The Mangrove Coast

17

The man behind the bar said, “Hello there, mate, you must be the Yank that Fernando was tellin’ me about.” I’d taken the bar stool in the far comer, the one nearest the door. Wasn’t feeling very talkative. I listened to him say, “You got a face like Iowa, so it’s not much of a guess… and from that expression, I’d say you either just screwed the pooch or the Turk’s been showing you some of his video toys.”

It was a little before 7:00 P.M. and a jungle breeze came off the water carrying aromatic little pockets of open sea, of jasmine and frangipani blossom… and of the city, too. The Old Walled City was just across the bridge. Narrow alleys of cobblestone, little markets that hadn’t missed a morning in three hundred years.

Even this far away, there was a hint of mangos plus crushed pineapple in the wind… and the odor of water on worn stone.

After my time aboard Moon of Kiz Kulesi, the breeze smelled pure, wonderfully uncontaminated. Can there be virtue in the fragrance of moving air?

“You’re name’s Ford, right, mate? Turns out we’ve got several mutual friends. Here-have a beer on me.”

That was a surprise. Apparently, some of my former associates had been on the telephone.

He’d wrapped the ten ounce bottle of Aquila in a brown napkin to keep it cool. I took it, drank it half down, paused to look at the condensation dripping down the bottleneck, then finished it.

“Must be thirsty.”

“Yeah.”

“Another?”

“Make this one a Polar.”

He used a church key to pop the top. No twist offs down here.

“After an hour or so with the Turk, it’s too bad a man can’t drink soap. Or get his soul pressure-washed. There’s just no quick way to get clean.”

“No. No, there’s not.”

“He try to sell you a membership to their freaky-deeky club?”

“That’s not the way he put it, but, yeah. Sounds pretty nice. I’m going to buy. Sounds like a great place.”

“Bullshit. You don’t need to lie to me. Like I said, we’ve got mutual friends. If the beer’s free, the least you can do is tell me the truth.” The man winked. “Hell, I’d tell the bloody truth all night long for free beer!”

I looked at him a moment and thought, yes, more than likely… he had that look… he’d been some places, seen some things, so we probably did have a lot in common. Maybe it was the same thing when Tucker and Fernando saw each other, members of the same secret club.

The man wore fishing shorts and a white T-shirt. The breast pocket of the shirt read: Walker Wilderness Tours- Northern Territory-Australia.

His hair was cropped short; looked to be in his late thirties maybe early forties. He had a flat, Irish face, a brown push-broom mustache and a nose that had done some traveling. Currently, it was pushed over to the right, just beneath his eye.

When he put the beer in front of me, I said, “Thanks.”

“Not a problem. Get five or six of those down you, I’ll start charging you triple, you won’t even notice.”

“You’re Garret, the guy who owns the place. I’ve heard about you, too.”

He had a good, strong laugh. Actually, it was more like a roar. “Hah! From the bloody Turk, I bet! What’d that nasty little sand nigger say about me? It was a lie, whatever it was. The man wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on the arse!” In Colombia it is always the cocktail hour. It was now also the dinner hour, so I was not alone in this open room with its ceiling fans and decorative flags hanging from the palm thatching.

Garret didn’t care. He didn’t care who heard.

“The Turk? Fuckin’ Turk, I don’t know if he wants me to put him in jail or adopt him!”

“He says you let him stay here because you want his vessel.”

“Hah! That’s a bloody good’un! The only thing worth a shit on that piece of garbage is the two or three hundred kilos of hashish he thinks the federales don’t know about. Which is why I won’t touch his boat, because I refuse to deal with the poisonous shit. Not everyone in Colombia runs drugs, you know. But I’ll auction his tub off fast enough when the courts put his ass in jail!” Garret slapped the bar: Hah hah hah!

Down the bar was Raymond, a sixty-some-year-old Irishman I’d met earlier. He was a merchant seaman who’d missed his ship and was now stranded in Cartagena. Used his accent and his stories to charm drinks. Always had a cigarette and glass in his hand, a rummy. There were three or four tables of men and women eating dinner. A table of Brits and a table of Italians, judging from conversations. Nearby was also a German couple, men. They wore T-shirts over their jock-sized bathing suits. Homosexuals sailing the coast, nice people not bothering anybody. Also at the bar were a couple of American men, one middle-aged, the other in his twenties. Regular-looking, but they had some money. They belonged to an absolutely stunning forty-two-foot Hinkley moored just down from the Turk’s ghost freighter. I’d met them earlier, too. Jim and Chris aboard the Windelblo. From New England, the kind of men you trust right away, the two of them in a customized million-dollar work of art but like it was no big deal.

