‘A button?’ Audrey asked.
‘Sure, a button. Like they have in a bank or something. Wire it up so you trigger a silent alarm.’
Audrey opened her mouth to speak, and then she hesitated. ‘This guy didn’t fail to file a tax return, right? This guy is up for something a little heavier ain’t he?’
‘He may be able to help us with something.’
‘Which means what it says. I know what that means. He’s—’
Miller smiled at Audrey, reached out and placed his hand over hers. ‘Audrey,’ he said. ‘What he might or might not have done is really not much of anything unless we speak with him. Right now you’re the only person in the entirety of Washington who’s had anything useful to tell us about this guy. We’ve been looking for him for some time, and seems that somewhere in the next couple of days we might actually get to him. That’s because of you. I don’t want anything to happen to you, and I sure as hell don’t want this guy to get wind of something and take off. He could be someone, he could be no-one, but right now he’s the only one we’ve got. I need someone to come in here and put a button back of the counter. City will pay for it, we won’t make a mess—’
‘Hell, I ain’t worried about anyone making a mess.’ She glanced at the clock behind the counter. It was nearly eight forty-five. ‘I’m closing at ten,’ Audrey said. ‘You want someone to come down here and do some handiwork then you better call ’em now.’
Roth took out his cell phone, dialled a number. He slid off the bar stool and walked toward the front door of the diner.
Audrey watched him go, then turned back towards Miller. ‘So what’s the deal with this guy you’re after?’ Audrey asked.
‘Like I said, we don’t know what the deal is until we speak with him.’
Audrey smiled knowingly. ‘This is like some serious shit though, isn’t it?’ She took a cup from beneath the counter, poured herself some coffee. ‘You don’t send out three, four detectives for a jaywalker.’
‘Sorry, Audrey, this isn’t something I can discuss with you.’
‘Honey, I know that, I’m just angling for something. Word gets out we had some important gangster down here the place’ll fill up before I can get the coffee made.’
Roth walked back toward them. ‘Someone’ll be here by quarter after,’ he said. He nodded his head at the door, wanted Miller to step away from the counter for a quiet word.
‘Lassiter’s in, wants us down at the Second.’
Miller walked back to Audrey. He thanked her, told her the work wouldn’t take more than an hour.
‘This alarm thing your people are putting in,’ she said. ‘That’s gonna go where?’
‘To us at the Second,’ Miller said.
‘So he comes in here, he orders coffee, I push the button, he takes his coffee and leaves. I don’t see that you’re gonna have time to get down here before he’s gone.’
‘We’ll have people outside,’ Miller said. ‘There’s some guys out there now. You hit the button, we get it at the precinct, we radio our people and they’re all over him in a heartbeat. You’re safe, okay?’
‘I’m not worried about safe,’ Audrey said. ‘I just figured that this guy is so important you wouldn’t want to miss him for the sake of a couple of minutes.’
‘We won’t miss him, Audrey,’ Miller said, and realized that they had done just that for eight months, even managed to walk him into Natasha Joyce’s life, to let him kill her. Missed him so much he’d managed to leave Chloe Joyce an orphan.
‘We have to go,’ Miller said. ‘It was good to meet you . . . maybe I’ll come have breakfast here after this thing is done, okay?’
Audrey smiled, waved her hand. ‘On the house, sweetheart, on the house.’
Miller slowed by the door, turned back. ‘Time are you open in the morning?’ he asked.
‘Six-thirty,’ Audrey replied. ‘I’m here at six, open by six-thirty. ’
Miller and Roth walked to the car. The block was quiet. One of the streetlights was broken on the corner. A dark pool of shadows - almost threatening, somehow ominous.
Roth paused at the car, looked back towards the diner. ‘You think we have a chance?’ he asked.
Miller looked back at the bright lights of the diner. ‘Maybe one,’ he said, and opened the passenger door.
