The Mulberry Bush

by Charles McCarry

  He also knew how good it would be for his business if the U. S. government eliminated his competition.

  I said, “Amzi won’t buy this.”

  “Why not? I think otherwise. Those two are enemies. Terhune betrayed Amzi in the Alejandro operation, saddled him with the blame and the guilt for what happened to Felicia. Terhune’s got something to resent. He made the new, worse Alejandro possible. Amzi spoiled everything. He stole the credit that belonged to Terhune. He has probably done the same thing many times since. And as a result, he has overshadowed Terhune for the rest of his career. Terhune thinks that he should be the DDO, that Amzi cheated him of his rightful place. This is his chance to recoup. Amzi knows this. He will not hesitate to send him into danger and hope for the worst.”

  “You want Terhune to come to Argentina?”

  “Where else?”

  “If he’s as smart as you think he is, he’ll never do that.”

  “Then we can meet on neutral ground. I will fly to meet him anywhere outside the USA.”

  For a change, I was the one who snorted. Where exactly was this neutral ground to be found? Given their history, there wasn’t a patch of it anywhere on the planet large enough for Diego and Tom to occupy at the same moment.

  Many seconds later, Diego broke the bubble of silence.

  He said, “There’s only one way to find out—ask him. Will you do this for me?”

  I said, “I’ll deliver the message.”

  38

  Amzi said, “It sounds like Diego has either made friends with Jesus or he wants to behead Terhune. All in favor of Jesus say aye.”

  No one spoke.

  Amzi said, “OK, Tommy Tune, you’re first on the dance floor.”

  “First principles first,” Terhune said. “Once a terrorist, always a terrorist. This man in particular. He was the brains and the executioner of the movement, then of the drug operation. Alejandro was the dummy in the store window.”

  Amzi said, “So you don’t want to take the bait?”

  “I didn’t say that. Maybe he actually has something useful to say. He says he knows everything and maybe he does. Everything he’s told us so far is factual. It’s a gamble. But we’re supposed to be gamblers.”

  Amzi pointed a finger at me. “You?”

  “If all he wants is to kill Tom,” I said, “he doesn’t have to lure him to Argentina to do it. Bill Stringfellow was less than five miles from his house when they chopped off his head. Diego knows where Tom lives. He has a stable full of assassins. He can whack Tom on his way home at any moment of his choosing or murder him while he watches TV or blow up his house during a family reunion. He could have done any of those things a long time ago if that’s what he wanted to do.”

  Amzi said, “You think he might actually spill all those beans?”

  “He certainly was pretty talkative with me. You both know the case. Did he say anything that wasn’t true? Tom?”

  “It doesn’t seem so. He may have left unsaid some things that are true.”

  “Like what?”

  Neither Tom nor Amzi answered the question. Nor did they exchange a glance, as a couple of men who knew the same secret might have done. I didn’t follow up.

  Amzi said, “So what do we do now?”

  He pointed at me.

  “It’s Hobson’s choice,” I said. “In my opinion it would be wise to err on the side of caution. Let me handle it.”

  “He’s your fucking father-in-law.”

  “In biological terms, yes. In fact, I have no idea what Diego is to me. And anyway, whatever he may say, the connection is irrelevant.”

  “Nice you’re in such a cooperative mood,” Amzi said.

  The truth was, Diego really wasn’t an enigma to me. Now that Luz and I were apart, why should his attitude toward me include so much as a molecule of trust or affection or good intent? To Diego I was a pigeon in training. If I pecked the right button I got a bread crumb.

  Terhune said, “What he’s told us so far concerns the past and matches what we know. That means nothing. As our young friend, here, told us in another context, this guy is way too smart to lie to us when we already know the truth. What he wants to do is give us a reason to yield to temptation. Can we do what he wants us to do and profit from it? It would be risky, but it could be done.”

  “And go on living?” Amzi said. “He ain’t going to meet us inside the embassy with a bag over his head, and where else could we be in control?”