Garret said, “So I’ll ask you again: tell me you didn’t buy into their freaky sex club.”

I leaned forward. “I need to get to Panama. Right away. Tonight, if I can.”

“Tonight? It’ll be dark. Nothing’ll be open, and you won’t be able to see a damn thing.”

“That’s why I want to get there when it’s still dark.”

The man nodded. “You’re goin’ after the woman. The woman the fat man kept down here on his boat.”

I leaned back and thought about it for a moment. Then I used my index finger to signal him closer. Into his ear I said a single word that implied the accomplishments of two men. Then I asked Garret to fill in the blanks, supply the missing names.

The men I described were two good Australians I’d worked with, both SAS, one from Perth, the other Darwin. If Garret could be trusted, he’d know exactly who I was speaking of.

He knew the names.

Good. It was a good connection to have. I relaxed a little. “That’s right, I’m going after the lady. Damn right I’m going after the lady. How’d you know?”

“Simple. A woman like her throws a big wake. Class and style, it’s worth… well, with a woman like that, let’s just say men don’t give love, they invest it. And there she is running around loose?” Garret’s expression said he knew the ideal comparison. “You see that Hinkley sailboat out there? Finding the lady in this bar was like finding that Hinkley abandoned on the high seas. It just ain’t gonna happen. The only mystery was how she got mixed up with the fat man. After I ran him outta here, I told my wife, ‘Somebody’s gonna show up looking for that woman. And they’d better hurry, before she’s dead.’”

I didn’t like the sound of that, nor the way he said it: Very matter-of-fact, not joking around. “You think he plans to kill her?”

“Naw. Someone doesn’t get her soon, though, she’ll probably do the job herself. Suicide, I mean. You can see it in her eyes. She’s got these sad, sick eyes, but very bright. Beautiful eyes. You’ve met the lady. Or were you hired?”

“Neither. She was the wife of an old friend.”

“Then you’ve missed something. With her face, a body like that, even at her age she could pass for some Latin American fashion model. A Yank accent, but her people are from the Equator, I’d bet on it. Plus she’s got the most beautiful eyes you’ve ever seen. Almost like they’re two different colors.”

No doubt about it now, he’d definitely seen Gail.

Garret said, “The fat man, one night here in the bar, he was offering her out to the street people, the dock hands, whatever. Like he was proving to everybody he was such a big shot that a woman like her meant nothing to him. Sell her like a whore, what did he care? A big joke, but she wasn’t laughin’. Because he meant it, damn right he did. He offered her to Fernando, ten pesos. About seven dollars U.S.

“It had nothin’ to do with money-bastard’s loaded with cash-the fat man’s just an asshole. Vicious. He likes to hurt people, just like his bodyguard… or a boyfriend, whatever the hell he is. Merlot’s giant boy-toy, a fella they call Acky. You know about him?”

“A little.”

“Well, if you’re goin’ after the fat man, you’d better know more than just a little. Acky came close to killin’ one of our local fellas. Got him down out there on the dock. Used his fists and his feet on him, damn near tore the man’s face right off. He’s a guy who likes to fight and likes to see people hurt. That’s one of the reasons I ran them off. The other is, I caught Merlot trying to talk one of the local kids onto his boat. The cook’s son, just a little shaver. And it weren’t to teach the kid how to kick a bloody soccer ball!”

Garret didn’t mind telling me about it. But first he wanted to know if I’d had supper. He was one of those you-have-to-eat-have-to-drink-guys. Probably a good father, a perfect person to own a restaurant.

I told him I had no appetite, not after the stench of being aboard the wind freighter from Istanbul. But maybe a glass of milk and some toast with Vegemite on it. If the kitchen had Vegemite.

That got a laugh.

“An Aussie without Vegemite? Gotta be kiddin’, mate. Ever notice that every country’s got its own perfect food? And it always tastes like shit to outsiders, but the locals are addicted. Colombia? We’ve got Amazona, the perfect pepper sauce. You know, verde. Blokes here eat the stuff on eggs, crackers, everything. It’s gotten so I’m just as bad. I’ll tell Fernando to bring you some toast.”

