The Marchand Woman

Chapter 3

When Glenn Anders entered the Coral Gables office the Deputy Chief told him of the death of Robert Lundquist.

“They dumped the body on the back steps of the police station in Merida, Yucatan. They left all his identification on him so they’d be sure we got the right message. And a note pinned to his shirt. I don’t need to tell you what it said.” The Deputy Chief — Mackinnon — had a sour jowled face and wisps of black hair across his bald head. “It’s a goad, of course. Proof that they mean business. The message is directed mainly at Venezuela. The note said among other things that they’ll kill another hostage tomorrow and another the day after that and so on, saving the Ambassador till last, until their demands are met. The idea here, I guess, is that they started with the least prominent of the hostages. The kid was an accidental member of the party.”

“This is the Peace Corps boy, I take it? Lundquist?”

“Yes. Poor son of a bitch. At least they did it clean. Shot him in the back of the head. Maybe he never knew it was coming.”

“Anything useful in the note?”

“The same anti-Castro propaganda. It’s in the lab in Mexico City. Along with the kid’s clothes and personals. They’re flying him into Houston for the autopsy. Who knows, maybe something will turn up under his fingernails.”

“Did they set a new deadline?”

“Noon tomorrow. Predictably.”

“Any word from the Venezuelans?”

“Not that I know of. But there’ll be a lot more pressure on them now. They’re holding out against three countries. A couple of Congressmen are making noises about embargoing oil imports from Venezuela. It wouldn’t happen, of course, but the fact that anybody suggests it is pretty hard on the Venezuelan image. Tourists are canceling reservations, that kind of thing. Maybe they’ll knuckle under. Personally I wish they wouldn’t. The only way to deal with these bastards is to refuse to deal with them. I’m all for the Venezuelans — let ’em stonewall it.”

Anders made no reply to that; he rarely believed in certainties or flat statements. If the Venezuelans hadn’t stonewalled it, he thought, this Lundquist might not be dead now. But who knows. Everything was caprice.

Mackinnon said, “I take it you didn’t turn up anything.”

“A couple of names that need checking out. Emilio Ortiz, Guillermo Garza. Mean anything to you?”

“Not especially.”

“They’re both out of the country on business trips.”

“Well maybe they are.”

Anders went out to the desk they had lent him and wrote up a report of his day. Then he put through a call to O’Hillary on the scrambler. “Anything new on the Lundquist boy?”

O’Hillary’s voice was calm, smooth, avuncular. “No, except that the killing achieved its purpose. The Venezuelans are capitulating. It’s not public yet but I have it on good authority. They’ll broadcast it tonight — they’ll be flying the prisoners out to Buenos Aires in the morning.”

“So the bastards get everything they asked for.”

“For the moment. Until we find them and take it back. That’s still your job, Glenn.”

“At the present rate,” Anders told him, “I’ll probably find them in nineteen ninety-three. Nothing’s breaking around here. Anything from air recon?”

“Some marvelous photographs of clouds and trees.”

“Shit.”

“The beeper in the container hasn’t moved since it was dropped. We don’t know if they’re leaving it there deliberately or if they’ve removed the money and left the container behind.”

“Probably the latter,” Anders said. “Any instructions?”

“No. Just carry on. We have every confidence in you.”

We have every confidence — it made Anders smile when he put down the phone. He was both amused and concerned by the Agency’s attitude on this thing. By putting the job in his hands they had revealed a great deal. In the hierarchy of things he was junior-grade. By putting him in charge Washington was going through the motions but it was clear to Anders that nobody was going to be axed if he failed to produce. The whole thing was indicative of the ambivalence with which Washington and Langley regarded this affair. Terrorism must be countered of course — but what if the terrorists weren’t quite our enemies?

What a marvelous embarrassment it would be, he thought, if I actually nailed the bastards.

Rosalia came along to his desk. Euphonious Rosalia Rojas. She had the pert eager bounce of an earnest trainee stewardess; certainly she was out of place around here but Mackinnon had called her our best pipeline to the Cuban community. The word that suited her was cute. She had dark tangled hair, cut medium-short, that bounced when she moved. Pug nose, very large black-brown eyes shaped into an expression of astonishment and vulnerability, a short-waisted buxom little body with a nervous brisk way of moving. From the outset she had appealed to him carnally. It had ripened beyond that and beyond anything he’d anticipated: Yet somehow it wasn’t alarming.

She had a small steno notebook from which she started reading aloud before she stopped walking. “I checked into those six names. Four of them are here in the Miami area working at their jobs and they haven’t been out of town in months except one of them took the wife and kids to Disney World six weeks ago. This leaves two, if the new math hasn’t altogether corrupted my arithmetic, and one of them is definitely in Mobile on one of those corporation refresher-training courses. He fixes cars for the Oldsmobile dealer and they’ve sent him to GM mechanics’ school.”

“Leaving one more.”

“Go to the head of the class,” she said cheerfully. “His name is” — just the slightest trace of accent, hees-name-ees, you might miss it if you weren’t listening for it — “Ignacio Gandara, age forty-one, occupation construction worker. At the moment he is laid off and collecting Unemployment but he didn’t pick up the two most recent checks at the Unemployment office and no one who knows him has seen him in about three weeks.”

“Does he have an American passport?”

“Yes.”

“Find out if he’s used it, can you?”

She made a note. “How did you do?”

“About the same as you. Five negatives, two possibles. Guillermo Garza, occupation lawyer — or so it says on his shingle — and Emilio Ortiz, who’s—”

“A construction engineer,” Rosalia said. “I know Emilio, he’s godfather to one of my sisters. He’s been shuttling back and forth to St. Thomas, working for a company that’s building a condominium over there.”

“That could be a cover, couldn’t it? Let’s not scratch Ortiz off the list just yet.”

She said, “Maybe you’re right. But I’ve always liked him.”

“One of the delights of this business is learning how little you can trust people.” He looked at his watch. “Join me for supper?”

When he looked up he caught the sparkle in her eye. “I’d love to. I’ll be ready in ten minutes — I’ll just put the Gandara inquiry on the wire to Passport Control.”

It was a flat low rectangular building on the Tamiami Trail, its only distinguishing feature a huge towering electric sign that looked like something along the Strip in Las Vegas. The parking lot was the size of a football field. Rosalia clipped along beside him chattering — her way of talking, like everything else about her, was quick and cheerful. Inside the place he had to stop to accustom his eyes to the sudden dimness. It was one of those structures that had been built since the invention of central air conditioning; it had no windows at all. The chandeliers were imitation wagonwheels, the decor was ersatz Wild West, the booths were heavy wood lined with padded black leather, the jukebox boomed with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. The menu offered steaks, rib roast and lobster; the drinks came in massive frosted tumblers like the mugs in drive-in root-beer stands. A girl in a backless top and a skirt so short it exposed her fanny, and heels so high she tottered, guided them to a booth and, when Anders made a dry remark, guided them to another one farther from the hammering of the jukebox. There was a lousy painting of Custer’s Last Stand over the bar and the two bartenders wore handlebar mustaches and ten-gallon hats. Anders detested Florida.

When they slid into the leather banquette he said to his companion, “I was thirty before I ever saw this part of the world. I had friends in Chicago who’d go to Miami Beach every winter — I grew up in that kind of set, lower-middle-class snobs. They kept telling me I had to go to Miami Beach and see all the fabulous hotels. I never intended to go there. I expected sooner or later Miami Beach would come to me, as it does to all men. I was right.”

“This isn’t Miami Beach. It’s Coral Gables.”

“Yeah. What’ll you have?”

“A hangover.” She was studying the menu. “But I think I’ll start with a banana daiquiri.”

