Metzger's Dog (13 page)

19
                  
The strong winds of the morning had scoured the sky to an impossible blue and then moved on. The sunlight now beat into the bowl of Dodger Stadium, heating the seats and the concrete steps so that food and drinks spilled months ago cooked and released a perfumy essence into the air. When the third warmup pitch smacked into the catcher’s mitt, a tiny cloud of dust exploded and then drifted luminous in the sunlight for a second.

Jorge Grijalvas stared about him at the stadium. He wasn’t looking at any of the individual players throwing the ball back and forth. That view of things didn’t interest him very much. His box had been chosen because it gave him what he called the whole view. At a glance he could see the entire infield as a unit. If he lifted his gaze he could see not people, but the crowd. He liked the crack of the bat and then the whole infield moving at once in the smooth, precise, and practiced maneuvers too quick for thought. The Dodger infield was like a special kind of machine, perhaps a trap.

Grijalvas had the same box every year. He also had a box in the Hollywood Bowl for the concert season, but he always gave the tickets to friends and business acquaintances who seemed to enjoy it, or perhaps only to enjoy accepting the friendship of Jorge Grijalvas. He paid no attention to the Los Angeles Rams, because American football made no sense to him. He understood it completely, but it seemed interesting only theoretically.

Baseball was different. Here was ritual, the nobility of a single small man in a white uniform on a field of dust pitting his cunning and his reflexes against nine in a contest of concentration and will before an immense gathering of people, a colorful, variegated blur of humanity ranged from the dugout to the heavens, all breathing in unison, all gasping as he swung the blond bat.

Grijalvas smiled and pivoted his head about in satisfaction to look at his companions. He was a happy man. He was a man of substance, a
padrón
, a man who could spend the afternoon in Dodger Stadium surrounded by his friends. They were more than friends. They were
fidelios
, the faithful.

As he gazed about the stadium he could see that the food and ice-cream vendors were beginning their first sweep down the steps that separated the seating sections. Across the stadium they were stepping down the aisles at once, the aluminum cases slung on their shoulders glinting in the sunlight. He snapped a twenty-dollar bill in his fingers and held up his right arm, then glanced about for the man who would come to collect it.

He was pleased when he saw the vendor step down the aisle. It was a young woman with beautiful long brown hair that shone reddish in the sunlight, and a complexion that was white, like a ceramic figurine. She was perfect, as the day was perfect.

“Give these gentlemen whatever they wish,” he said.

“I’ve only got hot dogs, sir.” And then she smiled, and he included her in his expansive mood. She added, “Great hot dogs, though.”

Grijalvas turned to his friends. “What do you think? Do we believe her?”

“How can we know?” said Juan, his face expressionless. “Is it guaranteed to be horse meat?” He winked to keep the tattoo of a tear on his cheekbone covered by his sunglasses.

She held up a tinfoil package. “This one ran third in the Belmont Stakes.”

Grijalvas slapped his knee. “Give us five, and keep the change.” He watched as she gave the other four hot dogs, then he said, “I want the one that won the Kentucky Derby.”

“Of course. I’ve been saving it for you.” She reached into the aluminum box and handed him one of her foil packages, then moved down the aisle. He saw her slip into the crowd and then onto the exit ramp. It must be a good day for her if she had to go back for more hot dogs already. Grijalvas looked at the infield. The first batter was striding to the plate, swinging his bat in a deliberate motion that seemed to be more mental than physical.

Grijalvas didn’t like hot dogs, but he found himself fiddling with the aluminum foil. It was so much bigger and heavier than he’d expected. He opened it and peered inside. When he saw the piece of paper on top he said to Juan, “Excuse me,” and walked down the steps to the men’s room. Inside, he unfolded the paper and read.

“Jorge, I need a favor. The rest of this hot dog is seventy-five hundred dollars, so don’t eat it. What I need is the use of your Mexican connections….”

He folded the paper without reading the rest of it and put the foil package in the breast pocket of his coat. Today was not a day to think about business. Still, he was a happy man, and there was no reason not to do as this man asked if the request was reasonable. The man was a lunatic, but the world was full of lunatics, and most of them were not capable of surprising.

On the far side of the stadium, Margaret climbed the steps and sat down next to Chinese Gordon.

