October's Ghost

CHAPTER EIGHT WHISPERS

Jorge picked the phone up on the first ring. “Yes.”

“Why did you page me?”

Tomás noticed the discomfort on his partner’s face. Lights from passing cars were distorted as they filtered through the phone booth’s cheap glass, casting unflattering shadows on his already scarred face.

“We have the reporter in sight. He’s in a bar in—”

“What the hell are you doing anywhere near him? Why is he still alive? His house, what did you find?”

The questions came rapid-fire, leaving Jorge little time to flower his answers. “There was nothing at his house; we turned it upside down. For some reason he was at the cops—”

“The WHAT!”

Tomás heard the shout from where he stood, the traffic noise not sufficient to drown out the sound from three thousand miles away. He was glad it was Jorge having to deal with their contact, much preferring the task of watching the bar’s front door down the street.

“Look, I don’t know what’s going on, okay? Our source at the paper told us the cops had him,” Jorge explained, careful not to mention the FBI. It would only make their contact more volatile. “So we staked it out and waited. At least he turned up, so we can find out once and for all from him if he has the tape.”

“If he had the tape, then the police would have it now, you dumb fuck!”

“Hey!” Jorge turned away from the booth’s opening, looking downward. “You want to come out here and clean this up? We aren’t idiots, man. Do you think the cops would have let him walk out of there if he gave them the tape? He’s a reporter, man. They’ve got that fucked up code of ethics and shit. Never reveal a source or anything. They like talking to cops about as much as I do.”

“All right. All right. Just find out if the guy has it.”

“No problem. When he leaves the bar, we’re gonna take him.”

“Do it right. Where are you staying? The location?”

“Why do you want that? You’re not supposed t—”

“Don’t fucking question me! I’m sending someone out to get the tape you do have. Understand?”

Asshole. Jorge reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the motel key, reading off the address and room number from the tab. “We switched places this morning. Anything else?”

“Don’t page me anymore unless it’s important.” The line went dead.

Jorge stepped from the booth and sat on the car hood, rolling his neck three full times. “They don’t pay us enough, man.”

“Your blood boils too easy, Jorge. Relax.” Tomás checked the bar’s front again. “This guy ain’t got nothing. We pop him, then it’s done with.”

“We make sure he’s got nothing,” Jorge corrected. It was a job, after all, and he’d never blown one yet.

“Then we pop him,” Tomás reiterated, hoping for a clean end to it all.

“Whatever.”

Testra pulled one earphone off and set the Italian sub down on its paper wrapper. “Did that sound like a setup to you?”

“Yep,” Sanz answered, his reply distorted by the mouthful of meatball sandwich. He paged through the phone-activity record they’d received from the phone company, then swallowed. “A good number of calls to L.A. numbers, especially lately.” He looked at the recipient codes, which showed only the type of station called— residence, business, public phone, or cellular. To find out any more, they would need additional warrants. “All phone booths. That’s funny — the only ones not to phone booths are the ones to Panama.”

Testra was looking at his copy of the records. It was as if their subject was operating some kind of switchboard. “They paged him, huh? Clean. These guys he’s dealing with send the phone-booth number to him by pager, then he calls them back. Smooth.” He flipped through the activity log to earlier dates. “Lots to L.A. lately. Some Miami. A lot in D.C., too. All phone booths.”

Sanz recalled the conversation just heard. “Reporter. A setup.” He shook his head. “We come looking for espionage, and what do we find? The same old shit.” Drug hit, he thought. Coseros was mixed up in enough of that to spill over this way. His and his partners’ work on the Coseros case had gotten them onto this one, with the anticipation that the leak and the Panamanian were connected. Slime was everywhere, he figured.

“Smoking gun, but not what we’re looking for,” Testra said.

The agents, both Bureau veterans, knew they had just heard a murder being planned.

