Goodbye Mexico

by Phillip Jennings

  “What’s sad at the moment is that I’m sitting here listening to a mad man. What in the hell are you talking about, Gearheardt? I mean, yes, it is a shame, but weren’t we talking about the Mexican mission?”

  “Not just Mexico, Jack.” He still had that pensive look.

  A knock on the door brought Gearheardt to his feet and the Walther PPK to his hand. He went to the door and opened it a crack. I smelled the women before I could see or hear them. A monsoon of perfume was wafting through the small opening. It was the old Gearheardt who smiled.

  “Señor, very kind of you. But we won’t be needing these women. My friend and I are discussing some very important things.” Gearheardt stuck his head almost outside. “Who is this one?” Gearheardt’s voice softened. “Buenos noches, señorita. Usted poseer anchuroso leche bolsillos. Hasta luego.” He closed the door.

  “Gearheardt, did you just tell some woman that she possessed large milk bags?”

  Gearheardt grinned. “Sometimes the Spanish colloquialisms escape me, Jack. That señorita took my breath away. But back to our mission.”

  It was our mission now.

  “I need you to stay right in the embassy. Doing whatever it is you’re doing. Keep an eye on Crenshaw. Get any information to me that seems like it might be pertinent, and on Cinco de Mayo, shoot the President.” He was looking in his jacket pocket, searching for more cigarettes.

  “Seems easy enough, Pepe. That ‘keeping an eye on Crenshaw’ might be difficult at times. But the rest seems reasonable.”

  Gearheardt sat down on the far end of the bed. He blew smoke at the lamp and watched it curl out of the top of the shade. “I told the Pygmy you were our guy, Jack.”

  “Headshot you think?” I asked.

  “Oh you know, maybe a torso hit with a high powered dum dum. That should do the trick.”

  “Well, I guess that about wraps up the discussion. Thanks for the evening, Pepe.” I got up to leave.

  “Did I mention that you’re insane? Seriously. You must have taken a crap and your brains fell out at the same time. You put the wrong pile back in your head. That would explain it.”

  Gearheardt smiled. “Jack, did you hear the one about the Congressman that comes into a bar holding a pile of dog crap in his hands and says to the bartender ‘Look what I almost stepped in?’”

  He cupped his hands and I saw he was holding the pistol I had given him.

  “You already had a pistol when I saw you yesterday, Gearheardt. Why did you want me to bring one to you tonight?” I edged toward the door.

  “Now we have a free pistol, Jack. Never can tell when one might come in handy. Did you check it out in your name?”

  He knew I had.

  Gearheardt came to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “This is the way things get done, Jack. Don’t take it personal. The Pygmy wants you in the game. The whole game. After the game ends, you’ll defect to Cuba and then we’ll get you back. A simple plan.”

  He was right. This was the way things that were ugly got done.

  “I’m not working for the Pygmy, Gearheardt.” I opened the door, wondering whether or not my pal would try to stop me. “I’m not even sure he exists.”

  “Well then you have nothing to worry about, Jack. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Jorge was waiting in the embassy car. “Home, Señor Armstrong?”

  “I think I’ll go back to my office for a while, Jorge.”

  I felt like I had already defected, even by talking to that damn Gearheardt without letting my boss in on the fact. But—and there was always a ‘but’ with Gearheardt, which was what had kept me in trouble all the time I had known him—I trusted Gearheardt. At the end of the day, his ideas usually made as much or more sense as ‘official’ policy. I had felt for some time that our policy in Mexico was drifting along as if we were hoping something would happen. Maybe Gearheardt was the something.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  GEARHEARDT BECOMES SANE; WORLD HOLDS BREATH

  Three messages awaited me on my desk. They made me immediately glad that I had decided to stop by before I went home. Two were encrypted but the communications room was always open and it didn’t take long to have the readable versions in my hand, and me back in my office. The third message was from my mother who, convinced I was an economic development officer, wanted to know if I had received my subscription to Latin Farming. She probably also wanted to know about Gearheardt, but that could wait.

