The Mordida Man

6

The deceptively slight man with the sleek gray head and the small prim mouth had heard all of the words before many times. Words of the barracks, the barnyard, the oil rig, the pool room, and the saloon. Short, harsh-sounding words mostly, with three consonants and a single vowel. He never used them himself and disapproved of their use by others, on the grounds that they betrayed a lack of imagination. Yet he was neither surprised nor dismayed that the words were coming now in a furious stream from the mouth of the President of the United States.

If anything, the words bored him, even though they were being used to describe his own incompetence and lack of character. So after a short span of listening, he tuned the words out and thought instead about his roses.

The slight man whose roses often won prizes was Thane Coombs, who nine months before, on his fifty-eighth birthday, had been named Director of Central Intelligence. Coombs was also nearly the last of the World War II OSS veterans who once had permeated the Central Intelligence Agency. That he had lasted long enough to be named Director was tribute more to his political skills, which were adroit, than to his intelligence, which, while not quite true brilliance, still left him far cleverer than most.

When after six minutes the President showed no signs of running down, Coombs let his mind drift to an idle examination of the fact that the man sitting behind the Woodrow Wilson desk had been only three years old when a twenty-two-year-old Lieutenant Thane Coombs had parachuted into France near Dijon as a member of a three-man Jedburgh team. But since this was only a notional comparison and really not very interesting, Coombs decided to interrupt the President in mid-word. The word he interrupted was “asshole.”

“It wasn’t us, Mr. President.”

The President completed the word he had begun, but stopped in mid-sentence. He gaped, a mouth-wide-open gape of surprise and disbelief, until he realized what he was doing and clamped his mouth shut into a harsh line of total suspicion.

“Not you?” he said, making it somehow an accusation rather than a question.

“No, sir,” Coombs said, choosing his next words with precision. “The Agency had nothing whatsoever to do with the abduction or disappearance of the Venezuelan national Gustavo Berrio-Brito — sometimes known as Felix. Nothing whatsoever.”

“The Libyans think you kidnapped him.”

“I deeply regret that our still rather flamboyant reputation may have endangered your brother and—”

The President cut him off. “Who?”

“Who kidnapped Felix, you mean?”

That drew a sharp impatient nod from the President.

“I have no idea. None.”

“But it wasn’t you?” McKay said, still almost hoping that Coombs was lying.

“No, sir. You see, Felix— We may as well call him that, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Well, Felix is, or perhaps now I should say was, the leader of a five-man or five-person terrorist group which insists on calling itself Red Anvil Five.”

“Always some cute fucking name.”

“Yes, I tend to agree. The group consisted of Felix, of course; a Japanese man; a German; a Frenchwoman, and another Venezuelan who was also a woman and also Felix’s sometime mistress. Her name was Maria Luisa de la Cova.”

“Was?”

Coombs nodded. “She was found dead early this morning in London. In Hammersmith, to be precise. By some children. She had been tied to a chair and garroted. Also tortured. Burned.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know.”

“Can’t you guess?”

Coombs hesitated, because he never liked to guess about anything. “It’s possible that she may have been the one who betrayed Felix to his abductors, whoever they might be.”

“This Anvil Five bunch killed a lot of people, as I recall.”

“Seventy-two to be precise,” said Coombs, who always strove to be just that. He started ticking the dead bodies off on his left hand. “Fourteen in Manila. Thirty-two in that EL AL plane at Brussels. Sixteen in the Gatwick shootout. Six more in Rome — not counting nine kneecappings there. And those four in Beirut, who were probably Israeli agents, although that was never confirmed.”

“And there’re just five of them?”

“Only five. And now without Felix and the de la Cova woman there are only three.”

“Who finances them?”

“At first they were self-financing. Bank robberies and kidnappings. French banks exclusively, for some reason, and Italian kidnappings. Usually either Rome or Milan. After the Beirut killings, Qaddafi offered them sanctuary in Tripoli. Felix and Qaddafi hit it off immediately, kindred souls, I should imagine, and became extremely close. After that, Anvil Five didn’t have to worry about money. When Mourabet came to power after Qaddafi’s death, he and Felix developed an equally close relationship. Perhaps even closer. In fact, someone floated a rumor that it was Felix who actually did for Qaddafi but we’re confident it was only that, a rumor.”

The President studied Coombs coldly for several moments and then seemed to reach a decision. He opened a desk drawer, took out the small Gucci box, and placed it in what seemed to be the exact center of his desk. “I want you to see something,” he said and removed the lid.

Coombs looked. “Mercy!” he said, which was as close as he ever permitted himself to an exclamation. “An ear, it would seem.”

“My brother’s.”

“Your brother’s,” Coombs said in a flat tone which he believed to be full of commiseration.

“They sliced off my brother’s ear and sent it by the Nigerian Ambassador to impress me with the seriousness of their intentions. I believe them. I believe that unless Felix is released by whoever’s got him, the Libyans will kill both my brother and Miss Rhodes. You say you don’t know who has Felix. My question is: Can you find out?”

“We can try, Mr. President.”

“Try.” Try was obviously not what the President had in mind.

“Yes.”

“What’s your best guess — the Israelis?”

