d’Alejandro meant that there were four openings at the top of the Cartel, four fewer people with the power and prestige to stand in his way if... If, he told himself. Well, why not? A seat at the table, certainly. Perhaps more than that. But there was work to do, and a “crime” to solve.

  By the time he reached Medellin, the two survivors from Untiveros’ hilltop house had been treated and were ready for questioning, along with a half-dozen servants from the dead lord’s Medellin condominium. They were in a top-floor room of a sturdy, fire-resistive high-rise building, which was also quite soundproof. Cortez walked into the room to find the eight trusted servants all sitting, handcuffed to straight-back chairs.

  “Which of you knew about the meeting last night?” he asked pleasantly.

  There were nods. They all did, of course. Untiveros was a talker, and servants were invariably listeners.

  “Very well. Which of you told, and whom did you tell?” he asked in a formal, literate way. “No one will leave this room until I know the answer to that,” he promised them.

  The immediate response was a confused flood of denials. He’d expected that. Most of them were true. Cortez was sure of that, too.

  It was too bad.

  Félix looked to the head guard and pointed to the one in the left-most chair.

  “We’ll start with her.”

  Governor Fowler emerged from the hotel suite in the knowledge that the goal to which he had dedicated the last three years of his life was now in his grasp. Almost, he told himself, remembering that in politics there are no certainties. But a congressman from Kentucky who’d run a surprisingly strong campaign had just traded his pledged delegates for a cabinet post, and that put Fowler over the top, with a safety margin of several hundred votes. He couldn’t say that, of course. He had to let the man from Kentucky make his own announcement, scheduled for the second day of the convention to give him one last day in the sun—or more properly the klieg lights. It would be leaked by people in both camps, but the congressman would smile in his aw-shucks way and tell people to speculate all they wanted—but that he was the only one who knew. Politics, Fowler thought, could be so goddamned phony. This was especially odd since above all things Fowler was a very sincere man, which did not, however, allow him to violate the rules of the game.

  And he played by those rules now, standing before the bright TV lights and saying nothing at all for about six minutes of continuous talking. There had been “interesting discussions” of “the great issues facing our country.” The Governor and the congressman were “united in their desire to see new leadership” for a country which, both were sure, though they couldn’t say it, would prosper whichever man won in November, because petty political differences of presidents and parties generally got lost in the noise of the Capitol Building, and because American parties were so disorganized that every presidential campaign was increasingly a beauty contest. Perhaps that was just as well, Fowler thought, though it was frustrating to see that the power for which he lusted might really be an illusion, after all. Then it was time for questions.

  He was surprised by the first one. Fowler didn’t see who asked it. He was dazzled by the lights and the flashing strobes—after so many months of it, he wondered if his vision would ever recover—but it was a male voice who asked, from one of the big papers, he thought.

  “Governor, there is a report from Colombia that a car bomb destroyed the home of a major figure in the Medellín Cartel, along with his family. Coming so soon after the assassination of the FBI Director and our ambassador to Colombia, would you care to comment?”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t get a chance to catch the news this morning because of my breakfast with the congressman. What are you suggesting?” Fowler asked. His demeanor had changed from optimistic candidate to careful politician who hoped to become a statesman—whatever the hell that was, he thought. It had seemed so clear once, too.

  “There is speculation, sir, that America might have been involved,” the reporter amplified.

  “Oh? You know the President and I have many differences, and some of them are very serious differences, but I can’t remember when we’ve had a President who was willing to commit cold-blooded murder, and I certainly will not accuse our President of that,” Fowler said in his best statesman’s voice. He’d meant to say nothing at all—that’s what statesmen’s voices are for, after all, either nothing or the obvious. He’d kept a fairly high road for most of his presidential campaign. Even Fowler’s bitterest enemies—he had several in his own party, not to mention the opposition’s—said that he was an honorable, thoughtful man who concentrated on issues and not invective. His statement reflected that. He hadn’t meant to change United Sta
tes government policy, hadn’t meant to trap his prospective opponent. But he had, without knowing it, done both.