When the tedium of ordering was concluded he gave Rosalia his full attention. In the jaundiced light her skin seemed pale and velvety. She had an emphatic way of returning his gaze. Then she screwed up her nose at him. “You’re a big shambling teddy bear, aren’t you.”

That made him laugh. “I think I’m falling in love with you.” Immediately it sounded lame; he’d meant it to be light, but not facetious: a joke to cover the fact that he meant it.

“Shucks, all the guys say that.”

“I believe that,” he agreed. “A backtrail crowded with broken hearts.”

She said, “I broke up with my boy friend three months ago. I moved out. I cried for a week and went numb for a week but I’m great at bouncing back. I’m telling you that because I didn’t want you to waste half an hour groping around for a way to ask me if there were any other serious men in my life. Or men seriously in my life, or whatever — I majored in English lit but it’s still my second language. I was going to be a teacher,” she explained, “but then I realized I hate teaching. I don’t have the patience to deal with people who don’t learn everything right the first time. Anyway I’m more useful here, you know. My father was very important in the Cuban exile movement. He died a few years ago but I’ve still got the family contacts.”

“Don’t you feel you’re selling them out?”

“Sometimes,” she conceded. “You have to decide where your loyalties are, don’t you. We left Cuba when I was four. I’m a citizen of the United States. I don’t picture any scenario in which the exiles will ever recover the properties they lost to Castro, do you?”

“I don’t think the restoration of confiscated properties is the motive. I give these folks a bit more credit than that.”

“They don’t like Castro — they don’t like Communism. I don’t think much of Castro or Communism either. But then I’m sure I wouldn’t have thought much of Batista either. You know it’s not easy when you’re born into the middle of a squabble like this. Whatever I do, I’m a traitor to somebody. I’ve spent my whole life arguing these things with my family and friends.”

“And?”

“I can’t see how war and killing will solve the problem. The counterrevolutionary movements want war. They’re wrong. So I’m against them.”

He envied her. She’d managed to make clear simple sense out of a complex muddle.

She said, “This Lundquist thing — what do you think will happen?”

“It’s foregone. We haven’t had a prayer of getting close to these guys in time to do any good. The ransom’s been paid, the political prisoners are on their way to B.A. and I expect either the Ambassador will be turned loose in a few days or the bodies will turn up in a common grave in the jungle. Probably they’ll turn ’em loose because that way the thing will die down sooner.”

“And then?”

“We’ll interview the survivors and maybe we’ll be able to identify the terrorists from that, but I get a feeling it won’t work out that way — they haven’t been stupid up to now. I’m not confident. Either way it’ll be forgotten. Nothing stays in the headlines. Another crisis will come up.”

“They’ve got ten million dollars for making war.”

“The terrorists? Maybe. They can’t overthrow Castro with dollar bills. It’s got to be a pretty small group.”

“They can make a lot of trouble.”

“There’s always trouble,” Anders said.

“Have you had any experience with hijackers before?”

“Sure. That’s why I was assigned to this one.”

“These are brighter than most, aren’t they?”

“Cool and careful. That’s worth worrying about. Terrorists are usually neurotic kids without sense — suicidal fanatics. They throw tantrums and smash toys to get attention — they’re too immature to think about consequences. Mostly they end up killed. But these guys have kept the rear exit open, nobody’s touched them and I won’t be surprised if they disappear with the ransom money. We’ll pick up a trail somewhere but it may be too cold to do us any good. Here come the lobsters.”

His mind had jumped off the straight track and he listened with only half attention to Rosalia’s bursts of talk while he pursued this new line of thought. Over coffee he broke into her monologue with an abrupt rhetorical question: “What if the setup was a false front? What if they’re a little gang of ingenious crooks who’ve found a clever way to steal ten million dollars?”

“What?”

“Suppose they’re not politicals at all. It fits,” he said. “It’s starting to look as if they don’t belong to the known Cuban exile movements.”

“But then why would they bother with the propaganda ransom notes and demanding the release of the political prisoners and all?”

“There’d be reasons enough. A smokescreen to throw us off the track. And everybody knows governments treat political agitators more gingerly than common crooks. And in this case there’s the anti-Castro aspect — we’d have committed more resources to the hunt if they’d been Communist terrorists.”

“Is that really how you see it?”

“I don’t know. The theory fits a lot of the facts. It’d be a daring risky kind of crime but it’s not much more dangerous than knocking over a bank and it’s a little bit more lucrative. And if they’re not politicals that would help explain why we haven’t tumbled any leads. For all we know they could be a gang of Mexican bandits out of a Pedro Armendariz movie.”

Rosalia had a flat in a two-story apartment court with its own pool and palm trees. The furniture was a reflection of her hectic person: busy fabrics but clean shapes. The Parsons tables were black plastic, the lamps were stark and the end tables were clear lucite cubes. There was a profusion of potted house-plants. On the walls were matted enlargements of high-contrast photographs — winter birch forests, a rocky coast that looked like Maine, something that looked at first like an abstract but turned out to be a shot of wood grain in close-up. When she turned on the stereo he was surprised by the selection: a jazz quintet coolly psychoanalyzing Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.

She said, “Drinkie?”

“Got any rum?”

“That’s very diplomatic.”

“Not really. I like it.”

“It’s not Cuban,” she said drily and went clipping into the kitchenette, speedy and practical and sure of herself.

He liked her. He thought perhaps he loved her but he had thought that a few times before and his ex had crashed into an overpass abutment at eighty miles an hour with a blood-alcohol content later measured at near comatose levels; now he was wary because he felt he’d driven her to it. In any case he wasn’t sure what women saw in him. He’d always been just a little overweight; he had the square face of a vacuum-cleaner salesman; and the Anders hair, a product of Danish genes, was pale and thin — it flowed in the air like seaweed, he thought. He had confidence in one thing: He did his work well. That was a reason to feel close to Rosalia. She understood the work. But then it didn’t make sense looking for reasons for such things.

She said, “What’s on for tomorrow?”

“I’d better get down to Mexico.”

“Oh.”

He said, “Your Spanish is better than mine.”

“Anybody’s is. Yours is atrocious.” Her eyes wandered away.

“Look,” he said, “how would you like to fly down to Mexico with me?”

Her smile was as good as a kiss.

Chapter 4

A fish jumped through the surface of the river: broached, shook foam, dived. Cielo watched for a while but it didn’t leap again. He listened to the birds and then finally went back along the riverbank reluctantly; it was time to put things in motion.

There were clouds; steam in the air; soon there’d be rain. It was what he had waited for — a safe time to move the hostages out. Later if someone tried to backtrack them with dogs or infrared the rain would protect them by washing away clues between the camp and the dock. The whole thing, he thought, was a quixotic farce; but one might as well maintain security. He slapped at a mosquito.

Cielo wasn’t the name he’d been born with; the nom de guerre had been chosen mainly for its meaninglessness. Cielo: sky. Only two of the nine men in his band knew his real name, not that it mattered; Rodriguez was not so astonishing a surname.

No one was in sight; that was in obeisance to the discipline of the camp — there was no knowing what sort of high-altitude equipment might be in search of them; the rule was to stay under cover at all times. Cielo entered the camp from tree to tree until he reached the covered walkway.

The camp had been built long ago by a Dutch oil company as quarters for its men during an exploration for petroleum in the river delta. When they found no oil they’d floated their rigs away to try again farther down the coast; they’d left the camp behind, as they usually did — it was cheaper to prefabricate a new one than to dismantle the old one and haul it away.

Cielo had left it all untouched; when he was gone he wanted to leave behind no sign of his presence. Nothing had been disturbed; machetes were forbidden — not even twigs were allowed to be broken.

