“I suppose I’ll need a code name,” Jo said.
“Yes,” Sir David said. “Any suggestions.”
Jo looked at her father, then back at her new boss. She remembered a story her mother had told her long ago. “How about ‘White Vixen’?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pilcaniyeu, Argentina
March 22nd, 1982
Brian Jamison was surprised at the size of the facility. He had toured nuclear weapons plants before, and this one was half the size of the smallest he’d seen. For a moment, he thought he might have been led to the wrong place, but the soldiers standing guard at the main gate convinced him that this was likely where he was supposed to be. Once he was inside, he knew for sure.
Major Gasparini was nowhere to be seen, and that was as it should’ve been. The Argentine had risked much already; there was no need to compromise him by being seen together, in the event this little trip went bollocksed. The way this one was slapped together, Jamison was giving no better than fifty-fifty odds about that.
Contrary to what was shown in the cinema, MI6 normally devoted lengthy and meticulous planning to its field operations. Not this time. Jamison had taken two weeks’ leave after his return from Asia in November and then was put to work studying Argentina. The Firm was anticipating some sort of dust-up with the Argies, and scuttlebutt around Century House, the SIS headquarters in London, had it that something was afoot concerning the Falkland Islands. Jamison had learned much about this part of the world in the past three-plus months. He’d never visited Argentina, but talked to other agents who had, and they all spoke glowingly about the country’s great food and beautiful women. It was a pity that he wouldn’t be around long enough to sample much of either.
Just a week ago, he received hurried orders to depart for South America, orders signed by “C” himself, the chief of SIS, in the traditional green ink. That made this op very important indeed, as his briefing emphasized. He flew from London to New York on the Concorde, from there to Los Angeles, and then down to Santiago, Chile. Given a blessed twenty-four hours to rest, he was then more thoroughly briefed by the MI6 chief of station at the British Embassy and a representative of the Chilean security service,
Centro Nacional de Informacion
. The Chileans, it seemed, were quite concerned about what was going on just across the border at the place Jamison was tasked to visit. They supplied him with a BIS captain’s uniform and appropriate identity papers.
It then became a matter of waiting until the right time. Jamison spent three pleasant days in Santiago and then was driven to Osorno, a city about seventy-five miles from the border. The next day he crossed over into Argentina using the identity of an Irish businessman with contacts in the nearby city of Bariloche. His luggage passed the border guards’ cursory inspection, which didn’t come close to finding any incriminating clothing or weapons, as those had been smuggled across the border ahead of him by a Chilean agent. Jamison then met the Chilean in Bariloche for the handoff.
The agent checked into a Bariloche hotel as Duncan MacPherson, Dublin antiquities merchant, made a phone call, had dinner alone at a nearby restaurant and then drove his rented car to the village of Pilcaniyeu. Still playing the role of an Irishman,
Jamison checked into the town’s only hotel, having reserved a room with his call from Bariloche. A friendly man-to-man inquiry to the bellhop, along with a few pesos, produced a name that Jamison already knew. Within a few minutes he found his way to a cantina that also served as one of the town’s sporting houses, catering primarily to soldiers from the base.
In the small bar Jamison saw the man he’d come there to meet. Without letting his gaze linger on the man, Jamison gave the recognition signal, rubbing the right side of his nose with his right index finger. He sat at the bar and ordered a local beer, and while taking his first sip he looked around the barroom again. The man, wearing civilian clothes, was nervously twisting the wedding ring on his left hand. Good, he hadn’t been followed. A few minutes later, the man rose and went over to a swarthy local sitting near an inside door, had a brief word with him, and was allowed into the next room.
Ten minutes later, after checking one more time for any possible surveillance and concluding he was in the clear, Jamison asked a discreet question of the bartender, who nodded to the local near the inner door. The agent paid for his beer and left a hefty tip. A minute later he was inside what appeared to be a sparsely furnished living room. Four young, world-weary women were watching television. An older woman appeared from another room, bringing the aroma of food with her. “How may I help you, señor?”
Jamison produced a hundred-peso note. “I believe Pedro is expecting me.”
The woman took the bill and motioned down a hallway. “Second door on the left, señor. Thirty minutes, please.”
Half an hour later, Jamison left the brothel by a side door, five minutes after a nervous Major Antonio Gasparini departed through the cantina. The young lady who had thought she’d be part of some three-way fun with the two interesting gentlemen was sent out for a walk, two hundred pesos richer.
The Argentine was quite uncomfortable during the meeting, causing Jamison to harbor his own concerns about the officer’s reliability. “I was told to come here every few days once I returned from leave,” he told the Englishman. “I have always been faithful to my wife, señor. Your people said this would be a good place for us to meet, and I had to establish a pattern by visiting it once or twice ahead of time. But I paid the whores and then had them listen to me spin a tale of woe about my poor wife and how she is coming unhinged. I rejected their offers for physical release from my torment.”
A good cover story, Jamison told him, in the event his superiors at the base were suspicious of him, which would have been quite understandable, considering the circumstances. Jamison had been briefed on the ordeal forced upon Gasparini’s wife. He reassured the major that deliverance for him and his family was quickly approaching. Once his inspection of the base was done, Jamison would return to Chile and file his report, then wait there until he would return to help the Gasparini family across the border to freedom. A matter of a week or two, he was told.
Somewhat reassured, Gasparini gave Jamison the critical documents he would need to gain entrance to the compound. He would be conducting a cursory inspection of the facility under the auspices of BIS. Gasparini assured him there was no regular BIS presence at the base, security being the purview of the Army, but occasionally the agency sent a man down for a look around. Jamison was advised to be discreet; should a suspicious security officer make an inquiry to Buenos Aires, Jamison’s cover would not hold up. The MI6 agent assured the nervous Argentine that he would be in and out within two hours. With luck, Gasparini’s superior would never know a BIS man had purportedly been looking around.
