October's Ghost

CHAPTER SEVEN SKELETONS

The sign on the door said “Interview Room”, a departure from the term “interrogation” that had fallen out of favor with law enforcement agencies recently. The reality and the bullshit of political correctness, Art thought, closing the door as he left the room, leaving Sullivan alone with a pot of coffee. He was sober now, which was a blessing and a curse. It made him more lucid, but it also turned the expectedly frightened drunk they had come upon into a mildly arrogant combination of bloodshot eyes and a smart mouth. Art was glad Frankie had been elsewhere checking on the license number and keeping an eye on Mrs. Carroll, who was patiently describing the suspects to a Bureau computer artist. Aguirre would have wanted to slap the guy.

Art went straight to the communications room, which was the size of a large closet. In it were the regular fax machines for communications with nongovernmental agencies, high-speed color facsimile machines connected to secure lines that were routed through the government’s new Secure Voice Communications switching centers, and relays that spit out continuous reports from law enforcement agencies throughout the country and overseas.

“Here you go, Agent Jefferson,” the com clerk said, handing over the faxes from State and INS. They had arrived almost simultaneously.

His eyes read down the reports as he walked back toward his desk. Frankie was at hers, just hanging up the phone.

“How’s Sullivan?” she asked.

“He makes a better drunk than he does a human being.” Art laid the faxes on his desk and leaned back against the divider wall. “Anything on the car?”

Frankie nodded. “These guys are pros, Art. We ran the plate, came up with an address, and checked it out. Nice blue Lumina parked right in the driveway with — guess what? — no plates. LAPD set up a perimeter and called the residents out on the P.A. Not our suspects, if you haven’t guessed already. Just some bewildered guy and his girlfriend wondering why the cops had their guns on them. Hell of a way to spend his day off. And he was just as surprised to learn that his plates were gone.”

“Did Mrs. Carroll take a look at the car book?”

“Pointed right to the Lumina,” Frankie confirmed.

“Smart,” Art commented. “They get a car — rented or stolen — then get plates from a lookalike car and ditch the others. How many people would notice their license plates missing?”

“Cops wouldn’t be too concerned, either,” Frankie added. “The car was new. The guy said he bought it two months ago. No plates is pretty normal under those circumstances.”

It was a clean move, Art thought, agreeing with Frankie’s belief that the suspects were real pros. And pros didn’t like to leave jobs unfinished. “Our jerk in there might still be in danger, you know.”

A loud, forceful breath escaped from Frankie’s lungs. She was tired, the lack of sleep from the night before catching up with her. It had been a thirteen-hour day already. “Anything useful from him?”

“Nothing Bill didn’t already fill us in on. I think Bill cut him loose. I was in the room when he called in. Hey, tough decision, but we both saw…the guy is a basket case when he’s lubed up.”

“Guess so.” Frankie gestured to the faxes. “Anything?”

Art handed them over. “INS has diddly. Just the standard stuff when he came over, except he didn’t request any help from the exile community. That’s kind of strange. Most of them coming over do. He did request a meeting with a representative of the government, though.”

“Doesn’t say here whether he got one or not,” Frankie noted.

“We’ll check on that later. I hear a lot of asylum seekers try and offer something for sale, and Portero at least had the background to know something.”

“The tape, maybe,” Frankie said.

“Yeah. Maybe he was going to the paper with it because he couldn’t get anyone in the government to hear him out.” That was worth looking into further. “Sullivan said that Portero kept insisting he had something terrible to share, something that could affect millions, he said.”

Frankie looked to the State Department fax. “He wasn’t lying to Bill, either.”

“Nope,” Art said, looking down the hallway to ensure that the door to the interview room was still shut. “Portero apparently was an assistant to Castro’s interpreter back in the early sixties. Russian language, it says.”

“A really busy time back then,” Frankie said, no real memories of the crisis in her consciousness. She had been in diapers then.

“My senior year in high school had just started.” Art looked away, remembering the time. “My grandma was worried to death. Hell, no one knew if we’d wake up the next day. Scary time, Frankie. Busy doesn’t do it justice.”

“Anyway,” Art went on. “State says they’ll try some other avenues tomorrow to get the proper classification of Portero.”

“Like what?”