He found Vargas and the big Draga boy in the money hut standing well away from the cage and looking expectantly toward him; he had interrupted their colloquy, startled them, and there was no way for Cielo to know whether they had been discussing the weather, the subject of sex, or the possibility of stealing the ten million dollars from Cielo.

He said, “It’ll rain soon.”

Vargas had a terrifying smile; it went with his size. It was said Vargas had broken a man’s back with his hands but Cielo knew the story to be false. Vargas was as gentle as he was massive; a man that big rarely needed to lose his temper. Cielo had known him twenty years. That was part of the trouble, he thought: We’re too old to believe in this nonsense. It takes children.

No, the money wouldn’t tempt Vargas; and as for the Draga boy, the idea might amuse him but in the end he would not steal because he did not need to steal. Emil Draga was the heir to his grandfather’s fortune, which would be enough to discourage him from taking suicidal risks. The lad wasn’t in this for money. He was in it, in an atavistic sense, for the adventure — he was a clever youth, big and muscular, ugly, stuffed with Draga legends of machismo and arrogance and financial bucaneering: Through determined rapacity the Dragas had acquired empires of cane and rum. Left to himself the hard and ruthless young Emil probably would become a corporate-takeover pirate, a Wall Street raider; if and when the old man died, Emil probably would move instantly to New York. Cielo had no illusions that The Movement could survive old Draga.

For the moment Emil would stay at Cielo’s right hand until the old man ordered him elsewhere or he saw an opportunity to flex his brutal muscles again.

In the cage with the money the squirrel and the parakeet showed no signs of illness. It had been long enough. Cielo said, “You can pack up the money and give their freedom back to the bird and the squirrel.”

Vargas showed his chilling smile. “It’s our day for being magnanimous. Today we give freedom back to everybody.”

“Don’t forget your hoods.” Cielo went toward the door wondering if he’d neglected anything. The parakeet and the squirrel had been caged forty-eight hours with the ransom money because Cielo had heard once about a rigged payment of money that had been radioactively treated so as to infect anyone who handled it. During the past days they also had studied the money under infrared and ultraviolet lights to make sure it hadn’t been dyed; they had sifted laboriously through the $50 and $100 notes looking for evidences of serial-number sequences or counterfeiting; they had subjected the money to every test they could think of. So far as Cielo could determine, it was clean. No doubt there’d been giveaway devices attached to the canister in which the money had been dropped from the helicopter, but they hadn’t even bothered to search it for transmitters. They’d left it where it had fallen until fourteen hours after the drop, when they’d moved it under cover of rain and transferred the money into the canvas sacks and gone out the way they’d come in — by canoe part of the way, outboard motorboat the rest.

He always preferred boats when it was possible. He was an island man, that was part of it, but also there was the fact that a boat left no footprints.

He said, “We’ll go in half an hour,” and left the hut.

He pushed the camouflage net aside and went aboard the ketch, stooping to clear his head when he went below. He cranked up the receiver and put on the headphones and consulted the dashboard chronograph; Julio was due to broadcast in three minutes. He waited with relaxed patience. He had learned patience long ago and practiced it all his life. In Sierra Maestra of the Cuban civil war, on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs waiting for the air cover that didn’t come, in Castro’s prison, in all the slow years since his escape from Cuba in 1964 — the nondescript demeaning jobs, the secrecy, the undercover work for old Draga. The slow acquisition and equally slow disintegration of the hard tight determined cell of Free Cubans. After the Bay of Pigs and the softening of U.S. relations with the Castro regime old Draga had lost any trust he might have had in the American government; he had gone it alone, trusting no one outside his own household and Cielo’s tight little band. They had practiced a conscious and businesslike paranoia — Cielo’s, alone among the movements, had successfully avoided infiltration by agents of Washington and Langley. Draga kept them isolated from all the other exile armies; Cielo had admitted to membership no new recruits — the commando was manned entirely by those with whom he had done time in the dripping Havana cells.

Until now. Emil Draga; he couldn’t be certain of Emil. The hothead had already exploded once. It was, he felt, another sign of the rot that had infected the group surreptitiously for years.

The radio crackled in his earphones. Good dependable Julio, the best of all possible brothers: mercurial, given to fits of gloom and sunshine, macho spirit and great lusty laughter and deep brooding sorrows. The loves of Cielo’s life were few: his three daughters, his wife, his brother. He cherished them — there was nothing else. The dream of glory had faded beyond recall.

“Merida to Constellation Three. Merida to Constellation Three.” Julio’s big voice, its boom thinned by static. “Message follows. Consignment arrived safely in Buenos Aires. All shipments on course and on schedule. Weather forecast light rain for eighteen hours. Have a good voyage. Merida out.”

Cielo switched it off. We’ve succeeded, then, he thought. The irony of it: empty gestures to placate a rich old man’s obsessions.

For a time it had been all right. He hadn’t minded; it was something to do. But no one was supposed to have been killed.

In his quarters he packed everything neatly into the B-4 bag, set it by the door and went around meticulously wiping everything with a damp towel to obscure prints, searching and searching again: Nothing must be left behind.

He went outside with the bag and set it on the pile of satchels and valises and knapsacks. Luz was there, his face an utter blank. “Put your mask on,” Cielo said, and went along under the covered walkway to the third hut. The last thing he did before reaching for the door’s latch was to press the heavy beard against his cheeks to make sure it was fixed in place. By now he was used to the pillow-stuffing under his belt. They’d remember him as a big man with a soft belly and all sorts of beard. It was what he wanted them to remember.

He unlocked the big padlock and put it in his pocket; it wouldn’t be needed again and he could not leave it here — it was remotely possible it might be traced: Locks had serial numbers.

Inside the windowless Quonset the air was stale with sweat. The Ambassador was in the middle of the floor doggedly doing push-ups; from the beginning he had put Cielo in mind of Alec Guinness in Bridge on the River Kwai — stuffy, blimpish, courageous. Cielo couldn’t picture himself ever trusting the man but he rather liked him and was pleased no harm had come to him.

Cielo spoke in English because he knew the Mexicans among the hostages understood it. He was not so sure of the Ambassador’s Spanish.

“We’re going to blindfold you. Don’t be frightened — you’re going to be set free in less than twelve hours. Our ransom demands have been met and we intend to honor our part of the bargain.”

He watched their reactions. Vacuous slow gapes; tears; explosions of relief; glares of disbelieving suspicion. One of the Agriculture Ministry men beamed gratefully at Cielo.

It was his first experience in the management of hostages but he had heard that they sometimes became sycophantically dependent on their captors. The friendliness with which most of them stared at him did not surprise him.

He said without conviction, “You’re close to freedom now. Please don’t risk it by foolish behavior. If anyone tries to run for it we’ll shoot without hesitation. If you co-operate you’ll be free by morning.”

They watched him expectantly. The Ambassador, on his feet now, tried to squint defiantly but his relief was too evident; finally he turned toward the others to hide his involuntary smile from Cielo.

He fingered the submachine gun absently. “In a moment we’ll blindfold you. You’ll be taken out of here and down the same path by which we arrived. We’re going to take you back aboard the same boat as before and you’ll be locked in the crew’s quarters forward. As you recall there are six bunks and a toilet. It will be cramped but it’s only for a few hours. Before daylight you’ll be set ashore and you’ll see the last of us.”