I
stood, waiting silently, in Francisco Sotelo’s narrow office on Paseo Salvador Allende, there between the Dinamarca and San Martin districts. I had already cleared the room for weapons; I knew that he did not carry a gun as a routine precaution. Perhaps Francisco Sotelo believed he would never be in a situation where a gun would be required.
I did not kill him as he walked into the office. I had raised my gun, my finger on the trigger, and when he turned toward me, when he looked right at me as if my presence was entirely expected, he smiled with such warmth and sincerity that it gave me pause for thought.
‘I would like a drink,’ he said, seating himself at his desk. ’I have just come from a very lengthy meeting. I am tired. I think that considering all I have done to assist your people that is the least courtesy you can afford me before we take this matter any further.’
He spoke with such simple intention, and he seemed so utterly unperturbed by the fact that an armed stranger was waiting for him, that he raised my curiosity.
‘You will join me?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘What is your name?’
I shook my head.
He smiled. ‘I think that unfair. You know my name. In fact you possibly know more about me than most of my friends do. You have my home address I’m sure, the name of my wife, my child. You have more than likely studied my photograph a great many times. I imagine you might have even watched me coming back and forth to work to be sure that there was no mistake in identifying me when the time came. I am right, am I not?’
Again I nodded.
‘Then the least you can do is tell me your name. Truth of the matter is that I imagine this meeting will conclude with my death.’ Sotelo smiled sardonically. ‘Thus it will not matter that I knew your name.’
‘My name is John.’
‘Imaginative,’ he said with a half smile.
‘That’s my real name.’
‘Your real name, or the name they gave you.’
‘You know who I am?’ I asked.
Sotelo nodded. ‘Of course I know who you are. You are CIA. You are Uncle Buck, the representative of the almighty United States of America. In fact, I know an awful lot more about why you are here than you do.’
‘Why do you think I’m here?’ I asked.
‘Let us have a drink, make this a little more civilized. Sit down, let’s converse for a while. Is that acceptable to you?’
I shrugged.
‘Surely you don’t have a more pressing appointment - John?’
‘I don’t.’ I liked the man. His seeming lack of concern, his nonchalant manner, even the way he looked - smart, a tailored suit, a clean white shirt.
‘There is a bottle of scotch in the drawer of my desk,’ he said. ‘You want to come and get it for yourself?’
I shook my head. I knew where the bottle was. I had seen it earlier when I’d searched the room. I also knew that there were glasses in the drawer beneath.
Francisco took out the bottle and glasses and set them on the desk. I watched him carefully as he poured our drinks. He slid a glass towards me. I sat down in one of the high-backed ornate chairs, an intricately carved wooden frame with a wrought iron trelliswork back that extended well above the height of my head. Francisco’s chair was the same, and for a moment neither of us spoke, as if we were both waiting for something. I crossed my legs, held the gun in my lap with the muzzle pointed directly at Francisco’s chest. I could smell the whisky from the glass in my left hand.
‘You understand La Allianza?’ Francisco asked.
‘I understand what I need to understand.’
Francsico smiled. ‘You know what the Chinese say about a quiet man?’
I shook my head.
‘A quiet man either knows nothing, or he knows so much he needs to say nothing at all.’
‘Is that so?’
Francisco paused for a moment, and then leaned forward fractionally. ‘Can I ask what they have told you about me?’
I raised my glass and sipped the scotch. ‘No.’
‘I am a lawyer,’ Francisco Sotelo said. ‘You know that much, right?’
I did not reply. Francisco was extending his life as much as he could. He was right. I had no other pressing appointment. It was late afternoon. His offices were officially closed and, based on surveillance reports, we knew he often spent the late afternoon and evening working alone. He had never been visited.
‘I am a lawyer, and I represent anyone your government tells me to represent. I have information regarding many of the operations your people have been running since the invasion of Nicaragua. I know about Rowan International and the Zapata Corporation. I know about the offshore oil drilling platforms that act as flight stations for the helicopters that carry cocaine back into the United States—’
I set my glass on the table. ‘Why are you telling me this, Francisco?’ I asked.