Listening to Garret was a pleasure after enduring close quarters with the Turk. He wasn’t a fan of either man’s. Said that Merlot and the Turk were birds of a feather. They’d worked out a deal; the Turk had told him all about it. The Turk supplied Gamboa with women and drugs, for which Merlot paid cash, plus marketing rights to Gamboa. What did Panama care about women from Colombia? For Merlot and his new club, Colombian women were cheaper, plus there was less red tape.

It essentially confirmed the story that the Turk had told me.

The Aussie added, “I knew the woman was in trouble when I realized that the Turk was stopping in at least once a month to mail her postcards. Understand what I’m saying? They wanted to give someone back in the States the impression that the lady was still here. There’s our little postbox. I peeked at the cards and I ain’t bloody shy, so I asked him about it. Hah! The Turk, he just puts a finger to his lips and grins. ‘Jealous husband,’ he says, or some bullshit like that.

“The fat man musta had her write the cards out in advance, probably thinking the same thing: Someday someone would come looking for her.”

As the Aussie spoke, I began to feel a nonspecific panic. What the hell had I dropped into?

I knew one thing: I had to find Gail Calloway and I had to find her quickly. From what I’d seen and heard, the woman was already so badly damaged that there might not be any way to save her… or any way to spare her good, good daughter, Amanda the sickening truth: Merlot had now violated and, perhaps, damaged beyond redemption the final two branches of a unit that had once been Bobby Richardson’s family.

I said, “Do you think Merlot is in Panama? In his little village there.”

“I know he is. Or was as of this morning. The Turk called him just before you blokes came in.” The man glanced over his shoulder, “We’ve got a phone log and I make folks use it or kick their asses out. The Turk’s got the federales out there waitin’ on him, so he does what I say.”

“Then that’s where I’m going. Gamboa. I’ll pay, I’ve got cash.”

Garret looked at his restaurant-not too busy, everything going smoothly. Then he looked at the clock behind the bar. It’d just turned 7:00 P.M. A nice night with stars, the light of a quarter moon already showing on Cartagena Bay. He thought for a moment before saying, “You can’t drive to Panama, I hope you’re not planning on that.”

No, I knew better. Not on the front end of the rainy season, anyway, which is precisely what April is. The jungled path between Colombia and Panama is an old silver transport foot route called the Darien Trail. This time of year, it would be all mud. There was no road.

“What is today, Friday? Saturdays, the first commercial flight doesn’t leave till one tomorrow, get you into Panama City about one-thirty. Is that quick enough for you?”

“No. Not if I have a better choice.”

“Well… there’s one other way.” His expression asked: Interested?

I nodded. Damn right I was interested.

He said, “I don’t suppose you know how to fly a Cessna? Nice one, a one-eighty-two.”

“Not well enough to make that trip, no. Not alone anyway.”

“But you know how to steer? If I dozed off, got some shut-eye on the way, you’d know how to steer a course, do all the basics? I’m tired as hell. I was up all night last night.”

I tried to remember if I’d ever met an Australian man who didn’t know how to fly a small plane.

I said, “Sure, I can steer. They made us log enough air time to get a private license, but I’ve never really used it”

“I can have you at Paitilla Airport, classiest little airport in Panama, in just under two hours. There’s a landing strip at Gamboa, but no lights. Can’t land there at night.”

“Panama City, that’ll be okay.”

“If you’ve got friends in the City, they can bring you a rental car or drive you, whatever. Gamboa’s only half an hour away. I’ll have to cut you loose, though, and fly back.” He smiled. “My wife and son miss me if I’m gone too long.”

I got the impression that Garret just wanted to get up in the air, get away from the lunacy of running a marina, dealing with the public. Maybe have the chance to talk about things he didn’t normally get a chance to talk about.

As the man had said: We knew some of the same people.

Surprise, surprise: I watched Tucker Gatrell lurch into the bar as I told the Aussie, “You finish up what you need to do. I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

The man looked terrible. He’d lost his cowboy hat. His white sports coat had some kind of purple stain down the front, he’d apparently been sick.

I watched Tucker stumble and knock most the drinks off a nearby table, as I added, “The calls are long distance, but I’ll use a charge card, if that’s okay. The Vegemite, I’ll take it with me. And I need to change clothes.”