  The President had scheduled the trip well in advance. It was a customary courtesy for the chief executive to maintain a low profile during the opposition’s convention. It was just as easy to work at Camp David—easier in fact since it was far easier to shoo reporters away. But you had to run the gauntlet to get there. With the Marine VH-3 helicopter sitting and waiting on the White House lawn, the President emerged from the ground-level door with the First Lady and two other functionaries in tow, and there they were again, a solid phalanx of reporters and cameras. He wondered if the Russians with their glasnost knew what they were in for.

  “Mister President!” called a senior TV reporter. “Governor Fowler says that he hopes we weren’t involved in the bombing in COLOMBIA! Do you have any comment?”

  Even as he walked over to the roped enclosure of journalists, the President knew that it was a mistake, but he was drawn to them and the question as a lemming is drawn to the sea. He couldn’t not do it. The way the question was shouted, everyone would know that he’d heard it, and no answer would itself be seen as an answer of sorts. The President ducked the question of ... And he couldn’t leave Washington for a week of low-profile existence, leaving the limelight to the other side—not with that question lying unanswered behind him on the White House lawn, could he?

  “The United States,” the President said, “does not kill innocent women and children. The United States fights against people who do that. We do not sink down to their bestial level. Is that a clear enough answer?” It was delivered in a quiet, reasoned voice, but the look the President gave the reporter made that experienced journalist wilt before his eyes. It was good, the President thought, to see that his power occasionally reached the bastards.

  It was the second major political lie of the day—a slow news day to be sure. Governor Fowler well remembered that John and Robert Kennedy had plotted the deaths of Castro and others with a kind of elitist glee born of Ian Fleming’s novels, only to learn the hard way that assassination was a messy business. Very messy indeed, for there were usually people about whom you didn’t especially want to kill. The current President knew all about “collateral damage,” a term which he found distasteful but indicative of something both necessary and impossible to explain to people who didn’t understand how the world really worked: terrorists, criminals, and all manner of cowards—brutal people are most often cowards, after all—regularly hid behind or among the innocent, daring the mighty to act, using the altruism of their enemies as a weapon against those enemies. You cannot touch me. We are the “evil” ones. You are the “good” ones. You cannot attack us without casting away your self-image. It was the most hateful attribute of those most hateful of people, and sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—they had to be shown that it didn’t work. And that was messy, wasn’t it? Like some sort of international auto accident.

  But how the hell do I explain that to the American people? In an election year? Vote to re-elect the President who just killed a wife, two kids, and various domestic servants to protect your children from drugs ... ? The President wondered if Governor Fowler understood just how illusory presidential power was—and about the awful noise generated when one principle crashed hard up against another. That was even worse than the noise of the reporters, the President thought. It was something to shake his head about as he walked to his helicopter. The Marine sergeant saluted at the steps. The President returned it—a tradition despite the fact that no sitting President had ever worn a uniform. He strapped in and looked back at the assembled mob. The cameras were still on him, taping the takeoff. The networks wouldn’t run that particular shot, but just in case the chopper blew up or crashed, they wanted the cameras rolling.

  The word got to the Mobile police a little late. The clerk of the court handled the paperwork, and when information leaks from a courthouse, that is usually the hole. In this case the clerk was outraged. He saw the cases come and go. A man in his middle fifties, he’d gotten his children educated and through college, managing to avoid the drug epidemic. But that had not been true of every child in the clerk’s neighborhood. Right next door to his house, the family’s youngest had bought a “rock” of crack cocaine and promptly driven his car into a bridge abutment at over a hundred miles per hour. The clerk had watched the child grow up, had driven him to school once or twice, and paid the child to mow his lawn. The coffin had been sealed for the funeral at Cypress Hill Baptist Church, and he’d heard that the mother was still on medications after having had to identify what was left of the body. The minister talked about the scourge of drugs like the scourging of Christ’s own passion. He was a fine minister, a gifted orator in the Southern Baptist tradition, and while he led them in prayer for the dead boy’s soul his personal and wholly genuine fury over the drug problem merely amplified the outrage already felt by his congregation....

  The clerk couldn’t understand it. Davidoff was a superb prosecuting attorney. Jew or not, this man was one of God’s elect, a true hero in a profession of charlatans. How could this be? Those two scum were going to get off! the clerk thought. It was wrong!

