Smith completed his encode; rows and columns of numbers swam before his eyes. He wrote the header of the cable: TS/SCI, TOP SECRET SPECIAL COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION, and its priority, ROUTINE.
Death, Smith thought, death is routine. This mundane bit of traffic would make certain that Langley understood what it had asked for—the death of Che Guevara.
Smith removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He walked behind the casita to the radio tent and gave the code groups to one of Holland’s men to transmit. The sergeant’s finger pressed on a radio key, clicks that translated to dits and das, an electric pulse that would bridge the distance of ten thousand miles—6574, 3544, 3122, 7162—numbers blasted into the ether, numbers that added up to zero. Zero for Guevara and more zeros, cold zeros, for his men.
25
COSMO ZEEBUS SHOVELED up the last of his flan, then pushed away the plate with his thumb. He had quite possibly eaten the largest dessert ever served in La Paz.
“By God,” he said, “I’ve lost my appetite.”
Zeebus had eaten all of two desserts, custard and gelato, not to mention a platter of papas rellenos and a full plate of silpancho, a Bolivian beefsteak smothered with tomato concassé and topped with a fried egg. It was a meal that would have choked a timber wolf.
“You can say a lot of shitty things about this place,” Zeebus said, “but you gotta love the food.”
Hoyle sipped a beer and averted his eyes. Zeebus was a gastronomic spectacle, a trencherman of the first order, and the owner of the place, a chola named Magda, loved to watch him eat. Zeebus had single-handedly added her restaurant, Los Escudos, to the diplomatic corps’s culinary map. As the plates were cleared away, Hoyle’s eyes were met by a pair of Swiss consuls at an adjoining table. They had watched Zeebus set about his lunch with an air of disgust and awe. Magda hurried along the busboys and smiled a gold-plated smile. Zeebus was like money in the bank.
Zeebus dropped a cube of sugar into his coffee. “What?” he asked.
Hoyle had watched Zeebus eat a hundred meals in maybe sixty different places around the world, and each time the sight shocked him.
“You’re amazing,” Hoyle said.
“Son, what’s amazing is how little you eat,” Zeebus said. “I never see you eat.”
That was true enough for this meal, a lunch spanning the period of the Bolivian siesta, between noon and two. It had taken Zeebus roughly this long to demolish his midday repast. Since early morning, Hoyle, Charlie, and Santavanes had been surveilling Selizar Galán, the general secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party. A loose but unbroken tail was kept on Galán as he carried out a morning perambulation, a trip to the market, a bus ride to a midcity café, and then a relaxing browse through a bookstore. Galán’s morning errands were erratic precisely to detect if someone was following. Twice the general secretary had doubled back on his own route, and twice he had rounded corners and waited, and each time his tails had eluded detection. Hoyle and Santavanes were impressed throughout the morning by Charlie’s diligence and his knowledge of the city and the target. Charlie was a natural-born operative.
Galán had met no one, dropped nothing off, nor picked anything up. He had retired to his apartment about noon, and while Charlie and Santavanes waited him out, Hoyle had elected to join Zeebus for lunch. The hunt would be resumed at two, when it was thought that Galán would reemerge. Until then Hoyle and Zeebus broke bread and buried the hatchet. Rather, it was Zeebus who broke the bread, and the way to this man’s heart was truly through his stomach.
“How are your ribs?” Zeebus asked, not convincingly.
“Better.”
“You get shot more than anybody I know.”
That was true. Though Hoyle tried not to think of it.
“Son, Ambassador Hielman wishes you were dead. He doesn’t like being told what to do. Even if it does come from on high.”
“We all dance for somebody, Cosmo,” Hoyle said.
“Yeah, well, I’m gonna dance right out of here. Thanks to you and the boy wonder.”
“Smith?”
“Son of a bitch. Yeah. Him. They officially made me chief of station since this thing heated up.”
“Then you owe him a thank-you note.”
“I’m chief of station of Turd City, pal. This place is nowhere.”
“It’s my second tour in nowhere,” Hoyle said.
“Yeah, well, we can’t all be as screwed up as you.” Zeebus looked at his napkin but did not use it to wipe his mouth. “One thing good came out of this.”
“Good for who?” Hoyle asked.
