The Marchand Woman

“This is the Peace Corps boy, I take it? Lundquist?”

“Yes. Poor son of a bitch. At least they did it clean. Shot him in the back of the head. Maybe he never knew it was coming.”

“Anything useful in the note?”

“The same anti-Castro propaganda. It’s in the lab in Mexico City. Along with the kid’s clothes and personals. They’re flying him into Houston for the autopsy. Who knows, maybe something will turn up under his fingernails.”

“Did they set a new deadline?”

“Noon tomorrow. Predictably.”

“Any word from the Venezuelans?”

“Not that I know of. But there’ll be a lot more pressure on them now. They’re holding out against three countries. A couple of Congressmen are making noises about embargoing oil imports from Venezuela. It wouldn’t happen, of course, but the fact that anybody suggests it is pretty hard on the Venezuelan image. Tourists are canceling reservations, that kind of thing. Maybe they’ll knuckle under. Personally I wish they wouldn’t. The only way to deal with these bastards is to refuse to deal with them. I’m all for the Venezuelans—let ’em stonewall it.”

Anders made no reply to that; he rarely believed in certainties or flat statements. If the Venezuelans hadn’t stonewalled it, he thought, this Lundquist might not be dead now. But who knows. Everything was caprice.

Macki

“A couple of names that need checking out. Emilio Ortiz, Guillermo Garza. Mean anything to you?”

“Not especially.”

“They’re both out of the country on business trips.”

“Well maybe they are.”

Anders went out to the desk they had lent him and wrote up a report of his day. Then he put through a call to O’Hillary on the scrambler. “Anything new on the Lundquist boy?”

O’Hillary’s voice was calm, smooth, avuncular. “No, except that the killing achieved its purpose. The Venezuelans are capitulating. It’s not public yet but I have it on good authority. They’ll broadcast it tonight—they’ll be flying the prisoners out to Buenos Aires in the morning.”

“So the bastards get everything they asked for.”

“For the moment. Until we find them and take it back. That’s still your job, Gle

“At the present rate,” Anders told him, “I’ll probably find them in nineteen ninety-three. Nothing’s breaking around here. Anything from air recon?”

“Some marvelous photographs of clouds and trees.”

“Shit.”

“The beeper in the container hasn’t moved since it was dropped. We don’t know if they’re leaving it there deliberately or if they’ve removed the money and left the container behind.”

“Probably the latter,” Anders said. “Any instructions?”

“No. Just carry on. We have every confidence in you.”

We have every confidence—it made Anders smile when he put down the phone. He was both amused and concerned by the Agency’s attitude on this thing. By putting the job in his hands they had revealed a great deal. In the hierarchy of things he was junior-grade. By putting him in charge Washington was going through the motions but it was clear to Anders that nobody was going to be axed if he failed to produce. The whole thing was indicative of the ambivalence with which Washington and Langley regarded this affair. Terrorism must be countered of course—but what if the terrorists weren’t quite our enemies?

What a marvelous embarrassment it would be, he thought, if I actually nailed the bastards.

Rosalia came along to his desk. Euphonious Rosalia Rojas. She had the pert eager bounce of an earnest trainee stewardess; certainly she was out of place around here but Macki

She had a small steno notebook from which she started reading aloud before she stopped walking. “I checked into those six names. Four of them are here in the Miami area working at their jobs and they haven’t been out of town in months except one of them took the wife and kids to Disney World six weeks ago. This leaves two, if the new math hasn’t altogether corrupted my arithmetic, and one of them is definitely in Mobile on one of those corporation refresher-training courses. He fixes cars for the Oldsmobile dealer and they’ve sent him to GM mechanics’ school.”

“Leaving one more.”

“Go to the head of the class,” she said cheerfully. “His name is”—just the slightest trace of accent, hees-name-ees, you might miss it if you weren’t listening for it—“Ignacio Gandara, age forty-one, occupation construction worker. At the moment he is laid off and collecting Unemployment but he didn’t pick up the two most recent checks at the Unemployment office and no one who knows him has seen him in about three weeks.”

“Does he have an American passport?”

“Yes.”

“Find out if he’s used it, can you?”

She made a note. “How did you do?”

“About the same as you. Five negatives, two possibles. Guillermo Garza, occupation lawyer—or so it says on his shingle—and Emilio Ortiz, who’s—”

“A construction engineer,” Rosalia said. “I know Emilio, he’s godfather to one of my sisters. He’s been shuttling back and forth to St. Thomas, working for a company that’s building a condominium over there.”

“That could be a cover, couldn’t it? Let’s not scratch Ortiz off the list just yet.”

She said, “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve always liked him.”

“One of the delights of this business is learning how little you can trust people.” He looked at his watch. “Join me for supper?”

When he looked up he caught the sparkle in her eye. “I’d love to. I’ll be ready in ten minutes—I’ll just put the Gandara inquiry on the wire to Passport Control.”

It was a flat low rectangular building on the Tamiami Trail, its only distinguishing feature a huge towering electric sign that looked like something along the Strip in Las Vegas. The parking lot was the size of a football field. Rosalia clipped along beside him chattering—her way of talking, like everything else about her, was quick and cheerful. Inside the place he had to stop to accustom his eyes to the sudden dimness. It was one of those structures that had been built since the invention of central air conditioning; it had no windows at all. The chandeliers were imitation wagonwheels, the decor was ersatz Wild West, the booths were heavy wood lined with padded black leather, the jukebox boomed with Waylon Je

When they slid into the leather banquette he said to his companion, “I was thirty before I ever saw this part of the world. I had friends in Chicago who’d go to Miami Beach every winter—I grew up in that kind of set, lower-middle-class snobs. They kept telling me I had to go to Miami Beach and see all the fabulous hotels. I never intended to go there. I expected sooner or later Miami Beach would come to me, as it does to all men. I was right.”

“This isn’t Miami Beach. It’s Coral Gables.”

“Yeah. What’ll you have?”

“A hangover.” She was studying the menu. “But I think I’ll start with a banana daiquiri.”