The Evening News Page 7

  “Well, it does distress me,” Jessica said. She wondered: Could it happen? Could Crawf be kidnapped and spirited away? It seemed unbelievable, but almost every day unbelievable things did happen.

  “Apart from fear,” she said thoughtfully, “I have to admit some of this fascinates me, because it’s a side of you I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before. But I do wonder why you haven’t taken that security course we talked about.”

  It was an anti-terrorism course put on by a British company, Paladin Security, that had been featured on several American news programs. The course lasted a week, and in part was intended to prepare people for just the possibility Sloane had raised—how to behave as a victim in a hostage situation. Also taught was unarmed self defense—something Jessica had urged her husband to learn after a savage attack on the CBS anchorman Dan Rather on a New York street in 1986. The unprovoked attack by two unknown men had sent Rather to a hospital; the assailants were never found.

  “Finding time for that course is the problem,” Sloane said. “Speaking of that, are you still taking CQB lessons?”

  CQB was shorthand for close quarters battle, a specialized version of unarmed combat practiced by the elite British Army SAS. The instruction was given by a retired British brigadier now living in New York, and that was something else Jessica had wanted Crawford to do. But when he simply couldn’t find time she took the lessons herself.

  “I’m not taking them regularly anymore,” she answered. “Though I do an hour every month or two to keep refreshed, and Brigadier Wade sometimes gives lectures which I go to.”

  Sloane nodded. “Good.”

  That night, still troubled by what had passed between them, Jessica found it difficult to sleep.

  Outside, the occupants of the Ford Tempo watched as one by one the lights in the house went off. Then they made a report by cellular phone and, ending that day’s vigil, drove away.

  8

  Shortly after 6:30 A.M. the surveillance of the Sloanes’ Larchmont house resumed. A Chevrolet Celebrity was being used this morning, and slouched down in the car’s front seats—a standard observation technique so the occupants would not be noticed by other passing vehicles—were the Colombians, Carlos and Julio. The Chevy was parked beyond the Sloane house on a convenient side street, the observation being carried on through side and rearview mirrors.

  Both men in the car were feeling tense, knowing that this would be a day of action, the culmination of long and careful planning.

  At 7:30 A.M. an unforeseen event occurred when a taxi arrived at the Sloane house. From the taxi an elderly man carrying a suitcase emerged. He went into the house and remained there. The newcomer’s unexpected presence meant a complication and prompted a call by cellular phone to the watchers’ temporary headquarters some twenty miles away.

  Their efficient communications and ample transport typified an operation on which expense had not been spared. The conspirators who had inspired and organized the surveillance and what was to follow were expert, resourceful and had access to plenty of money.

  They were associates of Colombia’s Medellín cartel, a coalition of vicious, criminal, fabulously wealthy drug lords. Operating with bestial savagery, the cartel had been responsible for countless violent, bloody murders including the 1989 assassination of Colombian presidential candidate Senator Luís Carlos Galán. Since 1981 more than 220 judges and court officials had been murdered, plus police, journalists and others. In 1986, a Medellín alliance with the socialist-guerrilla faction M-19 resulted in a killing orgy of ninety deaths, including half the members of Colombia’s Supreme Court.

  Despite the Medellín cartel’s repulsive record, it enjoyed close ties with the Roman Catholic Church. Several cartel bosses boasted private chapels. A cardinal spoke favorably of Medellín’s people and a bishop blandly admitted taking money from drug traffickers.

  Murder was not the only process by which the cartel ruled. Large-scale bribery and corruption financed by the drug lords ran like a massive cancer through Colombia’s government, judiciary, police and military, beginning at topmost levels and filtering to the lowest. A cynical description of the drug trade’s standard offer to officialdom was plata o plomo—silver or lead.