“Good for me,” Zeebus said. “As COS, I was able to sign my own request for transfer. I put in for somewhere there’s some action.”
“Maybe there’ll be some action here.”
“Shit. All you’re gonna do is try to get the Bolivians out from under their own beds. And besides, if there is any action around here, you aren’t gonna share.”
“I’m not the guy running this.”
“Save it. I know. I just want out of fucking beaner world. And I got it yesterday. A cable with my transfer—”
“Saigon?”
“Shit, why would I want to go there? I’m talking Berlin. U.S.A. versus the Commie Menace. The real show. Ninety days and I’m G-O-N-E. You and four eyes can fight the Frito Bandito without Cosmo.” Zeebus laughed at himself.
“Congratulations.”
Berlin was the big time. An island of the West surrounded by barbed wire—a place the game was played for real. Hoyle had no chance of ever being assigned there—not unless he was rehabilitated, and that was unlikely given the discontent Smith was sowing. It was also not the sort of place they sent contractors. Not as long as there was dirty work to do elsewhere.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“You don’t think I care?” Hoyle’s tone was wry.
“No, ya dope. I’m gonna give you a little inside info. Back channel.” Zeebus leaned a little closer. Hoyle noticed a fleck of egg yolk on his chin.
“About?”
“The people you pissed off.”
Hoyle’s face was a pleasant blank.
“Yeah, you. After your little powwow, Hielman’s knickers were in a knot. It doesn’t make it any better that there isn’t anything he can do about it. State Department is telling him to buck up and do as he’s told. It’s MacDonald, the military attaché, who’s gonna fry your ass.”
“How so?”
“Hoyle, sometimes you are a dope. Where’s Hielman gonna go? He’s an ambassador already. He’s at the end of the rainbow. Ambassador to Bolivia—last stop. But MacDonald—he’s a colonel. And he wants to be a general. He’s not going to get to be a general writing press releases for a group of Green Beanies training up a mess of Bolivians. Especially when he’s figured out that you and Smith have something going up in Vallegrande.”
“What does he know?” Now Hoyle’s tone was serious.
“Relax, son. He doesn’t ‘know’ anything—except that you got at least two Cuban contractors in here. He’s heard the rumors that there’s Communist mercenaries up-country. He’s heard that you and Smith got the green light to take them out.”
Hoyle’s voice was even. “If there’s been any leaks, Cosmo…”
“Son, cool down. If MacDonald knows about you, it’s because you got a reputation. Hell, I don’t even know what you got going up there. I’m just telling you. This thing isn’t over for MacDonald. He wants a piece of the action. He ain’t gonna sit by and watch the medals get passed out and him get passed over.”
Hoyle looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to two. “I have to run.”
“Who are you tailing?”
Hoyle said nothing but put a wad of Bolivianos down on the table.
Zeebus continued to fish. “Two o’clock. All the Bolos get up from siesta.”
Hoyle liked Zeebus, even if he was a pain in the ass. “Thank me for lunch, Cosmo,” he said.
“Thank me for the
information,” Cosmo said.
They walked for the door.
At the door, Zeebus stopped and kissed Magda’s hand. He turned on the charm, his Spanish thick with a Mississippi drawl: “Esa comida era fantástica. ¡Algo de su mejor alimento! Gracias, Señora.”
Before Zeebus could introduce him, Hoyle slipped out the door and disappeared into the crowd.
26
A BLOCK AND a half down, on the left side of the street, Selizar Galán exited his apartment and strolled east down Avenida America.
“It’s about goddamn time,” Hoyle muttered. He was sitting behind the wheel of a 1965 Impala staked out half a block down from the corner of Avenida America and Calle Viacha.
Santavanes stirred in the seat next to him, pretending never to have slept in his life. “¿Qué paso?”
“There he goes.”
Santavanes opened the car door and started after Galán, keeping the distance of half a block between them. The street was not crowded, but there were pedestrians about, the city beginning to stir after the midday’s lull. Galán stopped at a yellow street cart tended by a young chola in a bowler hat. He fished some coins out of his pocket and bought a Salteña. At the cart, he ate it slowly, turned twice, facing Hoyle, but did not see him or Santavanes among the cars and people streaming down the sidewalks. Whatever Galán had been doing in his house for the last three hours, it had not involved eating. As Galán ate, Santavanes stopped at a news kiosk and purchased a packet of cigarettes. He stood by the stall, smoking casually, until Galán had finished his lunch.
