by Ross Thomas
“Draper…Haere,” Merry said slowly, spacing the name. He frowned as if trying to remember where he had heard it before. “Politics, isn’t it?”
“Politics,” Haere agreed.
“Whatever brings you down here?”
“Vacation?”
“Here?” Merry didn’t try to hide his disbelief.
“Perhaps a little business?”
Merry shook his head as though business was simply awful. “Well, good luck is about all I can say. But if you want some advice—”
He was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Crane with note pad in hand. She looked at Merry, who nodded. Mrs. Crane turned to Haere.
“One,” she said. “The Friends clinic. They never heard of any Dr. Blaine, so they couldn’t be expecting him. Two, there was no J. Blaine on the Tucaereo flight from Houston yesterday—or the day before, for that matter. Three, I talked to Suro, who said he failed to arrest any gringos yesterday, although he might get around to it this afternoon after lunch.”
“Commander Suro is something of a kidder,” Merry explained.
“Yes,” Haere said. “He seems to be. So does the mysterious Dr. Blaine. What about this Dr. Rice? Has he turned up yet?”
“From where?” Mrs. Crane said.
“From wherever he disappeared to.”
“Joe Rice hasn’t disappeared anywhere,” she said. “It was Joe Rice I just talked to at the clinic.”
CHAPTER 29
The road that Citron followed out of the capital was a narrow blacktop, much potholed, and patched in long stretches with gravel. It led through an exurbia of shantytowns built out of scrap lumber and plastic sheeting and cardboard and flattened tin cans. The road then curved up into the mountains, where no one at all seemed to live other than a few farmers who grew straggly plots of corn and raised small herds of goats and the occasional chicken.
The sub-subsistence farms gave way to what seemed to be neglected or abandoned coffee plantations. Citron checked his odometer. At precisely 3.6 kilometers after the coffee plantations began he started looking for the side road that was marked on the rough map slipped to him by the busboy in the Inter-Continental restaurant. He almost missed the side road because it was virtually hidden by some tall broad-leafed plants. They looked like poinsettia to Citron, although they were actually higuerilla or palma Christi or, more commonly, castor-bean plants. Citron did notice they had been carefully planted to obscure the dirt side road that turned out to be not much more than a rutted path.
Citron backed up and eased the Ford slowly through the screen of broad-leafed plants, which noisily scraped against the car's sides.After bouncing slowly along the dirt path for 1.3 kilometers, Citron stopped the car and turned off the engine.
He watched as the one-armed man stepped out from behind a clump of bushes which, for all Citron knew, were coffee plants. The man was fairly tall, at least six feet, and thin. His right arm was missing. The stump poked out from the sleeve of a clean blue T-shirt. In the man's left hand was a pistol of some kind. Citron noted that it was a revolver. Over his eyes the man wore a pair of dark, gold-framed aviator glasses. He was a narrow-faced, grim-mouthed man, and Citron judged him to be in his middle thirties. Beneath the clean blue T-shirt was a pair of white duck pants that were soiled with smears of either dirt or oil.
The man moved slowly over to the Fiesta. The pistol was not aimed at Citron, but rather at the Fiesta itself, as if the man were prepared to kill the car should it make any sudden move. When he reached the right-hand door the man shoved the pistol down behind his belt and used his left hand to open the door. He took the pistol back out, climbed into the car, and looked at Citron.
“You are Citron?” the man said in Spanish.
“Yes.”
“I am Mr. X.” This time he said “Mr. X” in accented English.
“Right.”
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“To see if you were followed.”
“I see.”
They waited five minutes in silence. Citron found it to be a comfortable wait without strain or tension. It was, he thought, something like waiting with an old and troubled friend. Citron had often waited like this with other Mr. Eckyses in other countries until they decided to speak of their hopes and fears. Finally, the one-armed man broke the silence with an observation. “You speak very good Spanish.”
“Thank you.”