“Well, if this goes nowhere else, at least we can pop him on conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Yeah, but until then, what do we do with this?” Their wiretap warrant was issued under a national-security request, effectively sealing everything they heard and recorded from the moment it arrived in room 145.

Sanz thought on that, taking another bite of his dinner. “The same old shit. No variety to this job at all.” They couldn’t just let a murder in the planning stages, possibly close to being carried out, sit under a federal seal. “We gotta go to the SAC.”

“Can’t,” Testra said. “He’s at that get-together in Quantico. Went up a day early.”

Their options were limited. The agents, both of whom held Top Secret security clearance from their work on previous cases with national-security aspects, knew they couldn’t just call the cops in L.A. and tell them they had a hit about to go down.

“I say it’s important enough to send it through the channel,” Testra proposed. “The director is supposed to get our stuff directly. Why not this?”

“Fine with me.”

“Good.” Testra was relieved. The thing would be off his conscience now, but not out of mind. He was too smart a cop to think that. “Hey. Did that name sound familiar to you?”

“What, ‘Portero’?” Sanz asked. “Yeah. There’s about ten thousand of them on my block.”

“Smartass,” Testra commented, the name still sticking in his head but not setting off any alarm bells. He went back to his dinner, cursing the extra paperwork this would require, plus the inevitable court appearances if the L.A. cops got the word and nailed the yahoos who were dense enough to do their business over the phone. What they lacked in honor, Testra thought, criminals made up for in predictable stupidity.

“They blew it,” the contact said in Spanish.

“How?” The voice on the other end was demanding.

“Some reporter who was cozying up to Portero got picked up by the police. Our guys were supposed to check his house and get rid of him, but they screwed it up.”

“Wonderful. And now?”

“They’ve got the reporter under surveillance. They will verify if he has it this time.”

“Good. And them?”

“I said I would send someone for the tape they did get off Portero.”

“That is a wise move. Of course, there is no reason for them to remain in our employ after that.”

“I’ve arranged it.”

“Very good. We must assume that Portero hid the tape then. Somewhere it would not be easily found. Otherwise we would have known by now.”

“Right. We would have known, but it’s been quiet up North.”

“Silence is golden.”

The contact smiled and switched off the phone, his temper having subsided after the talk with his employer. Employer. That was a different way to think of it, but very professional, and very necessary. They were walking on a very narrow ledge, and he knew it, but things were now going to slow down. Soon he wouldn’t have to worry about the idiots on the coast, and they would soon have nothing to worry about either.

“We have more information, Colonel.”

Ojeda was sitting on an empty fuel can, slicing pieces of pork jerky with a large knife and sliding them into his mouth. Paredes handed him the report just received over the satellite manpack that was his, and their, link to Langley. The four-page summary of maps and descriptions of unit movements and locations was not of the quality available from the stationary satellite terminals. That they could receive facsimile transmissions at all had been a surprise to the colonel, who had expected only verbal reports. So much the better, Antonio knew. Trust was a two-way street here, and the fact that Langley was giving this the premier treatment had established a sort of invisible chain of respect in which Paredes was the strongest link.

“Something is wrong,” Ojeda said matter-of-factly, his jaw moving slowly as it pulverized the hard, spicy meat.

“What is wrong?” Antonio asked, but Ojeda waved off his concern, motioning instead for Captain Manchon to come over. “Look at this.”

Manchon studied the report, particularly the description of unit movements. “This makes no sense.”

“Colonel, if there is some problem with the intelligence, I can contact my superiors for clarification,” Antonio offered.

“No, Papa Tony, the intelligence as presented is adequate.” Ojeda swallowed a mouthful of jerky. “It is what it shows.”

“Did we underestimate their strength in this area?” Antonio asked, concerned that the level of quality he had worked hard to ensure was somehow suffering.

“No. No.” Manchon pointed to the map diagram. “These units are pulling back toward Cienfuegos. It appears they are leaving only a token force to delay us.”