Galán wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and continued down the street, again heading east. Santavanes followed, staying a block down, placing his left hand in his jacket pocket, a signal for Hoyle to keep back. Hoyle and Santavanes had worked together so often, in jungle and city, that they had a dozen such signals. A change of pockets to the right hand would mean to close up; a conspicuous checking of the wristwatch would mean that the tail was made—surveillance was blown—and the following units should pass on adjoining blocks and then regroup.
Hoyle checked his rearview mirror. Charlie puttered up on a motorbike and stopped next to the driver’s-side window. Down the block, a tall, heavyset man in a blue suit approached Galán; this was a surprise. The rules, and common sense, dictated that Galán would run a second surveillance detection route before he conducted any business. Made smug by his morning’s walk, Galán obviously considered himself to be free of observation. Santavanes was likewise caught unaware but smoothly turned into a ladies’ dress shop and waited. Hoyle squinted down the block.
“Who’s the gringo?” Charlie asked. He instantly regretted the remark, but Hoyle took no offense. He lifted a 35mm camera and used its long lens to zoom in on the man’s face. There was a brief moment’s disbelief, but Hoyle recognized the man at once.
“He’s not gringo,” Hoyle said, “he’s Russian.” The fat man was an opponent from Europe. “His name’s Diminov; he’s a light colonel in the KGB.”
Hoyle was amazed to see the Russian half a world away from their last encounter. He usually operated under diplomatic cover, but the Soviet embassy was closed in La Paz. The Bolivians had knuckled under to Uncle Sam, expelling both the Cubans and Russians after the missile crisis in 1962. That meant that Diminov had inserted under “illegal” cover. Like Santavanes and Valdéz—and Hoyle, for that matter—Diminov was not shielded by diplomatic immunity. The Russian was fair game.
Hoyle lowered the camera and watched the two men speak. Diminov was carrying a newspaper folded in half, perhaps the most obvious prop in the world of espionage.
“Right out in the street.” Charlie shook his head. This was not how the game was played.
“Tradecraft isn’t Diminov’s long ball,” Hoyle said. “He’s more of a brass-knuckles kind of guy. I played against him in Vienna. He’s lazy. Likes to work in parks.”
A third person joined them, a Bolivian dressed in a cardigan sweater and navy slacks.
“Who’s the lightweight?” Hoyle asked.
“Galliego. He’s a leader of the Communist Youth Organization.”
“You sure?”
“Trust me,” Charlie said.
Galán had balls. He was holding a Party conclave right out in the street. Direct contact between the Bolivian Communist Party and a Russian intelligence officer in broad goddamn daylight. It was either idiotic or brilliant.
“Who do you have on the other side of the market?”
“My cousin. Don’t worry.”
Galán, Diminov, and Galliego started to stroll toward the Mercado Lanza, a warren of stalls and vendors. Charlie revved his motorbike.
“If they split up, stay with the new guy,” Hoyle said.
Charlie threaded his Honda into the stream of traffic. Hoyle opened the car door and jogged across the street. Down the block, Santavanes emerged from the dress shop with his hand in his right pocket—the signal to close the distance. Hoyle hustled down the sidewalk and caught up to Santavanes at the edge of the market.
The market opened on three sides around them. There were hundreds of people, vendors and shoppers, tables laid out with bread and produce, stalls with shelves sagging under bright boxes and bottles and cauldrons filled with chicha and somo frío.
“I still have them,” Santavanes said as Hoyle trotted up, “fifty yards down by the blankets.”
Hoyle saw them through the crowd. He watched as Galliego handed an envelope to Diminov. The Russian stuffed the envelope into the newspaper and walked in the other direction. Galán turned back and headed directly at them.
“They’ve made a pass,” Santavanes said. “Who do you want?”
“I’ll stay with the Russian. You stay with Galán.”
Diminov walked casually through the crowded stalls, leaving the market at Avenida Figueroa. Hoyle sprinted across the street, nearly getting hit by a taxi as he cut across the corner to stay within sight.