“How did it go?” he asked, peering through a pair of binoculars.

“He got it.”

“Yeah, I saw that.” He lowered the binoculars and frowned at her. “Did you save me a hot dog?”

20
                  
As Porterfield touched the doorknob he felt it twist in his hand, and he stood to watch the door jerk open. On the other side was a tall, alert young man in a gray suit who seemed to be decorated with bits of plastic—three laminated access badges, the plastic edge of a radio that looked like a hearing aid visible at the breast pocket, a beeper at his belt.

“Oh, God,” muttered Porterfield.

“Sir?” said the young man eagerly, his left hand held to the earpiece of his radio, ready to pluck it out.

“Nothing at all.” Porterfield entered the conference room and looked about him. This morning the same group had gathered, but this time they had clustered together at the far end of the long table. At the near end was another group of three men and two women who seemed to be scanning sheets of paper that were brought to them by other people Porterfield didn’t know. As he watched, one of the women at the lower end of the table scribbled or marked a sheet and sent the messenger scurrying to the head of the table to Pines, who glanced at it, nodded, and returned to his conversation with those near in even lower tones.

Porterfield dodged two messengers and moved to the head of the table. The others looked up, their faces still in the expressions they’d held a moment before: Pines excited and perhaps revealing some hint of triumph at something he had just said, Goldschmidt’s lined and weary face slack with something between boredom and distaste, Kearns visibly disturbed.

Porterfield said quietly, “You could fit a few more people in here if you’d have them knock out that wall.”

Pines leaned back in his chair. “You can take it up with the Director.”

Porterfield turned and saw the young man open the door and step aside as the Director strode into the room. Behind him came two more young men with plugs in their left ears and carrying files. The Director walked with both hands in his pockets, as though to emphasize the fact that he carried nothing, opened no doors, wrote nothing down.

“How are we doing?” he said.

“We thought we’d wait until you got here,” said Pines. “The plane arrives at four-fifteen San Francisco time, which is seven-fifteen tonight.”

“Plane?” said Porterfield. “This isn’t that idiotic thing about the Russians, is it?”

Pines smirked, but the Director chuckled. “I don’t mind a difference of opinion on strategies. Ben didn’t know this plan is mine, and I give him the credit that knowing wouldn’t make any difference. And I know that even if we disagree on this one, you’ll all settle down and make it work.”

“Of course,” Pines said, staring at Porterfield. “The whole thing should be over in a few hours. The team is already in place, the arrangements are made.”

“Fine,” Porterfield said, pushing his chair away from the table. “Then you won’t need us.”

“I’m afraid we will, Ben,” said the Director. “It’s a good, solid move, but it’s not by any means a sure thing. Every time we deal with the Russians there’s a possibility of things getting out of hand—that they’ll make the irrational move, the inappropriate response.”

“Then I think we should take our business elsewhere,” said Porterfield.

The Director’s smile disappeared. “You haven’t heard the plan.”

Porterfield folded his arms and waited.

“It’s actually very subtle. The Aeroflot airplane from Moscow arrives at four-fifteen in San Francisco. It is met by the team we had originally planned to have. The Russians have had the names and faces for months. The team leads the Russians to the VIP lounge, buys them drinks, dinner, more drinks, whatever makes them happy.”

“And?”

“That’s it. The Russian consulate wonders where they are, their contacts at the hotel wonder. After a few hours, Moscow begins to wonder. Nobody knows because nobody saw them arrive and nobody saw them leave. When Moscow finally comes up with Donahue’s papers, the delegation is driven to their hotel and turned loose. Even they don’t know they’ve been detained. Moscow knows, of course, but they can’t make any claims because it would sound ludicrous.”

“What if Moscow doesn’t come up with the papers?”

“There are several contingency plans. There will be a LearJet all fueled up and ready to take them away if we need to hold them for any length of time. There will be four cars waiting if we need to split them up. Have I forgotten anything, Pines?”

“I don’t believe so. We should have the papers by midnight.”

“What’s to stop them from using other copies?”