  The first message was from Gib Wilson. He had been in the Marine Corps with Gearheardt and me (Although he’d never really liked Gearheardt because he made fun of the Marines. Gib had the sense of humor of a body bag.). He was now a junior officer at CIA Headquarters in Langley. His specialty had something to do with technology and I suspected he was a comm officer.

  It read: “Jack, something rumbling in Mexico. Lots of traffic but none routed through you, which is strange. Can’t say too much but your pal is mentioned a few times. Also new COS has departed CONUS but no arrival date shown in Mexico City. Strange. Keep your head up. Semper Fi. GW.”

  Not much hard information but it did ‘confirm’ that something was up for Mexico. Gearheardt might be telling the truth. And Gib also confirmed that others thought Crenshaw as strange as I did.

  The second message was a bit more official. “To Acting COS. Need current info on Cuban activity in Mexico City. University of Mexico. Cuernavaca. Top priority. Risk unlimited. ADIA.”

  ADIA was the acronym for an acronym that meant someone at a level immediately below the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence). To even get the encryption device to accept the acronym took clearance far above mine. So the message was authentic.

  ‘Risk unlimited’ was a way of telling me that even if I had to risk my life or the life of someone else, the operation must be followed through. This indicated a pretty high priority while giving some weasel room to HQ.

  My intercom buzzed. “Are you to go home this evening, Señor Armstrong?”

  “Yes, Jorge. Sorry. I’ll be right down.”

  Stupidly—that is without remembering all of my history with Gearheardt—I felt better. He was obviously not just making up all of the Cuban activity out of whole cloth. And based on the unwritten message in the messages, I wasn’t exactly expected to share this info with Crenshaw, even though he was my new boss. The ass on an ass, as Gearheardt described him.

  I woke in the middle of the night in a sweat. I had dreamed I shot the president of Mexico and the only safe harbor I could find was in Cuba. Defecting to Cuba was not on the top of my ‘to do’ list and I wished I knew how to find Gearheardt, to tell him that part of the plan wasn’t going to work. Not that I had agreed to shoot the president of Mexico.

  That part of the plan didn’t make sense either. Or if it did make sense, based on knowledge that I obviously didn’t possess, it wasn’t the kind of thing that even the CIA took lightly. No matter what the public might believe, assassination wasn’t a casual ‘oh by the way, why don’t we shoot the president while we’re at it’ kind of action. I resolved to get down to a few brass tacks with Gearheardt when he called in the morning.

  I decided to get a drink of water before I went back to sleep. The landlord usually shut off the air-conditioning sometime in the night so going back to sleep was a struggle.

  I had just stepped into the dark kitchen when the assailant struck me from behind. An arm around my throat shut off my air, a knee into the back of my knees crumpled me, and a hard punch to the kidney stunned me as I fell. I was just able to grab the jacket material of the assassin as I went down, and by putting my dead weight into it, threw the man across my body. He landed on his side next to me with a ‘whoomph’ that indicated the air was knocked out of him.

  “Gearheardt! You stupid bastard! What in God’s name are you doing attacking me in my own damn kitchen?!!”

  Gearheardt sat up, trying to get his breath. “How did I know it was you sneaking around in the dark, Jack? When I fell asleep, you were s
noring away in your own little bed. Then I woke up and saw someone sneaking into the kitchen. What the hell should I have thought?”

  “That I was up in my own damn apartment getting a drink of water, you asshole. Geezus, you nearly scared me to death. And what are you doing in here anyway?” I got up and turned on the light. Gearheardt sat on the floor rubbing his neck. Good. I hoped the jackass was hurt. My heart was still racing.

  “New plans, Jack. Or at least an update on the old plans.” He stood up. “Damn, Jack,” he said, “you could have really hurt me with that move.”

  “Gearheardt, you were attacking me!” I took a breath to calm down. “But what are these new plans? And by the way, I still need some authentication for this op. I’m not as dumb as I look.”

  “Not by a long shot, Jack. Let’s step in the living room so I can sit down. I think you fractured my cranulus.”