Coombs let doubt spread over his face. “A possibility, except that if the Israelis had Felix I think the entire world would have heard about it by now. You see, the problem is that the Libyans have made a great many enemies during the past ten or twelve years. When the oil money really started flowing, Qaddafi began messing about in the internal affairs of other countries — the Philippines, Somalia, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Chad, Malta, Uganda for a while, even Iran. He had all that oil money to play with, so some of it went to finance terrorist groups like Anvil Five. Qaddafi even pensioned off a couple of burnt-out cases at a thousand or so a month. So we must assume that whoever abducted Felix must have wanted to strike back at Libya. It’s a possible assumption, at least.”

It was difficult to tell whether the President had been listening. His gaze was directed at some spot just over Coombs’s left shoulder.

Still staring at the spot, he said, “I’m going to have to lie. Through the Nigerian Ambassador I’m going to let the Libyans believe that we really do have Felix. That’s my first lie. My second lie will be to the media about my brother’s whereabouts. And third, I’m going to have to lie about why the Libyans went home in a snit. None of these lies will stand up for long.”

“No,” Coombs said. “They won’t.”

“But I will lie to keep my brother alive and to keep United Parcel from delivering his fingers and toes to me one by one. And while I’m busy lying I want that outfit of yours to do two things.”

Coombs nodded carefully.

“First, I want you to find out where they have my brother stashed. If it’s a city, I want the exact address and the phone number. I want the map coordinates. If it’s a room, I want to know how many windows it’s got. If it’s a tent, I want the color.”

“That may be... difficult, Mr. President.”

“Difficult or impossible?”

“Difficult,” Coombs said at last, seeing no good reason why he should lose his job. “May I ask what you intend to do with the information?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“Second, I want you to find out who’s got Felix and to get him back. I don’t care how you do it or how much it costs. You’ve got carte blanche.”

“I’d like that in writing, Mr. President.”

“I don’t blame you,” McKay said. He took out a sheet of White House stationery and started writing. He wrote only one sentence, signed it, read it over, and handed it to Coombs. “That do?”

Coombs read the sentence slowly. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That will do nicely.”

It was just twenty-four hours after the November election when Bingo McKay had walked into the President-elect’s suite on the eighth floor of the Skirvin Tower Hotel in Oklahoma City, looked around, and told everybody to get out — including Dominique, the future First Lady.

The President-elect hadn’t questioned his brother’s order. Instead, he grinned and asked, “What’s up?”

“There’s a guy I want you to meet.”

“Who?”

“Sit down, kid,” Bingo McKay told the President-elect, “and listen real good.”

Jerome McKay sat down with a very weak Scotch and water and a fond amused smile. “Jesus, Bingo, you’ve got that end-of-the-world look on your face again.”

“Just listen. One of these days, something might happen. I don’t know what or when. But it might be messy and I might not be around.”

Jerome McKay had started to say something, but his brother held up a hand. “Just listen. If I’m not around, then you’re gonna have to have somebody you can depend on who can fix things — just like I can sometimes fix things. You following me?”

“It’s not hard.”

“That’s why I want you to meet this guy now — get to know him. He can fix things.”

“But not for free?”

“No, he charges pretty good.”

“Have we used him before?”

“You really want to know?”

Jerome McKay slowly shook his head. “But he’s good, you say?”

“He’s good.”

“What’s his name?”

“Paul Grimes.”

The second meeting ever between Paul Grimes and President McKay didn’t take place in the Oval Office. They met instead in a small denlike room on the third floor of the old Executive Office Building. Between them on the desk, still in its Gucci box, lay the severed ear of Bingo McKay, which the President hadn’t yet decided what to do with. Later he would wrap it up in a Baggie and place it in a White House freezer.

The meeting took place forty-four minutes after the President had met with the Director of Central Intelligence. Paul Grimes studied the severed ear for a moment, sighed, read the Libyan letter, read it once again, and looked up at McKay.

“Well, sir, I’d say old Bingo’s gone and got himself into just one hell of a fix.”

“I want him back,” the President said. “I want them both back.”

Grimes was silent for several moments. Then he sighed again. “It’ll cost.”

“Can it be done?”

“I didn’t say that. All I said was that it’s going to cost.”

“How much?”

Grimes shrugged. “A couple of hundred thousand up front right off the bat. More later. Probably a whole hell of a lot more.”

The President picked up the phone and Grimes noted with appreciation that it was answered immediately. McKay looked at Grimes. “Where do you want it?”

Grimes thought for a moment. “London,” he said. “Barclays.”

“Your name?”

Grimes shook his head. “Crosspatch Limited.”

Into the phone the President said, “Call Wheeler down in Oke City and tell him to transfer two hundred thousand out of that Doremi contingency account in Liberty National to Crosspatch Limited, Barclays, London.”

As the President hung up the phone without saying either thank you or goodbye, Grimes found himself staring again at the still open Gucci box. “They really cut it off, didn’t they?”

“They cut it off.”

“How much time have I got?”

“Not much. Ten days maybe. No more.”

“Not much.”

“No.”

Once again Grimes sighed. “Well, if I can get hold of this one guy I’m thinking of, I can—”

The President interrupted. “I don’t really want to know.”

Grimes nodded thoughtfully. “No, sir, it’s probably better if you don’t.”

“I just want them back. Both of them.”

Grimes rose abruptly, smoothly, the way some very fat people do. “Well, I’ll sure see what I can do, Mr. President.”