Redback (29 page)

In the bank video Rayman arrived at 3:34 p.m., just hours after his release. A man wearing a motorcycle helmet with a dark visor walks up on Rayman’s left side. A second man with a Dodgers cap and sunglasses is to his right and slightly behind him, but crowding him so may have held a gun to his back. That man is with him as Rayman withdraws money. Motorcycle man arrives after Rayman has already punched in his PIN and withdrawn the money.

The adjacent ATM was in use and a second witness told the detectives she was walking from her car toward the Wells ATMs when Rayman’s convertible Mercedes pulled up and double-parked. It annoyed her that they had double-parked and would get to the ATM ahead of her. Her name was Patti Wright and she didn’t realize at first that a violent crime was in progress.

‘I didn’t know the man who got out of the car with him had a gun. I knew there was something odd about how he was moving and staying close, but I just didn’t put it together. The other man on the motorcycle I didn’t even see arrive, though I think I remember hearing the motorcycle. By the time I noticed him, he was holding a gun to the other man’s head.’

Rayman’s lawyer dropped him off at home at approximately 12:30 and Rayman left the house in the convertible Mercedes soon after. He drove to an In-N-Out Burger and returned home at 1:30 according to a DEA surveillance team. The two agents watching mistook the man who showed up at 3:18 p.m. for a friend – it was still possible he was an acquaintance – it was very likely, Marquez thought, that the man they sent did know Rayman. This ‘friend’ was seen leaving the house via the front door accompanied by Rayman. The ‘friend’ wore a hooded sweatshirt with a sleeved pocket in front that likely concealed a gun.

Rayman and that man drove from the house to the mall and the Wells Fargo ATM. They double-parked, got out, and then the man on the motorcycle arrived. This was the part Marquez hooked into, executing him in front of a camera. It keyed with something Kerry Anderson had said years ago, and, in fact, he’d jotted down in one of his old logbooks.

The motorcycle rider walked up as Rayman and the unknown first assailant approached the ATM. Rayman slid his ATM card in. He entered his PIN and the bank record showed a two hundred dollar withdrawal. That money was disbursed by the machine, but left there, and if there was some meaning in that Marquez didn’t get it.

At this point, motorcycle man was along Rayman’s left side, still with his helmet on as he raised a gun. The woman standing in line, Patti Wright, and the teenage boy using the second ATM both reported having heard the command, ‘Look straight ahead!’

Rayman started to turn his head and the bank camera captured the spray as the bullet exited the right side of his head just forward of his right ear. Both men fled on the motorcycle. DEA surveillance did not pursue. They called it in and secured the scene. Marquez stood in front of the Wells Fargo ATMs and then flipped open his cell and called Desault as he walked back to his truck.

‘Kerry Anderson once told me that Stoval likes or requires photo verification from the Zetas or any other hired gun,’ Marquez said.

Marquez called Anderson but didn’t reach him. He flew home to San Francisco late in the afternoon and stopped at the DEA as he came through San Francisco. Murkowski came to talk and gloated, her cheeks reddening with the thrill at being the first to tell him.

‘You’re too late. She resigned this afternoon.’

‘Why did she quit?’

‘Well, Agent Marquez, I think it’s pretty obvious she doesn’t belong here.’

Marquez knew there was no point to a tit for tat with this Internal Affairs agent, but he couldn’t leave it there.

‘You forced out one of the best to ever walk through here, Murkowski. But you wouldn’t know that, and what’s more, you’ll never see it. You’ll never know the difference. You’re working for the wrong side.’

‘That’s the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me.’

‘Then never forget it was me that said it. I’ll see you later.’

His mood was dark that night. Katherine was gone three days on a business trip. She had taken Maria with her. He talked with both, and then sat outside slow drinking under the stars. The impunity with which Emrahain Stoval moved and did what he did reached to the core of Marquez. He didn’t feel anything at all for Rayman, but he kept thinking about the way Terri Delgado’s life was discarded.

