October's Ghost

CHAPTER TWO LIBERTAD

There were ten of them, all dressed in the dirty blue coveralls that they wore each and every day in the execution of their duties at the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force Base near Santa Clara in the central part of the island nation. On evenings such as this they would routinely spend the six hours of their first duty shift cleaning and preparing the base’s twelve operative MiG-23 fighters for use the following morning. The likelihood that any would be taken skyward was rare these days, so the limits of their efforts were largely directed at keeping the aircraft clean and rust free. A pretty picture they would make, but the squadron — which had boasted sixteen functioning MiGs just a month previously — was supposed to be more than a showpiece in its intended role, something these ground crewman were, in a grand switch of motives, going to prevent from ever coming to fruition.

In pairs they went to each aircraft, working as normal, cleaning debris from the landing gear and strut assemblies. The officer overseeing their work sat idly a hundred meters away in a straight-backed wooden chair that he leaned against a hangar’s outer wall. His attention was focused on one of the “unauthorized” publications so readily available in Santa Clara, particularly upon a pretty young woman whom the caption said was a frequent visitor to the sands of Playa la Panchita. From the absence of tan lines he was certain it was an accurate statement.

But while the risqué pictures held his attention, the crews under his watch were able to spend just a short amount of time longer than normal at the front wheelwell of each MiG. In less than four hours their work was done, freeing the crews, half of whom were unofficial “replacements” for those who were not inclined to cooperate in the somewhat historic venture soon to begin, to spend some much needed additional time on the four Hind helicopter gunships based at Santa Clara. There they focused on the tail rotor assemblies, lubricating the exposed fasteners and checking for the required torquing on the bolts. When the desired tightness was achieved, they moved on to the repair shop to clean and secure their tools, most of which were specialized and irreplaceable, as was much of the machinery in the building.

With a full shift of work behind them, the group, with the approval of their uninterested duty officer, proceeded to their barracks and, as every good soldier in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces was expected to do, cleaned and prepared their personal weapons for use in any eventuality.

This final task they completed with particular care and haste, knowing that a certain “eventuality” was soon to occur.

They called him Papa Tony. It was a term representative of respect more than lineage, though the blood that filled Antonio Paredes, Jr.’s veins was of the same land as his hosts. Yet his years were insufficient to allow for parentage of any of the men he was now with. They were all senior officers in the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces who had served their country with pride and distinction for decades, from a time before young Antonio had learned to walk. Some may even have taken up arms against his father in the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion. It was possible that one was even responsible for the elder Paredes’s death. But the past was simply history, Antonio believed, and it was time to write a new chapter for the books. Things changed, societies matured, and people who were once cattle in a pen had come to see the benevolent rancher as little more than a guide to the slaughterhouse. Yes, the past was very different from the present, except in one way that few would ever know. A very ironic and appropriate way. For the same reasons as his father, Antonio had returned to the land of his birth, the land his family had fled more than three-and-a-half decades before, to help bring freedom once again to a simple, beautiful people. And, as Antonio felt was a tribute to the father he never knew, he had come at the behest of the same, secretive American employer as his Papa Tony.

“Papa, do you wish to watch?”

Paredes turned toward the voice. It was Colonel Hector Ojeda, executive officer of the Second Mechanized Division, a unit located some twelve miles to the east at Falcon. It was a position he would occupy for fifteen more minutes. At that point he would become Colonel Ojeda, rebel officer and leader of the battle for his nation’s freedom.

Ojeda held a pair of French-made night-vision binoculars out for the CIA officer, who took them and followed his host to the edge of the vegetation on the hill just four miles north of the Santa Clara airfield. They settled in among a sparse grove of palms that opened into a moonlit clearing where the rise sloped downward. There was no fear of detection. The unthinkable would never happen. All threats were outside the borders, across oceans. Akin to the American maxim of personal freedom and safety, the door was unlocked on this warm autumn evening.

That was the essence of the plan to free Cuba.

“Ten minutes,” Ojeda reported. He was a tall man, thin from head to toe, which would make him appear weak if not for the eyes. Bulging, brown on white, they were set in a gaunt face that showed a tired determination known only by those who had traveled a long road to an uncertain future. His frame, never beyond wiry in his fifty-nine years, had obviously suffered from the strain of the previous three months. So much planning, so many things to accomplish in the shadows. And at any time his actions could have been discovered, with only one result imaginable. It was that knowledge that had pushed the already driven Ojeda to secure an opportunity for the future with a ruthless abandon that had silenced many of those who would not join in the fight for freedom. The affair had changed him, and he knew it.

Paredes had been changed, also. In his one month living among those who were about to inexorably alter their future, he had found an attachment to a place he had no memory of. It contradicted what he had been taught during his education in the United States about nature versus nurture. Where environment had shaped his being, it was this place, this land, that had formed it. And though the part he was to play, an officially deniable role as liaison between the rebel military commanders and Langley, was important, if small, he had come to realize that with success there would be a freedom of sorts for him personally, as well as for his hosts. In essence he was a thirty-eight year-old man who had come home.

“Watch the line of aircraft,” Ojeda directed.

Antonio braced himself against the coarse surface of a palm and brought the glasses to eye level, using his arms to form a sturdy triangle and steady the view. His left thumb activated the enhancement function of the binoculars, and a soft green luminescence escaped the viewport to paint the upper portion of his face with a glow that matched closely the color of the surrounding flora as seen in daylight.

“How long now?” Paredes inquired as he slowly swept the twin rows of Soviet-built fighters.

“Just a few minutes.”

All was still on the tarmac. Nearly an hour past midnight nothing else would be expected. But shortly a display of ingenuity, determination, and deadly ability would be offered, not only for the eyes of Papa Tony, but for the eyes of his masters, for whom a final act of convincing was necessary before committing support to the rebellion.

Antonio both heard and felt the breath of Ojeda on his neck. It surprised him some that the colonel chose not to watch the scene more closely, but then the man had lived it for so long. In each safe house — a generous term in a country where the accommodations depicted on Gilligan’s Island were ostentatious by comparison — he had been moved to, twelve in all, Ojeda had kept him intimately informed of the preparations and the participants who were signed onto the plan. So strange it was, Paredes had come to realize, that a man whom Ojeda and his comrades had respected for decades could destroy that trust and loyalty with such a minor act. They would have killed for Fidel Castro, but now they would kill to unseat him from power, from his throne of arrogance. The bullet that had killed General Eduardo Echevarria Ontiveros, hero of the Revolution and true leader of men, might just as well have been fired by volley at the presidente himself.