  For a while, through 1989 and 1990 during a wave of horror following the Galán assassination, cartel leaders were inconvenienced by law enforcement efforts against them, including some modest intervention by the United States. A retaliatory response, accurately described by the drug conspirators as “total war,” involved massive violence, bombings and still more killings, a process which seemed certain to continue. But survival of the cartel and its ubiquitous drug trade—perhaps with fresh leaders and bases—was never in doubt.

  In the present instance, while operating undercover in the United States, Medellín was working not for itself but for the Peruvian Maoist-terrorist organization Sendero Luminoso, or “Shining Path.” Recently in Peru, Sendero Luminoso had grown more powerful while the official government became increasingly inept and weak. Where once Sendero’s domain had been limited to the Andes Mountains, Huallaga Valley and centers like Ayacucho and Cuzco, nowadays its bombing teams and assassination squads roamed the capital city, Lima.

  Two strong reasons existed for linkages between Sendero Luminoso and the Medellín cartel. First, Sendero customarily employed outside criminals to conduct kidnappings which were frequent in Peru, though not widely reported by the American media. Second, Sendero Luminoso controlled most of Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley where sixty percent of the world’s coca crop was grown. The coca, in leaf form, was converted to coca paste—the basis of cocaine—and afterward flown from remote airstrips to the Colombian cartels.

  In the whole process drug money contributed heavily to Sendero finances, the group exacting a substantial tribute both from coca growers and traffickers—the Medellín connection among them.

  Now, in the surveillance Chevrolet, the two Colombian hoodlums were searching through a collection of Polaroid photos which Carlos, an adept photographer, had taken of all persons seen to have entered the Sloane house during the past four weeks. The elderly man who had just arrived was not among them.

  Julio, on the telephone, spoke in code phrases.

  “A blue package has arrived. Delivery number two. The package is in storage. We cannot trace the order.” Translated: A man has arrived. Delivered by taxi. He has gone into the house. We do not know who he is; there is no Polaroid of him.

  The sharp-edged voice of Miguel, the project’s leader, snapped back through the phone, “What is the docket number?”

  Julio, not comfortable with codes, swore softly as he leafed through a notebook to decipher the question. It asked him: What age is this person?

  He looked to Carlos for help. “Un viejo. How old?”

  Carlos took the book and read the question. “Tell him, docket seventy-five.”

  Julio did, producing another terse question. “Is anything special about the blue package?”

  Abandoning code, Julio lapsed into plain language. “He carried a suitcase in. Looks like he plans to stay.”

  South of Hackensack, New Jersey, in a dilapidated rented house, the man whose code name was Miguel silently cursed Julio’s carelessness. Those pendejos he was forced to work with! In the code book was a phrase that would have answered the question, and he had warned all of them, over and over, that on radio phones anyone could be listening. Scanning devices that could eavesdrop on cellular phone conversations were available in stores. Miguel had heard of a radio station that used a scanner and boasted of foiling several criminal plots.

  ¡Estúpidos! He simply could not get through to the idiots assigned to him—when the success of their mission, plus all their lives and freedoms were at stake—the importance of being vigilant, cautious, on guard, not just most of the time, but all of it.

  Miguel himself had been obsessively cautious for as long as he could remember. It was why he had never been arrested, even though he was on “mos
t wanted” lists of police forces in North and South America and some in Europe too, including Interpol. In the Western Hemisphere he was becoming as keenly sought after as his brother-in-terrorism Abu Nidal, on the other side of the Atlantic. About that, Miguel permitted himself a certain pride, though never failing to remember that pride could beget overconfidence, and that was something else he guarded against.

  Despite all the turmoil he had been a part of, he was still a young man—in his late thirties. In appearance he had always been unremarkable, with average good looks but no more; anyone passing him on a street might think he was a bank clerk or, at best, manager of a small store. In part, this was because he worked hard at seeming unimportant. He also made a habit of being polite to strangers, but not to the point of creating a memorable impression; most who met him casually, not knowing who he was, tended to forget having done so.