  Tom said, “On neutral ground, as he suggests.”

  “Like where?”

  They batted this ball back and forth for long minutes. Diego was right, these two did not like each other. However, they could read each other. They spoke over my head, as if I were a child who couldn’t understand the language grown-ups spoke among themselves. I was fine with that. They were talking themselves into this folly, just as Diego had hoped and for the reasons he had stated. He knew the type. It was their job to be curious, to live for answers, to outwit all comers.

  Registering reluctance, Amzi let himself be convinced. It was a weak performance. He might not want Tom to come to a bad end, but he wouldn’t be sorry if he did. He just didn’t want the responsibility. They decided to ask the Director’s permission to take the risk.

  Downstairs, Tom beckoned me into his office and shut the door.

  “I want to clear the air,” he said.

  I thought, Please don’t confess. I needn’t have worried.

  “There’s something you should know,” Tom said. “The Bureau has informed Security it has established that your mother died as a Medicare patient in a nursing home in Oregon. She wasn’t destitute but she was no millionaire, either. Her second husband—it was a common law marriage—never had a trust fund. He was a substitute high school English teacher, a nobody. The millions she’s supposed to have left you in trust was transferred from a bank in the Cayman Islands that’s popular with the cartels if it isn’t actually owned by them, to a bank in Lichtenstein they are also known to use, then to a bank in Denmark, then to the bank in Oregon, which presumably is clean. The Bureau thinks it’s onto something. Security tends to agree. That means a spot of bother. Clearly, whoever set this up wanted to throw you to the dogs. It will be hard to get the gumshoes to believe that, because that means they’d have to admit they were wrong and start all over again. Security is a world unto itself. Nobody, not even Amzi or your admirer the Director, can tell Security, let alone the Bureau, what to do or what not to do.”

  “Was my lawyer in on this?”

  “I don’t know, but he touched the money. That will be of interest to the Bureau.”

  Thanks, Tom, for the peace of mind.

  I said, “What do I do now?”

  “About what?”

  “Diego.”

  “Nothing whatsoever until you hear otherwise. It’ll take awhile for this to get through channels. Go back to Buenos Aires. If Luz is still there, she should stay there, out of the Bureau’s jurisdiction. If Diego asks, and he probably won’t, tell him the truth—we’re thinking about it. We’ll inform the station that you’re in town and to stay out of the way. Report in to the station as soon as possible and keep in touch. If you need anything, they’ll help you out in the usual ways.”

  I flew back to Argentina that afternoon. In spite of myself I looked for Luz among the waiting crowd outside customs.

  It’s no simple thing, giving up hope.

  39

  It took Headquarters a while to put the operation together. Tom would fly in on a Headquarters plane and fly out again the next day. He would be accompanied and protected by a special ops team. The meeting would take place at midnight in a safe house in Barrio Chico, a neighborhood in northeast Buenos Aires.

  Because I was someone Diego could trust or would have to pretend to trust, I would drive him to the safe house. A lead car and a chase car would accompany us. Diego would not be told exactly where he was going. Tom would be waiting for us in the house. While inside
he would be protected by one member of a six-man special ops team and me. The rest of the team would be deployed outside the house and out of sight.

  Diego would pass through metal detectors and an X-ray chamber when he arrived. I would be armed with my .45 and other weapons and if necessary, would shoot Diego dead, as would the special ops man. The inside man was a former Navy SEAL who for this operation used the name Joe. In the next few days I rehearsed all of this many times with the team as a whole and with Joe. They went through the motions, but all made it clear they thought I was worse than useless.

  Joe was a silent fellow in his forties, a panther, cold as ice, a trained killer like the rest of his teammates. While Diego was in the safe house he would be one breath away from sudden death, but Tom would be safe unless Diego was wearing a suicide vest. In which case, we’d all die, Diego included.

  It was a mystery to me why Tom wanted to do what he was doing unless he had a death wish, and why the powers that be were letting him do it. He was a walking institutional memory of Headquarters. He was a prize. Any drug lord would pay a fortune for the chance to pump him out. If something went wrong, as I was sure it would because it almost always does, we would, as Amzi put it, be left with our dicks in our hands.