But acts seen as insignificant by the mighty often propelled lesser men to counter the injustice they perceived with a fury never imagined. And fury was the proper word, for it was something Antonio knew was key to Ojeda’s being, and it was something to be revealed momentarily before his very eyes.

The flashes were rapid in succession, like a string of noiseless firecrackers exploding to one’s front. The brightness flared the night-vision glasses and were compensated for automatically, the optics fully recovering by the time the sharp cracks reached Paredes and Ojeda four miles distant. A joyous yell erupted from beyond the grove of palms as the sound passed over the rebel command staff.

Like a coach looking for evidence of mistakes or missteps on the part of his team, Paredes watched for several minutes as mayhem erupted on the base below. Pilots, alerted by the blasts and the subsequent alarm, ran from their quarters to the flight line where they stood, bewildered, as they stared at their suddenly grounded aircraft. To the west of the planes a flash erupted from the base’s maintenance hangar, followed quickly by a bright orange fireball that did not subside. Fingers of orange licked out of the half-open door and the shattered windows as equipment vital to the operation of the aircraft was consumed by the inferno. A few minutes later, as the Hind pilots and crew scrambled to their ships and took to the sky, the final blow of the opening was struck.

Antonio lowered the glasses as obvious muzzle flashes erupted around and in the control tower. He turned to Colonel Ojeda, who stood in the same position as before, his eyes cast not upon the successful operation unfolding, but toward the sky almost straight up. “Sufficient for your government, Papa Tony?”

Paredes smiled, wishing in vain that the cameras a hundred miles up could see the look in the colonel’s eyes, for no further confirmation of the viability of this rebellion would be necessary. “Ample, Colonel. It is a fair fight now.”

Ojeda’s gaze came down upon the American’s satisfied face. At several other airfields across the country similar actions would be happening, effectively taking the Revolutionary Air Forces out of the fray. The skies would belong to no one. Still, it was a fact only of tactical convenience to the colonel. “Papa, I would fight this war with a stick, a stone, and the hate in my heart.” The expression on his face changed slightly, to something that seemed to perplex and slightly frighten the American. “It was fair when they had an air force. Now the battle is mine.”

Grandiose, some would label the claim, but they were not standing in the shadow of the man who, as lit from above by the bright, full moon, resembled the earthly embodiment of the grim reaper. Antonio Paredes was, and he pitied the enemy, for any foe of this man was at a disadvantage simply by nature of his allegiance.

Ojeda reached out and touched the American on the shoulder, leaving his hand there for a moment, conveying the gratitude that words would fumble over. Then he turned and went to his men, leaving Paredes to stand among the palms that towered like sheltering sentinels over him. Activity on the base was picking up, with more flashes, more sounds, and the beautiful scenes of confusion as soldiers loyal to the government struggled to comprehend what had happened and where the enemy had come from. Ten men, Antonio thought. And Ojeda has thirty thousand. He could only smile at the thought of what was still to come.

The liberation of Cuba had begun.

Deputy Director, Intelligence, Greg Drummond hated the hour. The sun was barely up when his CIA driver arrived at his suburban Virginia home, the crisp beauty of an autumn morning not yet fully realized. And it wouldn’t be for the man who headed the Agency’s Intelligence directorate. He had missed a slew of sunrises and sunsets in his eighteen years at Langley, half of those in the past six months, and he had begun to wonder if life was anything more than work marked at both ends by meals from the Agency’s mess.

The drive in took thirty minutes, a little more than usual because some knucklehead had tried a right-side pass on a big rig and ended up transforming his forty-thousand-dollar Beamer into a thirty-thousand-dollar Beamer with a ten-grand repair bill attached. Drummond was deposited in the VIP area of the CIA’s underground parking garage and took the VIP elevator directly to the seventh floor, the home of the VIPs. Being a VIP had its pluses.

“Greg, hurry up,” one of the minuses said as he saw the DDI step off the elevator.

“One minute, Anthony.” Drummond walked past Director of Central Intelligence Anthony Merriweather’s office, which, unfortunately, was but one from his, and checked the night dispatches on his desk. There was no reason to rush, despite the DCI’s urging. The DDI slid out of his overcoat and laid his soft leather case on the desk, which, to his chagrin, hadn’t magically swallowed the ponderous “to do” list, courtesy of his micromanager boss, that would pop up on his computer screen when he coded in for the day.

He let out a breath and tried to convince himself that this day would pass quickly and productively, then picked up the Significant Events summary prepared by the night desk and felt his hopes of a second earlier fade away.

“Damn,” he said softly, folding the single sheet in half and pulling the corresponding detail report that explained in depth the event of concern. He has to listen to this, Drummond thought, knowing that “has to” was a term that rarely applied to Merriweather. He was in the DCI’s office a minute later.

“We have SNAPSHOT stuff coming in,” Merriweather reported.

“Oh? This soon?” the DDI asked, only half-interested.

“Healy’s guy gave me an eyeball description of what he saw. Very impressive,” the DCI commented, tearing the sheet of his notes on the conversation from the legal pad and sliding it into the shredder atop his wastebasket.

“Christ, Anthony!” Drummond’s jaw would have dropped if he didn’t know the added emphasis would be wasted. “You should not be in direct contact with field officers when they are engaged in a mission. Especially this mission.”

Merriweather made his disagreement clear with a look. There was a fine line between security and paranoia. “It is a secure communication link, Greg.”

“Secure is a fantasy we all hope is true,” the DDI said. “We do not take risks with it when they are not necessary. Mike could have gotten the information.” Mike Healy, Drummond’s counterpart in Operations, ran the spooks in the field.

“Hmm.” The DCI wasn’t sure he wanted Healy being the point of contact on something as big as SNAPSHOT. Like Drummond, the DDO had a tendency to filter too much, Merriweather believed. “Well, it’s done now. We’ll have another KH-12 pass in an hour. After that we go to the President. He’ll want to see that everything is going as planned.” And won’t DiContino be surprised that his Russia operation isn’t quite the most important thing going on, he added to himself, knowing that the man sitting across from him would neither appreciate nor understand his opinion of the NSA. It was clear enough without words, he figured.