Art smiled knowingly. “Once you’ve been through these hoops as many times as I have, you’ll learn that the term ‘share and share alike’ means little in government. Every agency and department has their own way of doing things, and their own sources of information. They’ll probably ask a liaison officer to ‘pull a favor.’ Happens all the time.”

Frankie’s head shook at the stupid bureaucracy, then yawned deeply, her arms stretching out and up. “Man, I am beat.”

Art looked at the wall clock. “You want to knock off? I can set Sullivan up with a sitter and get him bedded down.” As a material witness, one who saw the shooters pull the trigger, George Sullivan was a valuable witness. He was also a person the suspects obviously had an interest in, most likely because they thought he had something which they wanted. Something they had proved they were willing to kill for. For these reasons he would now be under Bureau protection, tucked away under constant guard.

Not really, but… “I think Cassie might want to see her mommy before she turns eight. You mind?” Cassandra was the jewel of Frankie’s life, the beautiful product of a marriage that had ended when her ex took to loving the bottle more than her.

Art’s phone rang before he could answer. “Jefferson.”

“Art, Dan. We have your tape ready, but there’s a problem.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s in Spanish and another language, sounds like Russian or something. We don’t have any Russian speakers at all, and my lone Spanish speaker left with the nine-to-fivers. Is Aguirre still here?”

Art pulled the phone away, pressing it into his chest. “Sorry, Frankie. Your genes are needed.”

She looked at her partner with a funny expression. “Jeans?”

“I’ll explain on the way down.” He brought the phone back up. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

The agents gathered their notebooks and headed not for the elevator, but for the interview room.

“You doing okay in here?” Art asked, poking his head in.

Sullivan pulled the hands away from his puffy face. His hair, a mass of thinning brown strands, was tousled and matted by sweat. What green there had been in his eyes was overcome by the fine rivers and tributaries of red that had subsided somewhat from earlier. “Wonderful.” How would you feel if you’d lost your job and had guys out to kill you?

“Good. Stay here, we have to check something out downstairs.” Art gave the man as comforting a smile as his humanity would allow. “We’ll get you to a nice, safe place in just a while.” He saw Sullivan nod with little interest and pulled the door shut.

“He’s feeling pretty low,” Art said, turning for the elevators, his partner alongside.

“At least he’s alive,” Frankie offered. “If he weren’t such a lush, he might have been on time for his meeting with Portero.”

“You calling it a redeeming quality?” Art asked, looking with some shock to his partner, the same one who had kicked her alcoholic husband out of the house and her life two years before, having had enough of his shit. “That’s mighty generous of you.”

“Not really,” Aguirre responded, the subject bringing an unpleasant past to her mind again. “ ’Cause he’d never admit that his problem saved his life. He doesn’t have a problem, remember.”

Art pushed the glowing “down” arrow at the twin elevators. “They never do, partner. Never do.”

Sullivan’s eyes were fixed on the off-white wallpaper as his hosts left, trying to pick out the tiniest specks of discoloration. The exercise hurt his already throbbing eyes tremendously, but he had to focus on something. Something to occupy his mind. Just anything that would not allow the thoughts to get in, just to keep them out. Out! Out! Out! OUT!

His fist balled up tight and came down on the table hard. The impact sent his Styrofoam cup of coffee tumbling to the floor.

“Dammit,” he whimpered softly, asking whatever supreme being there was just why these things had happened to him. Why me? It was a question he found himself asking more frequently these days, usually when he was…

No, that’s not it. That’s not it. If other people couldn’t handle their booze, too bad, but there was nothing wrong with his drinking. It was just something he enjoyed, something he had done for so long that it seemed second nature, something he…needed!

No! NO! What the hell did Sturgess know anyway? He was just like that Fields asshole in New York. “You need help, George.” What a line! It was easy to cast stones at others when you had your own problems. That was the real thing behind this, he knew. They needed a punching bag, someone to throw their shit at. A convenient target. Why not George? It was that simple and that clear.

Well, he could show them. He could prove that what they thought was a problem had no bearing on his life. It was just a… a thing. A thing he did, like lots of people. Right. If they thought he couldn’t do his job, then he’d just prove to them he could do it better than anybody.