“Your friend, Mr. Haere,” he said, pronouncing Haere “Ha-air-ray,”“his Spanish is not quite so good.”
“No, I suppose not.”
There was another silence, which lasted a full minute. “That is why I telephoned you.”
“Because of my Spanish.”
“Yes. My English is poor.”
“For what other reason did you telephone?”
“You do not know?”
“Not exactly.”
Mr. Eckys smiled without displaying any teeth. It was a slight smile, almost wan. “Suppose I said I was a bandit and that we intend to hold you for ransom.”
“Good luck.”
“You mean there is no one who would pay for your safe return.”
“No one.”
“You are a poor man yourself?”
“Very poor.”
“Yet you wear a fine watch.”
“A gift.”
“From a rich friend perhaps?”
“My mother.”
“Then your mother is surely rich and would pay well for the return of her son.”
“I fear that you do not know my mother.”
Mr. Eckys twisted slightly in his seat and raised the pistol so that it now was aimed at Citron. “I will take the watch.”
Citron shrugged. “It is yours,” he said and started to slip it from his wrist.
“Keep it,” Mr. Eckys said. “It was a test. A rich man would hesitate. A poor man would not.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Mr. Eckys frowned as he considered the question. “I am not sure,” he said finally, “but it is true. Perhaps it is because the poor have nothing to lose but their lives.”
“I can see you are a deep thinker,” Citron said.
“I think from here,” Mr. Eckys said, tapping himself on the heart with the muzzle of the pistol. “You may start the engine.”
Citron nodded and turned the key. “Where do we go?”
“Another two kilometers.”
“And then?”
“I will show you where it took place.”
“What?”
Mr. Eckys smiled, this time displaying a set of large white teeth. “The betrayal. That is why you are here, isn’t it? To learn the details of the betrayal.”
“Yes,” Citron said, putting the Fiesta into drive. “That is exactly why I’m here.”
They drove the two kilometers in silence until Mr. Eckys said, “Stop here.”
Citron stopped. Mr. Eckys used the pistol to point to a low mound, no more than a foot high, which was covered by weeds. The mound was perhaps seven feet wide and nine feet long. “We buried them there, all of them,” Mr. Eckys said.
“Who?”
“Myself and my comrades. We watched from over there.” He pointed to a stand of trees.
“I mean, who was buried?”
“The gringos. All nine of them. They killed each other. Later they were dug up and taken away.”
“When?”
Mr. Eckys thought about it. “It was six months ago—in June.” He opened the car door. “I will show you where it took place.”
Citron didn’t move. “I must ask a question.”
Mr. Eckys, almost half out of the car, turned to look back. “I will try to answer it.”
“How did you learn about me and Mr. Haere?” He paused. “That is my question.”
“Ah. I see. You are puzzled.”
“Yes.”
“The answer is simple. We learned of you from your embassy.”
“My embassy?”
“The embassy of the United States. You are a citizen of that country.”
“Yes.”
“That is where we learned of you.”
“They told you?”
“Told us?” Mr. Eckys looked surprised. “Us? We are the Committee of a Thousand Years.”
“I must apologize. I am not familiar with it.”
A gleam flared in Mr. Eckys's eyes. A patriot's gleam. A look of fervor crossed his face. “If it takes a thousand years, we will win back our land and free our people.”
Citron, finding himself in familiar territory, relaxed even more. He often had heard such talk in other hot countries. It was not only familiar, but also reassuring, even soothing. It somehow made him feel at home. “You are of the insurgents then,” he said.
“Of course.”
“And the struggle goes well?”
Mr. Eckys's face darkened. “Not well enough.”
“But yet you were able to learn my name and that of Mr. Haere.”
“We have our people in the embassy. Pot scrubbers, floor sweepers, and such. A file was left untended. The Xerox machine was handy. It took only a minute. The woman who accomplished this pushes the coffee cart through the embassy. She pretends ignorance, but has a degree in economics from the University of Mexico.”
“And what did the file on Mr. Haere and myself say?”