“Now that Cuba is free,” Drummond began, the sarcasm mild but undeniable, “we have to talk about CANDLE.”

“What about it?” Merriweather was impatient with his deputy’s seemingly endless search for a leak that he believed existed somewhere in the Intelligence Directorate. The days of James Jesus Angleton were long past, he reasoned, making the present search for a supposed leak reminiscent of the famed hunt for “K” by the former agency official. CANDLE was Drummond’s internal operation to locate the supposed exfiltration of information and plug it.

Drummond handed over the night summary and the detail report supporting the first item on it. Merriweather scanned it quickly, jotting down his own observations and giving it about as much attention as he had to his deputy’s suspicions from day one. It was his directorate, after all, and if there was a leak, which Merriweather doubted anyway, then it was his responsibility. He almost wished it were true so he could convince those diehards on the Hill that he needed new people for new times, not holdovers who were there just because of longevity in the position.

“So? The president of the Panamanian legislature changed his schedule for the day after tomorrow.” The DCI looked up. “Do we have a problem with that?”

Drummond told himself that all nightmares came to an end, and that he would soon wake from this one. “We had a damn complex surveillance set up on him, Anthony! He was supposed to meet with reps from the Peruvian drug cartels at location X. Now he suddenly changes to location Y, and we have no idea where that is.” The DDI let it hang there, wondering why his boss couldn’t see the seriousness of the implications.

“And?”

“Anthony, this is the third time we’ve had a meeting scheduled weeks in advance between Coseros and unsavories that was suddenly changed at the last minute. Not a week or two ahead, but days before the meet. That doesn’t give us enough time to find the new site and shift our assets. Someone is tipping him off.”

“I thought you checked your Latin-American section,” the DCI said.

“I have, but apparently not close enough,” Drummond admitted. “But beyond the fact that we have a leak—”

“Possibly,” Merriweather interjected, allowing it just for the sake of argument.

“All right, possibly have a leak. The important thing is to recognize who is benefiting from what is getting out.”

“Come on, Greg. Don’t beat that old horse anymore.”

Christ, is he blind? “Coseros is a government official in Panama, and his ass has been saved from indictment because of these leaks, and he has been tunneling money to your CFS guys down in Miami. Their bank account is busting, Anthony!”

“Funneling? That is not what the Bureau found in its three separate investigations before this one.” The Agency, as it sometimes did, was assisting the FBI in an investigation that required some of its special abilities. “I believe the term they settled on was ‘contributions.’ As for your narco-corruption theory, you know damn well that money Coseros has given them doesn’t even begin to amount to what is in their accounts. The CFS has other supporters, Greg. Big ones.” Merriweather seemed suddenly disinterested in any further correction of his deputy’s off-the-mark position. “Besides all that, the Justice Department has found no compelling evidence to support an indictment of Coseros,” he pointed out correctly, ignoring the other connection his deputy was implying.

“Because every time we get close, someone tips him!” Drummond sat back, letting the frustration subside a bit. “And he is supporting the people you want to put into power in Cuba.”

“I do?” The DCI chuckled. “So you consider yourself not a part of this?”

Bad choice of words, Greg. He’d learned that his boss was a master at catching misspeaks and using them to the fullest advantage. “Look, I want Castro out as bad as anyone. He’s one of the last of a dead breed. But we can’t overlook the connection between the Peruvian cartels and Coseros, and between Coseros and the Cuban Freedom Society.”

The DCI’s face went instantly red at the direct link the DDI was suggesting. “You are not to repeat that assertion outside of this room. Never! I will not tolerate even the hint of such linkage without irrefutable evidence to warrant it. Is that clear?”

“Have I yet?” Drummond responded with a challenge.

Merriweather ignored the question. “I will not jeopardize SNAPSHOT simply because you have doubts about the integrity of your directorate, and because you place fiction above fact in forming your opinions.”

“Anthony, I—”

“You will keep your unsubstantiated ideas to yourself until the time that you have something concrete to back them up. Is that very clear? A yes or no, please.”

What the hell was concrete? Drummond wondered. His job was supposed to involve speculation, and now his boss was telling him to reign in his brain? “Very clear.”

Merriweather was still flushed. He was not a man to calm from provocation or questioning easily. “Good.” He checked the time on the small desk clock left by his predecessor. “We have to be at the White House in a few hours. Be ready.”

And with that it was over. The DDI walked into the hallway, closing the door himself. It was still too early for the majority of Langley’s workers to have arrived, so he felt comfortable just standing in the hall. A better man had occupied the office he’d just left, until a microscopic, indiscriminate bug had taken its toll. Herb Landau just wouldn’t have run things this way, Drummond knew. He was sure of it, as sure as he was that the director’s cause célèbre was inherently flawed. Yet he could do nothing. The President had given it the nod, without even letting his closest advisers in on SNAPSHOT. That was an entirely different problem, but one the DDI saw as potentially more dangerous than having an autocrat at the helm of the Agency. His eyes searched the ceiling for a solution that was not there. He was certain where the problem was, however, and equally confident in his belief that things were going to get worse before they got better.

He would have been surprised, however, at just how much of an understatement his last thought had been.

The dacha of Gennadiy Konovalenko, president of the Russian Federation, was a hundred miles from the Russian capital, nestled along a river among a stand of firs that kept the expansive deck at the rear in a perpetual shade. The sunlight that did penetrate the canopy from the yellow globe low in the southern sky lit the rippling water below with sparkles and flashes, and cast a harsh, pale coloring upon the birds that flitted through the beams. The scene was in stark contrast to the dirty, dull pallor that was pervasive in the great cities of Mother Russia. All the brightly colored spires and fine statuary could not reverse a course of decay initiated almost eighty years earlier. It would take much longer to right the wrongs done the Russian people. Much longer to make the nation a reflection of its inherent beauty.

“We should have such a place in Red Square, eh?” the president suggested from his reclining wooden chair on the deck. It was reminiscent of the Adirondack style favored by the leisure-loving Americans and had actually been built with those in mind after the president’s return from a particularly enjoyable trip to the United States.