Sullivan stood quickly from the table, putting his blazer on and eyeing the coffeemaker with disgust. He opened the door and stepped into the hall. There was no one around. He didn’t know why until the time on the wall clock caught his attention. That late? No wonder there was no one there. He walked slowly to the elevator, aware that he really wasn’t supposed to leave, but what could they do—make him stay?

He walked out the front of the building into the stuffy air of early evening, walking down the block with a crowd before a cab came into view. Hailing a taxi in L.A. was nowhere near as easy as doing so in New York. Sullivan slid into the backseat.

“Where to?”

He thought for a moment. There was a lot to do. So much. He had to get started, but he really needed… wanted to relax first. “Freddy’s up on Sunset.”

“That a bar, fella?”

For some reason Sullivan couldn’t bring himself to answer. He simply nodded to the cabbie in the rearview mirror.

“Just hang back,” Jorge instructed, instinctively looking over his left shoulder as Tomás pulled into traffic.

“We should have taken him when he came out.” Tomás stepped on the accelerator hard, cutting in front of a stretch black limo that looked so out of place, it wasn’t even funny.

“In front of the FBI? Good plan, Sherlock.”

Fuck you, Tomás thought, as he kept their blue Chevy Lumina a half-block back from the bright yellow cab.

“I was surprised they saved it all,” Dan Jacobs admitted. “Usually don’t get it all.”

He dropped the cassette into a sophisticated triple Record/Play deck in the TS lab. He, Art, and Frankie were alone in the room, which was packed with millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, enough to give a professional sound engineer wet dreams.

“I thought you were into bullets and tire prints, Dan,” Art said with intended good humor. “Not this high-tech stuff.”

“Yeah, well, I always wanted to be a rock star. Never told you that, huh?” Jacobs plugged a trio of headsets, each with one earphone, into a splitter jack on the unit. “While I was in college and working, I used to play in a band.”

“No shit,” Art exclaimed, putting on the headset and trying to picture the straight-laced forensics agent as a long-haired musician.

Jacobs laughed, a little embarrassed. “Yeah. Good old CCR and Doors kind of stuff. We mostly played frat parties, and we weren’t very good. But”—he let out a wistful breath—“I got into recording gear. This stuff, right here, is my passionate closet hobby. My wife loves me when I crank it up.”

Art couldn’t believe it. It reinforced his belief that it was damn near impossible to paint someone with a broad brush, because you inevitably missed some of the more porous areas of their character.

“We’re set,” Jacobs announced. “Frankie, I’m going to have you speak into this microphone. It’s hooked up to this second deck. That way we’ll have a preliminary translation on tape. We can get a real detailed one tomorrow.”

“I’m ready, but remember I was raised with barrio Spanish, so this may be rough.”

“Confidence in you, partner.” Art took out his notebook and pen. “Hit it, Dan.”

There were a few seconds of alternating static and silence before the meat of the tape began. Frankie translated the words as they were spoken.

“The date is October twenty-eighth, 1962. Tape one, reel one, Alejandro Cortez is the… the interpreter.”

There was an obvious stop in the recording after the verbal date stamp, a common practice in official recordings.

“Portero was Cortez’s assistant,” Art told Jacobs, recalling the fax from State.

“Good evening, Premier Khrushchev.” Frankie’s eyes went wide, a second voice converting the words into another language — Russian, she thought. A response in Russian came quickly.

“Good evening, nothing! You are a thief, Castro! A thief!”

There was laughing from the Spanish speaker, the one referred to as…Castro? “You spoke to my brother, I gather. A thief, you call me? Then I shall call you a coward. You let the Americans walk all over you. You come here—”

“You cannot—”

“No! You will listen to me. Premier Khrushchev! I have heard enough of your boasts, and your promises, and your lies.” Frankie could imagine him gesturing grandly. “You came here to thumb your nose at the Americans, and as soon as that pig Kennedy stands up to you, you crumble. Like a brittle piece of glass. The smallest amount of pressure made you break.”

“You have no right to challenge the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics this way! No right on this earth!”

“I have every right, just as every person in my country has a right to expect protection when it has been promised. Promised by you. By YOU!”

“This will not be tolerated, Castro. You cannot expect to come away from this with what you have taken, or with your life.”

“Then take it back. Come take your precious missile back!”

“What!” Art said aloud, his eyes finding those of the other two agents. They were as huge as his.