  In the past, this ordinariness had been Miguel’s great good fortune, as was the fact that he did not radiate authority. His power of command remained hidden except to those on whom he exercised it, and then it was unmistakable.

  An advantage to Miguel in his present enterprise was that, although Colombian, he could appear and sound American. In the late-1960s and early ’70s he had attended the University of California at Berkeley as a foreign student, majoring in English and patiently learning to speak the language without an accent.

  In those days he was using his real name, Ulises Rodríguez.

  His well-to-do parents had provided the Berkeley education. Miguel’s father, a Bogotá neurosurgeon, hoped his only son would follow him into medicine, a prospect in which Miguel had no interest, even then. Instead, as the 1970s neared, the son foresaw basic changes ahead for Colombia—conversion from a prosperous democratic country with an honest legal base to a lawless, unbelievably rich mobsters’ haven ruled through dictatorship, savagery and fear. The pharaoh’s gold of the new Colombia was marijuana; it would later be cocaine.

  Such was Miguel’s nature that the coming transition did not faze him. What he coveted was part of the action.

  Meanwhile he indulged in some action of his own at Berkeley where he discovered himself to be totally devoid of conscience and able to kill other human beings, swiftly and decisively, without compunction or unpleasant aftertaste.

  The first time it happened was after a sexual session with a young woman he had met earlier on a Berkeley street while both were getting off a bus. Walking from the bus stop, they got into conversation and discovered they were both freshmen. She seemed to like him and invited him to her apartment, which was at the seedy Oakland end of Telegraph Avenue. It was at a time when such encounters were normal, long before the AIDS-anxiety era.

  After some energetic sex he fell asleep, then awakened to find the girl quietly looking through the contents of his wallet. In it were several identification cards in fictitious names; even then he was practicing for his international beyond-the-law future. The girl was too interested in the cards for her own good; perhaps she was some kind of informant, though he never found out.

  What he did was spring from the bed, seize and strangle her. He still remembered her look of unbelief as she thrashed around, trying to release herself; then she looked up at him with desperate, silent pleading just before consciousness ebbed. He was interested, in a clinical way, to discover that killing her did not trouble him at all.

  Instead, with icy calm he calculated his chances of being caught, which he assessed as nil. While on the bus the two of them had not sat together; in fact they had not known each other. It was unlikely that anyone observed them walking away from the bus stop. On entering the apartment building, and in an elevator going to the fourth floor, they encountered no one.

  Taking his time, he used a cloth to wipe the few surfaces where he might have left fingerprints. Then, using a handkerchief to cover his right hand, he turned out all lights and left the apartment, allowing the door to lock behind him.

  He avoided the elevator and went down by the emergency stairs, checking that the lobby was empty before passing through it to the street outside.

  The next day, and for several days after, he watched local newspapers for any item about the dead girl. But it was nearly a week before her partially decomposed body was discovered, then after two or three days more, with no developments and apparently no clues, the newspapers lost interest and the story disappeared.

  Whatever investigation there was had not connected him with the girl’s murder.

  During Miguel’s remaining years at Berkeley he killed on two other occasions. Those were across the Bay in San Francisco—what he supposed could be called “thrill killings” of total strangers, though he considered both as serving a need to hone his developing mercenary skills. He must have honed them well because in neither case was he a suspect, or even questioned by police.

  After Berkeley, and home in Colombia, Miguel flirted with the developing alliance of mad-dog drug lords. He had a pilot’s license and made several flights conveying coca paste from Peru to Colombia for processing. Soon a developing friendship with the infamous but influential Ochoa family helped move him on to larger things. Then came M-19 with its orgy of murders and the Medellín cartel’s “total war,” beginning in late 1989. Miguel participated in all the major killings, many minor ones, and had long since lost count of the corpses in his wake. Inevitably his name became known internationally, but due to his meticulous precautions there was little else on record.