  Diego had been told—by me, because I was the only possible liaison—that he would await me at 11:30 p.m. in a parking lot on the other side of town. I’d pick him up and drive him to the meeting place. He objected to nothing, asked no questions. And there he was, on time as always, sitting in his Mercedes.

  We drove to the safe house in silence. I was bringing together two men who hated each other and who both wanted to see the other man dead. The only certain element was that there would be a surprise. The only question was, which one of them, Diego or Tom, was going to provide the surprise?

  Two steps inside the house, after Diego had failed to set off the hidden metal detector, Joe waited.

  He said, “Good evening, Doctor. I have to search you. Please raise your arms.”

  Diego did so slowly, reluctantly, and then in one swift expert movement, cut Joe’s carotid artery with the plastic scalpel he held in his right hand. Blood spurted from the artery, just as it had done from Faraj’s artery in Sana’a. He was dead in seconds.

  Diego stepped over his body, entered the sitting room where Tom awaited us, and plunged the needle of the plastic syringe he held in his left hand into Tom’s neck. Tom, frozen in wide-eyed surprise, dropped like a stone.

  By then my .45 was in my hand, but I didn’t shoot. I could not kill Luz’s father and with it, all hope of ever seeing her again.

  Two thugs with Uzis slung from their necks materialized as if they had been beamed down from the Starship Enterprise. No more than fifteen seconds had passed since Diego and I walked through the front door. Despite the .45, the men with the Uzis ignored me. The thugs produced a U. S.-issue body bag, unzipped it, and spread it out on the floor. They fitted Tom’s rag doll body into it and zipped it up.

  Diego said, “Let me have your weapon and your spare ammunition. These comrades are very protective and they hate Yanquis. We don’t want any misunderstandings.”

  I said, “Is Tom dead?”

  “No. That was Versed I injected, not a poison. He’ll wake up in a couple of hours, remembering nothing. The gun, please. Hurry.”

  By now both Uzis were pointed at me. I handed it over, thinking I would be dead before I drew the next breath. I was not unhappy about this. The joke that was my life would come to an end. Good.

  Maybe thirty seconds had passed since Diego murdered Joe. The whole episode had been soundless.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  We walked out the front door together, Diego in the lead with my gun in his hand, the two comrades lugging the sagging body bag with Tom inside. A van pulled into the driveway at the precise moment we reached it.

  Diego, unhurried, said to me, “Take the front passenger seat, please.”

  The comrades, Uzis at the ready, sat behind me. Diego sat in a jump seat. Inside his bag, Tom was curled up in the luggage space.

  I searched the deserted street, but in the dim light of its lamps saw no sign of the special ops team. None. By now two minutes had passed, not more. Maybe the team was just around the corner, waiting for Joe to check in. Or maybe Diego’s Uzi corps had killed them all, gassed them, shot them dead with silenced weapons like the ones the team itself used. I assumed I would not live long enough to find out.

  We changed cars three times along the way and after a two-hour ride, ended up at an abandoned military airstrip somewhere in the countryside. Diego’s Beechcraft was parked at the end of the runway, propellers spinning. He unloaded the .45, threw the spare ammunition away, and handed the empty weapon back to me. We climbed aboard.

  A man I had never seen before sat in the copilot’s seat. Diego sat down in the pilot’s seat.

  I went to the cockpit door. Behind me the comrades took Tom out of the body bag and bound him with a whole roll of duct tape into one of the seats. He seemed to be regaining consciousness.

  In a loud voice I said, “Diego.”

  Studying the display of instruments, he said, “Yes?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll know when we get there. I can’t talk right now. Sit down and buckle up.”

  The engines revved, the plane lurched into motion and rolled down the runway. I sat down and buckled up.