He paused, looked around the room, and there was something in his expression that seemed lost, perhaps saddened, by the fact that he knew this was where his life would end.
‘There is testimony in this room,’ he said quietly. ‘Written testimony from former American drug enforcement agents to the effect that the Quintero and Gallardo drug cartels are responsible for bringing four tons of coke a month into the U.S. You know who they are?’
‘No.’
‘They are Contra supporters in Guadalajara, Mexico. That’s who they are, John, and they take four tons a month into your country, and the money that it makes is funnelled back into the war you are supposedly fighting against the communists.’ Francisco laughed bitterly. ‘This was never about communism, my friend. This war was about something else altogether. I’ll tell you something . . . between Noriega in Panama, John Hull in Costa Rica, Felix Rodriguez in El Salvador and Juan Ballesteros in Honduras - every single one of them a known CIA asset and a supporter of the Contras - your beautiful and almighty United States of America gets seventy percent of the cocaine it consumes. Your CIA has to engage with the criminal element anywhere it goes. To gain any degree of influence in an area, it has to come to an arrangement with the criminal authority in that area. That kind of arrangement is at the heart of every single covert operation your wonderful government has undertaken. The CIA is everywhere, the demand for narcotics is everywhere . . . tell me that they don’t have to cross one another’s territories at some point, John. Of course they do.’
‘I know nothing about this,’ I said.
‘You know nothing, or you know everything and choose to say nothing?’
I inched the gun upwards so the muzzle of the silencer was aimed at Francisco’s throat. ‘I know nothing.’
‘Which asks the question . . . is it that you choose not to ask?’
I took another sip of the scotch. It was a good scotch, a clean taste, and the sensation in the back of my throat was reassuringly familiar.
‘Did you know that Miami International airport is the take-off site for CIA and NSC planes supplying material to the Contras in Nicaragua?’ Francisco asked.
‘No, I did not know that.’
‘They bring supplies out to Managua and take cocaine back. The pilots are known criminals. They have outstanding federal records in your country. They are buying back their innocence by doing these things. Their visas are authorized by your very own Department of Defense. They have CIA credentials, and they use those credentials to ward off customs officials. The arms and supplies come here to Nicaragua, the coke goes back on the same planes, the pilots deliver the coke, fly the money to Panama, and that money is laundered through bank accounts established by Manuel Noriega.’
I said nothing.
‘You know who Manuel Noriega is, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know who he is.’
‘Well, he’s established bank accounts on behalf of your government, and the cocaine money is passed through those accounts and wired into Costa Rica. And those accounts in Costa Rica . . . they are held in the names of known Contra officials. It’s organized under the banner of something named Enterprise. Enterprise was created by a man named Oliver North. He’s assistant to your President’s security advisor. And Enterprise works with the Pentagon, with the CIA, the NSC . . .’ Francisco Sotelo laughed quietly. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, assistant to the U.S. President’s security advisor, Admiral John Poindexter, is more than aware of this organization . . . an organization established to support and protect the world’s biggest drug dealers.’
Francisco was silent a moment, looked toward the window to his right. ‘I read a report some time ago,’ he said. ‘It was written by a man named Dennis Dayle. He was the former head of an elite DEA enforcement unit, and you know what he said?’
‘I don’t know that I’m interested, Francisco.’
Francisco laughed. ‘Of course you are, John, these are your people. These are your employers, your colleagues, your friends. These are the people who will play golf with you at the exclusive Florida country club when you retire from this dreadful business.’
He raised his hand. ’You don’t want to know, but I’m going to tell
you anyway. Dayle said that in his thirty-year history in the Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies, the major targets of his investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA. That’s what he said. Are you not impressed and intrigued by such a statement from one of your own?’