  I ignored his whining and didn’t think there was such a thing as a cranulus anyway. “Turn on the lamp by that table, Gearheardt. I’ll start some coffee. I doubt I’ll be going back to sleep.” The light snapped on and I did a comic double-take. There was a naked woman sitting on my couch.

  “Jack, this is Marta. Marta, this is Jack. I think we would all be more comfortable if you both got dressed.”

  I actually could have taken a bit longer look at the stunning Marta, but went into my bedroom and threw on clothes. My haste was rewarded when I returned to the living room in time to watch a calm and collected Marta slowly (almost reluctantly, it seemed) don hers. She smiled as she stood to zip up the side zipper on her skirt. “Ola, Jack,” she said. My heart tingled.

  “Ola, Marta,” I replied. Then I realized that Marta had been in my living room with Gearheardt, without clothes. I looked at Gearheardt.

  “Marta is our ticket into the Cuban opposition, Jack. And whatever Marta wants, I assure you, Marta gets.”

  “We have Cuban opposition?” I sank down into the large leather easy chair, a gift from another asset in Mexico who also ran a stolen furniture racket.

  This is what happens in the CIA and particularly the part of the CIA where you deal with anyone as mysterious and manipulative as Gearheardt. You actually ask if we have Cuban opposition, when of course you know that Cuba is obviously an opponent. But there can be elements of the opposition that are in opposition to their own policy of opposing the U.S. So these would be in opposition to the opposition, making them of course our partners. But since Gearheardt was working in opposition to our own policy (as far as I knew for certain) which was in opposition to the Cubans, then if we had opposition from the Cubans, it must be the Cubans which were opposed to the original opposition that put them in opposition with us in the first place. Which was all to say that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Only Gearheardt’s double talk made it seem confusing.

  However, in this case, I was giving Gearheardt the benefit of the doubt because of my trust in him, the cable from Gib Wilson, and my basic distrust of Major Crenshaw, who of course might very well be working on the same mission Gearheardt claimed he was working on. By not sharing my information about Gearheardt with Crenshaw, I was now effectively working both sides. Which was where Gearheardt probably wanted me.

  A benefit of this brain numbing run-through of scenarios was that Marta was no longer making my heart or plumbing tingle.

  “Marta is a friend, Jack,” Gearheardt said. Everybody seemed to be able to read my mind. Not a good thing for a spy.

  “I don’t know what friends are these days, Gearheardt.”

  “Friends are the ones who you have to go to the funeral for after you kill them.”

  Marta had just spread her legs in front of me revealing a gorgeous little Beretta strapped to her inner thigh. She adjusted the holster and then modestly smoothed her dress into place. “I say we have coffee and we talk,” she said, looking at me.

  “Excellent idea,” Gearheardt said. “Let me get the coffee. Marta, you can give Jack your background.”

  Marta sighed, as if she had done this too often. But she went on. “I am Marta Carlingua. I am Cuban. My mother and father were Cuban importers of rubber products. It is very dangerous to be this in a Catholic country. My mother and father were Jewish. When Castro came to power the CIA contacted my father for him to put hot itching powder in some rubber product and to make sure that Castro and his henchmen got the product. This happened. But later the product was traced to my father. The Castro people shot my father and put hot itching powder on my mother in a not nice way. She became a prostitute. I ran away and I hated the Castro people very much. Now I work with Señor Gearheardt to help the Cuban people.” She smiled.

  “Thank you, Marta. I’d better help Gearheardt find the spoons.” I went into the kitchen where Gearheardt was looking dumbly at the coffee pot as if transfixed.

  “Gearheardt, I just heard probably the lamest story I’ve ever heard from anyone claiming they want to come over to our side and help us. Where did you find this Marta?”

  Gearheardt was happy to lay down the various pieces of the coffee pot he was holding and deal with something he supposedly knows something about. “What do we care, Jack? Think about it. What if she is a Castro plant? As long as we know that, we can handle it. But to tell the truth, I think Marta is the real thing.”

  “A Cuban defector?”