“Then what reason would we have to journey here?” Foreign Minister Igor Yakovlev responded with his own musing. He walked along the deck, sliding a gloved hand on the rough railing as he moved. The chill of the autumn afternoon caused a cloud of whitish mist to spurt from his mouth with each word and each breath. “And where would we hold court?”

The president laughed, his paunch shaking beneath the fur coat that took the bite out of the air but left his reddening nose unprotected. A man of only middle age, he was perhaps the most crucial leader his country — in whatever incarnation or by whatever name — had ever had. And “holding court,” as his trusted adviser called it, was but one tool he had developed to placate his critics. Bring them out here, to the dacha his father, a onetime member of the old Soviet Politburo, had built using prison labor imported from the east. Get them away from that dreadful place called Moscow, where power was the goal of all the players. Even he fell into that trap when the days in the Kremlin stretched to weeks, and weeks to months. But always there was his dacha, as modest as it was by Western standards. His escape. His domain.

A servant stepped onto the deck from the main building and announced the arrival of those who had come to do battle with the president. Court was in session.

“Igor Yureivich,” Interior Minister Georgiy Bogdanov said, greeting the man who should have been his equal in government, but the president’s favor had placed the foreign minister in an elevated state of importance. He turned to the leader of his nation, who was rising from his seat. “Gennadiy Timofeyevich, your dacha looks lovely as always.”

The president welcomed Bogdanov with the accepted firm kiss on each cheek. “Georgiy Ivanovich, you are welcome here always.” A polite smile masked the hollowness of the offer. “And you bring the good general with you.”

General Aleksandr Shergin, commander of Voyska PVO, the Russian air-defense forces that had changed little from the days of allegiance to the Soviet Union, nodded crisply to the man he grudgingly accepted as his commander in chief. “President Konovalenko.”

The president expected no more informal a greeting than that from a military man, and would offer none in return to General Aleksandr Dmitreivich Shergin. “Come, sit.”

Yakovlev took the seat beside the president, across the small drinks table from the men who were their adversaries. A platter of omul, a smoked fish imported from the eastern expanses of the country, appeared from the hands of a servant, as did a bottle of vodka and four glasses. The small talk that followed lasted several minutes, until its purpose as a prelude to more serious discussions had been exhausted.

“And now to the less enjoyable matters at hand,” the president said. “Your choice of a traveling companion leaves little for me to guess at, Georgiy Ivanovich.”

The interior minister smiled obligingly at the friendliness of the comment. “General Shergin is an expert in these matters.”

“As is his superior — Marshal Kurchatov,” Yakovlev offered. “And Colonel Belyayev.”

“Yes. Yes.” The interior minister laid a strip of the pinkish fish on his tongue and chewed it quickly to a swallow. “But they do not represent the opinion of all in the military.”

The president bristled at the veiled meaning. “You do not suggest that the military would try to hinder our efforts, do you, Comrade Bogdanov?”

It was “Comrade Bogdanov” now. Soon it would deteriorate to “Comrade Interior Minister.” Beyond that, just invectives. Bogdanov hoped to avoid that, but, with the president’s well-known temper and his fervency on this point, doing so would be difficult. He had to try, however. His duty to the Motherland demanded such.

“Hinder?” Bogdanov answered the question adequately with a non response. “It is simply a matter of advisement. To place so much trust in the Americans is, well, presumptuous, would you not say?”

“No, I would not say that.” The president pulled his collar up against the breeze that was picking up. “They have given Marshal Kurchatov unprecedented access to their strategic systems. Their raket submarines are being recalled for the duration of the operation. In a few hours he will observe the process by which a launch of their strategic missiles is ordered, something that is such a closely held secret the KGB was never able to determine the exact process.” His head shook emphatically. “No, Comrade Bogdanov, I would not say that our trust of the Americans is presumptuous.”

“I would,” the interior minister countered, drawing the philosophical line between himself and the president. “And so do many others…in all areas of our government.”

The president saw the general straighten at the minister’s words. What was being implied was clear enough. He had already survived one coup and had squashed two others before they ever got past the planning stages, mostly because they lacked any sort of catalyst to spark and inspire the plotters. The dismantling of his nation’s missile-warning system about to begin with American assistance could be just such a catalyst. Warnings of such a situation had been given since the plan’s inception. There was deep, vitriolic disagreement within the government over the plan. To trust the Americans or not. There were only two answers, with no gray area in between, and these men had been dispatched to be convinced that the president’s decision was correct. Anything less could lead to something the country neither wanted nor needed.

“Igor Yureivich,” the president said, signaling his foreign minister to do that which he had hoped would not be necessary. As a smart political maverick, though, he had prepared for the eventuality that it would.

“We have proof that the Americans are sincere in this effort,” Yakovlev began. “From inside the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The revelation caught both Bogdanov and Shergin off guard, and each looked to the other for some bearing as to what should be done now. The interior minister went on with the obvious. “We have an agent in the CIA?”

“Not exactly,” Yakovlev said with a smile, explaining the full story for the visitors after a sip of vodka. “As you can see, it is an unusual arrangement. But we have validated the information. The spy that State Security caught earlier this year — the damned Lithuanian in the shipyard — was foretold by the information we received from our source. And several other pieces of information have proven very helpful, and very truthful.”

Bogdanov thought over what he’d just been told. It was quite out of the ordinary but very elegant indeed. State Security, the leftovers of the former KGB, still held domain over the gathering of intelligence, but not in this, it was apparent. “And the reason for having the Foreign Ministry handle this…source, instead of State Security?”

The president laughed. “Even you, Georgiy Ivanovich, cannot believe that our vaunted intelligence agency is free of all the powers that corrupted it in the past. This arrangement is more secure, if somewhat more cumbersome. The chain consists of two persons in America. One of them is an American who has given us advance word of media reports for more than a decade now — their press is often more adept at information gathering than the KGB was — and can be trusted completely. Now his use is mostly as a courier. The other is a liaison at the embassy. Reports are delivered to the American by means that are not important, then to our man at the embassy. They are then brought directly to Moscow and hand-delivered to Igor Yureivich. He then brings them to me for review. And now the both of you are blessed with the knowledge.” He said the latter with a warning glare. “Where this information comes from is beyond compare, especially because it is given…how would you say?…unwittingly. Without embellishment or filtering. To let on that we have access to this information would surely end its availability. Hence the extreme precautions. I alone make the decision as to how the information is to be used.”