The Russian moved leisurely, unaware that frantic movements were being made in his wake. He sauntered two blocks down, then another. Ahead loomed the Plaza 14 de Septiembre, a likely place for Diminov to work. Hoyle had a good view of the subject and covering traffic around him. He seemed to be in a decent position to keep Diminov under observation. And then on the corner of Calle Illampu, he ran into Charlie.
“Where’s the guy in the sweater?” Hoyle said.
“I lost him.”
How the hell? “I thought you had a cousin on the other side of the market.”
“He lost him, too.”
“Get on the other side of the plaza,” Hoyle said. Chastised, Charlie gunned the motorbike and took off.
Hoyle jostled through the crowd. He finally regained sight of Diminov half a block down, standing in the doorway of a shop. As Diminov turned from the doorway, a striking dark-haired young woman appeared from the crowd.
Tania saw the man she knew as Robert fully a block away as she approached northwest up the Calle Max Paredes. He was precisely on time, as was she. The Russian was in exactly the right location, the doorway of a stationery shop called El Correo. As Tania moved toward him, she saw that he displayed the safety signal, a newspaper carried in his right hand, indicating that it was safe for her to approach. Tania carried a red clutch purse under her arm, her signal telling him that she had not been followed.
As she came closer, her heart began to race. It had been pounding since her last cover stop, a purchase at the gift shop of the Hotel Milton. Unlike Galán, Tania had kept her tradecraft sound. Her surveillance detection route had taken her across the city all morning. She had not been followed, but she could have no idea that Diminov had been. She was on edge, even paranoid, and she grew more tense as she approached Robert.
As Tania came near, Diminov stepped from the doorway. He seemed to look through her as though she were a stranger in the crowd, but as he stepped past, he flipped her the folded newspaper with an underhanded motion. They passed, not acknowledging each other, the newspaper now s
napped into Tania’s left hand. Without looking back, Diminov headed back to his hotel, and Tania crossed the street. They had completed a brush pass. Hoyle had seen it all. As had Santavanes, who’d brought up the car and now was double-parked a block from the plaza.
“We’ve got another player,” Hoyle said.
What had been a cakewalk in the morning had turned into a complex nightmare. Now Diminov was going one way and the dark-haired woman the other. Galán was somewhere back in the market, and Charlie had slipped from sight.
“We’re out of tails,” Santavanes said. It was an admission of defeat and a grudging tribute for the crafty Galán. They had been lulled by his sloppiness all morning and then overwhelmed. Galán’s ruse had worked perfectly. Frustrated, Hoyle watched as Tania moved away down the sidewalk.
There was suddenly the chirp of car tires, and that sound lengthened into a long skid. Tania was aware that a vehicle had swerved quickly, and a second later, it jerked up over the curb in front of her and onto the sidewalk, blocking her path. Tania thought at first, as everyone did, that it was a traffic accident.
The car doors were thrown open, and two men jumped out. Tania heard them shouting but could not make out the words; still she thought it only a mishap until she registered the glint of a chrome-plated pistol. She saw clearly that it was a snub-nosed revolver, not an automatic, and she felt the muzzle of the weapon jam into her ribs. The closer of the two men grabbed the front of Tania’s blouse and swung her toward the hood of the car. Tania was taken utterly by surprise, and she collided with the roof of the car and then the hood before she could shield herself with her hands. Her face was cut as she was whipped past the antenna. She heard the words “Policía Nacional,” and she knew the game was up.
Her ankles were kicked apart, and she was spread-eagled across the hood. As the arrest occurred, Tania had an odd sense that it had all happened before. It had not, but the event—compromise and detainment—had been in the back of her mind as long as she had undertaken clandestine work. A thousand times it had unfolded in her nightmares, a thing of dread and wonder, and now, as it happened to her, Tania felt oddly set apart from it. Like the people on the street, she could only observe with horror and dread. As she was searched, she lifted her head briefly to look down the block after Robert. It was instinct, a gesture she could not help, and one that a proper counterintelligence operative would have looked for as confirmation that a meeting had taken place. The Bolivian officers were more brutal than astute, and Tania’s head was shoved back down against the fender. Her head was jerked back and her arm twisted behind her. The newspaper dropped into the gutter as she was shoved headlong into the backseat of the car. One of the men jumped on top of her and slammed the door. The dark sedan accelerated back onto the street with tires smoking. The entire arrest had taken under fifteen seconds.
Killing Che Page 21