“That’s the beauty of it. This is better than getting the papers and the men who stole them. The problem isn’t the papers themselves, it’s that the Russians might use them. What we’re doing is letting the Russians know that they can’t keep doing this kind of thing because we’ll respond. They have the papers, so they know the names of a few agents, a few foreign nationals we’ve turned. It’s too late to keep that from happening. What we’re doing is showing them that we know a few agents of theirs, and maybe a few foreign nationals that they’ve turned. If they don’t do anything, we won’t do anything. After a decent interval both sides will have replaced the people who are known, and everything will be back to normal.” The Director waited. “Well?”

Porterfield said, “Well—”

“No,” Goldschmidt snapped. “Let me say it. The plan is stupid. Its only redeeming aspect is that it is unlikely the Russians will be able to understand the deranged message you’re sending them. It’s unprofessional. Who besides you was involved in this?”

Porterfield stared down the long table, watching the messengers arriving with an air of urgency, then leaving, usually with a single piece of paper that now contained a set of initials or a few words in a margin. As he watched, one of them handed a sheet to Maria Hurtado, Kearns’s assistant from the Latin America desk.

Pines had handed Goldschmidt a list of names, and he was running a finger down it quickly. “Ben,” he said, smiling, “you should see this.” He jabbed it in front of Porterfield, who glanced down at it.

“Molnar?”

“That’s the one.”

“The one who was pushing the Exploding President?”

“Exploding President? What the hell are you talking about?” Pines was breathing hard through the corners of his mouth.

“It was before your time,” said Goldschmidt. “Molnar was sponsoring a plan to make a dummy that looked just like the President but filled with two hundred pounds of tritonol and a layer of fléchettes.”

“What the hell for?”

“To assassinate assassins. You know, at parades and ceremonies.”

“But that would kill everybody around it for a hundred yards.”

“Right. Well-done hamburger. If we’d gone for that one, we might have gotten the Nuclear President. I guess it’s our loss. Glad to see you’ve found something else for Molnar to do.”

The Director said quietly, “It’s not fair to mark a man for life just for one bad idea. He’s been very helpful on this one.”

Porterfield was staring down the table at Maria Hurtado, whose face had suddenly changed. Her brows were knitted and she was frowning, but her eyes were wide with excitement as she read. Then she was standing, walking toward Kearns, her eyes still on the sheet in her hand. She reached over Kearns’s right shoulder, placed the paper on the table in front of him, and waited.

The Director was saying, “We’d like to use the next few hours to develop ways of taking advantage of this situation. Actual interrogation may not be wise, but it is an option. There is a range of other options to be explored and—”

“Excuse me,” said Kearns.

“One moment.” The Director held his hand up majestically. “What I want is a little brainstorming. Bring in your best people. If one of you hears something that might be worth pursuing, pass it immediately to the other groups. Now, Kearns, what is it?”

“There’s new information. This article appeared in the
Vox Populi
of Ixtapa, Mexico, this morning. Let me translate the important parts.”

The Ministry of Education released the following figures today. There are over fifteen million students enrolled in the nation’s primary and secondary schools this year. The number is the highest ever, according to Ministry sources. An especially encouraging part of the report is that while the number of students is expected to continue to grow, the number of qualified teachers has grown much faster during the past five years. There are now 619,352 full-time licensed teachers.

“How much checking has been done, Maria?” Porterfield asked.

“The
Ixtapa Vox Populi
seems to be the only paper in Mexico that carried the story. That’s the biggest sign. It’s a small paper with maybe thirty thousand subscribers.”

“What about the report?” said Goldschmidt. “Is it real?”

“We don’t know yet. The figures are reasonable at first glance. There are about fifteen million children in Mexican schools and about six hundred thousand teachers. People downstairs haven’t been able to get the Ministry of Education to confirm or deny, but they’re working on it.”

Other messengers were arriving now, and the young man at the door was frowning as his earpiece squawked its scrambled traffic into his brain. The messengers began to form a line beside Maria Hurtado’s empty chair until Kearns waved them to the head of the table.

“This one says the report definitely came from somewhere in the Ministry of Education but was released as an exclusive to the
Vox Populi
.” Maria Hurtado placed it on the table and looked at the next one, then at the next. “The figure for teachers is inaccurate. The real figure is almost six hundred thirty thousand.”