I had a light, long-sleeved black turtleneck and jeans that seemed like the thing to wear. I would, after all, be roaming around Gamboa at night. I might even compromise Merlot’s house if I got the chance.

I watched Tucker turn, staggering, as if to acknowledge the mess he’d made, but his boot caught on the leg of one of the tables and he fell backwards, landing hard on his butt. It was pathetic to watch: a bowlegged caricature of an old-time Florida cowboy totally lost and out of control. I said, “And Garret? You mind if the old man bunks here? I’ll pay cash in advance for any damage he does. And for his rack, his drinks, whatever he needs. I just don’t want him with me.”

Garret had watched the exhibition along with the rest of the bar. “Can’t say as I blame you, mate.”

I’d been keeping track of the digital glow of the GPS, hoping Garret would wake up. Had a private little debate about it: Let the man sleep until we were closer to Panama City? Or make him take over the controls now?

Thoughtfulness won out. Let the man sleep. Yeah, I was paying him, but he was still doing me a gigantic favor. Plus, he’d be flying back to Cartagena alone and he’d need all the rest he could get.

I checked the GPS once again before I adjusted my headset, touched the transmit button and said, “Colon tower, this is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel… I’m ten miles south-southeast at two-point-five with information Bravo.”

GPS meaning Global Positioning System. Information Bravo meaning I’d just checked the weather, was completely under control. At least, that was the impression I wanted to give them.

I waited for what seemed a long time before I repeated my previous transmission, adding, “Copy, Colon tower? Do you read?”

Nope, apparently not. Garret had set the radio frequency, but I checked it again: 122.8. That seemed about right. Checked the GPS again. Yep, now nine miles out of Colon and closing.

I touched the transmit button once more and said for anyone to hear, “This is Skylane four hundred Delta Hotel and I’ll be passing Colon to the south, bound for Panama City at two-point-five but climbing to four-point-five when I reach the mouth of the canal.” Said it more for any other aircraft in the area rather than the sleeping tower in the nasty little port town of Colon. Felt like adding that everyone should stay the hell out of my way, because I wasn’t much of a pilot and we were roaring into Panamanian airspace at 160 knots but at varying altitudes, and on a course that had more in common with a roller-coaster than with the normal patterns of a plane flown by someone who knew what he was doing.

Years ago, after my first required solo, our instructor had described my touchdown as, “More like a midair collision with earth than what you’d call a landing.”

But I could steer okay. In fact, I was enjoying it, because it took my mind off things I preferred not to think about.

What I preferred not to think about was becoming quite a long list…

Things I preferred not to think about: hearing Amanda’s voice through the telephone, but seeing her as a child again in that heartbreaking photo as she told me that the medical examiner had decided Frank had probably died from a heart attack that may have been catalyzed by slipping in the kitchen, cracking his head open on the counter.

Skipper, the young widow, was taking it pretty well. Maybe not so surprisingly well. She’d lost a soul mate, but gained three maybe four million in assets, not counting her beachfront home in Boca Grande.

Funeral was set for Monday.

Apparently, Frank had sprinted from the pool into the house-knocked the sliding door off its tracks, that’s how fast he’d been going. Maybe hurrying to answer the phone, she guessed. But that didn’t make sense because there was a phone near the pool. It was almost like he was in a panic. Running after something or running from something. How else could he generate that kind of force?

Part of what she said struck a chord: In a panic, running from something.

Scared to death, that’s what the medical examiner was suggesting. But by what?

I asked, “There were two weird red lines on Frank’s neck. Did the medical examiner say anything about that?”

No-and I could tell that Amanda did not enjoy having to again visualize her stepfather lying dead on the floor.

Something else was, she had a call in to the investigator Frank had hired, but no luck yet. She’d left a message.

I told her not to worry about it. I didn’t need the information anymore. Told her that I had a good lead on her mom and that what she’d probably better do was call the airlines as soon as we hung up and book a flight for tomorrow morning. The earlier she could get here, the better.

That got her excited. “You’re kidding me! Already? My dad was right, you really do have special talents.”

I wondered if my lighthearted enthusiasm sounded as contrived as it felt. “We’ll see,” I told her, and that as soon as I knew more, I’d call. Sometime late tonight, probably.

Just before we hung up, she’d said in a shy voice, “I miss you.”