“I am waiting, Premier Khrushchev. I am waiting…. Come take it. Let the world see that not only can the United States of America make you bow, but let them see that a small country — an ally, no less — can make you kneel. Let the world see this.”

There was a long pause, time enough for the agents’ imaginations to shift into high gear. The scenarios envisioned were all equally frightening.

“President Castro—”

“Do not think that because you suddenly use my title that you can stroke me like a lover. No, no, no.”

“What do you want? What will make you return our property?”

“It is no longer your property. It is ours. It will remain ours.”

“You cannot keep it. I cannot—”

“You can, and you will have to. It is all very easy to explain to your government, Premier Khrushchev. When my soldiers captured the missile, they killed all the crew, and the security troops, of course. Tragic, yes, but necessary. And there was a devastating explosion of the fueling trucks very soon after. It consumed everything. You see, Premier Khrushchev, there is nothing to send back. It is very convenient for you. I will obviously not reveal anything. The only reason anyone would ever know of our acquisition would be if I must use the weapon to defend the Revolution.”

“But… But… President Castro, it is an atomic weapon. How can I. .”

“You have no choice. None. If you go to war over this, you will lose. How will your other allies see their benevolent protector if you crush a small country such as my own? You know what they will do. You will have revolt along your borders. Is it worth this, Premier Khrushchev? Is it?”

“I must…”

“Your Politburo will not understand. This secret is yours, and it is mine.”

“It will remain as such?”

“It will. We can even send you the bodies of your soldiers who died so tragically. They can be transported from La Isabela with their associated units. A fine funeral for the heroes will placate your Politburo.”

“No. No. There must be no hint of bodies. I suggest that they were consumed in the fire. Dispose of them as you wish.”

“They were soldiers, following orders. They will receive a fine burial.”

Again there was silence on the tape, but none of the agents spoke. What was there to say, other than a few choice expletives that could scarcely express the gravity of what they had just heard?

“Yes, I hope that they… that they will. I hope that…”

“It is done, then, Premier Khrushchev. Done.”

“Yes. Yes. It must be.”

“It is. Good-bye.”

The sound of the connection being broken clicked loudly.

“Lock the tape away, Alejandro. The good premier is not to be trusted. His memory of what transpired here may need to be refreshed someday.”

“Yes, Presidente.”

A shift from static to total nothingness signaled the end of the recording. Jacobs slid his headset off and stopped both tape decks, hitting the Rewind button next. Frankie and Art pulled theirs off a second later.

“Oh, my God,” Frankie said, summing up the collective feelings completely.

“Can this really be true?” Jacobs asked, wondering just who could answer the question.

“I don’t know,” Art answered, afraid to be more certain. “I’ve heard early tapes of Castro’s speeches. That sounded like him.”

Frankie’s eyes narrowed, her head swinging slowly from side to side. “But how could that be… I mean, if it is true, then there could still be…”

“I know.” Art shifted his thoughts from the past to the present, not wanting to deal with the future quite yet. “This puts a more sinister spin on the shooters who hit Portero. You may have been right before — they could be working for the Cubans. There certainly is a motive for the silencing aspect of this now.”

“Jesus.” Frankie had never wanted to get into the counterintelligence stuff the Bureau had to deal with, but now an uglier side of it appeared to be rearing up right in front of her. “If so, then Sullivan could be in more danger than we thought. Much more.”

There was no hesitation in Art’s response. “Get downstairs and sit with him. Don’t let him out of your sight. They’ve already proved they’ll kill for this.”

Frankie needed no more prompting. She was out of the TS lab and hitting the stairs a few seconds later.

“Dan, you say nothing of this. Clear?”

“Hey, who the hell would believe me?” He popped the two cassettes from their respective machines. “Do you want copies?”

“Yeah. Two of each.”

“All right. There’ll be a little degradation, remember. That recording is at least a second-generation copy made from the original reel tapes.”

“Okay. Okay.” Art was thinking fast, trying to plot the proper avenues of action in his head before setting anything in motion. It was quite a foreign manner of operation for him in this type of situation. “I’ve got to get in touch with the director. This has to go to him.”

Dan knew that the special agent in charge, William Killeen, was not keen on having street agents go over his head. “What about Bill?”