“Thank you, Maria,” Kearns said. She returned to her seat at the foot of the table. Kearns shrugged. “It’s a definite government press release, not an ad somebody bought in the paper.”

“I’m not sure I’m following all of this,” the Director said. “Can somebody please sort it out?”

“Sure.” Porterfield studied his fingernails, then looked up. “What it means is that you’d better get somebody busy calling off the ambush at San Francisco airport.”

“Right,” Goldschmidt nodded. “It was a bad idea in the first place, but now we know it would just get them mad as hell for nothing. They haven’t got the papers. Nobody has.”

“Nobody?” said the Director.

“Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet,” Porterfield agreed. “Otherwise the Mexican government wouldn’t be bidding fifteen million dollars for them.”

T
HE
D
IRECTOR LOOKED AROUND HIMSELF
glumly. “For this morning’s session I’ve decided we need to develop a clearer idea of the options we have available. I’ve invited a few specialists to come and give us the benefit of their expertise.”

Goldschmidt whispered to Porterfield, “Molnar.”

“I heard that,” the Director said, “as I suppose I was meant to. The first of these people is Mr. Bob.”

“Mr. Bob?”

“Bob is his last name, and he’s probably heard whatever you’re thinking of saying, so forget it. He’s been in on a number of ransom situations, and he’s going to—”

“Does he know what’s going on?”

“He’s here to brief us, not the reverse.”

There was a knock, and a bald man in a blue pinstripe suit entered. “Hello,” the man called as he walked to the table. “My name is Mr. Bob. Are you ready for me?”

“Yes, I believe we are, Mr. Bob.” The Director pronounced the name with exaggerated ease, then his brow furrowed slightly, as though he were afraid he’d said it wrong. “I’m afraid we’re badly behind schedule, so I’ll have to ask you to give us the basics in a few minutes.”

“I can do that.” He sat down beside the Director and addressed the others. “I’m here to talk money. If I go too fast, stop me. If you hear something you want more of, ask. If you want me back, call 9559. Basically, in ransom situations your best bet is the money. They won’t refuse it, they won’t lose it, they won’t go too far from it. Always use Mr. Bob’s law: ‘If they’ve got it, you’ve got them.’ Money talks, but only if you pay off with talking money.”

Porterfield said, “What’s available these days?”

“There still are only three kinds, really. There’s counterfeit, marked, and treated.”

“Treated?” Kearns seemed to wake up.

“Chemically treated. You can break that down in three ways, actually—there’s poison, there’s a biological-warfare agent, and there’s a self-destruct chemical.”

“You mean the money disappears?”

“Sure. It’s only paper and ink. You can make it fade with a bleach, make it go all gooey and wet with a little solvent, make it burn with a corrosive. The timing on these things is a little tricky, so you have to be careful about it, of course.”

“What do you recommend for a large transfer of funds, Mr. Bob?” The Director hesitated. “A payoff in the neighborhood of ten million dollars? Counterfeit?”

“Well, maybe,” said Mr. Bob. “We’ve got a problem with the counterfeit, though. We’ve got only two kinds, and what we need is three. We’ve got only great and awful. The awful stuff you can use only with people who haven’t seen much American money. You couldn’t pass it off as a supermarket coupon. The great stuff is an even bigger mistake. It’s so good it takes special equipment to figure out what’s wrong with it, which isn’t much. No, treated money is probably the answer. We’ll supply the chemicals if you’ll supply the money. Chemicals are cheap.”

“You’re wasting Mr. Bob’s time,” said Porterfield. “Time is money. The situation is that the money will be paid to people who are in this country and might very well take it to a bank or spend it here. They may also retain some part of what we want to ransom.”

Mr. Bob stared at the ceiling. “Let’s see. No biological stuff—can’t have an epidemic at home, and if it isn’t a really virulent strain it doesn’t always work. No poison, because you can’t be sure they’d all touch it. And you say they’ll keep part of the prize to protect themselves?”

“That’s likely,” said the Director.

“Then I’d say your only hope is to pay them off in one-dollar bills. It’s pretty easy to spot somebody driving off in a caravan of trucks. I guess I’m not going to be of much use here.” He stood up.

“No, wait.” The Director held up his hand. “What about the packaging? Can we do something with that? How about a homing signal or a radio or something?”