  Miguel’s—or Ulises Rodríguez’s—connections with the Medellín cartel, M-19 and, more recently, Sendero Luminoso, expanded as the years went by. Through it all, though, he maintained his independence, becoming an international outlaw, a gun-for-hire terrorist who was, because of his efficiency, constantly in demand.

  Of course, politics was supposedly a part of it all. Miguel was by instinct a socialist, hated capitalism passionately and despised what he thought of as the hypocritical, decadent United States. But he was also skeptical about politics of any kind and simply enjoyed, as one might an aphrodisiac, the danger, risk and action of the life he led.

  It was that kind of life which had brought him to the United States a month and a half ago, to work undercover, preparing for what would happen today, which the entire world would shortly learn of.

  The route he had originally planned to the U.S. was roundabout but safe—from Bogotá, Colombia, through Rio de Janeiro to Miami. In Rio he would change passports and identities, appearing in Miami as a Brazilian publisher en route to a New York book fair. But an undercover contact in the American State Department had warned Medellín that U.S. Immigration at Miami had urgently requested all available information on Miguel, especially about identities he was known to have used in the past.

  Miguel had, in fact, used the Brazilian publisher identity once before and although he believed it was still unexposed, it seemed wiser to avoid Miami altogether. Therefore, even though it meant some delay, he flew from Rio to London where he acquired an entirely new identity and a brand-new, official British passport.

  The process was easy.

  Ah, the innocent democracies! How stupid and naïve they were! How simple it was to subvert their vaunted freedoms and open systems to advance the purposes of those who, like Miguel, believed in neither!

  He had been briefed, before reaching London, on how it was done.

  First he went to St. Catherine’s House, at the junction of Kingsway and Aldwych, where births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales are recorded. There Miguel applied for three birth certificates.

  Whose birth certificates? Those of anyone whose date of birth was the same as, or close to, his own.

  Without speaking to anyone or being questioned, he picked up five blank birth certificate applications, then walked to where a series of large volumes were on shelves, identified under various years. Miguel chose 1951. The volumes were divided into quarters of the year. He selected M to R, October-December.

  His own birth date was Novem
ber 14 that year. Leafing through pages, he came across the name “Dudley Martin” who had been born in Keighley, Yorkshire, on November 13. The name seemed suitable; it was neither too distinctive nor as obviously common as Smith. ¡Perfecto! Miguel copied the details onto one of the red-printed application forms.

  Now he needed two other names. It was his intention to apply for three passports; the second and third applications would be backups in case anything went wrong with the first. It was always possible that a current passport had already been issued to the same Dudley Martin. In that case a new one would be refused.

  He copied the remaining names onto two more forms. Deliberately, he had selected surnames whose initial letters were widely spaced from the “M” of Martin; one began with “B,” the other “Y.” That was because, at the Passport Office, different clerks handled different letter groups of applications. The spread ensured that the three applications would be dealt with by separate persons, so any similarity would not be noticed.

  At all points Miguel was careful not to touch any of the forms on which he wrote. That was why he had picked up five forms; the two outside ones were to protect the others from his fingerprints and he would destroy those later. He had learned since Berkeley that nothing could take away fingerprints totally, not even careful wiping—new high-tech fingerprint tests, the Ninhydrin and ion-argon laser, would reveal them.

  Next was a short walk to a cashier’s window. There he presented the three applications, still managing not to touch any of those he would leave. A male cashier asked him for a fee of five pounds for each certificate, which he paid in cash. He was told the birth certificates would be ready in two days’ time.

  During those intervening days he arranged to use three accommodation addresses.

  From Kelly’s London Business Directory he noted several secretarial agencies to whose unembellished street addresses mail could be sent and then collected. Going to one of the agencies, he paid a fee of fifty pounds, again cash. He had a cover story ready—that he was starting a small business but could not yet afford an office or secretary. As it turned out, no questions were asked. He repeated the process at two other agencies which were equally incurious. He now had three separate addresses for the trio of passport applications, none of them traceable to himself.