“That Haere will use the information we have to topple the repressive government in Washington.”
“It said that?”
Mr. Eckys shrugged. “Words to that effect. I read only the translation, of course.” A thought came to him that caused his hand to stray back to the pistol. “Is it not true?”
Citron answered carefully. “It is true enough. Mr. Haere has had wide experience in toppling governments. An expert. I am merely the…propagandist.”
Mr. Eckys nodded his approval. “A vital role.” He turned again to leave the car. “Come, I will show you where the betrayal took place.”
Citron got out of the car and followed the one-armed man to the thick stand of trees. “What do you see?”
“Only trees,” Citron said.
“Come.”
Mr. Eckys led the way through the trees. There were stunted pines and a type of laurel and others that Citron didn’t recognize. They formed a thick, almost impenetrable screen that Mr. Eckys twisted through, Citron behind him. Then the trees ended.
“Look,” Mr. Eckys said. “They brought in a bulldozer to create it.”
It looked something like a meadow that the trees were now trying to reclaim. It was at least fifteen hundred feet long and perhaps seventy-five feet wide. Citron nodded. “A landing strip,” he said.
“Exactly.” Mr. Eckys indicated the trees. “My people were concealed here. The gringos’ truck was over there.” He pointed to the far end of the landing strip.
“The truck?”
“The cocaine truck.”
“I see.”
“The plane came in like this.” Mr. Eckys used his one hand to show how the plane landed. “It was an old plane with two engines. Of the Douglas company manufacture.”
“A DC-3.”
“Yes. I believe so. It taxied to the cocaine truck. A dozen gringos, all armed, emerged from the plane carrying suitcases. The suitcases contained the money. The cocaine was packed in drums.”
“Drums?”
“Oil drums.”
“How much was there?”
“Of the cocaine? A ton, I believe. At least a ton. Perhaps two.”
“Go on.”
“While the drums were being loaded onto the old plane, the money was being counted. There was so much money that they weighed it on a special scale. Then the gringos who flew in with the plane and the money tried to arrest the gringos with the cocaine.”
“Arrest?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“The gringos who had supplied the cocaine refused to be arrested. So the shooting began. Four of the drug buyers were slain, as were five of the drug sellers. It was glorious. The pilot of the old plane panicked. He started the engines. The gringo drug buyers who still lived ran for the plane and scrambled aboard. The drug sellers continued to fire at the plane as it rose into the air. It was a splendid sight. Dead gringos everywhere.”
“What happened to the money?”
“Ah. That. It was loaded into the truck. The gringos left, leaving the dead behind. Some of my people followed the truck, of course. It went directly to the Presidential Palace, which was even then occupied not by a President, but by the repressor Carrasco-Cortes. Meanwhile, we buried the dead gringos, but first we photographed them, and then turned to our Cuban comrades.”
“To identify the dead men?” Citron said.
“Yes.”
“Who were they?”
“Nine were killed in the battle. Five were of the CIA.”
“And the other four?”
Mr. Eckys smiled. “They were of the FBI.”
CHAPTER 30
Citron and Mr. Eckys walked back through the trees to the rutted trail in silence. When they reached it, Citron turned to the one-armed man. “You say the Cubans identified them—the dead men?”
“Yes. We contacted them and they dispatched an agent.”
“From Havana?”
Mr. Eckys looked at Citron with pity. “Havana? Certainly not. From Miami.”
“Yes,” Citron said. “Of course.”
“A strange man for a secret agent.”
“How so?”
“He drank. He made advances to our women. He boasted of how rich his family was before Fidel came down from the mountains.”
“Did he have a name?”
Mr. Eckys shrugged. “He had many names and several passports. Venezuelan. Chilean. USA. At first, we suspected him. He was not of a serious disposition. But he was shrewd. Even when we got him drunk and supplied him with one of our cleverest women, he gave nothing away. All he wanted to talk with our woman about were the old days in Havana when his family owned all the milk in Cuba. Or so he claimed. Nevertheless, we decided to entrust him with the photos of the nine dead gringos. A week later he sent us their names and particulars by a Tucaereo purser who is one of our sympathizers.” Mr. Eckys frowned at Citron. “Why do you smile?”