  The clerk was unaccustomed to bars. A Baptist serious about his religious beliefs, he had never tasted spiritous liquors, had tried beer only once as a boy on a dare, and was forever guilt-ridden for that. That was one of only two narrow aspects to this otherwise decent and honorable citizen. The other was justice. He believed in justice as he believed in God, a faith that had somehow survived his thirty years of clerking in the federal courts. Justice, he thought, came from God, not from man. Laws came from God, not from man. Were not all Western laws based on Holy Scripture in one way or another? He revered his country’s Constitution as a divinely inspired document, for freedom was surely the way in which God intended man to live, that man could learn to know and serve his God not as a slave, but as a positive choice for Right. That was the way things were supposed to be. The problem was that the Right did not always prevail. Over the years he’d gotten used to that idea. Frustrating though it was, he also knew that the Lord was the ultimate Judge, and His Justice would always prevail. But there were times when the Lord’s Justice needed help, and it was well known that God chose His Instruments through Faith. And so it was this hot, sultry Alabama afternoon. The clerk had his Faith, and God had His Instrument.

  The clerk was in a cop bar, half a block from police headquarters, drinking club soda so that he could fit in. The police knew who he was, of course. He appeared at all the cop funerals. He headed a civic committee that looked after the families of cops and firemen who died in the line of duty. Never asked for anything in return, either. Never even asked to fix a ticket—he’d never gotten one in his life, but no one had ever thought to check.

  “Hi, Bill,” he said to a homicide cop.

  “How’s life with the feds?” the detective lieutenant asked. He thought the clerk slightly peculiar, but far less so than most. All he really needed to know was that the clerk of the court took care of cops. That was enough.

  “I heard something that you ought to know about.”

  “Oh?” The lieutenant looked up from his beer. He, too, was a Baptist, but wasn’t that Baptist. Few cops were, even in Alabama, and like most he felt guilty about it.

  “The ‘pirates’ are getting a plea-bargain,” the clerk told him.

  “What?” It wasn’t his case, but it was a symbol of all that was going wrong. And the pirates were in the same jail in which his prisoners were guests.

  The clerk explained what he knew, which wasn’t much. Something was wrong with the case. Some technicality or other. The judge hadn’t explained it very well. Davidoff was enraged by it all, but there was nothing he could do. That was too bad, they both agreed. Davidoff was one of the Good Guys. That’s when the clerk told his lie. He didn’t like to tell lies, but sometimes Justice required it. He’d learned that much in the federal court system. It was just a prac
tical application of what his minister said: “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”

  The funny part was that it wasn’t entirely a lie: “The guys who killed Sergeant Braden were connected with the pirates. The feds think that the pirates may have ordered his murder—and his wife’s.”

  “How sure are you of that?” the detective asked.

  “Sure as I can be.” The clerk emptied his glass and set it down.

  “Okay,” the cop said. “Thanks. We never heard it from you. Thanks for what you guys did for the Braden kids, too.”

  The clerk was embarrassed by that. What he did for the families of cops and firemen wasn’t done for thanks. It was Duty, pure and simple. His Reward would come from Him who assigned that Duty.

  The clerk left, and the lieutenant walked to a corner booth to join a few of his colleagues. It was soon agreed that the pirates would not—could not—be allowed to cop a plea on this one. Federal case or not, they were guilty of multiple rape and murder—and, it would seem, guilty of another double murder in which the Mobile police had direct interest. The word was already on the street: the lives of druggies were at risk. It was another case of sending a message. The advantage that police officers had over more senior government officials was that they spoke in a language that criminals fully understood.

  But who, another detective asked, would deliver the message?

  “How about the Patterson boys?” the lieutenant answered.

  “Ahh,” the captain said. He considered the question for a moment, then: “Okay.” It was, on the whole, a decision far more easily arrived at than the great and weighty decisions reached by governments. And far more easily implemented.

  The two peasants arrived in Medellín around sundown. Cortez was thoroughly frustrated by this time. Eight bodies to be disposed of—not all that difficult a thing to do in Medellín—for no good reason. He was sure of that now. As sure as he’d been of the opposite thing six hours earlier. So where was the information leak? Three women and five men had just died proving that they weren’t it. The last two had just been shot in the head, uselessly catatonic after watching the first six die under less merciful circumstances. The room was a mess, and Cortez felt soiled by it. All that effort wasted. Killing people for no good reason. He was too angry to be ashamed.