Spiral (46 page)

Haydon pushed aside his plate, glanced at Garner, and addressed Renata.

"You say you know a woman who was his classmate. Would she know any more about him than you? Could you trust her information?"

"Yes, to both questions. She doesn't know the family well, but is close to people who do. She and Bias were in some of the same clubs in the university, and she had a couple of classes with him."

"How old is he?" Garner asked.

Renata thought a moment. "This woman is in her early thirties."

"Can you call her?" Haydon asked. "Would you be able to get information from her?"

"I think she would talk, yes. She has been quietly helpful to our group."

Haydon stood, and walked around to Renata's chair. "Would you call her now?" he asked, pulling her chair out for her. "There's a telephone over here on the other side of the room. Handle your questions any way you wish. Use your own instincts. Find out as much about him as you can—his likes, dislikes, habits, appearance, history since leaving the university, his travels."

"I understand," Renata said.

"And a photograph. Would she have a photograph?"

"I'll ask." Renata bent down beside her chair and picked up a briefcase. "I brought a Guadalajara telephone book. I thought we might need it."

Haydon walked with her to the far side of the room, spoke with her a few minutes, and then came back to the table.

"Stuart, how are you going to decide if this is the right man?" Nina asked, her voice lowered. "You can't publish his photograph in the media on a hunch."

Haydon shook his head as he sat down. "I don't know. We'll see what she says." Haydon looked at Renata, who was already talking to someone in Spanish. He turned to Celia.

"We're still not any closer than we were before. Did Valverdi ever mention any other safe houses, any other addresses or location besides the Belgrano on Chicon?"

"No," she said. "Nothing. He said these men were professional' that they'd come in here, do the job, and get out without ever leavin a trace."

"Well, they haven't quite done that," Haydon snapped. "Are you
damn
sure you're telling me everything?"

Suddenly he was surprised to hear the strained, edgy tone of his own voice as if he were abruptly projected outside of his body, observing himself as if he were another person. He saw his forehead twisted in a censuring scowl, his upper body leaning into the table, his doubled fist resting beside the plate with the half-eaten sandwich. Celia stared back at him with a quivering chin, blinking quickly couple of times. He cut his eyes at Nina, who was looking at him as she were watching a pot about to boil over and hoping it wouldn't.

Celia didn't answer him, perhaps she couldn't, and he said nothing else. He sat back in his chair and looked past Nina, outside beyond the French doors. The terrace was now catching the full glare of the midday sun, its stones seeming to drain of their color as they baked in the bleached light. Quickly absorbed in his own thoughts, he lost track of time.

"Bueno
," Renata said loudly, jolting Haydon back to the present. He turned around to find the others looking at her as she stood by the telephone, concentrating on jotting down a last-minute note.

"We are in luck," she said firmly, walking over to them and pulling her chair away from the table to sit down. When she continued, she addressed Haydon.

"My friend says that Bias was, indeed, a
teco
during his university days. In fact, by the time he had entered graduate school, his own abilities and his father's influence had enabled him to rise above Brigade's rowdy campus politics into a quieter, more influential role. She said that she had heard that while he was still in graduate school he began to travel to Mexico City quite frequently, and that he eventually married a girl from there. But the girl died shortly afterward, within a year. Sometime after that he was somewhere in the States for a while, a year or more, but she was not sure about this. Then there were rumors that he had become a mercenary in Central America, but none of the people who really knew him well believed there was any substance to that. During the last five or six years, though, she knows of no one who has seen or heard from him directly. Some believe he is again involved with the
tecos
and travels extensively for them. One person claims to know for sure that he was in France during the early eighties, and then more recently, in the last couple of years, they saw him in Tegucigalpa and Guatemala City."

She looked at her notes, which she had taken in a stenographer's notebook, writing on both sides of each sheet. She turned several of these.

"Let's see,... before the University of Guadalajara, he attended a Jesuit private school, and was very serious about his religious studies. Evidently he had wanted to go to a Catholic university too, but Apolinar was afraid he was going to ask to enter the priesthood and made him go to the state university."

"What about his personality?" Haydon interrupted.

"All right, uh, what is he like? Handsome, very handsome. Well read, intelligent. Not boisterous, but not a quiet person either. Very pleasant, very polite. She remembered he liked clothes. He dressed very well. About five feet nine or ten. He was well built, but was not an athlete. He was close to his mother, but had a very 'correct' relationship with his father. Apolinar tried to dominate all the sons, but Bias seems to have rebelled the least at his heavy-handedness. He was the one who tried most to conform to what his father wanted."

Renata stopped. "I'm sorry, I just took down everything she said. I know some of this is not the kind of thing to help us now."

"No," Haydon said quickly. "It's all important, every bit of it. Go on. What else?"

"Well, I think that is most of it," she said, flipping through her pages. "She wanted to know why all the questions."

"What did you tell her?"

"That I would explain when I returned."

"What about a photograph?"

"Oh, yes. She has several."

"What's the most recent?"

"1980."

"Did you ask her if it was clear, in good shape?"

"Yes, I did. They're family pictures that one of his sisters gave friend, who then gave them to Consuela."

"Fine, excellent," Haydon said. He thought a moment. "Oka; I want to check something before we go any further. Can you fir the Medranos' residence number in the Guadalajara telephone directory?"

"I've looked for it already, but it must be unlisted."

"We've got to try to locate Bias before we go ahead with this Haydon explained. "It would be an unforgivable blunder to run his picture only to find out later that he's walking around down the minding his own business, and could have been reached with a simple telephone call."

