by Trevor Scott
Then the door opened and Gerhard Beck entered. He took a seat in the brown leather swivel chair behind his oak desk. He was wearing khakis again, along with a tan button up shirt with epaulets.
Beck opened a thin laptop and clicked on the keyboard for a moment—probably inputting a password. Then he leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands together on the desk in front of him.
“You are a bit of a mystery,” Beck said.
She said nothing.
“When you were recruited in Buenos Aires, you had very little on you. Cash but no credit cards. Who your age doesn’t have a credit or debit card?”
She still kept quiet as she pondered his description of her kidnapping as a mere ‘recruitment.’
“That was a direct question, Maria Mendez. If that really is your name.”
It wasn’t. She was Maria Vega. “When I go out for drinks, I use cash,” she explained.
“Right. But your cell phone had no contacts and its history was wiped out with the exception of the very last person you texted.”
Maria decided not to explain that text, since she knew it was to her friend Sirena.
“That was an incomplete text,” Beck said. “It appeared like you were telling someone you needed help. But why?”
She gulped hard now, but she had known this question would come up eventually. She said, “I was afraid of some men in that bar.”
“Really? You expect me to believe that?”
“It is the truth,” she said.
“We looked into the number that you called,” Beck said. “It was for a hair salon in Madrid.”
“I must have hit the wrong number,” she surmised. “I had been drinking.”
He ignored her now as he seemed to be watching something on his laptop. Finally, he said, “You are older than the other girls. What is your real age?”
“You have my passport,” she said.
“I have a passport. But that is as phony as your story.”
She didn’t budge. He was fishing for her to break, but she knew her back story just as well as her actual life. Perhaps even better, since she knew she could be called on to answer questions like this. She told Beck her date and place of birth.
Beck smiled and shook his head. “You can keep saying that for your stay here, but eventually I will find out the truth. I have asked for help from a friend I know in the Spanish government. Once he verifies your identity, we will be forced to deal with you in another way.”
“I don’t understand why your men kidnapped me,” she said. “What is the purpose?”
Beck had his hands down under his desk and she thought he might be gratifying himself.
“You will find out soon enough, Maria,” Beck said.
“Is this about sex?” she asked. “I am not a virgin.”
“I am sure this is true,” Beck said. “But you will become one again.”
The door to the office opened and a guard came in and pulled her to her feet. The man escorted her back to the dormitory.
The dorm was somewhat subdued, with only a few girls laying around on their beds or sitting in small groups on floor mats in a lounge area.
Maria went directly to her bed and crawled to the upper bunk. Gerhard Beck was crazy, she thought. A certifiable nutcase. Think, Maria. What are your options? Maybe she didn’t have time to rescue the college girls from her home country. Perhaps she needed to save herself first and then come back for the others. Only she was uniquely trained to survive an escape.
•
Gerhard Beck sat back in his chair and toggled through the CCTV images for the dormitory. He found the best camera angle for this new woman, Maria, and concentrated on her as she lay in her bunk. Something wasn’t quite right about her. He had conducted processing interviews with every girl in camp and had never seen one so calm. Perhaps that was because of her advanced age. But that didn’t account for everything. Maria wasn’t only not afraid of him, she looked at him like she wanted to rip his head off and piss down his windpipe.
He took out his satellite phone from his locked drawer and typed in a long sequence of numbers from memory. Nazca Center was just out of cell service range, so the SAT phone was their only way to communicate. They didn’t even have internet in this camp. When they decided to release a video, they were forced to travel into Lima and upload that at an internet café. And his people knew to never use the same café twice in a row. They rotated among five locations with five of his men, so the authorities could never trace their activity.
He had lied to Maria. A little white lie. His contact in Spain was not in law enforcement. He worked for INTERPOL, and would be sure to warn him if his agency was closing in on their operation.
His contact knew immediately why he was calling, since Beck had given the man just a few hours to find the information he had requested. Beck had even sent his contact a photo of Maria’s passport, along with a more recent photo and her fingerprints, which his men had gotten while she slept through the drugs on her first night at Nazca Center. So, his contact excitedly gave him the information Beck needed.
“Are you sure?” Beck asked.
His contact was sure. Beck thanked the man and cut off the call. This changed everything. Instinctively he knew this Maria was a fraud, but he had no idea it was this bad. Now he needed to decide what to do with her.
27
Lima, Peru
After landing in the Peruvian capital, Jake and Sirena were picked up in a Toyota SUV and driven to the Miraflores area. They checked into a hotel a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean and got something to eat at a curbside restaurant before heading out on foot to a shopping area on the ocean.