“A retreat to the city,” the CIA officer said, wondering if the situation was truly that desperate for the loyalist forces.

“No, not to the city,” Ojeda corrected him. “They are moving too many men west, to the opposite side of the Bahia de Cienfuegos. The city itself is on the northeast shore of the bay.”

Antonio studied the map, matching it to the one Manchon carried at all times. He wasn’t a military tactician, but the move, if it was happening, had no logic to it. The positions they appeared to be heading for at Guilermo Moncada, just fifteen miles north of his family’s former home at Juragua, were backed against several natural obstacles. The bay was one. To the south and west the swamps of the delta would block any tactical movement. In essence they were backing into a bottleneck.

“Very peculiar, Colonel,” the captain commented, a hand rubbing his stubbled chin.

“These are the bulk of the loyalist forces in the center of the country,” Paredes observed, checking the report for any other appreciable opposition in the area. There was none. “We have them, Colonel. It is almost over.”

“We have always had them, Papa.” Ojeda took the map from Manchon. “Captain, is the road between here and Aguada de Pasajeros open?”

“It is ours, sir,” the captain reported happily.

Ojeda thought for a moment, more concern on his face than Antonio thought warranted, considering the evidence that victory would soon be theirs. “Captain, I want one battalion to continue the move south toward Cienfuegos. I want them to press hard. Make it Captain Cresada’s battalion. The rest of the force we will move west to Aguada de Pasajeros, then swing east to attack from the position we should not be in.”

Manchon pondered it for a moment. “It is bold, and it carries risks. Many risks.”

Antonio decided to add his own cautionary tone to the analysis. “The battle is yours, Colonel Ojeda. The war is almost won. To risk delaying the outcome, is that necessary?”

Ojeda took the concerns not as an insult to his leadership or tactical decisions, but as questions from those not versed as he in the rigidity and predictability of the comrade commanders he now faced in battle. “Their moves are not logical, nor are they smart. They are not by the book.” He saw Manchon nod slightly. “That worries me. Papa Tony, when is a wounded animal most dangerous?”

“When it is cornered, of course.” Antonio still didn’t grasp the totality of the colonel’s thought.

“Correct.” Ojeda slid the knife into its sheath on his belt and stood, pulling his green fatigue cap on. “Unless it is a possum playing dead.”

It was now clear to the CIA officer. “I understand.”

“Good. Now it is time to kill this beast before it wakes from its false slumber.”

He rated a non-assigned space in the employee lot on the north side of Langley’s two-hundred-acre complex. That was rarely a problem, as the hour he arrived at work was long past the time when the rest of the Agency’s workforce had left for their suburban Maryland and Virginia homes. Those nice, big brick things that he had driven past many times and dreamed. Just dreamed. Fifteen years, and he still could only dream.

And he worked like a dog. But that wasn’t good enough. No. They had to move him to the graveyard shift to fill the space that some long timer had retired from to spend his time with some stupid powerboat he always crooned about. Now he couldn’t even spend the night with his wife. Twelve years of marriage, and he had to spend it away from her. That wasn’t right. They didn’t even ask him if he wanted to change shifts. No. Just did it. And still for the same damn money thanks to the damn shift differential being yanked because of the budget mess. Wonderful. They spend their money like idiots, and who has to pay?

But that was just the reality of it. Only the big shots got the frosting on the cake. Not the real workers. His head shook with disgust enough for ten men.

So, he had sought his own remuneration for the years he had been underpaid and the recent times when he had gotten the shaft. He was now a big shot. What he did mattered to someone, and that someone was willing to pay for it. Just another way to reap the benefits of government service, he thought, pushing his hands deep in his coat pockets as he walked through the chilly night air toward the workers’ entrance.

His name was Sam Garrity. He was, in simple terms, a spy. He was also a janitor.

The laughability of it all was enough to make him smile wide as he passed through the first security checkpoint on his way to the seventh floor.