‘These people are animals,’ protested McBride to Devereaux down the secure line from Caracas Station to Langley.
‘Come on home, Kevin,’ said his superior. ‘I’ll ask our friend in the south what, if anything, he discovered.’
Paul Devereaux had long cultivated a contact inside the FBI on the grounds that no man in his line of business could ever have too many sources of information and the bureau was not likely to share with him the very gems that would constitute true brotherly love.
He had asked his ‘asset’ to check in the archive database for files withdrawn by Assistant Director (Investigative Division) Colin Fleming since the request from on high had circulated regarding a murdered boy in Bosnia. Among the withdrawals was one marked simply ‘Avenger’.
Kevin McBride, weary and travel-stained, arrived home the following morning. Paul Devereaux was in his office as early as usual and crisply laundered.
He handed a file to his subordinate.
‘That’s him,’ he said. ‘Our interloper. I spoke with our friend in the south. Of course, it was three of his thugs who brutalized the charter pilot. And you are right. They are animals. But right now they are vital animals. Pity, but unavoidable.’
He tapped the file.
‘Code name Avenger. Age around fifty. Height, build . . . it’s all there in the file. There is a brief description. Now masquerading as US citizen Alfred Barnes. That was the man who chartered the deeply unfortunate Mr Lawrence to fly him over our friend’s hacienda. And there is no Alfred Barnes matching that description on State Department files as a US passport-holder. Find him, Kevin, and stop him. In his tracks.’
‘I hope you don’t mean terminate.’
‘No, that is forbidden. I mean, identify. If he uses one false name, he may have others. Find the one he will try to use to enter San Martin. Then inform the appalling but efficient Colonel Moreno in San Martin. I am sure he can be relied on to do what has to be done.’
Kevin McBride retired to his own office to read the file. He already knew the chief of the secret police of the Republic of San Martin. Any opponent of the dictator falling into his hands would die, probably slowly. He read the Avenger file with his habitual great care.
Two states away, in New York City, the passport of Alfred Barnes was consigned to the flames. Dexter had not a clue or shred of proof that he had been seen, but as he and charter pilot Lawrence had flown over the col in the sierra, he had been jolted to see a face staring up at him; close enough to take the Piper’s number. So, just in case, Alfred Barnes ceased to exist.
That done, he began to build his model of the fortress hacienda. Across the city, in downtown Manhattan, Mrs Nguyen Van Tran was myopically poring over three new passports.
It was 3 August 2001.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Voice
If it is not available in New York it probably doesn’t exist. Cal Dexter used a sawn-timber shop to create a trestle table with a top of inch-ply that almost filled his sitting room.
Art shops furnished enough paints to create the sea and the land in ten different hues. Green baize from fabric shops made fields and meadows. Wooden building blocks were used for scores of houses and barns; model-makers’ emporia provided balsa wood, fast glue and paste-on designs of brickwork, doors and windows.
The runaway’s mansion at the tip of the peninsula was made of Lego from a children’s store and the rest of the landscape was down to a magical warehouse providing for model railway enthusiasts.
Railway modellers want entire landscapes, with hills and valleys, cuttings and tunnels, farms and grazing animals. Within three days Dexter had fashioned the entire hacienda to scale. All he could not see was that which was out of sight to his airborne camera: booby traps, pitfalls, the workforce, security locks, gate chains, the full strength of the private army, their equipment and all interiors.
It was a long list and most of the queries on it could only be solved by days of patient observation. Still, he had decided his way in, his battle plan and his way out. He went on a buying spree.
Boots, jungle clothing, K-rations, cutters, the world’s most powerful binoculars, a new cellphone . . . He filled a Bergen haversack that finally weighed close to eighty pounds. And then there was more; for some he had to go out of state to places in the USA with more lax laws, for others he had to dive into the underworld, and others were quite legal but raised eyebrows. By 10 August he was ready and so were his first ID papers.
‘Spare a moment, Paul?’
Kevin McBride’s yeoman face came round the edge of the door and Devereaux beckoned him in. His deputy brought with him a large-scale map of the northern coast of South America, from Venezuela east to French Guyana. He spread it out and tapped the triangle between the Commini and Maroni rivers, the Republic of San Martin.
‘I figure he’ll go in by the overland route,’ said McBride. ‘Take the air route. San Martin City has the only airport and it is small. Served only twice daily and then only by local airlines coming from Cayenne to the east or Paramaribo to the west.’
His finger stabbed at the capitals of French Guyana and Surinam.
‘It’s such a God-awful place politically that hardly any businessmen go and no tourists. Our man is white, American, and we have his approximate height and build, both from the file and what that charter pilot described before he died. Colonel Moreno’s goons would have him within minutes of debarkation. More to the point, he’d have to have a valid visa and that means visiting San Martin’s only two consulates: Paramaribo and Caracas. I don’t think he’ll try the airport.’
‘No dispute. But Moreno should still put it under night and day surveillance. He might try a private plane,’ said Devereaux.
‘I’ll brief him on that. Next, the sea. There is just one port: San Martin City again. No tourist craft ever put in there, just freighters and not many of them. The crews are Lascars, Filipinos or Creoles; he’d stand out like a sore thumb if he tried to come in openly as a crewman or passenger.’