The dicey part of the op came the next afternoon, when the MI6 agent, now posing as BIS Capitan Eduardo Concepción, drove his rented car the three miles from the village to the nuclear facility. The Argentine Army-standard .45 automatic in his hip holster did what little it could to bolster his confidence. Relying on his training and experience, Jamison used the short drive to compose himself, and when the gate came into view, he was as ready as he’d ever be.
The guards at the gate were thorough, inspecting Jamison’s papers and searching the car. Gasparini had assured him they would not report his presence to the security office; BIS insisted that its inspectors be allowed in unannounced and given free reign. They were permitted inside, but certain areas were off-limits. The BIS inspectors never raised a fuss about it, being content to quickly complete what they viewed as a boring assignment.
There was always an exception, though, and Jamison did his best to push that thought away while at the gate. The man who searched the car reported to his sergeant that it was clean, and the sergeant of the guard gave Jamison’s documents one last look and handed them back without a smile. “You may proceed, mi Capitan,” he said.
“
Muchas
gracias.” One big hurdle leaped, more to come.
Nobody paid any attention to him once he entered the facility. Armed soldiers were everywhere, greatly outnumbering the civilians in business suits or lab coats. Jamison had memorized the rough map of the facility drawn up by Gasparini, and made his way casually around the grounds and through the four interconnected buildings, carefully avoiding the people while not seeming to. Inspecting an enemy military base or research facility was not normally undertaken by active MI6 operatives; Century House much preferred to get its information from people who worked there. Much safer, and the foreigners generally were eager to cooperate when given proper incentive. This time was an exception, but Jamison had been on hostile ground before and doubtless would be again. Like many of his fellow agents, he’d come close to death enough times to give it a healthy respect, always taking proper precautions. James Bond could infiltrate Blofeld’s headquarters with nothing more than a Walther PPK and a willing female accomplice, shoot several dozen ill-trained guards and bring down the entire place with a handful of well-placed explosives. In real life it was a bit more complicated.
The compound consisted of six buildings, four of which were connected by enclosed aboveground walkways as well as underground tunnels. One of the outbuildings was a large barracks for the security troops, the other a warehouse and repair shop. Jamison ignored these and entered the central complex by a side door. A guard stationed inside inspected his papers and waved him through.
The danger increased with each step further inside the facility. At any moment, a security officer could ask to see his credentials, perhaps tipped off by a suspicious employee, perhaps just practicing due diligence. Jamison was fluent in Spanish and able to handle himself in a pinch, but his experience in China not too many months ago had reinforced the belief that he was far from infallible. If it came to a confrontation with any of the security force here, the game was up. The challenge, then, was to avoid such a confrontation.
One of the buttons on Jamison’s khaki jacket was not the standard brass. It concealed a tiny but powerful camera, capable of shooting up to thirty photos, activated by a tug on a certain spot of the hem of the garment. One of MI6’s clever tools that would serve to enhance his report, assuming he lived to deliver it. He’d already taken three shots of the exterior of the main building.
Jamison’s briefing had told him what to look for, but not why. That would not be difficult to figure out. Considering the tensions over the Falklands, inspecting a suspected enemy nuclear facility could lead to only one conclusion: the British intended to destroy this place rather than risk a nuclear attack on the fleet. It quickly became evident, however, that a British assault on this base, short of a nuclear strike of their own, was out of the question.
From the size of the troop barracks alone, and the proliferation of armed men, Jamison concluded that the Pilacaniyeu facility was guarded by at least three hundred soldiers, perhaps as many as five hundred. He had seen a few sandbagged bunkers, doubtless for machine-gun emplacements. It was likely some light armored vehicles were concealed somewhere. Reinforcements from the Army post near Bariloche were only a couple hours away, and their helicopters even closer. An assault by SAS or SBS commandos would be suicide; infantry and armored tactics were not his specialty, but Jamison could still estimate that it would take at least a battalion-strength assault with armor and air support to take the base. The Chileans might be able to muster something like that here, but it was not within the realm of possibility for the British.
He followed a series of hallways, remembering Gasparini’s map. Some of the civilians nodded to him, and he nodded back with what he hoped was an appropriate air of superiority. Some of the security guards gave him a look, but none challenged him. His destination was in the middle of the large building, and he knew he was getting closer by the increasing numbers of guards and the decreasing numbers of civilians.
Gasparini told him the entrance to the top-secret bomb-assembly section was heavily guarded. Even the BIS inspectors never entered unless in company of a senior security officer. Jamison didn’t want to risk exposing Gasparini, so he asked about an alternative. The Argentine major told him about a circuitous route sometimes used by the scientists, who delighted in outwitting the security force in such small ways. This “back door” was known to Gasparini’s people and regularly checked, but they let the scientists think they could come and go relatively unscathed.
The MI6 agent saw the double-doored entrance to the central lab complex, guarded by four soldiers with automatic weapons, plus an officer with a sidearm who was checking the identity cards of each person entering and leaving. Jamison quickly continued on his way down the connecting hallway. One glance had told him he would never get through that gauntlet. Plan B it was, then.
He knew he was somewhere near the scientists’ changing rooms. A fiftyish man in a white lab coat was going past him. “Excuse me, señor,” Jamison said politely, “can you tell me where the nearest lavatory is located?”
“Certainly, mi Capitan,” the scientist said. “That would be the changing room. I was just going there. I’d be happy to show you.”