He couldn’t sleep that night. The house creaked and moved. His phone rang a burred half ring at 4:00 a.m. and when he checked it was Sheryl. He called her back and there was no answer. He drove to her house in San Francisco early the next morning, couldn’t find her, and then he got the call from Desault.

SIXTY-TWO

‘
S
toval is moving,’ Desault said. ‘He’s in the air headed to Italy. Last time he went from there to Africa. Do you want to follow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, it’s your call, but are you sure? There’s no lead. There’s no tip he’s going to hunt. There’s nothing.’

‘I’m going to stick with him, and I’ve been thinking more about the hit squads, his relationship with the Zetas, and what he gets out of it other than he needs them for business. He may get the same thrill out of ordering a hit as bringing down a lion.’

‘Where are you getting that from?’

‘He didn’t have any reason to kill Terri Delgado. Without a bighorn case she wasn’t a threat to him.’

‘You’re having a real hard time with her murder, aren’t you?’

‘Of course, I am.’

‘How much is it affecting you?’

‘Don’t even go there. I’m fine.’

Some say insight is just pattern recognition at a subconscious level. Marquez guessed that Stoval was due for a hunt. The periodicity, the past frequency, the timing was right. He packed his go bag. When Stoval’s pilot diverted to the Bahamas, ostensibly with a mechanical problem, and then filed a flight plan to go from there to Argentina, Marquez called Desault and asked him to book a flight for him to Buenos Aires.

Four hours later he was off the phone with Katherine and on his way to the airport. In Buenos Aires he bought another ticket, this one on Aerolineas for a flight to Bariloche where Stoval owned a hacienda in what the Argentinians called the Lake District. His FBI contact in Buenos Aires, an agent named Jose Verandas, met up with him at the US embassy in BA. Sometimes Stoval stayed in Buenos Aires for several days at the home of an old friend, a retired general named Trocca. He was there now according to Verandas, so they drove out to scout Trocca’s house.

‘We’ve got a liaison, an Argentinian military attaché, a colonel, but we’re not cleared yet for any active surveillance in Buenos Aires,’ Verandas said. ‘In Bariloche the rules are a little looser, mostly because there’s no one to keep track of us. There’s a lot of open country down there. You’re a game warden, you’ll like it there.’

‘I’ve been there. Tell me about General Trocca.’

‘He’s a hunting partner for Stoval and was a lieutenant in the Dirty War thirty some odd years ago. There’s a scar that runs the length of the left side of his face they say he got throwing someone out of a plane over the ocean. A bad guy, but a survivor who got rich peddling arms to African rebels.’

Marquez thought of Billy Takado’s tape, the riff on Argentina and wing hunting. But that was fall hunting and this was the southern hemisphere and early spring, barely spring. Verandas had a photo of Trocca for him. He was tall, thin, and white-haired. He had a large nose, dark eyes, and the unmistakable scar. Trocca accompanied Stoval to the airport the next morning.

The airport in Bariloche was built on a plain with snowy mountains in the distance. Marquez got there ahead of Stoval and Trocca. Cover was sparse, and it was windy and bright in the late morning when he trailed the gray BMW carrying Stoval and Trocca up a road into mountains southwest of Bariloche. Five miles later, he watched a heavy gate swing open and the car disappear up the road to Stoval’s hacienda.

Verandas flew down that night. So did a second FBI agent named Taltson, who like Verandas was also working out of the US embassy in Buenos Aires. Late in the afternoon Marquez sat with Verandas in a car in heavily wooded country half a mile from the estate entrance. He felt jet-lagged. He felt weighed down by Terri Delgado’s murder, but was glad he’d flown down. That Trocca was a hunting partner ramped up the chance something would happen, and there wasn’t any large legal game Stoval could go after. He had the phone number of the local game warden but hadn’t called him yet. It was all very loose. They were looking for opportunity based on Stoval’s patterns. Verandas and Taltson followed his leads and simultaneously second-guessed him.