One of the American Marines glared at him, filled with distrust. That one had been a troublemaker from the beginning; in retrospect Cielo wistfully wished that if someone had had to be killed it could have been the Marine rather than the Peace Corps youth. The youth had made trouble with his mouth and drawn attention to himself but this Marine was far more dangerous in his silent scheming ways. Two nights ago he’d tried to organize an escape by digging out under the back wall. Vargas had heard the noise and they’d put a stop to it, bloodying the Marine’s nose as a lesson, but it hadn’t put a stop to the Marine’s brain. The Marine was dogged — a good soldier; Cielo didn’t lack admiration for him.

“When you’re set ashore you’ll find a burro trail leading into the forest. Follow the burro trail for several hours. It will be morning by then, you’ll have no trouble. By noon you’ll come to a paved highway. After that you’ll make your own fate. A car or a truck will come along, you’ll make your own decisions. By tomorrow night you’ll be home with your families. So please be patient just a little longer.”

He addressed this last directly to the Marine because he understood the Marine to be susceptible to reason. Threats would not dissuade the Marine from resistance or rebellion; reason might. It all depended whether he could convince the Marine that he actually meant to set them free. If the Marine believed he was destined for murder then no amount of logic would calm him.

The Marine’s thoughts were not readable. He met Cielo’s stare without guile, reserving judgment.

Cielo said, “It is, you see, in our own interests now that you all be released unharmed. It proves to the world that we are men of our word, and also in a practical sense it will help to calm the rage of your governments. If we were to murder you we’d become hunted outcasts everywhere. If we keep our word and release you, we are heroes — at least to those who agree with our purpose. I therefore beg your co-operation for a few more hours.”

He was thinking, To them I must be a terrifying apparition — the size of him, the beard, the machine gun, the unnaturally gruff rasp he used for a voice in their presence. It was a good thing they couldn’t see the fraud underneath. He was searching his brain: Was there anything else he ought to say to them? He couldn’t think of anything. It would have to do.

He backed toward the door. “In just a little while now,” he told them, and left. At the moment of going through the door he realized that if Soledad could see him now she would laugh at him.

He imagined the bubbling caress of her voice and thought, I am truly a figure of ridicule. The thought put him in a better frame of mind until he went into the big hut and crossed glances with young Emil. The youth gave him a rakishly defiant look, brimming with sullen resistance. That one had made a murderer of Cielo and the thing had gone altogether sour then; Cielo was in command and could not absolve himself of the responsibility but it was Emil who had killed the American boy, without orders, and thus put an end to Cielo’s plan that no one be injured. From that moment it had no longer been a bluff; up to then Cielo had been prepared to give it up if the target governments had refused the ransom demands but after Emil’s act there had been no choice. Once the American was dead it would have been foolhardy not to make use of the corpse so he had ordered it dumped in the town.

The American’s jiggling earnestness, his ceaseless talk, had irritated them all but in truth the American had meant no harm and done none, except to their nerves. Cielo thought, I had better light candles for him.

He’d already reprimanded Emil harshly but beyond that did it matter? It wasn’t Emil’s fault that nobody had told him the whole exercise was a sham, a bit of theater, a command performance for the entertainment of old man Draga. Emil, in committing them to the irrevocability of their course, had merely shown that he believed it wasn’t a lark; it was war. Well it was war only in Draga’s withered mind but Emil didn’t know that because there was no way for anyone to explain it to him. And maybe Emil was right. You had to do this sort of thing believing in it; otherwise you were worse than a fool.

Emil had served in the American Army toward the end of the Viet Nam absurdity; there he had learned to kill dispassionately and casually. Perhaps he had murdered the American boy to remind his older companions of what he thought they were up to. Cielo remembered the sullen contempt in Emil’s eyes when he’d admonished them beforehand. There’s to be no killing.

Such a stupid farce, he thought. The old man would have done better to entrust his job to Emil. For purposes of revolution you needed kids. People too young to have grown inhibitions.

Cielo fingered the submachine gun again. At least he could finish the job; that much he could do. Get the money back to Draga and make sure it wasn’t hijacked along the way by outsiders. But one thing was sure. No more hostages were going to be murdered. He’d shoot Emil before he’d let him kill another innocent.

The others in the room came forward slowly, sweeping the walls and the cot frames with damp toweling, preparing to quit the hut. Cielo drew back the cuff of his fatigue jacket to examine his watch. Just right. Any minute now the rain would begin and daylight would drain away. Soon they’d be on the river bound for the sea. Ghosts in a rainy night; no one would catch them now.

Chapter 5

When Carole emerged into the steamy Houston heat there was a ravening mob of journalists on the concrete steps and Howard took her arm, leading the way, trying to drive a wedge through them. Strobes half-blinded her and there was the flicker of lenses. One of the bayonet microphones almost took her jaw off. The reporters were all talking at once and she couldn’t understand a word; she cringed, shaded her eyes, got behind Howard and pressed forward, using him as a ram. “Get me out of this.”

Can you tell us how it feels... Have you been told if anything has been learned... What sort of boy was he... Your reaction to the Venezuelan delay that may have cost your son his life... How does it feel?

She screamed. “You fucking hyenas!” knowing the obscenity would render their films and recordings useless.

Howard was booming calmly, “Give us a break, this is no time...” His voice was lost in the babble.

He fed her into the car; she punched the lock button down and stared ahead stonily. Like slavering kids at a candy store window they pressed up against the windshield. She held herself rigid. Flashbulbs exploded. One of the reporters stumbled against the car, making it rock. Howard fought his way around and squeezed into the driver’s seat. When he turned the key in the ignition she said, “Run them down.”

“Take it easy. We’ll be out of this in a minute.” He gunned the engine in neutral, making a noise. It drove the pack into retreat and he pulled it gently away from the curb. When she looked back she saw the red light still winking above a TV camera’s zoom lens. Then they were around the corner and she slumped. “Ghouls.”

“I know. I know.” He pulled up at a red light. “Look, we’d better drive up to Beaumont and catch a plane there. They might be covering the airport here.”

“You go ahead. Drop me by a taxi. I’ll check into a motel.”

“What’s the point of hanging on here?”

“I’m going to wait and fly back to Virginia with the body when they’re finished with it.”

“That’s morbid.”

“One of us has to do it.”

“They’ll send it on. We’ve got to get back to Alexandria — the funeral arrangements have to be made...”

“You go ahead then.”

“It’s something else, isn’t it?”

She said, “In all the madness I didn’t really get a chance to talk to that Marine.”

“You won’t get a crack at him for weeks, Carole. He’ll be closeted in debriefing sessions with the others. They won’t let him talk to outsiders until they’ve squeezed him dry — they may not even let him talk afterward.”

“I have to know,” she said.

“There’s a better chance of that in Washington than there is here. At least we may be able to squeeze some information out of O’Hillary.”

“There’s a taxi. Pull over.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “If you’re determined I’ll take you to a hotel. Any preference?”

“I’ve never been in Houston in my life. How do I know?”

The car’s air conditioner blew a dry chill against her face. The street was a wide boulevard lined with structures that looked tentative and temporary; it might have been Los Angeles. Traffic endlessly streaming. Life goes on, she thought with bitter banality.

At the first motor hotel she said, “That one will do,” not caring; Howard pulled in under the porte-cochere and opened the trunk to get out her overnight bag. The heat was close and depressingly heavy.

By the room, key in hand, she said, “Go ahead. I’ll be all right. I’ve got phone calls to make.” She opened it and pushed inside.

“I don’t like leaving you just now.”

She turned, lurching; walked blindly toward a door.

“Where are you going?”

“The bathroom,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m all right.”

“Don’t go. Stay here.”

“Howard, I’m going to make a fool of myself and cry.”

“Fine. I’d rather you cried here with me than by yourself in there.”

She sat down. “I’m sorry to be such a fool. I’ll get over it in a minute.”

