“Okay. Can you give me any background on the crew?”
The suave official parted his hands in a gesture indicating futility. “I do not think that your readers would find such information entertaining.”
“They might,” Mary countered. “Especially if they are family men, trying to make an honest living to feed their families back home. Every day the oppressive Government of the United States keeps the crew imprisoned, their families suffer. Americans can sympathize with their plight. They can put pressure on their Congressmen to secure an early release.”
The man lowered his hands onto the table and stared at them as if to admire the fine manicure he had yesterday. Then he closed his eyes and leaned back with an exhalation of breath. “Wait here, please.” He rose easily from the chair and walked back into the interior of the house, disappearing through the furthest door on the left of the long hallway.
“Psst!” Mary heard a low sound from behind her after the secretary had disappeared into the room. She turned and saw an old woman standing behind the second door to her left, motioning for her to quickly approach her. Her curiosity piqued, she crossed the foyer, looking to her right once to see if the secretary was soon coming back.
The old woman grabbed her arm and drew her into a small drawing room. She closed the door softly, as if she were afraid that any noise would alert someone in the house to investigate her actions.
“You want to know something about the Marta?” she asked, her toothless mouth slurring some of the words.
Mary nodded. “I’m doing a piece—”
The old woman silenced her by putting her wrinkled, bony hand up close to her mouth. “I don’t care why you are here. You have put yourself into grave danger. No one wants to reveal anything about the Marta.”
“Why? What’s the big deal? They aren’t hiding anything, are they?”
“I am going to tell you a secret,” she whispered conspiratorially and motioned for Mary to bend her head even nearer. “They weren’t shipping any drugs. Not this time. They were transporting weapons.”
“Weapons? For who?” Mary whispered back.
The old woman cackled softly. “There’s a war. It’s going to set the whole of Latin America on fire. They don’t care about communists or capitalists. They are a government all of their own, and they want to rule their world on their own terms. Now you remember that. That will be a real story.”
“But who wants to start a war?” Mary pressed, feigning denseness.
“The barons of the world are fighting over a land full of gold. Now you better get back out there before that man notices you are gone. Oh, don’t turn your back on him,” she warned, referring to the secretary. “He talks out both sides of his mouth like a snake.”
“Why are you telling me this, Grandmother?”
“Because my grandson is fighting in this war. He has already lost his father—my only son—and for what? There is no glory, no reward. Only death and sadness. It is a sickness and a blight that has covered my homeland.” Then she became very morose, and tears began to form in her eyes. Her voice almost sounded pleading. “A mother should not live so long to see her children die, and I do not want to see my grandchildren die as well.”
She sniffed back her tears and became resolute.
“Now, go! Quickly!” she urged.
Mary was comforted by the fact that her absence had not been detected as she cautiously returned to the foyer. She walked back to where she had been standing and assumed the air of impatience at having been abandoned without even being offered a place to sit down.
The secretary finally returned after another fifteen minutes, bearing a slim folder with two sheets of paper contained inside. He shoved the folder under Mary’s nose. “I think that you will find everything you need in this folder,” he explained, his tone having a note of finality in it.
Mary overlooked his brusque behavior and accepted the folder. “Thank you, señor. I appreciate your help. I’ll send you a courtesy copy of the next edition.”
The man waved both hands slowly in front of him. “No need. If I truly had any interest in your trash, I could just as easily buy a copy at the newsstand. Good day.”
As Mary stepped through the door and out onto the street, a second man stepped out into the foyer from the first room on the left and purposely approached the secretary.
“If she is a reporter, then my father sired me from a pig,” he commented, watching the closed front door.
“I quite agree, Juan,” the secretary spoke softly. “Follow her. See what she is up to. When you have learned of her purpose, you have my permission to kill her.”
The man named Juan bowed and started for the door.
“You remember our date, no?” the guard called out to her as she passed by him.
“I’ll give you a call,” she responded, flashing a big smile to conclude a promise. Poor bastard, she thought to herself as she hailed a cab and directed the driver to take her to the Norwegian Consulate. There she found the reception more accommodating. The Consulate was housed in a small but stylish house. The interior was decorated in the custom of the represented country but more sedate and less flamboyant than the Colombian Consulate. The woman who had answered the doorbell graciously welcomed her into the house, speaking in Norwegian and her hands, indicating that she should wait for someone to assist her.
A Mr. Jörgen presently introduced himself, holding out his hand in welcome. “How can I be of assistance?” he asked politely in near-perfect English.
Mary handed him her press credentials and then repeated the same cover story she provided at the Colombian Consulate, adding, “I’ve noticed that the Marta was flying the Norwegian flag. Is it possible to check the registry?”
“We might be able to assist you there. Please, come with me.”
He escorted her into a small room near the back of the house, which he had transformed into his office. He bade her to sit down on a narrow couch while he moved to a large bookcase that made the room even smaller. He found a large volume and withdrew it from its place. He carried it over to his desk and opened it. For several moments he perused the tome until he found the information he was looking for.