A nice thing to hear, but she said it in a voice that told me she hoped to be more than a friend… which is probably why it hurt me so much.

Something else I preferred not to think about was Tuck. He’d made a big scene at Club Nautico when I told him I was leaving him behind. So drunk and drugged up that he could hardly speak, but still coherent enough to make himself the center of attention.

I’d told him that he’d find a way to embarrass me, and he had. Stood in the doorway of the marina weaving, trying to form words, and then-I couldn’t believe it-he began to weep.

I’d never even heard the man’s voice break before, but there he was sobbing, people in the bar hearing it all, but not understanding, when he yelled at me, “Why won’t you give me a chance to make it up to you! You don’t think it’s damn near drove me crazy all these years? She was my sister, goddamn it! My only sister!”

It was the first time he’d ever mentioned the death of my mother or had even acknowledged that it had happened. That’s how stoned he was. That’s how old and broken, filled with regret, he’d become.

I felt some sympathy, but not enough to take him along.

Something I didn’t mind remembering, though, was telephoning computer whiz Bernie Yager, timing it lucky enough so that he was at home.

After explaining to him where and what and why, I gave him the Internet address for Club Gamboa’s Web page. I’d copied it onto a little piece of paper before I left the Turk’s boat. To Bernie, I said, “I’ll be forever in your debt if you destroy the son-of-a-bitch. The sooner the better.”

Bernie had an evil little grin in his voice when he replied, “This whole terrible thing with Commander Richardson’s wife, it’s got the entire community talking.”

“It does?”

“They’re burning up the phone lines. Take it from me. And your fat friend? An hour from now, there won’t be a data bit left standing of his Web page. All that money he paid? Down the drain. And every time he rebuilds it, I’ll do it all over again.”

Yeah, I was enjoying the flight, feeling the little plane beneath me. Concentrate: light touch of the wheel, foot-rudder controls and a nicety of trim all keyed to engine speed. Kept my eyes moving from horizon to altimeter, checking over and over to make certain that all gauges were in the green.

We’d been at forty-five hundred feet when Garret dozed off, but I’d dropped down to the deck, twenty-five hundred, to get a better view.

What I saw beyond the flare of my own running lights was the Caribbean Sea glittering in the moonlight. Off to the left was a black hedge of coastline, no lights, no life at all. Mangroves. Had to be mangroves. I repeated my transmission twice more, no reply. Had the feeling that I was alone in the world, suspended in darkness above a revolving earth.

What worried me was, I knew there were military bases nearby. The Jungle Operations Training Base at Fort Sherman was still operating. I’d done some training there years ago: tropical billets on a 30,000-acre preserve of untouched rain forest. Magnificent. There were Forts Gulick and Davis, too, but they’d already been turned over to the Panamanians. I remembered enough from my flight training that such bases generally have restricted areas associated with them called MOAs, or Military Operation Areas.

You can’t fly through a restricted area without prior permission. To get that, I’d have to call the base’s approach frequency before entering… a frequency I did not know. So, if I screwed up, I could expect to soon see a couple of Tomcats, war lights strobing, insisting that I land so that I could have a little talk with base security.

It’s the sort of thing that inexperienced pilots want to avoid…

Ahead now I could see an iridescent mushroom that had to be the big city glow of Colon. Separated from Colon by a panel of darkness was a galaxy of anchor lights at the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal. Lots of freighters and cruise ships waiting to transit.

It was still difficult for me to accept the reality that the Panamanian government had chosen the power brokers of Taiwan and Hong Kong as the canal’s major concessionaires.

China?

It gave me something new to think about. Something to take my mind off the picture that kept re-forming behind my eyes…

Axiom: Whoever controls the ports of Panama controls the Panama Canal. Accept the premise and you have to also accept the fact that, as of December 1999, it will be China. To be exact: Panama Ports Corporation, subsidiary of a major Hong Kong conglomerate.

At first, I was shocked… but then, as I flew along gazing at the lights of ships at anchor, it began to make some sense… then it made perfect sense.

It wasn’t just business, pure and simple; it was business and the politics of the coming millennium.

Most believe that the United Nations will provide scaffolding for the emerging “World Government” or “New World Order.” That’s what right-wing conspiracy kooks and leftist dilettantes preach, anyway.