“Suppose I stay on a while. I can take a late-night flight. Let’s have dinner before I go.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve just remembered I have a terrible headache.”

He pressed his hands together until she heard the knuckles crack. “I wish I knew what to do for you.”

“Nothing. I’ll be all right. You can depart with a clear conscience.”

“Please don’t be like that.”

“I’m sorry.” She was too exhausted to argue.

“Look, if there’s anything—”

“The fact is right now at the moment I’m unable to meet the emotional demands of this and I need to be left alone to collect myself. If you stay much longer we’ll start degrading each other.”

After he left she went to the window and watched his car until he got into it and drove away into the traffic. Failing to collect her thoughts she attempted to rest but her eyes wouldn’t stay shut and finally she made a number of phone calls trying to arrange a meeting with the Marine but everything was shut to her.

Then she had a half-formed idea. There’d been a dimly familiar face in that mob of journalists on the steps. She went back to the phone. It required three calls. One to Los Angeles Information; armed with the number she called the L.A. paper; armed by the Examiner with a Houston number she called Dwiggins’ hotel.

Dwiggins arrived in something under twenty minutes and gave her a baffled smile.

“Come in,” she said, “I’m unarmed.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want something from you.”

“Quid pro quo?”

“Yes. You can have an interview if you think it’s worth it.”

“You’re front-page copy right now. Celebrity mother of terrorist victim.” He came in but seemed hesitant about shutting the door. She made a vague gesture and he closed it and crossed gingerly to a chair where he sat up on the edge like an expectant pupil.

Dwiggins was fortyish and quite fat, his hair prematurely white and wispy; he had a journalistically bibulous nose and wry eyes that had seen everything.

She said, “I noticed you in that lynch mob but it didn’t register until afterward.”

“I’m flattered you remember me at all.”

“Your column on me wasn’t particularly friendly, as I recall — something about me being the apostate leader of a new wave of sentimentality and cornball trash — but you did me the extraordinary courtesy of printing what I’d actually said in the interview. I find that unique.”

He dipped his head an inch. “Thank you.”

“Are you also old-fashioned enough to honor an agreement to keep something off the record?”

“If the agreement is made beforehand. I won’t print anything without your permission.”

“You won’t even discuss it among your friends. Fair enough?”

“All right. But—”

“The quid pro quo, I know. I’ll give you an interview you can print. This is something else.”

Dwiggins acceded with a dip of his broad face.

“I’ll make it as painless for you as possible.” She nodded toward the tape recorder, granting permission. “You want to know how I feel about the death of my son. I feel every which way — like a kaleidoscope. Right at this moment I have an acute desire never to feel anything again.”

“Sure.”

“I’m sure you don’t need remarks from me about the senselessness of this tragedy. Of course it’s arbitrary, it’s a grisly waste of a brilliant human life, it’s pointless and maddening.”

He said quietly, “Have you cried much?”

“Yes, I have tears but I don’t let them blur my vision. Mainly right now I feel rage. I want revenge, you see. I can’t help it, I can’t rationalize it away. It’s intensely personal and I’m sure that’s a useless response to such an impersonal attack but that’s how I feel. I want these terrorists punished.”

“Brought to justice.”

“Justice,” she said, “doesn’t come into it. I’m talking about emotions now. Justice is an abstract concept.” She made a loose fist and contemplated it; she looked up at the reporter. “I want to be there, physically present, the day these animals are destroyed. I’ll get satisfaction from it — I know, nothing can bring my son back. But all the same. It’s what I feel.”

Dwiggins said, “Tell me about Robert.”

At one point he stopped her to flip the tape cassette over to Side Two. They kept talking and it was unreal to her: Two people conversing normally as if the world still were the same as it had been a week ago. She tried to be candid and articulate. She tried to listen carefully to his questions and respond appropriately. But the words — both Dwiggins’ and her own — broke up in her mind. Half the time she was not aware of what she was saying, although a canny part of her mind kept hold of the secrets that had to remain off the tape and off the record; she talked automatically but not carelessly.

When the tape was finished Carole said, “Thank you. You could have made it much harder for me.”

“I promise you there won’t be any snide asides about cornball trash.” He had relaxed during the interview, slumping back in the chair, crossing his legs, watching her amiably while she spoke. He was not a threatening figure. She sensed a great deal of sadness in him but had no clue to its source.

She asked if he wanted to drink and he declined, surprising her. “I’m a bit of a lush,” he confided, “but I keep it under control and I don’t drink when I’m working.”

“Do you mind if I have one?”

“Not at all.”

It was a two-ounce screw-top bottle of Scotch she’d dropped in her handbag on the airplane. She sucked it straight from the nipple of the bottle. “We go off the record now,” she said. “All the way off the record. This is exclusively between you and me and it goes no farther.”

“Fair enough. What do you want me to do?”

“Did you ever know my brother?”

“Warren Marchand? No, not personally. I admired his work a great deal. He was a hell of a writer.”

“I thought you might have known him. That series you did for the Examiner about the CIA mercenaries in the Montagnard country.”

“That was years ago. I’m astonished you’d remember it.”

“I remember it because it was the kind of thing my brother would have done.”

“I take that as a considerable compliment.”

“It was meant as one,” she said. “Is that the only time you’ve departed from your usual Hollywood beat?”

“No. I did a series on the Alaska pipeline a few years ago. And I was in Angola a while during that mess. I covered the aftermath of the Allende assassination in Chile, too. Once in a while I ask for a hard-news assignment. It reminds me of the real world out there beyond the tinsel.”

“Do you still keep in touch with any of the people you interviewed on those stories?”

“Which people?”

“Mercenaries.”

His eyelids dropped; he gave her a long scrutiny before he replied. “This is hardly the century for that kind of romantic gesture, you know.”

“Maybe it’s a good idea whose time has come back. I’m descended from good solid Norman stock. People whose record of violence and rapacity would make Caligula look like Shirley Temple. If you look at it that way it would be completely out of character for me to sit by and do nothing in the face of this — this, what can I call it? Obscenity? Affront?”

“You’re being irrational, you know.”

“Of course I am. If God had wanted us to be entirely reasonable he’d have made us in the image of a Univac computer.”

Dwiggins said, “Forgive me if I pick this up as if it were ticking.”

“It won’t be any risk for you, whatever happens.”

“I don’t want to be the one to send you into the jungle.”

“You’re a good guy, Dwiggins.”

He said, “What do you know about terrorists?”

“Not much.”

“I’ve made a few observations over the years. Want to hear them?”

“Certainly.”

“The terrorist is a juvenile delinquent, whatever his age. He’s not much different from a kid who gets into drugs or joins the Moonies or makes his bedroom into a shrine to some rock group. Does that surprise you? He senses misplaced feelings all around him, and inside him. The terrorist can’t stand the idea of being an ordinary person like anybody else. And he can’t stand the idea that ordinary people may actually enjoy their lives. In a sense he has an amazing affinity for the banal — violence, I think, is one of the stupidest but most natural responses to frustration, and what’s the real difference between terrorism and football? The problem isn’t terrorists, the problem’s the world that creates them. When things get so big and complex and impersonal that no individual feels he can affect anything around him, he becomes sullen and apathetic and he resents his impotence and sooner or later he explodes. One way or another. We all have our own private explosions. We’re all caught up in the obsession with novelty — marching to ever new tunes, excited by ever new fads of salvation — astrology, drugs, gurus, revolutions. One man’s ‘est’ is another man’s terrorism. Do you see what I’m saying to you? I think you seem to have managed to convince yourself that the people who killed your boy aren’t human. It’s the key psychosis of warfare. The enemy isn’t human because he’s the enemy.”