“Here it is,” he stated. “The Marta was first registered in 1954. Previously, it had been flying the Cuban flag. Interesting. There’s a bid registered to buy the vessel.”
“Does your record say who the buyer is?”
“Ja. Oriental Imports, Inc. out of New York.”
Mary made the mental connection, but she kept this knowledge from off her face. Thank you, Mr. Jörgen. You’ve been very helpful.”
“My pleasure, Ms. Gonzalez. Is that all the information you needed?”
“Yes, thank you,” she rejoined. “You’ve been most helpful.”
“Allow me to show you out. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“No, no. You’ve given me just the information I needed to flesh out my story. Thank you.”
Outside on the street, she looked for a taxi but saw none in sight. She decided to walk up to the corner and see if her luck would be any better. As she strolled a dark blue sedan pulled up to the curb, matching its speed with her steps. Nervously, she glanced at the occupants, noting two Latinos in the front seat. She decided not to hasten her pace but played their game to see what their next step would be. As she came within sight of the corner, the car finally stopped just ahead of her, and the driver’s door opened. An oily little man stepped out, a small revolver cloaked in his left hand.
“Señorita Gonzalez. Would you please be so kind as to step inside the backseat of the car?” He opened the back door after switching the pistol into his right hand.
Mary shrugged with indifference. “Sure, why not? I was looking for a ride anyway.” She entered the car, noticing the other occupant holding a long barreled pistol on her. “So, where are we going?” she asked nonchalantly as she made herself more comfortable. “I know of a good motel if you’re interested. Rates are pretty r
easonable.”
The driver slid behind the wheel and closed the door. “We already have a nice quiet place picked out. Besides, we want to have a friendly, private conversation. Maybe if you are cooperative, we can discuss other arrangements later.”
“You mind if I ask your names for my paper?”
The oily man looked at her through the rear view mirror. “You aren’t with any newspaper, are you, Señorita Gonzalez. That is your real name, maybe?”
“My mother liked it. I like it. So, yeah. I guess it’s my real name.”
“You have a very discourteous mouth, Señorita Gonzalez. Where I come from, women talk to their men with respect. I think we should talk about respect, too.”
Mary thought that she had pushed her luck as far as she should and remained quiet throughout the remainder of the ride. The driver drove to Potomac Park and headed towards the pylons that supported the George Mason Bridge. He stopped the car and invited Mary to join them for a little walk. Mary shrugged her shoulders and stepped outside the car. The other man came up from behind the car, his weapon still trained on her.
“So, someone bring a picnic basket?” Mary asked. Relaxed, she was waiting for the right opening.
The oily man drew his arm up to strike her but thought different of it. They were too exposed. Instead, he motioned for her to start walking towards the water. She started walking as if she had all the time of the day. They led her under the bridge where the sunlight failed to warm and then flanked her to begin business.
“All right, Señorita Gonzalez, now we want some answers. You give us the right answers, we will be nice. You give us a hard time—well—we’re used to tough women.” He grinned evilly. Mary let a moue cross her features.
“Now, whom do you really work for?”
“Your boss has already checked out my credentials,” she replied.
“Who are you? The CIA?”
Mary laughed. “I wouldn’t work for that filthy, bourgeois instrument of the oppressors for a million dollars.”
“What did that old woman say to you?” he changed tact.
“What old woman?” she answered, feigning surprise.
The oily man stepped closer and moved to slap her face. He never connected. With a move he had neither expected or could counter, he found himself suddenly spinning into his accomplice. The gun had mysteriously slipped into her hand, which she now pointed at both men.
“The gun,” she commanded. “Toss it over.”
The second man complied, casually tossing the long-barreled pistol at her feet.
“You boys like to pick on helpless, defenseless women, don’t you? You like to teach them a lesson about their place in the world. All right, gentlemen—and believe me I use the word loosely—maybe I should give you a lesson about the new woman who’s coming up in the world.” She let the pistol drop from her hand.
The two Latinos stood up and looked at each other, thinking they had just run into a streak of luck. With a nod they rushed at her, thinking her easy prey. What they had not counted on was that she held a black belt in karate. She parried their rush by using their momentum against them. They did not have time to rise up from the ground a second time before she was kicking and flipping them up into the air. The oily man crumpled to the ground and remained inert, but the accomplice pulled out a four-inch knife out of his boot and waved it threateningly in front of him.
Mary smiled. Now she was going to have some fun. She waited until he lunged at her. Her arms flew faster than the eye could follow. She blocked his clumsy thrusts, landing blows on his neck and against his ribs. He could not hold onto the knife because she had numbed the nerves of his arm and fingers, and it fell harmlessly on the ground. But she was just playing with him, meting out a punishment, in her mind, he should have received a long time ago.
When she finally tired of her game, she removed the belts off each man and securely tied their arms behind their backs. Then she half-carried, half-dragged them to their car and dumped them unceremoniously into the backseat. She jumped behind the wheel and drove to the nearest police station, identified herself as an officer of the Court, and asked them if they would kindly put her assailants on ice for a while.
