The Argentine Triangle: A Craig Page Thriller

by Allan Topol

  This evening was the last chapter in his courtship or, more precisely, his deception of Gina Galindo. He wasn’t being a shit, he told himself, as she bounded off the plane, the picture of youthful enthusiasm, a woman in love, her face glowing with excitement and expectation. Dressed in a bright print blouse and short pink skirt, she raced over and threw herself into his arms.

  “So tell me what we’re going to do,” she said, as they roared south with Craig behind the wheel of a BMW convertible on the 405 toward Orange County.

  “Well, tonight we’re going to have a great dinner at a restaurant called Mille Fleur in Rancho Santa Fe. Then head to the hotel for whatever.”

  “Can we go swimming tomorrow?” she said with enthusiasm.

  “Of course.”

  “I brought a bathing suit because it’s Southern California and I thought it was hot. Tonight it’s freezing.”

  He laughed. “It’s the desert. Always cool at night. Tomorrow should be a fabulous day.”

  “Great. You’ll love the bikini. It doesn’t cover too much. The nuns would never have approved.”

  “But they won’t be here,” he said, and laughed with her.

  “Can we go to some movie studios? I read about this tour at Universal. Oh, and I want to go to Disneyland. Can we do that? Please?”

  He didn’t want to lie to her any longer. “We’ll take it one day at a time. We’ll make our plans for tomorrow in the morning. How’s that?”

  “Great,” she repeated. As he drove, he noticed her eyes were closing. That was good. By the time they reached the hotel, three or four hours from now after dinner and wine, jet lag and the time difference would have hit her.

  At the restaurant, when they were sipping champagne, she blurted out in a solemn voice, “I have a confession to make.”

  “Should I get a black cassock and put myself in a little booth?”

  “That isn’t funny.”

  She was right. He knew he shouldn’t have said it because religion was no laughing matter for her, but he couldn’t resist.

  “I’m sorry, Gina. That was insensitive on my part.”

  “You’re forgiven.”

  “Anyhow,” he said. “You wanted to tell me something?”

  She looked away from him. “Before I met you, I was seeing another man in Washington. An older man. You might hear about it from someone else, but even if you don’t, I want you to know.”

  He decided to play dumb. “You want to tell me who he is?”

  “Edward Bryce. The man who headed the American delegation to Argentina. I never really liked him, but it was something I had to do.” She sighed deeply. “It’s all so complicated.”

  “You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to.”

  “I want you to know that after our date at the tango bar in Buenos Aires, I decided to end the relationship with him.”

  “What did Bryce say about that?”

  “He doesn’t know. I haven’t told him that in so many words, but I ended it in fact. I mean, that way … I might see him again, but nothing intimate. You know what I mean.”

  He nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. Now our food’s coming. Let’s enjoy dinner.”

  Dinner at Mille Fleur was great. But after a glass of champagne and two or three glasses of Nuits St. George, Gina slept all the way to the hotel. And once they entered the room, she said, “Do you mind if we wait to do whatever until tomorrow morning? I’m sorry, but I’m really tired.”

  “No of course not. I get up early and run in the morning. So don’t worry if I’m not here when you wake up. I’ll be back for breakfast.”

  “Run as long as you want. I sleep in the mornings.” She gave a short laugh. “As late as possible. So we’re perfect together.”

  She used the bathroom first. By the time he brushed his teeth, she was already sound asleep on one side of the king-sized bed.

  As he looked at her, so contented, a smile on her face, her breasts rising and falling with each breath, he thought of that old expression, “You’re going to hate me in the morning.”

  Rancho Santa Fe

  “I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding this place,” Craig told Betty as he climbed into the back of the armor-plated Lincoln Town car and sat next to her.

  “None at all. The wonders of GPS. Now tell me where we can go to talk and look at documents. I hate sitting on the road. We might have to explain ourselves to some nosey local cop.”

  “A college classmate of mine’s father owns a racehorse farm five minutes from here. They have a small grandstand. After we spoke, I called yesterday to say I was bringing by a friend to watch the morning workout. I don’t expect anybody to be there who will recognize you. Just the trainers. The only newspapers those guys read are the racing ones.”

  “I brought this along just in case.” She pointed to a large, burgundy hat resting on a red file folder in the center of the back seat. “Now give the driver some directions.”

  Craig guided him through the gray gloom and fog of predawn. By the time Craig identified himself to a trainer and they were settled in the grandstand at the Bender Horse Farm, well out of earshot from the trainers, the sky in the east was starting to brighten.

  Two magnificent thoroughbreds were thundering by, while trainers, stopwatch in hand, binoculars up to their eyes, watched intently.

  “I assume Gina arrived alright,” Betty said.

  “She’s asleep in the casita.”

  Betty patted the red folder on her lap. “This is going to be rough for Gina. I mean with what she thinks of her father. You’ll have to use a lot of care in what you do with it. How you expose it to her. It could be devastating.”

  He wondered whether Betty, who had never married or had children, had had issues with her own father. To reassure her, he said, “Don’t forget about my years alone with Francesca. I know how complex relationships can be between girls and their fathers. Now tell me what you found.”