“Dwiggins,” she said with a tight little smile, “you can take your social theories and wrap them in sandpaper and shove them all the way up.”

He professed not to hear her. “I’m not excusing them. God knows they’re more to be censured than pitied. But look, when children drop and smash their toys you don’t murder them, you just clean up the mess as best you can.”

“These are not infants. They’re responsible for their acts.”

Dwiggins sighed. “You’re convinced they’re not going to be apprehended?”

“I have no doubt of it.”

“You may be right. If they’re half clever they’ll stay out of reach until the world loses interest in them. There won’t be any extended outcry for their capture. The people — including politicians — the people get exercised but they never get concerned. The voice of the people is mainly an indifferent groan.”

She let him run on. He was talking himself into it; she didn’t need to prompt him.

He made a last-ditch effort at resistance. “You don’t like to feel that you’re an ordinary person who can be pushed around by these events. That’s something you have in common with the terrorists — your motives aren’t much different from theirs and now you’re proposing to use their methods, too. Does that leave any difference between you and them?”

“I never aspired to the sainthood.”

“It’s a kamikaze idea.” Dwiggins’ elbows were on his knees. He exposed his palms to her. “You are nuts, you know that?”

“I grant the possibility.”

“Certifiable,” he said. “It costs money, I expect, and nobody could make any promises.”

“I know. I have some money and I don’t expect promises.”

He said, “I want to cover this story.”

“Let’s see how it works out first. I may let you know how things go. Then again—”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I did you a favor,” she told him, “and I asked you one in return. If you want to renege I’ll try someone else, but—”

“What do you want? A private army?”

“I want one man. Someone who can find them — someone who knows that part of the shadows.”

He brooded at her and she met his glance. She was tired of his evasions and admonishments; apparently he saw that, for he gave a quick little nod. “I’ll ask around. Where will you be?”

She felt at the same time relieved, satisfied, and all at once frightened — as if a door were slowly closing, shutting her into a private hell.

Chapter 6

In the fading September light the trees were heavy with dark leafery and she walked heavily. The funeral was still an open wound and she had no idea when it might begin to heal; she anticipated nothing.

O’Hillary in his office was as before: all plastic surface, running his hand through that wavy hair of his. A quick pleasant smile and cold eyes. Smooth, cynical and adept; earnest and compassionate, without an ounce of feeling in it. He probably made love as if he were dictating a memo. According to the white-gold ring he was married and she found this astonishing.

“I appreciate your coming,” he said. He pronounced “appreciate” with a very precise “c.” “We’ve debriefed Ambassador Gordon and some of the other hostages. I thought you might like to know the results. I’m afraid for the most part they’re negative. We know there were at least seven terrorists. The leader was a big man with a bushy beard. The beard may have been false, of course. The others wore masks or hoods at all times. They spoke with Spanish accents. At least one or two of them have some background in seamanship — they transported the hostages in a sailing boat. Now as to the death of, ah, Robert Lundquist, I’m afraid we’ve learned less than we’d have liked to learn by this time. As you know, one of the Marines on the security detail had been struck a severe blow on the head, and evidently your son was concerned there might be concussion — he badgered the terrorists to get medical attention for the Marine. After a while your son was taken out of the hut. The others thought he was being taken to see the leader so he could press his request for medical attention for the Marine. That was the last any of them saw of him. They didn’t see the murder take place, so I’m afraid his murderer won’t be identified until we’ve apprehended the terrorists and interrogated them.”

“You’ve found the hiding place, haven’t you?”

“It’s being searched. Every lead is being pursued.” Something — possibly the coldness of her face — prompted him to add, “This gang seems to be some sort of wild-card outfit. None of the known Cuban exile groups knows anything about them. We’ll come up with results, I think I can promise you that, but it’s going to take time.”

“If a crime isn’t solved in the first forty-eight hours it probably never will be solved. Statistical fact, Mr. O’Hillary.” One of Robert’s statistical facts. “I’m not a supplicant begging for scraps. I’m a citizen. I’m the one who pays your salary.”

O’Hillary’s face colored a bit. “Of course I understand how upset you are. But we’re on the same side, aren’t we.”

“I don’t think we are.”

“Isn’t that a bit — well, paranoid?”

“It’s consistent with the facts.”

“Consistent? You could say that about a cathartic. We’re doing our jobs, Mrs. Marchand, as best we know how to do them. There’s no massive conspiracy to cover up the facts about your son’s death. I think you must be careful to make sure your anxieties don’t drive you into emotional difficulties. I know this is an excruciating cliché, but nothing any of us can do about this can bring your son back or make up for your loss.”

“I haven’t entirely taken leave of my senses,” she said. “I simply want to be able to face myself when I think of my son. Never mind, Mr. O’Hillary.” She saw it was no good; there was no getting through to the apparatchiks; she got up and left.

It wasn’t much of a walk back to the hotel. An old woman went by walking an infinitesimal dog, and somewhere a siren shrieked; a young man came along bearing cut flowers in white tissue wrappings, beamed at her and went on by with a spring in his step. She nearly snarled at him. She knew she was going to have to do something about this rage before it destroyed her.

At the desk she found a message from Dwiggins; in the room she dialed with the eraser end of a pencil and sat tapping the pencil against her teeth, listening to it ring. Dwiggins answered on the fifth ring and said, “Call me matchmaker. Have I got a boy for you.”

“Good grief. You’re drunk.”

“Do you want to hear this or not? You’ll love the guy. He’s this big lug, got his nose right next to his ear, hairy all over. Just like a movie star.”

“Yeah,” she said. “King Kong.”

Dwiggins laughed uproariously.

“All right,” she said. “Who and what is he?”

“Crobey. Harry Crobey. I knew him in the highlands. Listen, the guy’s a creature of clandestine warfare the way a tiger’s a creature of the jungle. He’s the kind of guy you’re looking for.” She heard the sound of ice in a glass.

She said impatiently, “Tell me about him.”

“Who?”

“Crobey. Harry Crobey. For God’s sake.”

“Oh yeah, him.” The phone seemed to drop from Dwiggins’ mouth. She vaguely heard him muttering, then after a moment his voice came back on the line. “Sorry, I dropped the phone. You still there?”

“I’m still here.”

“Tell you about Crobey,” he said. “He used to fly in and out of the highlands on this old Air America plane, DC-3.I went in with him a couple times.”

“He’s a pilot?”

“Yeah, he was then. He’d take off with a six-pack of beer by the seat. Drink the beer, refill the empties by urinating in them, drop them out the window on Cong villages. I mean the guy’s beautiful. A top-grade infidel.”

“You do make him sound attractive,” she said.

Dwiggins’ belch sounded cavernous. “I talked to him. He’s between jobs right now. He’s willing to listen to your proposition.”

“Where and when?”

“Nassau. If you want to talk to him you have to go there. He can’t come to Washington right now.”

“Why not?”

“Maybe he ought to tell you that. I don’t like telling tales out of school. You haven’t had second thoughts, have you?”

“No.”

She heard him drink — sucking swallows. “I hope they don’t write this up as Dwiggins’ folly,” he said. “I hope you don’t get killed or something.”

“Tell me about this Crobey person.”

“Well there are people who like him. And then there are people who find him a thoroughly poisonous creep. You mustn’t trust any of these guys. They can be trusted to obey the laws of their own existence — they’d never walk into a potential trap without reconnoitering the exits first, they’d never rape a woman if they thought her husband could do them any harm, they’d never shove a stack of chips out to the middle of the table if they didn’t think they could beat the other guy. But dope, extortion, murder, any of the really vile crimes — those are paper laws to these guys. I’m not trying to impugn Crobey particularly. I’m just telling you about these people as a class. They don’t operate according to the inhibitions you’re used to. They’re pretty wild.”

