Mounting Fears

38

TEDDY FAY HAD DECIDED NOT TO LEAVE PANAMA CITY-NOT JUST YET, ANYWAY. HE had put away the gray-wig-and-mustache disguise and was now employing a red wig with a lower hairline and gray flecks, with eyebrows to match. He had kept his apartment, since no one had ever seen him leave or arrive there, and on the whole, he felt pretty comfortable.

There had been an item in the local English-language paper about Ned Partain's body being found on the tanker, but as he had expected, the police had not been able to ascertain where old Ned had boarded the ship. Eventually, they would get around to visiting El Parador, the restaurant where he and Ned had dined, and they might figure it out after that, so he would not return to El Parador. He had been back to the bar at El Conquistador, wearing the new disguise, and had detected no recognition in the eyes of the bartender, so he might go there occasionally in search of women.

He had considered paying a visit to Darlene Cole, in Maryland, but to remove her from the earth would just confirm her sighting of him. He had been reading the National Inquisitor, which, surprisingly, seemed to have a substantial circulation in Panama City, and there had been an article about the death of Ned Partain, quoting the local police as saying it was accidental in nature. No mention had been made of Ned's assignment, nor had the photo of Teddy run in the paper.

Teddy had felt the need of better cover, though, so on a moonless night he had let himself into the local personnel office of the Panama Canal Company, gone through the files of retirees and found an excellent match for himself, a retired gentleman with thirty years' service in payroll. He copied the man's file, substituted a photo of himself in his current disguise and returned the file to its dusty cabinet. Then, using the same photo, he made himself Canal Zone documents.

All this had kept Teddy entertained for a few days. Now, however, he had one more base to cover: the Panama station of the Central Intelligence Agency. If, somehow, the station chief had gotten wind of Partain's fate, he would have reported the incident to Langley, and one or more agents would have been assigned to see that the Inquisitor did not publish any stories about Teddy. That would not have been in the Agency's interests.

The website of the American Embassy had yielded the names of the principal officers of the embassy, and there, nestled in the list as deputy agricultural attachй, was his old acquaintance Owen Masters, so it was not hard to figure out who the station chief was.

Owen, apparently, had been shipped off to Panama to serve out his time before retirement, which, if memory served, would be in the not-too-distant future. Panama was hardly a plum assignment, and that meant that the other members of the station would be few in number, probably no more than half a dozen, mostly rookies. Owen's only real work in Panama would be training them to seem busy.

Teddy ran his agile intellect over the possibilities. Suppose, perhaps through an agency asset in the Panamanian government or police, Owen had been apprised of Ned Partain's demise. Teddy's one mistake had been not to remove his photograph from Ned's pocket before assisting him onto the ship. And that would have been found when the police went through his clothes and hotel room. Suppose, then, that Owen had seen the photograph and recognized Teddy from the old days. He would have alerted Langley, in the person of Lance Cabot, his boss, and by now Lance would have seen it.

This was all a worst-case scenario, of course. It was likely that Owen had never heard of Partain and that the photo now rested in some filing cabinet at police headquarters in Colуn, at the other end of the canal, which would suit Teddy just fine.

The worst-case scenario, though, would suit him pretty well, too, because Lance Cabot, as soon as he saw the photo of Teddy, would have conducted an immediate sweeping-under-the-rug operation. Certainly, he would not have apprised Katharine Rule of the resurrection of Teddy Fay, since that would have reflected very badly on himself. Nor would he send people looking for Teddy, since that would mean looking for a dead man. Lance, for the moment, would serve very nicely as Teddy's new best friend.

Owen Masters, though, would have little interest in Lance Cabot's comfort. There had been, after all, a day when Owen's career track had aimed him, more or less, at Lance's job, and now he found himself moldering in the heat and humidity of Panama, grinding it out until his retirement clock reached the magic number of thirty, disaffected and thoroughly pissed off. Owen was the wild card in the worst-case scenario, and Teddy wanted to have sight of him, to assess his state of mind.

Teddy began by waiting outside the American Embassy in the late afternoon. He wanted to know what time Owen Masters called it a day, and he was gratified to see the aging spy wander out of the building at a quarter past four. He certainly wasn't working nights trying to find Teddy. Owen got into his car, a dusty embassy Chevrolet, and Teddy cranked his motor scooter and followed him.

The trail of Owen Masters led to a dimly lit cantina a mile or so from the embassy but probably near Owen's home. There he would be unlikely to encounter fellow embassy employees, so there would be no one to report back on how much he was drinking. And Owen was drinking much.

The man started with a tequila shooter and a cerveza chaser, just to get his alcohol blood level up, then switched to margaritas. Teddy witnessed all this from the far end of the bar, while he nursed his own drink. Owen spent an hour there, anesthetizing himself for whatever his evening promised.

What it promised, it turned out, after Teddy had followed him home and stationed himself outside a kitchen window, was five minutes of a monumental fight with Owen's wife, Estelle, whom Teddy had met once at a social gathering of spooks. The discussion covered the no doubt familiar ground of Owen's consumption level of alcohol, Owen's lack of career prospects, Owen's failure to save enough money for a decent retirement, and Owen's having got them sent to this godforsaken place.

This was followed, after Estelle had finally wound down, by a grimly silent supper and television viewing. Teddy was happy for Owen that he had a satellite dish.

Teddy wended his way to a favorite restaurant for dinner, feeling less worried about Owen Masters as a threat. He would stick around Panama City, albeit well prepared for flight, until he discerned some more threatening blip on his overdeveloped personal radar.