“This could be trickery,” Bogdanov suggested.

“Not with what has been allowed to slip out,” Yakovlev responded. “We have learned such secrets that you would not believe.”

“And those may be useful in the future,” the president said, knowing the value of inside knowledge during negotiations in the international arena. “I tell you all this only to stave off any foolish moves by ‘other parties.’ You must convince them that such would be a grave mistake, and you must do so without revealing what you have been told.”

Shergin caught the president’s attention with his stare. “I trust that you are right to believe this information. Inoperable radars will do little to protect the Motherland.”

“As will malfunctioning ones,” the president shot back. “A safer tomorrow will come only from trust today.”

Interior Minister Bogdanov, in a position of allegiance that was odd considering his seemingly benign place in the government machinery, had to decide whether to report in the positive or the negative to his fellow dissenters back in Moscow. The 106th Airborne Division, a unit that had saved the president once by refusing to participate in a failed effort to unseat him, was poised to move into the capital with just a word from General Shergin, its allegiance this time opposite of the past by way of a new, conversely loyal unit commander. Would Bogdanov set such a thing in motion? Could he?

“The next two weeks will be somewhat tense,” the interior minister theorized, his decision sure to disappoint many of his political bent. “I hope events bear out your trust in the Americans.”

“I have no doubts,” the president said confidently. “All will go well.”

“I hope so,” Bogdanov said. “For the sake of the Motherland.” And for yours.

“Tomás, look. Quick,” Jorge said, the CNN anchor’s words sounding much too awake for such an early hour, then reminded himself that he was on the West Coast. He had been out here too long, he knew. “Turn it up, Tomás. Turn it up.”

Tomás set down the plastic cassette case and jeweler’s screwdriver and rolled off the motel bed. He twisted the volume knob until the sound came up. No fucking remote, he thought, realizing that fifty-six bucks a night didn’t necessarily guarantee the latest in amenities.

“Early reports from Havana indicate that the apparent coup has caused widespread disruption of communications systems.” The anchor fiddled with papers that were being fed to him, obviously trying to sort out that which was before him and the flow of words through his earpiece. Fast-breaking news was never as pretty as the produced stuff. “And, uh, we are now getting some confirmation on an earlier report that this may be a very large and a very well organized uprising. Sources at Guantanamo Naval Base near the eastern end of the island are reporting that there is heavy fighting in the nearby city of Guantanamo. Flashes… I am reading this as I receive it, so bear with the roughness of it. Flashes are visible from the north and… If these reports are correct, and we believe they are, then this fighting is hundreds of miles from the initial reports from the area near the country’s capital of Havana. And…”

Jorge switched the set off. “I don’t believe it.”

“Shit. No wonder they want this thing out of circulation.” Tomás tightened the last of the small metal screws that held the cassette together. “Does this do anything to us?”

Jorge’s head shook. “Fee up front, Tomás. We have our money, we do the job.” He looked at the work his partner was finishing up. “How long?”

“Just…a…there!” Tomás held up the tape. “You should go for the head like me next time.”

“Like I should have known,” Jorge protested. One of his shots had not only found its mark in the man’s chest, it had also clipped the cassette he was carrying in his shirt pocket, destroying the transfer rollers but sparing the tape itself. That had necessitated a hurried search for the required materials and tools. A cassette of the same type had been purchased, along with the tiny screwdrivers, and was simply dismantled and the undamaged spools of tape inserted. It had taken some time, as Tomás was careful to remove all fragments of the shattered plastic. Thankfully, the tape had been pulled from Portero’s pocket quickly enough, saving it from a drenching in the man’s blood. Liquids, especially thick ones like human blood, were devastating to the thin magnetic tape that depended on stability in its environment for longevity. Anyone who had ever left one exposed on the dash of an automobile on a hot day would understand the fragility completely.

A thump from outside the door made Jorge turn his head. It had to be the complimentary USA Today, one of the reasons he had chosen this motel. The one extra he wanted, actually needed. It would save him a trip to the liquor store across the street. “Let’s hear it.”

Tomás reached for the portable cassette player and inserted the tape, pressing Play next. A few seconds went by before there was speaking to be heard. Thank God it…

“What is this?” Jorge asked. It was not what they had been told to expect.

“Who is that?” Tomás added another question. “This isn’t the fucking tape! What the fuck is going on!”

“Shut up!” Jorge said, looking at the walls and hoping they were thick enough to contain his partner’s outburst. He listened for a few minutes to the conversation’s end. “Damn.”

“Jorge, that is not what we were supposed to find.” Tomás stood from the bed and began to pace.

“That had to be Portero speaking,” Jorge said. “But the other one?”

Tomás stopped his stalking, looking directly to his partner. “Jorge, we fucking killed an FBI agent today to get that tape, and it ISN’T EVEN IT!” The news on both radio and TV had spread the word quickly, along with vague descriptions of the pair that, thankfully, weren’t very accurate.

“But it is something.”

Tomás, the younger of the two, snorted. “Yeah. A lot of good that’ll do us. Fuck!”

His partner was right, Jorge knew. They were supposed to get the tape and verify that it was the tape. What they had been briefed to be on the lookout for was definitely not what they had just heard. “You still have that reporter’s name, the one he was supposed to meet with?”

“Sure do. You think he might have given it to him ahead of time?”

“It’s possible,” Jorge figured, even though he didn’t see how it could have happened. “But we’re going to make damn sure about it. First we’ve got to report this.”

“But we’re not supposed to…” His partner’s look convinced him that arguing was not a good idea at the moment. “They’re going to love this.” Tomás watched Jorge go to the door and open it gingerly, peering through the crack into the early-morning darkness before retrieving the paper from just outside.

“Dial it,” Jorge instructed his partner while he pulled the slip of paper out of his wallet. On it was the number of a phone booth he had selected a few days before. He had selected others and would use each only once. Next he opened the paper to the sports section. It was baseball season, so he found the first story nearest the upper left of the page concerning America’s favorite pastime, ‘Angels Still Alive’, the heading read. Hard to believe, he thought. But his interest was in the body of the story. Just when the team from the land of Disney… He had his key. D.

“Ringing,” Tomás said.

A minute later, almost three thousand miles away, ten digits appeared on the screen of a cell phone buzzing inside a man’s pocket. With just a single look, he knew what to do. His USA Today had been finished hours before with his breakfast.