“All right, you’ve forewarned me. What about Crobey?”

“You ask him. He’ll tell you whatever he wants you to know about himself. It’s better that way.”

Hooting pedestrians out of the way, the taxi carried her along a stifling narrow passage. Black people occasionally stooped to peer at her through the open window of the cab. Their faces were sullen like thunderheads.

The driver kept up a running tourist-folder commentary and she didn’t quite have the nerve to shut him up. Finally the machine stopped abruptly, almost pitching her out of her seat, and the driver said cheerfully, “We here, miss,” pointing up through the windshield toward a ramshackle stoop, a collapsing porch roof and the dismal doorless doorway under it. Rooms to Let.

She paid him twelve dollars: the fare from the airport — exorbitant but not worth a quarrel. She slung the overnight bag by its strap over her shoulder and clipped up the worn steps. Hunks of stucco had peeled off the walls leaving concave gray scars. Once there’d been a front door but the powdered remains of its frame testified to the earnestness of the termites that had demolished it. A child startled her, bursting out of the darkness and rushing past her with a leap to clear the steps; another child followed, giving chase, whooping in mock anger. Urchins, both of them in rags. She might have been in Harlem.

A wooden sign hung on chains from the corridor ceiling above a door on the right, letters painted in a fading crescent legend: Manager — Ring Bell. She rang.

A black woman opened it. Very fat and, from the smell and the eyes, a little drunk — cheerfully high: She smiled beatifically in Carole’s face. “Yes mom?”

“I’m looking for Harry Crobey.”

“Oh, you the lady from the States. Crobey expecting you. He gone down Paradise Bar.” The fat woman squeezed past her and waddled to the porch. She wore a sleeveless dress, patterns of red and gold; when she pointed up the street the flab dangled under her arm and billowed like a sail. “You go up that corner and turn the left, mom, you see Paradise Bar up there.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes mom.” The woman grinned again and stumbled back into the darkness.

Walking around the corner she felt dark eyes on her and was unnerved, too conscious of her whiteness. In skirt and flimsy blouse she felt unclothed. Traffic darted through the streets, old cars stinking of badly tuned exhausts, and there were dozens of blacks and whites and it was broad daylight but just the same she was uneasy with fear. Impatiently she chastised herself for being racist; she turned the corner briskly and found the Paradise Bar a block away on the waterfront, the Paradise Island bridge looming in graceful arc beyond it. Pretty little boats zigzagged through the Nassau passage and off to the left she saw the stack of a cruise liner. The heat dissipated remarkably in the length of that single block; a breeze came off the water, cool and dry.

The bar was vast and low-ceilinged, stinking of beer and pounding with jukebox regurgitations of steel-drum band music. A group of young men in T-shirts stood at a pin-bowling table sliding the chuck around with boisterous violence; five or six men were ranged along the bar and the only white in the place was a man at a tiny three-legged table by the wall. He watched her with no expression until she walked toward him. Then he stood up. Not excessively tall; not King Kong at all. He looked as if he had once been presentable enough but had gone a bit to seed. He had a lot of sable hair thatched over his forehead; his white shirt, open down to the third button and with the sleeves rolled up, was clean enough but needed ironing — perhaps it had been too long in a suitcase. She put him at more than forty but the more defeated her.

She said with a trace of uncertainty, “Mr. Crobey?”

“Yeah, Harry Crobey.” English accent — that or South African or Australian.

“Carole Marchand.” She thrust out her hand. He took it with a bit of a smile. His hand was coarse but he wasn’t a knuckle-crusher.

“Have a seat. What can I get you?” He had a harsh deep voice.

“Fruit juice, a soft drink, I don’t mind. I think alcohol would give me a headache in this heat.”

“If you’re not used to the heat you’ll get the headache with or without booze. But whatever you want.”

“All right. Would they have Dewar’s here?”

“I doubt it. They’ll have something that passes for Scotch whisky. On the rocks?”

She watched him walk to the bar. He had a bit of a sailor’s roll to his walk. The big head was set square on a size-seventeen neck and his biceps were hard beneath the rolled-up sleeves. Very narrow hips like a horseman. When he returned from the bar bearing drinks she saw why he rolled his walk: He had a very slight limp and the roll almost concealed it.

He showed that he could smile. She felt she could have lit a match on his jaw. She said, “You’re not exactly what I’d expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Three hundred pounds, a brush crew cut and a loud brutal voice.”

“A thug.”

“Maybe. Dwiggins was a little vague.”

“Probably drunk,” Crobey said.

“You are a mercenary, aren’t you?”

“Honey, I’m Harry Crobey. Also I mercenare.”

“Why?”

If he was surprised by the question he didn’t show it. “It’s a living,” he replied.

She had wanted to shake him a bit, find out what was under the facade of easy self-confidence; it hadn’t worked and she was momentarily nonplussed. She looked about the cavernous barroom. The jukebox had gone silent. The place seemed to extend away into an infinity of darknesses. She said, “Where do they keep the caskets?”

He didn’t chuckle or smile. “You want to make small talk all afternoon?”

“Look, I suppose you’ve done this lots of times. I’m new to it.”

“Okay. The first thing is, most of the people in my trade don’t like to be called mercenaries. It’s like calling a Japanese a Nip. Personally I don’t mind it, I know what I am. But keep it in mind for future reference.”

“I wasn’t planning to make it a habit.”

“Hiring yourself a mercenary? I guess not — you don’t look the type. But soldier-of-fortune has a better ring to it.”

“That sounds like something out of a cheap men’s magazine.”

“What kind of literature did you think these guys read?”

“But you’re different, is that it?”

“You’re a little abrasive, you know that? What’s your first name again?”

“Carole,” she said. “You can call me Miss Marchand.”

“More like Mizz Marchand from the look of things.” He waved his glass toward her shoulder. “There’s the door, right there, behind you. Any time you want to excuse yourself.” He was chewing up an ice cube the way a dog would grind up a bone — with loud sharp crunching noises.

She said, “I thought you needed a job.”

“You can look at that one of two ways. Either I’m unemployed or I’m free.”

“From the looks of your boarding house—”

“I eat.”

She said abruptly, “Why couldn’t you come to Washington to discuss this? Dwiggins offered you the fare money, didn’t he?”

“I’ve temporarily exiled myself from the States. To avoid alimony jail. Next question?”

“You’re married to an American?”

“I used to be. The answer to your next question is Liverpool. But I left there when I was fourteen. My passport’s American. Naturalized. I mention that in case you’re leery of foreigners.” He was studying the plunge of her neckline. Then his eyes lifted and he smiled with cool insincerity — the polite wintry insolence of a clerk in an exclusive shop. Belatedly she saw the extent to which he was putting her on.

She said, “As long as we’re inventorying your personnel file, what’s the limp? A battle injury?”

“Sometimes when I’m drunk with a pretty lady I claim that’s what it was. Actually the ankle got busted by a bouncer in Macao — a bar that looked kind of like this one. It wouldn’t have caused any trouble but it was set by some virgin surgeon who didn’t know an ankle bone from a hole in the ground. I can still run as fast as I need to. If that enters into your considerations.”

“Dwiggins told you the nature of the job.”

“Sort of. Your kid was killed by the people who snatched the Ambassador in Mexico. You’re not the type to go lying down on the tracks. That’s what he said. I see he had a point. You want them tracked down.”

“I want them to hang.”

His laugh was a bit cruel. “Here I’m the one who’s supposed to be the nihilistic professional but that’s as cold-blooded as anything I’ve heard in a while. What do you do for a living again? Produce films?”