“Remember the SAC conference.” The Bureau’s SACs were gathering at the academy in Quantico, Virginia, for a so-called budget summit. Everybody was feeling the heat. “You think this can wait with what’s going on down there?”

“Not my call.” Jacobs thought for a moment. “What about Lou? He’s in town.”

Step by step, Art. “You’re right.”

“He can give you the go over the phone. He’d have to.”

Shit. “No, that won’t work. This has got to go over a secure line. He doesn’t have one.” Lou Hidalgo, Art’s boss’s boss, lived in Mission Viejo, a good hour away. Too far. Too long to wait. “I’ve got to do this.”

“Like I said, your call,” Jacobs cautioned.

Frankie burst through the door to the lab. “He’s gone!”

“Gone?” Art stood quickly. “To fucking where?”

“Don’t know,” Frankie answered, her breaths coming fast and hard. “The lobby guard said he saw him leave about ten ago.”

Dammit. “I knew I shouldn’t have left him.” The senior agent let the rush pass, measuring his breathing, just as he was supposed to do. You idiot, Jefferson! “Okay, get a bulletin out. I want a protective warrant issued for Sullivan.” He paused again, straining to regain his composure, knowing he would need it when talking to the man who had authorized his de facto demotion a year before for pushing limits that he shouldn’t have.

Art Jefferson knew this could be construed as similar behavior, but he didn’t really give a damn at the moment. He was doing what he had to…his job.

“There is a problem.”

General Asunción studied the Russian’s expression. “What problem? It will not work?”

Anatoly Vishkov shook his head. “It will work, but you can not carry out a complete fueling of the booster.” He pointed to the series of valves and gauges that were connected to the underground storage tanks for the fuel and oxidizer three hundred meters distant. “There is contamination in the tanks.”

“What!” It was not a question, for no answer would truly be acceptable. “How?”

Vishkov wiped his hands on a rag, rubbing it nervously. “Water, I believe. But there is more. I will show you.”

Asunción followed the physicist to the mass of gauges and flow meters that would allow the weapon to be fueled.

“The fuel gauge indicates one hundred and eight thousand kilograms of propellant. Here, see?”

“I see. What of it?”

“There are only supposed to be an even one hundred thousand kilos of UDMH,” Vishkov reported, referring to the undimensional dimethyl hydrazine. “A similar reading comes from the NTO tank.” That contained the oxidizer, nitrogen tetroxide. “I suspect that rains of a week ago infiltrated through a rupture in the upper portion of the tanks.”

“So the water makes the fuel useless?” the general asked disgustedly.

“Not the water, so much, as the soil residue that was sure to seep in also.” Vishkov tossed the rag onto the tree of silver pipes and valves. “Filters and traps will remove the water and residue, but the soils here are high in nitrates. It is a process of the swamps to the east and natural fertilization. There was certainly a nitrate infiltration, which can upset the balance of the oxidizer to the fuel. We cannot know how much the ratio has been altered, so fueling the booster would contaminate the internal tanks.” He paused, thinking on the increasing sounds of explosions. “Any attempt to actually fire it would likely fail.”

The general turned away, taking a few steps toward the weapon that had become his life, his friend, and now his nemesis. “What can we do?”

“We need fresh fuel and oxidizer,” he said to Asunción’s back, cursing the stupid decision he had made to not use the storable liquid propellants as they were intended, leaving them in the booster tanks for long periods. But that still would have required occasional draining and flushing, a process made difficult by the lack of trained personnel. No, this had been the right decision, to store them away from the missile, but now the problems associated with his prudence would require remedying. “We will have to pump directly from any trucks that bring them.”

Asunción looked to his right and nodded to his assistant, signaling that the Russian’s suggestion should be carried out. To secure the needed materials in this situation would be a tremendous undertaking, but it would have to be done. The refinery at Los Guaos would have to come through. “But the other systems are ready?”

“Awaiting only a target,” Vishkov said, letting his suspicions surface for the first time.

The Cuban turned quickly back, signaling with a toss of his thumb to get the Russian back to his maximum security villa at Castillo de Jagua. He would enjoy his life there for but a few more hours, then that would end. One death plus a million, Asunción thought, looking at the tower of destruction standing before him and wondering what deserving population center would be the recipient of it.