Kurt Jenkins had sent Jake a large file with everything known about Gerhard Beck, the man they would be checking on in Peru. Beck was of German heritage, but had grown up most of his life in Buenos Aires. He held an Argentine passport and had traveled extensively worldwide until a year ago. That’s when he had settled into Peru. But the man had no known employment. He lived off his inheritance from his father, who had been a business owner in Argentina up until his death ten years ago. Upon his father’s death, Gerhard had sold his father’s import export business and became a playboy of sorts, dating mostly rich daughters of the Argentine elite. Then something happened a year ago, but there was no intel on what that could have been, and the guy seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Beck’s family heritage was his paternal grandfather, who had been a prominent Nazi SS officer. Eventually the man was tracked down by the Israelis hiding in Argentina, living the good life. Before the Israelis could prosecute the grandfather, though, he had killed himself in a prison cell awaiting trial for war crimes. But the crimes of the grandfather had not impacted Beck’s father, even though his business was probably started by stolen Nazi money.
Jake strolled down the dark street toward the sea, Sirena on his side.
“What do we know about this guy we’re meeting?” Sirena asked.
“Kurt said the guy knows Lima and Peru better than anyone alive,” Jake said. “He’s retired from the Peruvian National Intelligence Office.”
“DINI does not have a stellar reputation,” Sirena reminded Jake.
“I know,” he said. “Their government shut down the agency a few years ago.”
“Wiretapping the vice president of the country should have some consequences.”
They came to a small park and Jake was confused. “There’s supposed to be a high-end shopping mall here.”
“I looked it up online,” she said. “It’s built into the side of the cliff, dropping down about three stories.”
“Let me guess,” Jake said, “you wanted to see what stores they had here.”
She shrugged. “I could use some new shoes. Especially with all the walking we’ve been doing down here.”
Before crossing the street, Jake pulled up a photo of Esteban Caro, the former Peruvian intelligence officer. He showed the image to Sirena.
> “He looks older than dirt,” Sirena said.
“Kurt said the guy is in remission after a bout with lung cancer.”
“I guess that explains the bald head.”
“He’s only sixty-three,” Jake said.
They crossed the road and went to the edge overlooking the ocean. Now Jake could see the shops below. People moved about going from store to store. Others were crowded into bars and restaurants overlooking the ocean. Someone had done a nice job developing this area, Jake thought. His eyes finally caught the bar below where they would meet this Peruvian.
They took the steps down to the bar and walked right in. Since they were about ten minutes late, Jake guessed the former intel officer would already be inside.
Jake nodded his head to Sirena when he saw their contact at the end of the bar. As per their arrangement, the man was wearing a straw hat. Sirena would be the main contact, since she was fluent in Spanish.
Moving in on one side of the man, Sirena said, “Amazing view up here.”
Esteban Caro let his eyes inspect Sirena’s body. He said, “It is now.”
Jake came up behind the distracted Peruvian and said in English, “I’m Jake and this is Sirena.”
Esteban turned and shook Jake’s hand. Then he turned back to Sirena and kissed her hand and shook it as well. “You two should get a drink. We can talk out on the terrace.”
With a shift of his eyes, Jake told Sirena to go with the man to the terrace. “I’ll get a couple of beers.”
Jake watched Sirena work her magic as she walked outside, with the Peruvian following her like a buck chasing a doe in heat.
He ordered a couple of local beers and waited, his eyes scanning the room for anything out of the ordinary. When the beers came, he went outside to the terrace overlooking the sea. Sirena and Esteban were laughing at something, speaking in Spanish. He handed a beer to Sirena and sat on the far side of the table with a superior view of the bar. Then he just let Sirena work the guy for information. He picked up about half of what they were saying. She was mostly building rapport with the guy. Flirtatiously, of course.
“We should speak English,” Sirena said. “Jake speaks many languages, but his Spanish is not complete.”
“Of course,” Esteban said. “I speak only Spanish, English and Quechuan, the language of the Incan people. I was just telling your friend about Lima and Peru.”
“He’s been retired for a year now,” she said.
“So you still have some contacts in your government?” Jake asked.
The Peruvian nodded and sipped his drink. “Of course. I helped train most of the intelligence officers.”
“Did you get a chance to look into this Gerhard Beck?” Jake asked, getting right to the point.
Esteban said, “Yes. He must have friends in high places.”
“What makes you say that?” Jake asked.
“Because the man purchased a property on the outskirts of the city for almost nothing.”
Jake shrugged. “Maybe the house is a piece of crap.”
“No, sir. It is not a house. It is a former army camp, built during the end of the Second World War. It still has a number of buildings and an intact perimeter fence.”
“You know the place?” Sirena asked.
“Yes. Our agency used it as a prison for a number of years. That was during a dark time in our history. It was originally built to train soldiers.”
“What is Beck using it for now?” Jake asked.
Esteban shrugged. “I could not find out. But I could bring you there in the morning.”
Jake already knew about this camp from the information provided by Kurt, but it was always nice to get a local perspective. “I know in the intel business it’s not a good idea to speculate on anything, but sometimes we have to use our gut to assess a situation. What does your gut tell you about this Beck and his camp?”
Esteban looked confused until Sirena said something to him in Spanish. “Oh, I see,” he said. “Seriously, nothing has come up on this man or the old camp.”
All right, Jake thought. This was going nowhere fast. “Nothing at all.” He hesitated and added, “What can you tell us about the security there?” He pulled out his phone and brought up the map of the location. Then he switched from map mode to satellite view, zooming in on the image.
