Guardian of Lies

FIFTY-FIVE

As Realtors will tell you, location is everything. For us, the good news is that Costa Rica sits dead center, right on the spine of the Americas.

The airport in Pavas is smaller than San José International, known as Juan Santamaría. The Pavas airport caters to domestic flights and eco tours to the coasts. It offers occasional international charters, from small prop jobs to jets, the occasional Citation, and even a Gulfstream or two as we learn today.

Ordinarily you couldn’t touch a charter flight from San José to northern Mexico for anything close to thirteen grand. But the bad economy and the good location have conspired to make things possible. These days, flights coming from the south are often snagged in the air by radio if the passengers are willing to allow a few more on board in return for a good discount.

Today we get lucky. A Gulfstream is already on the ground, sitting on the runway. It is headed from Panama City to Los Angeles and will stop in Mexico City for the couple who are now getting ready to board.

A phone call from the charter desk out to the plane, followed by a quick vote by the other two people already on board, and for a little over eleven thousand dollars all three of us have a ride north.

“Do we get any hors d’oeuvres on board?” asks Herman.

I give him a look to kill.

“Just wondering.” He gives me a moping face. “Been a while since we had breakfast.”

“There is food on board.” The man behind the counter is working the computer, not even looking at us when he says it, so he doesn’t see the broad smile on Herman’s face.

“See, it pays to ask,” says Herman. “Bet you they got beer too,” he whispers in my ear.

The man at the counter barely looks at our passports, just long enough to take the names and put them in the computer, then hand them off to the resident immigration officer a few feet away who punches them with an exit stamp and hands them back to us. We allow Maricela to take the lead on this as she speaks impeccable Spanish and makes Herman and I appear almost civil.

If I’d known, I could have saved us five grand, though I may be happy to be a Canadian citizen on the Mexican end. There are no boarding passes. We just haul our luggage out onto the tarmac. When the three of us climb the steps and get inside, we see the luxury of the deep leather chairs, all of which seem to swivel and recline. The four other passengers are standing next to a center table, munching and clinking their iced glasses.

They turn with broad smiles and introductions to welcome the rest of the partygoers. Hi, my name’s Paul. I’m an international fugitive. Please excuse the blood on my hands. There simply wasn’t time to wash up.

Instead I shake hands and use my Canadian name to make new friends. I haven’t figured out what I do for a living yet, but I’m sure they’ll ask. I take the cell phone from Herman, move to the back of the plane, and make one last attempt to reach Harry.

“We got ’em,” said Mendez.

“Did you get the woman?” said Thorpe.

“If she’s with him, they’ll have her in just a few seconds.”

“What do you mean? Either you have him or you don’t,” said Thorpe.

“The agents are turning onto the street right now. They’re less than a hundred feet from the signal. They’re right on top of them, could reach out and touch them,” said Mendez.

“Can you hear what’s going on?” said Thorpe.

“What do you mean it’s a different tower?” Mendez was talking to someone else. Thorpe could hear more voices, a lot of excitement at the other end. “What?”

“What’s happening?” said Thorpe.

“Sir, there’s a little confusion here. We’re getting some signals we don’t understand. There’s got to be a tower malfunction. The signal’s been handed off to three separate towers. What? How fast?”

“What’s going on?” said Thorpe. “Talk to me.”

“According to our technicians the signal is moving again. Whoever has the phone is doing about a hundred and forty knots.”

“What?”

“That’s about a hundred and sixty miles an hour.”

“I know what a goddamn knot is,” said Thorpe.

“He appears to be on an airplane.”

“Do we have any military assets in the area? WACs, anything that can track it on radar?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, find out. And see if you can get the tower at the airport to call the plane back. Costa Rican police ought to be able to do something. And call me when you know.” Thorpe slammed the receiver down so hard it bounced off the cradle on the phone and onto the floor, where he got up and kicked it.

Nitikin had spent most of his life shielding the bomb and harboring it for a purpose. In his youth, the device was an instrument of the revolution. That Khrushchev would not use it for that purpose and share the power with their comrades in Cuba had angered Nitikin. The revolution was an ideal, pure and pristine. Yakov had never abandoned his country. On the contrary, its leaders had abandoned the revolution. Despite all the years he spent in hiding, Yakov Nitikin was still a soldier.

But now that he was old, he was confused. He longed only to spend time with his daughter, to see her again, to talk to her, to hold her. He wanted to see his granddaughter, Katia, whom he had seen only once as an infant, but whom he talked about endlessly with Maricela, asking questions and looking at photographs. All of these were now lost, left behind in his hut at the encampment. He had cried himself to sleep, bellowing like a baby the night Maricela left the camp. Something had snapped in him. He feared for her and could not wait to call her on the phone.

He now hovered anxiously on the edge, caught between duty and the desire to escape.

Nitikin knew that there was no way to bargain with Alim. To attempt it was to invite a quick death. How does one bargain with the devil? The moment Afundi knew that the bomb was armed, he would pull out his pistol and Yakov would be dead. There were times he thought he hated the man enough that he could kill him, but the thought of sabotaging the bomb never entered his mind.

To fail now was to betray everything he believed in, all that he had worked for all those years. He had traded a life with his family for the mission of the bomb. It was not his child, though there were times when he felt as if it throbbed with life, the embryo of revolution.

He searched for some way out, some method by which he could satisfy duty and still see his daughter. What he needed was time.

Yakov was working through an open side panel of the wooden crate, inside the container, presumably checking the device for any damage, as instructed by Alim.

Nitikin had lied to him. The bomb was entirely safe to transport. The safety device was redundant. After all, the warhead had been designed for delivery in the belly of an unmanned MiG jet, a cruise missile launched from a ramp, not unlike the V-1 rocket. The gravitational and kinetic forces applied to the warhead at launch were probably three or four times greater than those experienced in the most violent vehicle collision or other accident.

True, the safety device would prevent the bomb from achieving a chain reaction if the gun was fired accidentally, but there was no chance of that unless the cordite charge was loaded under the breech plug, which only a fool would do except immediately prior to deployment.

For Nitikin the safety device had but a single purpose: it made him indispensable and kept him alive. It had one other advantage-only he knew whether the safety device was engaged or not.

“He wants to know if there is any damage.”

Nitikin was startled by the voice coming from behind him. He looked out and saw the brooding face of the interpreter standing in the bright sunlight just outside the open door of the container.

“No, it looks fine. I’m just checking the last few items.”

“Then I can tell him the device is in working order? You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Yakov spoke from inside the box, without looking. When he didn’t hear any further comment, he stuck his head out and saw the larded backside of the interpreter twenty feet away, walking in the other direction along the deck, toward the bridge.

Nitikin turned back to the bomb. He used the flashlight he’d borrowed from the interpreter to check and make sure that the minute groove cut into the safety wire was properly aligned, a quarter turn, ninety degrees, in a clockwise direction. Once satisfied, he took hold of the wire and turned it counterclockwise until the groove in the wire was facing straight up.

Very gently, so as not to break the delicate bond holding the wire to the safety disk, Yakov eased the wire toward himself until he saw the fine red line painted on it at the outer edge of the bomb case. The safety disk was now clear of the gun barrel. It was housed in a separate supporting container welded to the inside of the bomb case. Reinserting the safety in the barrel would take knowledge of the settings as well as fine hand skills that even Nitikin doubted he possessed any longer.

Yakov crawled from the crate, closed the wooden side panel, and screwed it down tight.

Arming the bomb had fulfilled his duty as a soldier even though he had no intention of informing Alim until the last moment, and then hopefully through a note or a message delivered by another. Now Yakov was free to escape and join his family, if he could only find the means.