Both are wrong. Unnoticed by the working public, a world government has been emerging strongly, steadily, for the last decade, and it is not the United Nations. It is a government made up of international conglomerates. These conglomerates have become the behind-the-scenes arbiters of power worldwide. Toughened by the economic expedient, they have become efficient and mobile administrators of legislation and policy. They have their own legislative and executive branches; they have their own sophisticated intelligence-gathering capabilities and their own loyal citizenry. Microsoft, British Petroleum, NEC, Canon, Toyota, Dow Chemical, Time Warner, Turner Broadcasting-of the world’s largest one hundred economies, more than half of them are not countries, they are corporations.

So, yes, it made sense. Couriers of the New World Order were taking control of the earth’s most important and profitable canal, and it had nothing to do with conspiracies. It was the Darwinian template acted upon by political dynamics. Yes, there were some Panamanian legislators who stoked and tended hard feelings toward the U.S. Maybe that was part of it. But Asia, booming on-the-move Asia, was a sound financial choice.

China now controlled the Panama Canal…

It was a difficult truth to accept.

Some critics will say that, somewhere, a good man who was devoted to the well-being and security of his own great nation is rolling over in his grave; a hardened little Rough Rider who, to his credit, had nothing in common with New Age chief executives who lack what he most admired: courage, integrity and fidelity to the greater good.

And those critics will be correct.

There will also be advocates who point out that after years of manipulation, murder, ill-use and what amounts to political slavery administered by the United States, the small nation of Panama has not only a right but an obligation to do what is best for its own people.

They will be correct as well. But neither viewpoint carries an ounce of currency when applied to this new Darwinian template of world government. The dynamic is neither evil nor good, neither left-wing nor right-wing. It is pure. It is power. In such an environment, liars often prosper and cheaters usually win. Things are changing. The hubs of world authority are in a constant state of flux. Why did I find that surprising? Why would anyone find it surprising?

“We almost there yet?” Garret was stirring in the left seat. He glanced out the window, then he sat up quickly. Jammed his headset down over his ears and said, “Christ, that’s Colon over there! We were supposed to cut inland way back.”

“I know, I know, but I didn’t want to wake you up and I didn’t want to fly into any mountains, so I reset the GPS and it gave me a new route.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know how to fly.”

“I’m a terrible pilot, but I’m a fair navigator. Some people feel safer over land, I happen to feel safer over water. Besides, I’ve never flown down the canal at night.” He said, “That’s the first problem. We’re not allowed to fly down the canal.”

“Can we fly along it?”

“Yeah. Just don’t buzz any cruise ships. We don’t want a bunch of newlyweds and nearly-deads complain’ to the Panamanian authorities about us.”

I was banking southwest now over a vast darkness that was Gatun Lake, one of the largest manmade lakes in the world. The channel was lit up like a freeway. Open all the locks at once, and it would be like pulling the plug on a bathtub. The lake would drain almost dry, not enough water left to float a pontoon boat, let alone a thousand-foot-long container ship.

The mountains fed the lake, the lake fed The canal. Thus the necessity of the locking system on this highway between two seas.

Garret said, “Your friend who’s picking you up at Paitilla Airport? He’s gonna be sittin’ on his hands twenty minutes or so longer than expected, ‘cause that’s how late we’re gonna be.”

“He’s the friend of a friend, really. A real live Zonie, fourth generation. Born here, went to high school here, and now he’s been temporarily stationed at the embassy. That’s what I was told, anyway. He’s a Company man.” Garret flew for a while before he said, “One of the Christians in Action fellas? One of the blue-shirt guys, is that the company you’re talking about?”

I didn’t reply to the question. “The best thing is, he says he lives near Gamboa. And he’s got a car I can use. Some kind of transportation once I get there.”

“Good on ya’,” Garret said. “Seems like it’s coming together bloody well.”

“So far.”

Panama City lay ahead, a void of the tangible insinuated by hills on the rim of horizon and moonlight. Gaillard Cut and the Continental Divide were out there. Gamboa and Gail Calloway were out there, too.

I was watching thunderheads to the southwest crackle with sulfurous light. The clouds vanished, then reappeared. The Aussie surprised me a little when, after a long silence, he replied, “No, that’s not what I meant when I asked if he was CIA. What I meant was, if you’re going to kill the fat man, it’ll be handy to have a guy like that on your side. A spook, I mean.”