“Video cameras,” Esteban said. “But we have no way of knowing if this man upgraded his system.”
Jake sent a text to Kurt, asking for a current satellite image of this camp. He got a text almost immediately, saying he would get on it. This could require some time, Jake knew, since Kurt would have to use one of his old contacts in the Agency to acquire this real-time image.
“We can’t wait until morning,” Jake said. “It would be better if we could take a look at the camp tonight.”
Esteban shook his head. “That is not possible.”
“Why?” Sirena asked.
“I have had too much to drink,” the Peruvian said.
Jake assessed the man more carefully. The man was slurring his words, but Jake thought that was simply a speech impediment. Now he understood that Esteban Caro was trashed.
“Did you drive here?” Jake asked.
Esteban nodded his head. “I am parked in the underground garage here.”
Sirena put out her hand. “I’ll drive. You navigate.”
The Peruvian stood up and found his keys. He handed them to Sirena and watched as she headed for the door. Esteban shook his head. “Wow,” he whispered to Jake. “I did not think they made them like that anymore.”
“Easy,” Jake said, his hand on the man’s shoulder. “She could snap your neck with her bare hands.”
Jake and Esteban followed Sirena out to the common area.
They found the Peruvian’s car down a level in the underground parking area. Sirena got behind the wheel, with Esteban in the front passenger seat to navigate. Jake was in the back seat checking his phone for connectivity, but he couldn’t get any until they reached the surface.
As they drove down the boulevard along the ocean, Jake suddenly got a text. It simply said ‘call me.’ It was from Kurt Jenkins.
Jake called his old friend and the man picked up immediately.
“Jake, we’ve got a problem,” Kurt said.
“Go ahead.”
“The government in Uruguay somehow got wind that we were talking with Tiffany Larsen.”
“So.”
“Turns out she has never been an American citizen,” Kurt said. “Uruguay is her home country, and they demanded we release her.”
“What? That’s absurd.”
“I know. But our people checked on it and it’s true. She had dual citizenship by naturalization, but when her husband had his problems, she turned over her U.S. passport and renounced her U.S. citizenship.”
“Okay. So, where are we on it?” Jake asked.
“Nowhere. The local ambassador was contacted by State, who passed it on to the Agency station chief in Montevideo. They put an end to the interrogation and were forced to release Tiffany.”
“Tell me you’re fucking kidding,” Jake said.
“I wish.”
Crap. If Jake was right, this woman was much more dialed in than initially thought. “She could talk with the people in Santiago or here.”
“I know. You’ll need to move fast.”
“At least tell me you have satellite images for me,” Jake said.
“Negative,” Kurt said. “The Agency doesn’t have current coverage in that area.”
“What about the National Reconnaissance Office or the military?” Jake asked.
“Same. I tried them all. I even reached out to a friend in the NSA. They looked into the location, but there is no land line and no cell signals emanating from the old camp.”
“No internet?” Jake asked.
“Nothing.”
“They must be using a SAT phone,” Jake reasoned.
“My thoughts also. They must turn it off comple
tely after each call.”
Jake considered that. “This could work to our advantage. Tiffany would have no way to contact them.”
Kurt cleared his throat and let out a deep breath.
“What?” Jake asked.
“She got on a plane a couple hours ago,” Kurt said.
“To where?”
“Lima. It’s a little over a four-hour flight. She’ll be there in a couple of hours.”
Jake checked his watch. “All right. That doesn’t give us much time.”
“You can’t go in alone, Jake.”
He didn’t give his old friend any false assurances, he simply thanked him and tapped off the call.
Sirena checked out Jake in the rearview mirror. “Is everything all right?”
“Just wonderful. We’ll be going in blind, though.”
The drunken former Peruvian intel officer turned to Jake and said, “Not entirely.” He pulled out some papers from inside his light jacket. “I anticipated you might want some plans for the compound. They’re old and are probably not up to date, but they might help.” Esteban handed the papers back to Jake.
They were not overly detailed, Jake noticed. But at least the main structures were there. This would have to do until they got eyes on the compound.
The military had a term for that: SNAFU! Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.
28
The old Peruvian Army camp was situated on the eastern edge of the city, nestled down a mountain crevice in a narrow valley. The nearest point of civilization was nearly two miles away, and that was just a small cluster of rural residences.
Jake and Sirena and the former Peruvian intel officer, Esteban, had found a position on high ground about a half a mile away, where they had observed the compound for the past couple of hours. As far as Jake could tell, there was no activity whatsoever. There were no rotating perimeter security forces. No men in watch towers with automatic weapons. Nothing. If it were not for the subdued lights along the perimeter fence and on a few of the buildings, he would have guessed the place was abandoned. But that wasn’t the case. What Jake did notice, was a full garden in the center of the encampment. Also, a number of the buildings had air conditioning units running, despite the cooler evening temperatures. Next to those AC units were backup generators. What kind of place was this?