“I’m sorry,” Citron said. “I did not know that I was.”
“It was not a pleasant smile.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I suppose you desire the list.”
“Very much.”
“With the list can Mr. Haere topple the fascist government in Washington?”
“He can only try, but I assure you his desire to do so is a burning one.”
“And the new government—would it be less supportive of our generals?”
“Who could promise that? But I fail to see how it would not be an improvement. A great improvement.”
Mr. Eckys thought about it. “Yes,” he said finally. “What you say is true. I will give you the list.” He reached into his left hip pocket and brought out an 81/2-by-11-inch sheet of ordinary typewriter paper that had been folded into quarters. “Perhaps in your propaganda you could mention us.”
“The Committee of a Thousand Years.”
“Yes.”
“I will mention you.”
“Thank you.” Mr. Eckys handed over the sheet of paper.
Citron unfolded it. There were two headings. One was CIA and the other was FBI. Under the CIA heading were the names of five men along with their ages and their home addresses. Most of them lived in either Maryland or Virginia. Citron wondered if the Cuban secret agent had obtained their home addresses from telephone books.
The first two names of the four presumably dead FBI agents jumped up at Citron's eyes. He felt himself start. The first name was John D. Yarn. The second man was Richard Tighe, no middle initial.They really can leap out at you, he thought. They can actually jump right off the page.
“You are smiling again,” Mr. Eckys
said.
“What?”
“I said you are smiling again. That same smile. I have seen men of wide experience smile just like that. Their experience has been both good and bad, but mostly bad.”
“This list,” Citron said, waving it a little.
“Yes?”
“It will be extremely useful. Extremely.”
“Good. It is what we hoped.”
They turned and headed down the rough trail toward Citron's car. They walked in silence. When they reached the car, Mr. Eckys said, “I will leave you here.” He offered his left hand. Citron shook it with his own left hand.
“Who knows?” Mr. Eckys said. “Perhaps some good will come of all this.” He didn’t sound too hopeful.
Mr. Eckys turned. He turned just in time to see the man who called himself Dr. James G. Blaine step out from behind a thick clump of bushes that Citron still thought of as coffee plants. Dr. Blaine was wearing a light windbreaker, a blue shirt, and chino pants. On his feet were striped blue running shoes. In his right hand was a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. He pointed the pistol at Mr. Eckys. He pointed it casually, with one hand, his right, much as he would point a finger, and fired three times as Mr. Eckys tried to tug his own pistol from his belt. Two of the rounds struck Mr. Eckys in the chest, the other one just above his belt buckle. Mr. Eckys fell forward. He tried to break his fall with his one hand, but failed and landed on his face in the red dirt, where he called on his mother once, on God twice, shuddered, and died.
“Well, now,” Blaine said and turned to Citron. “You’re Citron, right?”
Citron nodded, his fear making him either unwilling or unable to speak. Probably both, he thought, as he felt the fear grab at his lungs and trickle down from his armpits.
“Just wanted to make sure,” Blaine said.
“Hey, Hallmark!” a man's voice called.
Blaine spun around in a crouch, both hands now on the pistol, searching for something to shoot at, someone to kill.
“Behind you, dummy,” another man's voice called. Blaine whirled again and fired into the foliage. From behind Blaine, John D. Yarn stepped out from behind a clump of either dwarfed or stunted pines. Yarn shot Blaine in the back four times, aiming his shots carefully, squeezing them off, taking his time. Blaine stumbled forward two steps, then twisted around, struggling to look behind him, to discover who his killer was. The last expression that crossed his face was something like recognition. “Well, fuck you, turkey,” he said and crumpled into the red dirt not more than a foot from the dead body of Mr. Eckys.