Marquez worked out a rolling surveillance plan, and then took the first leg alone. Verandas spelled him just after midnight. When he left Verandas he drove the road around Lago Nahuel Huapi toward the hotel. From the road he looked out over the lake in moonlight. It was cold still and felt like winter. The lake was quite large and in many places fingers of water reached in deep into the shoreline. He remembered a lot more of the country than he thought he would. The big hotel that didn’t seem much changed at all. He slept deeply and was standing at the window of the room at dawn looking out over the lake when the call came that Stoval had just driven through the hacienda gates.

‘He’s coming your way, Marquez.’

SIXTY-THREE

S
toval picked up a man in Bariloche who looked dressed to be out in the raw weather, and now they were north of town in open country running out a dirt road muddy from spring runoff. Marquez waited five minutes before following. The rental car bounced in the potholes. His wheels spun in mud. From a wooden sign Marquez knew the road led to trailhead parking, but he didn’t follow them all the way in. He watched the odometer and when he guessed he was a third to a half mile from the trailhead he pulled over. Brush scraped the passenger side as he parked. He gathered his gear and walked the last stretch quietly through the trees.

Stoval and the other man stood outside the Range Rover looking like they were getting ready to hike into the mountains. Marquez focused binoculars on Stoval and saw the hollowing of the cheeks and deep creasing at the corners of the eyes, but in many ways he looked the same. He looked fit and lifted a soft gun case out of the back of the Range Rover, and then unzipped a silver-plated bird gun and dropped shells into the big pocket of his coat.

The other man didn’t carry a gun. He slipped a pack on, looked like a local and moved like a guide, a gold-skinned, dark-haired man smiling in anticipation. He wore a red bandana and sunglasses and led Stoval into the cold raw morning and chill in the trees.

After they hiked out, Marquez went back for his car. He drove into the trailhead lot and parked it where it couldn’t be missed, then radioed Verandas.

‘They hiked in and Stoval is carrying a shotgun. I don’t know what he’s going after this time of year, but I’m going to follow.’

He pulled on another layer and a windbreaker and ski cap, but once he set out to catch them he warmed up fast. He figured they had twenty-five minutes on him and that it wouldn’t take him long to catch up. He doubted they were more than three quarters of a mile ahead of him, and when that turned out to be true he hung back far enough to make it unlikely they would spot him.

Neither looked back much. Whatever they were here for was ahead. The barest first edges of the coming spring showed as mud and a softening of the snow in the sun between the trees. In many places were larger snow banks and the trail moved through forest and then climbed steeply, switchbacking up, and higher on to exposed rock. The wind blew hard off the Andes. It scoured away the early clouds and cut through Marquez’s clothes. His boots crunched through snow and slid on wet rock.

At roughly the five mile mark his radio no longer reached Verandas. He got only static. Ahead, strands of cirrus whitened the sky above the high peaks and he watched as Stoval and the other man rose through a long stand of trees to a saddle. They walked close together, Stoval carrying his gun with an easy confidence. They moved higher and into a longer stretch of trees and he saw only flashes of their clothing, the red bandana, the back of Stoval’s dark blue coat, and beyond them the dark gray rock of a ridge ahead. When Marquez reached the saddle he followed their boots’ prints through the snow, saw where they’d tromped through a muddy patch and picked up the rockbound trail again.

The trail left the trees and climbed a steep rock slope toward a knife blade of a ridge. It steepened and the snow among the rocks was windblown with a hard smooth crust that broke under his weight as he left the trail and worked sideways. He didn’t know if they’d hiked over the ridge and down the other side, or were on top, so he stayed below the crest. When he climbed up he was well down the ridge, away from their line of sight, and edged up. He stayed low and now with binoculars he saw them easily. They stood behind a granite outcropping and above them eagles circled raggedly in the cold wind.

Stoval watched the eagles, and as the guide pointed out two condors flying toward them from out across the deep forested valley ahead, his attention left the eagles. The condors were still small at this distance, but their wingspans were striking. They held a clean line cutting cross to the wind. They looked thick-shouldered and dark as they neared. Spring melt had begun and winter-killed carcasses were becoming exposed, so maybe they were searching for food.