“I don’t produce them. I direct them. Sometimes I write them.”

“Same difference. I don’t go to the cinema much. I think the last one I saw was My Fair Lady. Not counting some Roy Rogers movies on black-and-white TV sets dubbed into Portuguese.” He picked up her empty glass and went to the bar. She tried to compose herself. She’d expected a crude simple tough who would take her money and obey orders without questions. But on reflection she realized that type wouldn’t have been very useful to her. The thought startled her: Had her intentions been that unrealistic? Was she in fact merely going through the motions of something she didn’t really mean to carry through? Was her passion already cooling?

He settled into his chair. The table was hardly big enough for two glasses and four elbows. Crobey said, “Tell me about yourself, then,” contriving to look interested.

“What for?”

“I’m having a little trouble sizing you up. You’re a product of that lofty bit of WASP society where they take charm and wit for granted and that doesn’t sit too easy with the image of somebody who travels two thousand miles to sit in a grungy saloon hiring a middle-aged gunslinger.”

Middle-aged gunslinger. He had a curious way of regarding himself simultaneously as a romantic hero and a worn-out loser. In an odd way he reminded her of New York and the unwashed tramps who sat in Washington Square Park playing chess: at once quaint and repellent. Crobey was clean enough in the hygienic sense — he was close-shaven, he’d had a haircut recently, there wasn’t any grime under his fingernails — but he exuded the shabbiness of a well-worn coat, expensive once but gone green with too much use.

The jukebox began to thunder again. Crobey bellowed at the bartender: “Turn that thing down.”

The bartender’s black startled scowl came around to their table; after a moment Crobey’s expression impelled the man to go around to the end of the bar and reach behind the jukebox. The volume dropped to half its former decibels. The bartender returned to his slot without looking at Crobey again. It made Carole look at her companion in a new way: Something in him had terrified the bartender.

Apparently struck by the edge of the same reaction, the four black youths at the pin-bowl table strolled insolently out of the bar, one of them looking back over his shoulder, staring at Crobey.

She said, “I had a brother, a reporter — Warren Marchand. Did you know him?”

“Yes. He was all right. Kind of stupid to go in there and get killed the way he did, but I liked him. His stuff was good.” He pushed the tumbler of whisky toward her. “Now drink up and tell me everything you know about this situation.

He took her to a fish place for dinner. The decor was primitive and most of the clientele was black. It wasn’t on the tourist maps, she was sure of that. But the sea bass was edible. Crobey pumped her for details and she found herself remembering trivial things she’d have forgotten if he hadn’t goaded her into retrieving them: the hint, from Dwiggins, that the Mexican reporter (Ochoa? Ortega?) thought he’d recognized the leader; the mention, from Howard who’d got it from O’Hillary, that the leader had a Spanish accent but not Cuban — possibly Puerto Rican. Things like that. Crobey grilled her for hours, going back over the same things until she was sick of it. Finally she said, “Have you made up your mind yet?”

“I’ll have a crack at it.”

“Mind if I ask why?”

“The only suitable reward for a spy is money. Napoleon said that. I expect to charge you a lot of money. In return for which I offer the possibility, but not the guarantee, that I may be able to dig these guys up for you.”

“How much money? I’m not the Federal Reserve Bank.”

“A thousand a week, American. A bonus of twenty thousand if I find them. And don’t bargain with me. It’s firm.”

“All right. You’re hired,” she said. “You’ve worked for the CIA, I gather. Who else?”

“People who paid me to fly for them or fight for them. You can ask around if you want — a few of them might give me references. You want some names? A lot of them are dead by now, of course. Assassinated in one coup or another. Most recently I was over in Ethiopia but I got sick of it.”

“So you just bugged out?”

“I served out the contract. I don’t just bug out. I’ve done contract work in Rhodesia and back in the old days over in the Congo and some other places. A few years ago I was down in Angola. I never sign on for more than six months. You get tired of places.”

“Do you still fly a plane?”

“When I can get one. I’ve still got my ticket, AFT license, but I don’t do it for fun. I’m not a Sunday warrior.”

“You always fight on the same side?”

“What do you mean?”

“Anti-Communist, I suppose.”

He said, “Not always.”

It was the sum of his answer. She smiled a bit. “You’re as free with information as a gaffer in a poker game.”

“What do you want to know? My ideology? I haven’t got one. Zealots bore the hell out of me. I hang around revolutions because that’s where the work is. You ever read a writer named Ambrose Bierce? I had a long stint in a Montagnard village once, the only book in a language I could read being The Devil’s Dictionary. I committed a couple of his definitions to memory. One of them sums it all up. Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.”

Her eyes puckered with suspicion. She had a feeling he probably had committed a lot of things to memory. She was puzzled by the mask he wore.

As if reading her thoughts he said, “Some people are satisfied with make-believe, or spectator sports or maybe playing a tough game of handball or squash. I’m not the vicarious type, that’s all. Look, we belong to a race that reaches for the moon and then plays golf on its surface. Why get worked up over what this species does to itself? Maybe when I was a lot fresher and greener I had a small capacity for sustained indignation against social injustice but you find it dwindles quickly with age.”

“You’re peculiar,” she said.

“I had a traumatic childhood you see. When I was three years old my father was taller than me. I never got over it.”

“How can you find these Cubans, or whoever, if you don’t even know their names?”

“If I start to look like a proper nuisance they may come after me. Anyhow it’s worth a try. It can’t be done too obviously, of course — if they think I’m advertising for attention they’ll pull back.”

“Isn’t that risky? What happens if they catch you?”

“I’ll be dead and you’ll be shocked.”

“Do you need to be so cold-blooded?”

“You’re pretty defensive, aren’t you? No need to feel guilty, ducks. I’m volunteering, remember? I wouldn’t be much use to you if I was the sort that went all a-twitter every time somebody threatened to cut a sunroof in my skull.”

Carole grunted dubiously: Now he was flexing his muscles again.

He said, “Have you given any thought to what happens if I find this lot for you?”

“I’m not asking you to kill them. Just find them.”

“You needn’t worry. I don’t go around killing people where there may be witnesses afterward. I don’t know of any country where you can defend yourself for murdering a man by producing written instructions from a woman ordering you to kill him.”

She said, “I want them exposed. Tried and convicted and executed. I’ve got to force Washington’s hand because, to mix a mean metaphor, they’re dragging their feet. Not to mention that exposing the terrorists is a good way to guarantee their failure.”

Crobey studied her. He mused. “You’re a lady who’s lived her whole life in a neat plastic-wrapped civilization where people think there’s a difference between the politician in column A and the politician in column B. Somewhere along the line something blows up and you make the amazing discovery that the world contains hate and violence and injustice. Most civilized folks respond forthrightly to that shocking discovery by sulking and whining and complaining. Ducks, I admire you a little because you’ve got the gumption to do something about it, but let’s not pretend that exposing this handful of clowns is going to effect much improvement in the situation. You want revenge, fine, I’ll do what I can for my thousand a week, but let’s not pretty it up with talk about justice and that rot.”

“Where did you pick up that speech? Humphrey Bogart?”

“I’m trying to make a point,” Crobey said, not without a bit of a smile. “My getting hanged or put away in Ures prison forty years isn’t included in the price of your ticket. If it gets dicey I’ll shoot to kill — and so will they. This isn’t an exercise in schoolbook justice. You want to understand that right up front, ducks.”

“I gave up believing in the tooth fairy a while ago, Crobey. I don’t really need your sermons on disillusionment — all I’m asking you to do is find them for me. Now shall we talk about the down payment?”