“You sure they were the ones who tried to rough you up?” the pot-bellied sergeant at the desk joked.
“Charge them with assaulting a Deputy U. S. Marshal and resisting arrest. And yes, if you must know, they had a notion in their heads that they were taking on a defenseless little lady. They thought they needed to teach me a lesson in manners and proper submissiveness.” She rotated her head to ease her neck muscles. “Looks like I was the school-teacher today.”
Mary returned to the office feeling upbeat and began piecing the information she had just uncovered together with the knowledge the team had already gathered. She looked through the compiled report and found the name Oriental Imports, Inc. that had been provided by the ATF agent posing as a longshoreman. Now the question that came to her mind was framed with the desire to know who owned this company, which had become more than a passing footnote in this case.
Her research took about three hours for her to learn all that was available on the firm through public sources. It was allegedly owned by an Alonso Cortez, but its financing had been completed through the First Loan and Banking, a financial institution that was known to be affiliated with Prescott Enterprises. Now that was an interesting connection to the infamous Andrew Prescott whom Director Welsh seemed intent on protecting. Another hour and a half of research led her to the fact that this Cortez was the brother of a Carlos Cortez, a suspected member of the Mendendez family out of Miami. Tanelli? Mendendez? This case was definitely beginning to take on an interesting character.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“DORIS”
TIM ROBBINS PULLED a little black book out of the back of his lower desk drawer, which he had hidden from anyone but the most determined of searchers under a stack of innocuous papers. Actually, it was one of three such books that he kept, each in its own separate location. He had arranged his entries to appear as if he kept a record of his contacts with and conquests of the fairer sex, just in case someone snoops through his personal things and finds the book. In actuality, it contained the sum extent of his secret numbers of “friends and acquaintances” he had culled together over the years: people in and out of government circles that he had found useful or who had supplied him with invaluable information that he could not otherwise obtain through normal channels. He had further assigned each contact with a woman’s name, often transforming the male name into a female equivalent. If the contact was already female, he simply changed the name to one that was fairly close to the original. The last name was merely an initial. His annotations, such as “good, fantastic, a bore,” and the like, were his own devised code words for the different agencies where they worked for or were associated with at one time or the various professions they were engaged in. Finally, the telephone numbers were bogus as well; he had long ago devised a transposition system to hide the real numbers based on a combination of using the alphabetic entry along with the page number of the entry.
He flipped to the “Ds” and found a Doris G. He glanced at the number, made the correct calculations in his head, and dialed the number.
“Hello?” a masculine, tenor voice sleepily answered the phone.
“Hey!” Tim greeted cheerfully through the phone. “I’m kinda thirsty. You up for a drink?”
“Sure. All the time, man. Where to?”
“How’s Joe’s sound?”
“Okay?” The voice on the other end now sounded thick, as if the owner was just coming down from a high induced by marijuana or some type of barbiturate. “When?”
“I was thinking we could meet in about an hour.”
“I’ll be there with bells on.” “Doris” tried to sound cheerful, but it was apparent by his voice that he wasn’t operating on all eights.
The phone line went dead, and Tim hung up the receiver. He smiled to h
imself: Let’s see if the spooks can figure out that one, meaning the “third person” who everyone in the Department professed to be monitoring the telephone calls to and from the office, listening for juicy bits of information they could pass up to the front office. Politics, being the animal it was, seemed to flourish on hearsay and other perverted knowledge, which could then be used to either coerce people to do things they otherwise would not think of doing or keep them in line under a sadistic supervisor. Tim was not a paranoid type of person; he just did not like “Big Brother” interfering with either his personal or his professional life. And in this case, he most certainly did not want his agency looking over his shoulder. There would be too many intrusive if not revealing questions asked, and he did not want to provide any answers that could not just be personally embarrassing but prove damning to his career.
Freedom of expression and speech is an idealistic concept, one to be placed on an altar of worship or adoration. But in practice, it could never be completely tolerated. Knowledge is power, which implied that knowledge should be kept in the hands of the few. At the same time, the truly most powerful need to keep a bridle on the lips and tongues of those who held any knowledge, a means of control and not only over those who served in subservient positions but also as a means to ensure maintaining personal authoritative power and position.
He put the special little black book back into its nesting place and closed the drawer. Then he made a pretense of conducting official business for the next thirty minutes. At the appropriate moment, he stood up and stretched with a show of exaggerated fatigue. Grabbing his coat and hat, he casually sauntered over to McLeod’s secretary. “I need to drop by the library,” he told her. “McLeod wants me to research something or the other. Don’t know when for sure I’ll be back.”
She made a note on a pad. “If Mr. McLeod asks for you, I’ll pass on your location to him.”
“Thanks. I always appreciate your good work.”
“I’m glad everyone thinks so,” she responded coolly, her countenance telegraphing that she did not concern herself how he felt or what he thought about her work
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