There was a secure computer link between a guarded enclave on the shore of the Republic of San Martin and a machine in McBride’s office. Like Washington Lee, it used the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) system of unbreakable cyber codes to keep communications from prying eyes; the difference was that this one had authority.
Devereaux studied the full text of the message from the south. It had clearly been written by the estate’s head of security, the South African van Rensberg. The English was over-formal, as of one using their second language.
The meaning was clear enough. It described the Piper Cheyenne of the previous morning; its double pass, heading eastwards towards French Guyana and then back again twenty minutes later. It reported the flash of sunlight off a camera lens in the right-hand window, and even the registration number when it passed too low over the col in the escarpment.
‘Kevin, trace that aircraft. I need to know who owns it, who operates it, who flew it yesterday and who was the passenger. And hurry.’
In his anonymous apartment in Brooklyn, Cal Dexter had developed his seventy-two frames and blown them up to prints as large as he could before losing too much definition. From the same original negatives he had also made slides which he could project onto the wall-screen for closer study.
Of the prints he had created a single wall-map running the length of the sitting room, and from ceiling to floor. He sat for hours studying the wall, checking occasionally on a small detail with the appropriate slide. Each slide gave better and clearer detail, but only the wall gave the entire target. Whoever had been in charge of the project had spent millions and made of that once-empty peninsula a fearsome and ingenious fortress.
Nature had helped. The tongue of land was quite different from the hinterland of steamy jungle that made up much of the small republic. It jutted out from the main shore like a triangular dagger blade, guarded on its landward side by the chain of hills that some primeval force had thrown up millions of years ago.
The chain ran from the sea to the sea
, and at each end dropped to the blue water in vertical cliffs. No one would ever walk round the ends to stroll from the jungle onto the peninsula.
On the landward side, the hills climbed gently from the littoral plain to about a thousand feet, with slopes covered in dense vegetation. Over the crests, on the seaward side, the slope was a vertiginous escarpment, denuded of any foliage, whether by nature or the hand of man. From the estate, anyone with binoculars looking up at the escarpment would easily see anything trying to descend onto the forbidden side.
There was one single cut, or col, in the chain. A narrow track ran up to it from the hinterland, then twisted and turned down the escarpment until it reached the estate below. In the col was a barrier and guardhouse, which Dexter had seen too late as it flashed below his window.
Dexter began to make a list of the equipment he would need. Getting in would not be a problem. It was getting out, bringing the target with him, and against a small army of estate guards, that would be close to impossible.
‘It belongs to a one-plane, one-man charter firm based at Georgetown, Guyana,’ said Kevin McBride that evening. ‘Lawrence Aero Services, owned and run by George Lawrence, Guyanese citizen. It looks perfectly legitimate, the sort foreigners can charter to fly into the interior . . . or along the coast in this case.’
‘Is there a number for this Mr Lawrence?’ asked Devereaux.
‘Sure. Here.’
‘Did you try to contact him?’
‘No. The line would have to be open. And why should he discuss a client with a complete stranger on the phone? He might just tip the client off.’
‘You’re right. You’ll have to go. Use scheduled flights. Have Cassandra get you on the first flight. Trace Mr Lawrence. Pay him if you have to. Find out who our inquisitive friend with the camera was, and why he was there. Do we have a station in Georgetown?’
‘No, next door. Caracas.’
‘Use Caracas for secure communications. I’ll clear it with the station chief.’
Studying his wall-sized photo montage, Cal Dexter’s eye moved from the escarpment into the peninsula known simply as El Punto. Running along the base of the escarpment wall was a runway, taking up two-thirds of the fifteen hundred yards available. On the estate side of the runway was a chain-link fence that enclosed the entire airfield, hangar, workshops, fuel store, generator house and all.
Using a pair of compasses and estimating the hangar length at one hundred feet, Dexter was able to start calculating and marking distances between points. These put the cultivated farmland at around three thousand acres. It was clear that centuries of wind-borne dust and bird droppings had created a soil rich in goodness, for he could see grazing herds and a variety of lush crops. Whoever had created El Punto had gone for complete self-sufficiency behind the ramparts of escarpment and ocean.
The irrigation problem was solved by a glittering stream that erupted from the base of the hills and flowed through the estate before tumbling in a cataract into the sea. It could only originate in the high inland plateau and flow through the protective wall in an underground flue. Dexter noted the words: ‘Swim in?’ Later he would line-dash them out. Without a rehearsal, it would be crazy to attempt a passage through an unknown underground tunnel. He recalled the terror inspired by crawling through the water traps of the tunnels of Cu Chi, and they were only a few yards long. This one could be miles, and he did not even know where it began.
At the base of the runway, beyond the wire, he could see a settlement of perhaps five hundred small white blocks, clearly dwelling units of some kind. There were dirt streets, some larger buildings for refectory halls and a small church. It was a village of sorts; but it was odd that, even with the men away in the fields and barns, there were no women or children on the streets. No gardens, no livestock. More like a penal colony. Perhaps those who served the man he sought had little choice in the matter.
He turned his attention to the main body of the agricultural estate. This contained all the cultivated fields, the flocks, barns, granaries, and a second settlement of low white buildings. But a uniformed man standing outside indicated these were barracks for the security staff, guards, overseers. By the look and the number and size of the quarters, and the likely occupancy rate, he put the guards alone at around one hundred. There were five more substantial villas, with gardens, apparently for the senior officers and flight personnel.
The photographs and the slides were serving their purpose, but he needed two things more. One was a concept of three dimensions; the other was a knowledge of routines and procedures. The first would need a scale model of the whole peninsula; the second would require days of silent observation.
Kevin McBride flew the next morning from Washington Dulles direct to Georgetown, Guyana, with BWIA, landing at 2 p.m. Formalities at the airport were simple and with only a handgrip for a one-night stay, he was soon in a taxi.
Lawrence Aero Services was not hard to find. Its small office was in a back alley off Waterloo Street. The American knocked several times but there was no reply. The moist heat was beginning to drench his shirt. He peered through the dusty window and rapped again.
‘Ain’t no one there, man,’ said a helpful voice behind him. The speaker was old and gnarled; he sat a few doors away in a patch of deep shade and fanned himself with a disc of palm leaves.
‘I’m looking for George Lawrence,’ said the American.