  “The daughter of a rubber distributor. She knows every thing you can imagine about them.” He smiled. “Can you imagine dating the daughter of a rubber distributor? Sounds like a TV sitcom. Think about—”

  “Damn it, Gearheardt. You’re a child sometimes. Forget the rubbers, okay. You’ve dragged me into the cockamamie idea of assassinating the president of Mexico. You’ve introduced me to a Cuban—”

  “She was naked, Jack. I supposed you’re going to hold that against me too.”

  I closed my eyes, not caring whether Gearheardt thought I was just visualizing Marta naked. I counted to twenty before I opened them and spoke.

  “Just fill me in on the plan, Gearheardt. This is not Vietnam where I had to rely totally on your gibberish. I have my own resources.”

  “And I’m counting on you using them, Jack. Hang with me. As you see the beauty of this scenario, I have no doubt that you’ll be right there by my side. Like always.”

  I shuddered at that thought. On the counter I saw a cereal bowl with what looked like ground coffee and sugar covering the bottom. “You don’t know how to make coffee, do you, Gearheardt?”

  “I do except for the part where this thing with holes in the bottom has to fit in this pot or somewhere.”

  “Give me that damn thing and go into the living room. Work with Marta on a better cover story while you’re in there. I’ll make the coffee.”

  Marta, it turned out, was no dummy. Over the coffee that I finally produced, Gearheardt had her run through her role in the mission, code named (according to Gearheardt) ‘Goodbye.’

  “As in ‘Goodbye Mexico,’” I said.

  “Something like that,” Gearheardt answered, smiling at Marta.

  I admit it was partially to impress the delicious Marta that I pretended (I thought) to go along with Gearheardt’s scheme. There were parts of it that made absolute sense. And there were parts that only a madman could possibly think up. A certain macho attitude—the root of most problems in the world—made me discuss with apparent equanimity the idea of assassinating the President of the country. Somehow I assumed that my subsequent refusal, at the appropriate time, would be taken care of by others far more qualified than I was.

  “I don’t understand the defecting part, Gearheardt,” I said. It was nearly three A.M. and even the still delectable vision of Marta on my couch (and the thought of her soft tan thigh with a Beretta strapped to it), was not keeping me completely awake.

  Gearheardt yawned. “All part of the plan, Jack. Don’t worry about it now. I can assure you that you will be taken care of. Won’t he Marta?”

  “You will be taken great care of, Jack. I will pe
rsonally see to that.”

  “I’m sure you will do a good job. How exactly do you plan to do it?” I hoped she didn’t hear the amused condescension.

  “I will come with you.”

  As inviting at that sounded early in the morning in my apartment in Colonia Polanco, the conversation was getting too close to a commitment on my part, one that I wasn’t ready to make. Somehow, I had to find out if Gearheardt was acting on his own, or at least on behalf of a small faction in the Company. Or was this a mission that had administration, and therefore Agency, approval and direction? Neither seemed likely. But neither was impossible.

  I was beat. Too tired to think through the possibilities. Even the annoyingly perky Marta looked tired.

  “I need to go back to bed, Gearheardt. Do you two want to spend the night here? Officially, this time.”

  “Marta will stay, Jack. I need to see some people. Thanks, anyway.” He rose, stretching. “In fact, Marta needs to move in here. She’ll stay out of your way.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say. The prospect wasn’t totally unattractive. Although my current girlfriend from the Austrian embassy might feel differently about having Marta around full time.

  “Marta, if you will excuse Gearheardt and me for just a moment.” I pulled him into the kitchen again.

  “She can’t just move in here. In case it hasn’t occurred to you, the Agency frowns on its agents having foreign spies live with them. There’s probably even a regulation about it, you idiot.” I was getting madder as I talked to him. It was easier when I didn’t have the luscious Marta protruding through her blouse in front of me. “And you admitted that you’re not even positive that she isn’t working for Castro. She could slit my damn throat while I was sleeping or something.”

  “I think you would wake up before she could actually get your throat slit, Jack.”

  “That isn’t the point, you jackass. You’re not ducking this one. What—”

  Gearheardt stepped to the door and removed the rubber stop with his foot, allowing the kitchen door to swing shut. As it slowly closed he said, “Be with you in just a moment, Marta. Jack’s teaching me to make coffee.”