  Tom woke up. His arms twitched. His jaw moved as he attempted to make saliva. He looked old—lank gray hair falling into his eyes, gray pallor. His shirttail was out, his clothes askew. The right sleeve of his white shirt was bloodstained. I had never before seen him disheveled.

  In moments we were airborne. The plane made a wide turn, climbed to altitude, and flew toward its destination, wherever and whatever that was. The window shades were drawn, so there was no way of locating Polaris or guessing which way we were going or what lay below.

  Tom opened his eyes, looked at me as if he had never seen me before, saw that he was bound hand and foot and torso to his chair with fifty feet of gray tape, and then closed his eyes, as if reentering oblivion or trying to do so.

  He said, “What’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Why aren’t you taped like me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Like hell you don’t. This is your work. I know it is.”

  His speech was thick, his eyes full of loathing. I had not foreseen this reaction, but Tom was right. This was my work. He may have made a stupid decision to take this reckless chance, but I had brought the temptation to him. Even when asked, I hadn’t told him what I was sure Diego had in mind but chose instead to assume he was smart enough to know without help. Maybe I was right. It was just that Headquarters was no match for Diego. And never had been.

  Tom, the Yanqui who handed Felicia over to her torturers, had given Diego a reason to lead the life he led—to avenge the rape of the love of his life, first by Alejandro, later by a roomful of common soldiers, to romanticize her and himself, to paint indiscriminate murder of the innocent as an act of virtue, to call money dripping with blood and suffering the treasury of social justice. In short, to do all the things he accused Alejandro of doing because Alejandro was a monster of pride.

  With better luck, as he had said, he might have crossed the Rio de la Plata with Felicia by his side and lived happily ever after with her in his arms and children as beautiful as she was in their laps. Someone had to pay for that no matter the cost. Without Diego, Alejandro would have done something stupid and been arrested before he had done any serious harm. Dozens of the dead who had been collateral victims of bombs and bullets would have lived.

  Yet when all was said and done, I and nobody else had made this ending possible. Now I had my own revenge by act of omission, by means I had never imagined. Just like Diego. Our politics, his as well as mine, was revenge, which we shared more deeply than any two fools who had ever shared communis
m or capitalism or religion or loved the same woman. When I set out to betray I thought I would be the only Judas in the picture. Instead, I had discovered that traitors were a worldwide fellowship—Mother, Faraj, Diego, Boris, Burkov, Tom. In his own fashion, Amzi.

  Luz? She had typed a period on an empty page. Everything Diego had ever done, he had done for her. She had known that he was her father—of course she had—ever since she was old enough to know the truth and smart enough to understand it. She had lived her life in the power of that colossal secret. What greater romance can be imagined? How could I compete? Yes, she had deceived me. But if, five seconds from now, Diego or one of the comrades put a bullet in my brain, or if I lived to be an old man and like my own father was murdered in my sleep for pocket change, I would die loving not the real Luz, a being to whom I had never been introduced, but the Luz in the mirror. She had made love as if she loved me. What more did she owe me?

  The plane descended and then leveled off. Diego emerged from the cockpit. He pointed at Tom. With razor-sharp fighting knives the two comrades sliced off the duct tape that bound him and stood him on his feet, gray tape still pasted to his clothes. This did not hide a dark stain on the crotch of his trousers.

  To me, Diego said, “You’re here because I wanted a witness Amzi would believe. All this is being videotaped, so you’ll have documentary evidence to back up your story. I wish you all the best. I’m truly sorry about Luz.”

  Was he going to let me live? One of the comrades opened the Beechcraft’s door. The other comrade regarded me with amusement—inspired no doubt by the startled look on my face. No matter what Diego said, no matter the sympathetic face he wore, I was sure that my life was about to end.

  Diego, strong for a man his age, seized Tom, who was shouting in Spanish and resisting with all that remained of his strength, by the collar and the belt. He rushed him to the door and heaved him out of the airplane. Then, without a word, Diego himself turned around, smiled at me, crossed his arms on his chest, closed his eyes, and threw himself backward through the open door and into the night.