Avenger (29 page)

He was taken back downtown yet again, this time in a prowl car, and was shown into an office where the air-conditioning was like a long-delayed cold bath and delicious. Inspector Evans toyed with his passport.

"What exactly are you doing in Guyana, Mr. McBride?" he asked.

"I was hoping to pay a short visit with a view to bringing my wife on vacation later," said the agent.

"In August? The salamanders shelter in August down here. Do you know Mr. Lawrence?"

"Well, no. I have a pal in Washington. He gave me the name. Said I might like to fly into the interior. Said Mr. Lawrence was about the best charter pilot. I just went to his office to see if he was available for charter. Is all. What did I do wrong?"

The inspector closed the passport and handed it back.

"You arrived from Washington today. That seems clear enough. Your tickets and entry stamp confirm. The Meridien Hotel confirms your one-night reservation for tonight."

"Look, inspector, I still don't understand why I was brought here. Do you know where I can find Mr. George Lawrence?"

"Oh yes. Yes, he's in the mortuary down at our general hospital. Apparently he was taken from his office yesterday by three men in a rented four-by-four. They checked it back in last night and flew out. Do those three names mean anything to you, Mr. McBride?"

He passed a slip of paper over the desk. McBride glanced at the three names, all of which he knew to be false, because he had issued them.

"No, sorry, they mean nothing to me. Why is Mr. Lawrence in the morgue?"

"Because he was found at dawn today by a vegetable seller coming to market. Dead in a ditch by the roadside just out of town. You, of course, were still in the air."

"That's awful. I never met him, but I'm sorry."

"Yes, it is. We have lost our charter pilot. Mr. Lawrence lost his life and, as it happens, eight of his fingernails. His office has been gutted and all records of past clients removed. What do you think his captors wanted of him, Mr. McBride?"

"I have no idea."

"Of course, I forgot. You are just a travelling salesman, are you not? Then I suggest you travel back home to the States, Mr. McBride. You are free to go."

"These people are animals," protested McBride to Devereaux down the secure line from Caracas Station to Langley.

"Come on home, Kevin," said his superior. "I'll ask our friend in the south what, if anything, he discovered."

Paul Devereaux had long cultivated a contact inside the FBI on the grounds that no man in his line of business could ever have too many sources of information and the bureau was not likely to share with him the very gems that would constitute true brotherly love.

He had asked his 'asset' to check in the archive database for files withdrawn by Assistant Director (Investigative Division) Colin Fleming since the request from on high had circulated regarding a murdered boy in Bosnia. Among the withdrawals was one marked simply "Avenger'.

Kevin McBride, weary and travel-stained, arrived home the following morning. Paul Devereaux was in his office as early as usual and crisply laundered.

He handed a file to his subordinate.

"That's him," he said. "Our interloper. I spoke with our friend in the south. Of course, it was three of his thugs who brutalized the charter pilot. And you are right. They are animals. But right now they are vital animals. Pity, but unavoidable."

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, night-watchmen 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 girl 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."