‘Enough,’ said McBride. Early it might be; he fancied a second whisky.
Back in the colonel’s office, the secret policemen laid out some smaller items. One steel watch, engraved MW on the back. A signet ring, no inscription.
‘No wallet,’ said the Colonel. ‘One of the predators must have snatched it if it was made of leather. But maybe this is even better. He had to abandon it at the border-crossing point when he was recognized.’
It was a United States passport in the name of Medvers Watson. The profession was given as scientist. The same face McBride had seen before from the visa application form stared at him: eyeglasses, wispy goatee beard, slightly helpless expression.
The CIA man reckoned, quite rightly, that no one would ever see Medvers Watson again.
‘May I contact my superior in Washington?’
‘Please,’ said Colonel Moreno, ‘be my guest. I will leave you your privacy.’
McBride took his laptop from his attaché case and raised Paul Devereaux, tapping in a sequence of numbers that would keep the exchange from prying ears. With his cellphone plugged into the laptop, he waited until Devereaux came on line.
He told his superior the gist of what Colonel Moreno had told him, and what he had seen. There was silence for a while.
‘I want you to come home,’ said Devereaux.
‘Not a problem,’ said McBride.
‘Moreno can keep all the toys, including the rifle. But I want that passport. Oh, and something else.’
McBride listened.
‘You want . . . what?’
‘Just do it, Kevin. Godspeed.’
McBride told the colonel what he had been ordered to do. The fat secret police chief shrugged.
‘Such a short visit. You should stay. Lobster for lunch on my boat out at sea? Cold Soave? No? Oh well . . . the passport, of course. And the rest . . .’
He shrugged.
‘If you wish. Take them all.’
‘I’m told just one will do.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Trick
McBride arrived back in Washington on 29 August. that same day, down in Paramaribo, Mr Henry Nash, with his passport issued by Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to give him his full title, walked into the Consulate of the Republic of San Martin and asked for a visa.
There was no problem. The consul in the one-man office knew there had been a flap several days earlier when a refugee from justice had tried to enter his homeland, but the alarm had been stood down. The man was dead. He issued the entry visa.
That was the trouble with August. You could never get anything done in a hurry, not even in Washington, not even if your name was Paul Devereaux. The excuse was always the same: ‘I’m sorry, sir, he’s on vacation. He’ll be back next week.’ And thus it was as the month of August finally trickled away into September.
It was on the 3rd that Devereaux received the first of the two answers he sought.
‘It’s probably the best forgery we’ve ever seen,’ said the man from the State Department’s passport division. ‘Basically, it was once genuine and was printed by us. But two vital pages were removed by an expert and two fresh pages from another passport inserted. It is the fresh pages that bear the photo and name of Medvers Watson. To our knowledge there is no such person. This passport number has never been issued.’
‘Could the holder of this passport fly into and out of the States?’ asked Paul Devereaux. ‘Is it that good?’
‘Out of, yes,’ said the expert. ‘Flying out would mean it would only be checked by airline staff. No computer database involved. Flying in . . . that would be a problem if the INS officer chose to run the number through the database. The computer would reply: no such number.’
‘Can I have the passport back?’