Art Jefferson walked off the elevator on the fourth floor just after sunrise, at a time when the L.A. office would normally be quiet for another two hours. This day, though, there were more than a hundred agents already on duty, more than half there on their day off. That was just the way it was. You didn’t kill an agent without striking a chord in the collective body of the FBI. Art pitied the perps who had robbed Thom Danbrook of his life.

“Art.” It was Cameron Lowe, the supervising special agent of the L.A. office’s Violent Crimes Section — Art’s boss.

“Morning, Cam.” Art walked to his desk in the bullpen area of the floor, which was divided into dozens of “rooms” by attractively upholstered shoulder-high dividers. He and Frankie shared one on the north side of the floor, near the row of glass-enclosed offices that housed the supervising agents of the office’s sections. Art had rated one once as head of the OC (Organized Crime) Section. That time was now just a fond, detested memory.

“How’s Aguirre?” Lowe asked, leaning his short frame against the pseudo wall that surrounded Art’s and Frankie’s desks.

“I made sure Shelley got her home last night.” He slid out of his jacket, hanging it on the single metal hook clipped to the divider’s top edge. “It ain’t easy, Cam. She’s hurting.”

“Are you going to need someone else to back you up on this? I mean, if she needs some time…”

Art’s head shook. Frankie had made it clear that she wanted in on this, and Art expected no different. He’d never known an agent to back away from the chance to catch the killers of a fellow agent. The offer had to be made, but… “No. She’ll be in. Is everything squared away with LAPD?”

“All set.” The LAPD, which had jurisdiction over the area where the murders were committed, had technical authority to be the lead agency on the case. But the fact that a federal officer had been killed in addition to the other victim had prompted the local police to cede the lead to the FBI. Now they had two murders to solve, and that of the other victim presented the best chance at finding the killers. Thom Danbrook had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. “TS figured out what happened with his gun.”

“What?” It was a subject of interest to the Bureau as a whole, as every agent carried the same Smith & Wesson Model 1076 that had somehow failed at the critical moment. The office’s Technical Services Section had immediately gone to work to determine the cause of the failure.

“Shooter error,” Lowe explained, pulling his own 1076 out. He removed the magazine and cleared the round in the chamber before proceeding. “Look.” He gripped the weapon in the proper manner, with the off hand supporting the front and underside of the gun hand. “Danbrook had a nasty gash on the skin webbing between the thumb and forefinger of his off hand.”

Art’s head dropped. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He held it like a revolver, off hand wrapped over the side with the thumb on top. When he fired his first shot, the slide hit his hand and didn’t travel far enough back to pick up the next round. He reverted to Academy training when the stress kicked in. Unfortunately we were still with revolvers when he went through.” Lowe reloaded and reholstered his weapon. “That’s why the weapon failed, but I don’t know if he could have done anything to change the outcome.”

It was a cop’s nightmare: walking in on something and having the initiative in the bad guys’ favor.

“Anything on the getaway vehicle?” Art inquired, sitting down and turning on the ten-cup coffeemaker strategically placed on his side of their area. Frankie had her own on the small credenza, the result of the caf-decaf wars soon after their pairing.

Lowe had been there all night, giving Art a chance to come down from the adrenaline high and get some sleep. “LASO found it in back of the Pacific Design Center, on fire.” The Los Angeles Sheriffs Office patrolled the nearby city of West Hollywood, just blocks from the site of the murders. “Listed as a stolen out of Culver City.”

“These guys get around,” Art commented.

“Listen, I appreciate you taking this on,” Lowe said.

Art waved off the gratitude. “Cam, it’s no trouble. You knew his folks. You should be there.” Lowe and his boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jerry Donovan, were leaving on a midday flight to St. Louis to deliver condolences to Danbrook’s parents. It was common for ranking members of the office where a fallen agent was assigned to visit the family, and at the request of the San Francisco office, Lowe and Donovan were going to do the duty. It was fitting, as the young agent had spent the majority of his short career in L.A. “How’d Bill take it?”

“Like a sock in the gut” Lowe answered. Special Agent in Charge William Killeen was at the Bureau’s Quantico, Virginia, academy for a meeting of all fifty-eight SACs to advise the deputy director on budget and manpower needs for the next fiscal year. “He wanted to come back, but I convinced him to stay there. He can’t do anything more than we already are.”

The machine was only up to cup number two, but Art couldn’t wait. He switched it off and poured himself a cup, then turned it back on. “You want any?”

“Leaded?”

“Un,” Art answered, getting a polite shake of the head in response. “Where are we at?”

“Jacobs is going to bring down an evidence list in a while and anything that might help.” They could use anything at this point.

“What about the other victim?” Anyone other than the dead agent was an “other.”

Lowe motioned with his head to the file folder on Art’s desk. “Not much more than last night.”

Art read through it quickly. “Francisco Portero. Sixty-five. Florida driver’s license.” He looked up. “Miami have anything yet?”

“Luke Kessler promised it by seven,” Lowe replied.

“Hmm.” It was the slimmest of the slim. Art was in charge of an investigation without a well-defined starting point. “Witnesses sure aren’t plentiful.”

“That blond waitress is still in shock. The only thing she gave us was that Portero said he was meeting someone. No descriptions from her, though. Looking at the statements, I’d say your busboy is the best so far. His description matches the one you gave of the van’s driver more closely than any of the others.”

A sudden hush fell over the room, the silence soon filled by condolences and comforting words as Frankie Aguirre waded through the sea of her fellow agents. She set her purse on the desk and went to the open arms of Cameron Lowe.

“How’re you doing, little lady?” The senior agent, a father figure in the L.A. office, was entitled to call her that, probably the only guy in the place she’d let get away with it.

“I’m okay.” Her eyes were a little swollen, but there were no tears. She had cried them all out the previous night.

“Much sleep, partner?”

“A few hours,” she answered, stepping back from the security of Lowe’s strong arms. “Enough for now.”

Lowe reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders, bending his head to look her in the eyes. “You go easy.”

“This is where I need to be, Cam. I need to help find the guys.” I want them.

