t exclusive, and it was located at the base of the harbour wall facing out over a glittering blue sea. More to the point, the sea winds at last triumphed over the stench of the back streets.
Unlike his employer the secret police chief avoided ostentation, uniforms, medals and glitz; his pinguid frame was encased in a black shirt and black suit. If there had been a hint of nobility of cast of feature, thought the CIA man, he might have resembled Orson Welles towards the end. But the face was more Hermann Goering.
Nevertheless, his grip on the small and impoverished country was absolute and he listened without interruption. He knew exactly the relationship between the refugee from Yugoslavia who had sought sanctuary in San Martin, and now lived in an enviable mansion at the end of a piece of property Moreno himself hoped one day to acquire, and the president.
He knew of the huge wealth of the refugee and the annual fee he paid to President Muñoz for sanctuary and protection, even though that protection was really provided by himself.
What he did not know was why a very senior hierarch in Washington had chosen to bring together the refugee and the tyrant. It mattered not. The Serb had spent over five million dollars building his mansion, and another ten on his estate. Despite the inevitable imports to achieve such a feat, half that money had been spent inside San Martin, with tidy percentages going to Colonel Moreno on every contract.
More directly, Moreno took a fee for providing the slave labour force, and keeping the numbers topped up with fresh arrests and transportations. So long as no peon ever escaped or came back alive, it was a lucrative and safe arrangement. The CIA man did not need to beg for his cooperation.
‘If he sets one foot inside San Martin,’ he wheezed, ‘I will have him. You will not see him again, but every piece of information he divulges will be passed to you. On that you have my word.’
On his way back to the river crossing and the waiting aeroplane at Parbo, McBride thought of the mission the unseen bounty hunter had set himself; he thought of the defences, and the price of failure: death at the hands of Colonel Moreno and his black-eyed experts in pain. He shuddered, and it was not from the air-conditioning.
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Calvin Dexter did not need to return to Pennington to collect any messages left on the answering machine attached to his office telephone. He could make the collections from a public phone booth in Brooklyn. He did so on 15 August.
The cluster of messages was mainly from voices he knew before the speaker identified himself. Neighbours, law clients, local businessmen; mainly wishing him a happy fishing vacation and asking when he would be back at his desk.
It was the second-to-last message that almost caused him to drop the phone, to stare, unseeing, at the traffic rushing past the glass of the booth. When he had replaced the handset he walked for an hour trying to work out how it had happened, who had leaked his name and business and, most important of all, whether the anonymous voice was that of a friend or a betrayer.
The voice did not identify the speaker. It was flat, monotone, as if coming through several layers of paper tissue. It said simply: ‘Avenger, be careful. They know you are coming.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Plan
When Professor Medvers Watson left, the Surinamese consul was feeling slightly breathless; so much so, the official very nearly excluded the academic from the list of visa applicants he was sending to Kevin McBride at a private address in the city.
‘Callicore maronensis,’ beamed the professor when asked for the reason he wished to visit Surinam. The consul looked blank. Seeing his perplexity, Dr Watson delved into his attaché case and produced Andrew Neild’s masterwork: The Butterflies of Venezuela.
‘It’s been seen, you know. The type “V”. Unbelievable.’
He whipped open the reference work at a page of coloured photographs of butterflies that, to the consul, looked pretty similar, barring slight variations of marking to the back wings.
‘One of the Limenitidinae, you know. Subfamily, of course. Like the Charaxinae. Both derived from the Nymphalidae, as you probably know.’
The bewildered consul found himself being educated in the descending order of family, subfamily, genus, species and subspecies.
‘But what do you want to do about them?’ asked the consul. Professor Medvers Watson closed his almanac with a snap.
‘Photograph them, my dear sir. Find them and photograph them. Apparently there has been a sighting. Until now the Agrias narcissus was about as rare as it gets in the jungles of your hinterlands, but the Callicore maronensis? Now that would make history. That is why I must go without delay. The autumn monsoon, you know. Not far off.’
The consul stared at the US passport. Stamps for Venezuela were frequent. Others for Brazil, Guyana. He unfolded the letter on the headed paper of the Smithsonian Institute. Professor Watson was warmly endorsed by the head of the Department of Entomology, Division Lepidoptera. He nodded slowly. Science, environment, ecology, these were the things not to be gainsaid or denied in the modern world. He stamped the visa and handed back the passport.
Professor Watson did not ask for the letter, so it stayed on the desk.
‘Well, good hunting,’ he said weakly.
Two days later Kevin McBride walked into the office of Paul Devereaux with a broad smile on his face.
‘I think we have him,’ he said. He laid down a completed application form of the type issued by the Surinamese Consulate and filled out by the applicant for a visa. A passport-sized photo stared up from the page.
Devereaux read through the details.
‘So?’
McBride laid a letter beside the form. Devereaux read that as well.