"Then the best way to be sure of that is to call one of the Rivas brothers," Renata said. "We would never be able to reach any of the family—there are too many intermediaries whose business is to keep people away. Hernan Rivas would know what to do about your call,'' she said, opening the telephone book. "Here." She circled a number and handed the book to Haydon.

Haydon took the book and turned around to his desk. The Mexican secretaries were as difficult to get past as Garner's. He spoke two of them, identified himself, waited, spoke to another, assured it was extremely important and confidential. When Rivas finally came on the line, he did not disguise his suspicion. Haydon explained who he was, and said that it was urgent that he speak to Bias Medrone. When Rivas asked why, Haydon explained that the HPD had reason to believe that Bias had been involved in a homicide in Houstor previous night, but if he was there, perhaps he could clarify mistake. Rivas said that that was a preposterous story because personally knew that Bias was in Costa Rica on family business. Haydon asked how he could get in touch with Bias in Costa Rica, but Rivas said he was in the countryside there and could not be reached. Haydon said that he was sorry, then, but he would have to go a with the warrant. Rivas, very excited, said that would be a grave take, and asked for the name of Haydon's superiors. Haydon the names to him and said that he would withhold the warrant six o'clock that evening. If Rivas could provide him with good reasons why he should not issue the warrant, then he could contact Haydon before that time. He gave Rivas both his home number and the number at the homicide division, thanked him for his help, and hung up.

Haydon turned around and stood. "Mitchell, let me ask you a couple of questions," he said, starting toward the library door. Outside in the hall he walked halfway to the foyer before he stopped and turned to face Garner.

"I want to charter a business jet and send her down there for the pictures." He looked at his watch. "It's almost one-thirty. She'd be able to leave Hobby airport by two-thirty. I think it's about a two-hour flight. If her friend would meet her at the airport there, she could be in the air again by five, and be back here in time to have the picture on the ten-o'clock evening news, and before tomorrow's papers go to press."

"Is that the only way you can get them here? Doesn't the DEA have some kind of wire or satellite transmission hookup to the States?"

"No. Everything like this is handled by diplomatic courier, or simply the mails. Mitchell, I need you to go with her. She can't be allowed to do it by herself. You can get in a cab right now, and I'll have all the arrangements made by the time you get to the airport. Richland Charter Flights. I've used them before on Mexican flights."

"Okay," Garner said. "I'll have to make a few calls first and cancel some appointments."

"I'd appreciate it," Haydon said. "You can use the telephone in the living room if you want some privacy. It's also a separate line."

"Give me five or ten minutes," Garner said, turning toward the double doors of the living room.

Haydon walked back to the library and explained to Renata what he wanted to do. She readily agreed.

"I'll call the charter service right now," he said. "I'll make the arrangements and get an arrival time in Guadalajara. Then you'll have to call your friend and tell her when to meet you at the airport. We don't want to waste time having you going into the city.

"
As soon as Haydon had confirmed the charter and the arrival time in Guadalajara and called a cab, Renata placed her call. At one forty-five a cab pulled into the drive, Haydon slipped Garner a couple of hundred dollars in case they incurred any out-of-pocket expenses, and they were gone. Haydon went back into the house and called Dystal.

Chapter 47

As
he sat at the traffic light, Bias lifted the icepack off his left wrist, which rested in his lap, and checked the swelling. He had tried keep ice on it from the time he got back to his rooms in the early morning hours. While it wasn't as bruised as he had expected, it was too painful and the swelling still too extensive for him to do enough probing to determine if it was broken. But despite the throbbing, wrist was not his main concern.

He had been extraordinarily lucky. When he had jumped over the barrier into the dark he had had no idea what lay below, and assumed he would land on cement. But it was dwarf juniper, which afforded a softer landing and had probably saved his life. Had it been cement, he might not have recovered from the impact as agilely as he had, rolling against the wall of the building before the men above reached the barrier and started firing into the shrubbery. Pressed against the wall, he had listened to the sputtering machine pistols, the oddly muted ripping of the shrubbery and the empty casings plinking into the shredded bushes. He heard cursing in Spanish doors slamming, but he didn't begin running until he heard th engines racing and the screaming tires.

Since the police didn't normally carry fully automatic machine pistols, he knew it was Negrete. While he lay on his stomach in the dark bank of oleanders where he had gone to ground again only a block away, his wrist throbbing and his clothes soaking up the sweat that poured off him in the still, humid night, Negrete's cars circled the neighborhood in the vicinity around the garage. If he had parked the rental car somewhere along the street instead of in a parking lot, they would eventually have discovered it. When they finally disappeared at the first distant wailing of the police sirens, Bias got feet and walked with disciplined unconcern back to his car hospital parking lot.

He had immediately signaled Arizpe on the radio, and they met at a late-night diner on Richmond. Bias told Arizpe what had happened, that the police knew about him, that apparently Negrete had gotten to Waite, had picked up on Ferretis, and had followed him to the dead drop. After some discussion they decided that whatever Negrete had gotten out of Waite it wouldn't have been enough to threaten them. They decided not to change any plans. They could not determine how the police had gotten Arizpe's name, but believed the authorities had little information beyond that or they never would have let Cordero leave the city. Except for Negrete knowing they had purchased RDX, they were the only two who knew where the explosives had been placed, and they could see no point at which they might have left a trail for the police, or even Negrete, to pick up. The greatest liabilities in this operation always had been the contacts in Houston, and by one means or another, all of them were now dead, except for the escaped Cordero. The only remaining significant dangers were that Arizpe's surveillance might be spotted, and that by some freak change of routine Gamboa would not cross the San Felipe rail crossing for several days. They agreed to go back to their bases, get some sleep, and follow the procedures they had already initiated.