“We will,” Lowe said, bringing his hands away. “I’ve got to run home and get cleaned up before Jerry and I leave. Lou is senior here until Jerry gets back.” Lou Hidalgo was deputy assistant special agent in charge. “He’ll be in about nine, but he’s wrapped up in that investigation group that’s running with ATF.”

“Right. Pass along my…you know.” Art hated these moments. Death had never been something he’d handled well. When his grandmother, the woman who’d raised him, had passed, he had withdrawn for almost a year, secluding himself in the dorm at the University of Alabama. His grades went up, but A’s and B’s had seemed almost meaningless at the time. Now he knew better. It was what she had wanted, what she had pushed him to do. This death, though, was an aberration. His grandmother’s time had come. Thom Danbrook’s had been chosen by another with no authority to do so. There was only one power in the universe with that authority. The ultimate power. The ultimate protector. The ultimate judge. Thom’s killers would come to know the latter intimately, Art vowed.

“You want some coffee?” Art asked once Lowe had left.

“Yeah, I’ll settle for your stuff today.” Frankie slid her empty mug across their adjoining desks, which faced each other. “I don’t need anything wiring me today.” She took the steaming cup and sipped it gingerly for a moment. “A lot of bodies here this morning.”

“You’ve never seen this before, have you?” She shook her head. Art knew she hadn’t. “It’s terrible when it happens, but it really shows you what people are made of.”

“I saw a few folks on the way in who rode Thom pretty hard when he was here,” Frankie said, remembering that Thom, the perfect gentleman, had kept his private life just that. But rumors were rumors, and they always found a way of starting. The truth had started the ones circulating about Thom, first quietly questioning his sexual orientation and later openly attacking it. Still, he hadn’t run away from his life. The request for a transfer to the Bay area had been made when he first arrived in L.A. years before. Frisco was where he had been accepted to law school on a part-time basis. Thom Danbrook, attorney. Frankie wanted to cry at the thought of it never happening.

“Mortality is a powerful teacher,” Art said. He hoped it would be enough to end the stupid, silent discrimination against those who just wanted to do their job. Thom had drawn his gun and faced down two shooters, for Christ’s sake! Wasn’t that enough? “We’ve got ‘em all at our disposal.”

“What’s the plan?” Frankie looked at the roster that Art handed her.

“Omar Espinosa is coordinating the field teams. He’s got three of them over at the other victim’s place.”

It occurred to Frankie that she had no idea who the man was. “Who was he?”

Art related the particulars. “He had a little apartment up off of Highland. Manager’s card was in his wallet, which was a break. We wouldn’t have had an address this fast otherwise, ‘cause the DL is out of Florida.

“The other teams are going to start hitting the areas where the van was stolen from and where it turned up.”

Either the killers had someone waiting for them, or they had other wheels already procured. That was the way pros would have done it, and these guys were looking like pros, which didn’t bode well for a quick resolution. Still, the agents had learned that all criminals, by way of their choice of profession, had some innate stupidity that, somewhere along the line, would cause a slipup. Catching the mistake was the trick.

“I’d say we have to find out why these guys wanted to kill Portero,” Frankie suggested.

“The busboy said one of them…” Art flipped back through his notes. “Medium height, curly black hair, mustache. That one called Portero’s name before they fired. He also saw the other one, the balding guy who shot at me, bend down and take something from Portero’s shirt pocket.”

“If this leads to anything, I think we owe that busboy a lunch.”

“I told him we’d put in a good word for him with the INS,” Art said. “He’s been trying to naturalize for a couple years now. Anyway, so we have two shooters who knew their intended victim and who wanted something from same.” His eyes asked for Aguirre’s read of the situation.

“Contract hit,” she observed flatly. “But still, why Portero?”

There were several possibilities that Art could think of, and probably a dozen more he knew would crop up along the way. “Okay, all the primary participants are Hispanic. One is from Florida.”

“Could have some OC involvement,” Frankie surmised, the activity of investigation easing the pain of grief. “There are several Cuban crime families that are trying to expand their influence, and they’re pretty ruthless from what I remember of the briefings.”

“Salvadoran and Panamanian, too,” Art added.

Frankie drained her first cup and slid it back for a refill. “That gives us a few thousand suspects, not counting the million or so we haven’t thought of yet.”

“Slow and steady. That’s how we win this race.” Art had come across that lesson after much grief. His natural tendency was to push, push, push. Getting past that sometimes destructive trait had been one of the biggest hurdles in his life. “We’ve got ten teams slated to run down things once we get a little more from Miami.”

Art’s phone rang. “Jefferson.” He smiled at Frankie. “Speak of the Devil. How’re you doing, Luke?… Yeah, it’s appreciated. He was a good kid. You have anything?” It took a minute for the Miami agent to relate the information. “Well, that is interesting. Sure appreciate your help. Hey, get some sleep. Bye.”

“Well?” Frankie inquired, wanting desperately for there to be something they could start with.

“Francisco Portero fled from Cuba earlier this year,” Art explained. “He came over on that commuter flight that just hopped across the Keys. There were a couple other flights that did the same thing back in ‘92 or ‘93. Can’t remember which. Maybe both. But that isn’t even the frosting.” His partner’s eyes scolded him for the pause in his release of the information. “Portero, up until he left, was translator for the Cuban ambassador to the UN.”

“So this was a defection,” Frankie observed, a question immediately coming to mind. “What language?”

“Lang—” Art smiled with embarrassment. It was the little things, the nuances, that he missed. He was a global thinker, while Frankie saw the trees in the forest. “I forgot to ask. I’m sure it’ll be in the hard copy he’s faxing.”

“Kind of a new spin on things,” Frankie commented. “A former Cuban diplomatic type defects and ends up dead before year’s end. Hit from home?”

It couldn’t be ruled out, Art thought, but the evidence didn’t point that way. “I don’t know about that. The busboy said the guy who called to Portero didn’t trill his R’s. He said it was pure gringo talk. If it is the case, though, then it points toward a silencing. Like Portero knew something that someone at home didn’t want him to tell.”

“Or he had something they wanted,” Frankie countered, remembering what the busboy had seen. “Or both.”

“Two places to check,” Art said. “INS and State. Portero would have automatically been granted asylum because of where he came from, so he would have had an interview with the immigration boys. They might know if he made any declarations when he came in, or if he asked to meet with any of the exile groups. That’s pretty common. They all offer some sort of assistance to newcomers. There might be something in there to help us.”