  “I’ll give you a summary. Afterwards, you can take the file containing the dossier and archival documents backing up every statement. They’re all copies. I kept the originals in Washington.”

  “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  She straightened the hat. “Gina’s father, General Miguel Galindo, was one of the worst perpetrators of crimes against the Argentine people during the Dirty War. He approved lists of thousands of people to arrest as enemies of the state. Supposedly, for their left wing political views. He decided which ones should be tortured and which ones should be murdered. He even conducted some interrogations himself. All of them disappeared.”

  “My God. She idolizes her father. Believes he was a great man. A hero of the Republic.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “How accurate is the information?”

  “The documents all came from our archives. Intelligence reports at the time and internal Argentine documents. All authenticated.”

  She paused to push back her glasses. “You also asked me for information relating to Estrada and the kidnapping of babies. Estrada’s name never appears in any of our documents. Perhaps he was too junior at the time. A baby kidnapping operation was run by some of the generals, so Estrada could have been working for one of them. They called it Operation Delta. A sadistic choice of title. Delta, the letter D, is the first letter of the word divide. They kidnapped babies, and divided them from their families. Maybe hundreds. Nobody knows. Again, from supposedly Communist sympathizers. They sold these babies to friends and pocketed the cash. There’s nothing in the documents linking Gina’s father to Operation Delta.”

  “Are you certain there’s no evidence in the documents of Estrada’s involvement in the kidnapping business?”

  She shook her head. “I asked the researchers several times. The answer is no. Some other names were mentioned. Do you have reliable evidence of your own that Estrada was involved?”

  She was looking at him hopefully. “That could help us with Treadwell to overrule B
ryce.”

  Craig paused to weigh the issue in his mind. An affidavit from Maria about Estrada’s involvement wouldn’t carry the day with Treadwell because Bryce would blow it out of the water as no real evidence. “What I have at this point isn’t enough to do the job. Only fuzzy recollections from twenty years ago, Bryce would contend. Or an effort to destroy an innocent man trying to become president of the country.”

  Still, he might have another way to use Maria to nail Estrada. “Tell me what happened to Gina’s father after the Dirty War ended and civilian rule returned to Argentina.”

  “Initially, there were no prosecutions, no trials, or any other accounting for the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. Instead, the new civilian government reached a tacit understanding with the military to sweep it all under the rug and move on as if nothing had occurred. So for the next three years after civilian rule was restored in 1983, General Galindo continued doing whatever generals do in peace time—supervising officers and so forth.”

  “And then?”

  “He was walking from a restaurant in a town in Patagonia near an army base to his car when a woman raced up to him. Before anyone had a chance to react, at point blank range, she fired three shots into his chest killing him instantly. It turns out she was the wife of one of the men who disappeared. She blamed him for it. The whole incident was hushed up. The official version was that he had been killed by Communist insurgents. Gina was away at boarding school at the time.”

  Betty handed him the folder. “It’s all in here. I’ll alert B. J. Walker at the Embassy in Buenos Aires to give you any help you need. Use the same code if you want to get inside to use a secure phone.”

  Craig opened up the file and began leafing through the papers. “Where are the documents relating to General Galindo?”

  She pointed to them. As she turned to look at horses racing on the track, he began reading the documents. Something in one of them caught his eye. “Holy shit,” he said recapturing Betty’s attention. His face was as white as a sheet.

  His heart went out to Gina. Nobody should have to learn about a parent what he now knew. He hoped to hell he could persuade her to do what he wanted without having her know everything about her father.

  Craig jogged back from the Bender horse farm carrying the red folder, in order to work up a sweat and give his jogging alibi some validity. As he approached the casita, he was surprised to see the lights turned on. Hopefully, it just meant that Gina had gotten up early because of the time difference. Not that Schiller’s goons had found them. Or Bryce had shown up to get her back.

  Regardless, he decided to leave the red folder in a corner of the porch, out of sight. He’d pick it up later, when he could slip it into his suitcase without her watching. Then, on tiptoes, he quietly walked around to the back of the casita to the glass sliding door. He had to peek inside and see what was waiting for him.

  Feeling vulnerable without a weapon, he grabbed a rock from the ground, held his breath, and looked through the glass door.

  Gina was alone.

  What he saw when he slid open the door was Gina dressed in a sheer, pale blue silk nightgown and matching robe.

  She shouted, “Surprise. I’m up, and I ordered breakfast from room service.” The table was fully set. “I wanted to show you I can be domestic.”

  He laughed. “Thanks. That was very nice of you.”

  “I hope you’ll like what I ordered.”

  “I’m sure I will. I’m all sweaty. Just let me jump into the shower then we’ll eat.”

  After he emerged from the shower in a terrycloth robe over a pair of underpants, she used the bathroom. That let him bring in Betty’s folder and bury it in clothes in his suitcase.

  Gina walked over and kissed him. “Breakfast. Then whatever,” she said.

  “You look fabulous,” he told her as she sat down across from him.

  “Thank you. Dinner last night was wonderful.”