“And State?”

“I want to know what Portero did over the years, what sort of information he might have had access to. What other positions did he hold? Who he knew? Anything that could point to what he had that they wanted.”

Art jotted the requests for information down and had them taken to the office’s communication room for immediate transmittal to the respective government agencies.

“Good morning, folks.” It wasn’t, Special Agent Dan Jacobs knew. As supervising special agent of Technical Services in L.A., he had been there for the duration of this one. He had seen where Thom Danbrook had fallen and had made the tragic discovery of why the young agent’s gun had malfunctioned at the moment of truth. Bad news all around. But now he brought what could be some positives to the morning. “You want some leads?”

“What do you got?”

Jacobs pulled the first item from a manila envelope. “First is this.”

Art took the item, a business card advertising a place called Tony’s Tacos on Pico. He flipped it over, finding the real clue. “No area code,” he commented, handing the card with the scribbled phone number on the back across to his partner.

“The exchange is right for this area code,” Frankie observed. Her fingers squeezed the flimsy card. It was moist. “What’s with the dampness?”

“That brings me to number two.” Jacobs removed a clear plastic cassette tape from the envelope.

“Is that condensation?” Art inquired, noticing the fogging inside the unmarked protective plastic housing.

“You’ve got it. We found it balled up in a napkin on the table, like the dead guy had been trying to dry it off. The card was in his left-front pants pocket, and there was a good deal of wetness there. From what I could tell, he might have spilled some water on himself. There was a glass a little less than half-full still on the table. My guess is that the tape was in his pocket with the card, some water got on it, and he took it out to dry it off.”

“Any chance of getting to hear what’s on it?”

Jacobs nodded confidently to Art. “Luckily it was just water. We should be able to clean it up and at least get something off of it.

“Finally we have this.” He handed over a see-through evidence bag with tiny shards of clear plastic captured at the bottom. Several were stained dark by what appeared to Art to be blood. “We pulled these out of his shirt pocket.”

Bingo. “Shirt pocket. You’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Jacobs assured him. “They’re fragments of the same kind of cassette you have there. Identical, actually. Same manufacturer. There were also the same type of fragments in the wound right behind the pocket.”

Art looked to Frankie. “I think we’ll add that lunch to the ‘thank yous’ we give that busboy.” He turned back to Jacobs. “So we can assume that there was a similar tape in his shirt pocket that was hit by a bullet?”

“I think so,” Jacobs affirmed. “Oh, we also got the caliber of the guns. Three fifty-sevens.” Revolvers, unfortunately, did not give up their spent shell casings, requiring analysis of the bullets recovered from the victims. “I should have some model information later today, maybe tomorrow.”

“Great.” Art handed back the tape and the bag with the fragments. “Can I hang on to the card?”

“No prob.” Jacobs laid a hand on Frankie’s shoulder. “Hang in there.”

Frankie smiled and reached up, touching Jacobs’s hand with hers. “Thanks.”

Art called over two teams of agents after Jacobs had departed and tasked them with checking out the establishment on the card. Someone at Tony’s Tacos might recognize the photo taken from Portero’s driver’s license. An employee or patron might know him. Or it could be a cold trail.

But there might be a hot one to pick up on. “So our shooters took a tape.”

“And left one,” Frankie pointed out. “Why do you suppose that was?”

“Well, let’s assume they came for a tape, and to shut Portero up. Both of those are more ‘probable’ than ‘possible’ now. If they came to do what they did, I’d sure bet they’d have a complete wish list.”

“Then one of the tapes might have been, what? A decoy? Maybe just another tape? A duplicate? Which one?”

Art thought back to what Jacobs had given them a minute before. “It would have to be a decoy, something he could give up easily if challenged. You ever read some of the travel guides for New York? They suggest keeping a second wallet with a twenty-dollar ‘mugger’s fee’ in an outside pocket.”

“Like a shirt pocket,” Frankie said. “And keep the real thing in your pants pocket. The front one.”

“Right where the one we have came from.” Art smiled with satisfaction for the first time in eighteen hours. The others had been motivated by nervousness. “Our shooters may have gotten the wrong tape.”

“Which means they may be back for the real one.” Frankie knew that a question was inevitable. “But back where?”

Art held the business card up, flipping it over and over before stopping the motion with the number facing his partner. “Our freaked-out blond hostess said Portero was there to meet someone, and I doubt it was the two who showed up.”

“The card was in the same pocket as the tape,” Frankie carried the thought on. “You want to do a reverse search on it.”

“Why bother the phone company?” Art mused, scooting his chair forward and lifting the handset to his ear. “Fingers crossed it’s a two-one-three number.” He punched the seven numbers and waited.

“City desk,” the female voice answered on the other end.

Art’s face puzzled over the words. “City desk?” Oh, boy. “Uh, what paper is this?”

There was a quiet laugh. “The Los Angeles Times, sir.”

He hung up without carrying the conversation further. Just another wrong number. “It looks like Portero might have been about to give something to the Times.” The silencing theory was gaining credence exponentially.

“Let’s hope we have whatever it was,” Frankie said. “And now?”

Art stood and put his jacket back on, ready to go do some real work. “We visit an old friend.”

“Of whose?” Frankie gathered up her purse and followed her partner out of their cubicle, getting the answer only after they were in the elevator.

The car pulled up around the corner from the yellow bungalow in one of Los Angeles’s disappearing nice, quiet neighborhoods, its two occupants exiting and checking their surroundings before walking off.

They were dressed nicely, the elderly woman noticed, and very neat in appearance. But it was very early for anyone in the neighborhood to have visitors. Maybe they were police, she thought, as she muted the television, leaving the morning news anchor without a voice. As chairperson of the neighborhood watch, she was ever-vigilant. The gangs had stayed away from the middle-class area she had lived in for fifty years, but of late there had been gunshots at night in the distance. What was the world coming to?

So, from her early-morning perch behind the huge bay window her late husband had installed as a birthday present some twenty years before, she watched as the two strangers disappeared around the corner. They were walking normally, not hurried, not overly cautious, but it was her duty to watch over the block. There was no reason to call the police. They were busy enough with emergencies, she knew. But she did do a simple thing that the very pleasant lieutenant from the local police station had suggested when unknown visitors appeared in the neighborhood.