  He looked away from her at the lemon tree outside the window. Tell her already, he chided himself. Waiting won’t make it any easier.

  “I ordered us a wild mushroom omelet,” she continued in her bubbly enthusiasm. “I know a lot of you Americans don’t think you should eat eggs, but my great grandma lived to be ninety-nine and she ate two eggs every day of her life. So what do you think of that?”

  “I’m happy to try it.”

  “And if we ever have children, and I know that’s a big if, then I intend to make them eggs every day and keep them healthy.”

  He tore off a piece of toast and poured them both some coffee. He couldn’t continue the charade any longer. Her line from last evening seemed like the best opening. “I have a confession to make.”

  The grim, serious expression on his face knocked the smile off hers. Her hand holding a cup of coffee shook. Some spilled out as she put the cup down. “I’m not going to like this. Am I?”

  “No. You won’t.”

  “You’re already married?”

  “I’m not, although that would be easier to explain.”

  She sat up ramrod straight and gripped the sides of the chair hard, as if that could save her from the storm that was about to blow through the room and blast her away.

  “I intend to put my life into your hands,” he said. “Literally. I mean that. But I know I can trust you. And I need your help.”

  She was puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  “Before I tell you, just remember one thing. Above all else, I believe you’re a wonderful person, and I truly care about you.”

  “But you don’t love me?”

  Instinctively, he began to duck the question, but he realized that wasn’t fair to her. He had to level with her fully. She was an adult. “No, I don’t. And I never told you that I did.”

  “But I thought …”

  He watched a few tears appear in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away. This is damn hard, he thought. “This isn’t about us,” he added.

  “Then what is it about?”

  “I’m not who you think I am.”

  She was dumbfounded. “You’re not Barry Gorman, an investment banker from San Francisco? You don’t have $10 billion to invest in Argentina? It’s all one big disgusting lie?”

  He didn’t like doing it this way, but he had no choice if he had any chance of persuading her to help him. Besides, he owed her an honest explanation.

  “That’s correct. I am not Barry Gorman.”

  “Then who are you?”

  He took a deep breath. “My name is Craig Page. I used to work for the CIA. For the last year, I raced cars around the world. Recently, the CIA recruited me to help them in Argentina.”

  “So you just spent time with me and made me fall for you because it was part of your job? To get information.”

  She had said it calmly, but once her words sunk in, her face was contorted with anger. She rose to her feet.

  “That’s not right,” he said. “Remember what I told you. I care for you a great deal.”

  She took two steps toward him. Without any warning, she raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face. Then she burst into tears, heavy wracking sobs. She ran over to the sofa and buried herself in the pillows, crying.

  He waited several minutes. Then he tried to put an arm around her to comfort her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she cried out. “You’re scum. You’re the lowest there is.”

  He would have liked to have asked her what the difference was between what he did and her sleeping with Bryce. Wasn’t that part of her job? At least he hadn’t slept with her. But that wasn’t the point. He had deceived her.

  He retreated to the breakfast table and sipped coffee in silence, waiting for her to stop crying. He had to admit she had given him one helluva slap. The whole right side of his face stung.

  When the well of tears ran dry, she went into the bathroom, washed her face, and returned wearing one of the hotel’s terry cloth bathrobes instead of the sheer lingerie.

  Sh
e sat on the sofa, now ready to talk. He pulled up a chair, facing her across the wooden coffee table.

  “Okay, I understand that you’re a spy,” she said. “But what possible good could you accomplish by spending time with me. I don’t have any government secrets.”

  He gulped hard. “You are extremely close with General Estrada. We knew that you were obtaining information from Edward Bryce and passing it along to Estrada.”

  She pulled back in bewilderment. “You make me sound like a spy.”

  “Let’s not quibble with semantics. The CIA has been concerned about Estrada’s agenda for some time. They sent a man, Ted Dunn, to—”

  She raised her hand and cut him off. “But why’s any of this a reason for you to spend time with me?”

  No sense dodging any longer. He decided he’d better come clean about everything. “On our first date in Washington, I had no intention of sleeping with you. I hoped you’d invite me up to your apartment after dinner so I could install a couple of listening devices. I did that after you fell asleep.

  “So you bugged my apartment?”

  “And your phone.”

  “My phone too.”

  “I’m being honest.”

  “You’re a crumb,” she shouted. “I don’t use swear words like some girls. So I won’t call you those other things. Even though you deserve it.”

  She shook her head in bewilderment while her face displayed anger. “You listened to all of my conversations with Rosie and Edward. You heard me in bed with him.” The dread of it sunk in further. “How could you do that and look at yourself in the mirror? It’s disgusting.”

  “In fact, I didn’t listen to anything. A machine made transcripts.”

  “Oh, that makes it right?”

  “I’m not proud of what I did. It was necessary.”

  She wrinkled up her face. “Necessary for what?”

  He was relieved they were finally getting to the issue. “I was brought into this because the CIA had sent another man, Ted Dunn, to Argentina to find out what Estrada’s agenda was. When Colonel Schiller and Estrada found out about Dunn, they had him killed along with a young Argentine man, Pascual, who was helping Dunn.”