The Evening News Page 8

  Then, making use of automatic photography machines, he obtained three sets of passport photographs, each time varying his appearance. For one picture he applied a neat mustache and beard, in another he was clean-shaven and changed his hair parting, for the third he wore heavy, distinctive glasses.

  Next day he collected the three birth certificates from St. Catherine’s House. As before, no one was in the least interested as to why he wanted them.

  He had already obtained passport applications from a post office, again being careful not to touch them. Now, wearing disposable plastic gloves, he completed the forms. On each, as the applicant’s address he used one of the accommodation addresses already arranged.

  Two photographs had to accompany each passport application. One photo was required to have on it a statement by a “professionally qualified person,” such as a doctor, engineer or lawyer, identifying the applicant; also the same person affirmed that he or she had known the applicant for at least two years. Based on advice he had received, Miguel wrote and signed the statements himself, disguising his handwriting and using names and addresses selected at random from a phone book. He had also bought a rubber stamp set which he used to make the names and addresses more convincing.

  Despite a warning on the passport form that checks of support signatories were made, in fact they rarely were, and the chance of a false statement’s being discovered was extremely remote. There were simply too many applications and too small a staff.

  Finally, Miguel dealt with the three “identified” photos—those that had writing on them and therefore would not appear in any of the passports he was applying for, but were destined for Passport Office files. Using a soft sponge, he applied a weak solution of Domestos, a household bleach similar to the North American product Clorox. This ensured that within two or three months the photographs on file would fade and blur, and thus no picture would exist of Miguel, alias Dudley Martin or the other names.

  Now Miguel mailed the three applications, each with a postal order for fifteen pounds, knowing it would take at least four weeks for the passports to be processed and sent back. It was a tedious wait but, for safety’s sake, worthwhile.

  During this hiatus he mailed several letters to himself at the accommodation addresses. In each instance, after waiting a day or two he telephoned to inquire whether mail was there, and when the answer was “yes” stated that a messenger would make the collection. He then used unknown youths from the street for the pickups, paying them a few pounds and, before revealing himself afterward, watching carefully to ensure that none was followed. It was Miguel’s intention to collect the passports, when delivered, in the same way.

  All three passports arrived within a few days of each other during the fifth week and were collected without a hitch. When the third was in his hands, Miguel smiled to himself. ¡Excelente! He would use the Dudley Martin passport now, retaining the other two for future use.

  One final step remained—to buy a round trip ticket to the United States. Miguel did so that same day.

  Before 1988, all holders of British passports required a visa to enter the U.S. Now a visa was not needed, provided the intended visit would not exceed ninety days and the traveler possessed a return ticket. Though Miguel had no intention of using his return portion and later would destroy it, its cost was trifling compared with the risk of another sally through bureaucracy. As to the ninety-day rule, it made no difference to him either way. While he did not expect to stay that long in the U.S., when he left it would be either secretly or with another identity, the Dudley Martin passport having been discarded.

  America’s rule change about visas had delighted Miguel. Once more those convenient open systems were being helpful to his kind!

  The next morning he flew to New York and, at John F. Kennedy Airport, was admitted without hindrance.

  After reaching New York, Miguel went immediately to where a sizable Colombian community lived in the borough of Queens and where a safe house had been arranged by a Medellín cartel agent.

  “Little Colombia” in Jackson Heights extended from Sixty-ninth to Eighty-ninth streets. A thriving narcotics center, it was one of New York’s most dangerous high-crime areas where violence was a hiccup and murder commonplace. Uniformed police officers seldom ventured there alone, and even in pairs did not move around on foot at night.

  The district’s reputation did not bother Miguel at all; in fact, he thought of it as protection while he began his planning, drew on money made secretly available, and assembled the small force he would lead. That force’s seven members, including Miguel, had been selected in Bogotá.

  Julio, at this moment on surveillance duty, and Socorro, the only woman in the group, were Colombians who had been “sleeping agents” of Medellín. Several years ago both were sent to the United States, ostensibly as immigrants, their only instructions to establish themselves and wait until such time as their services were needed for drug-related activity or some other criminal purpose. That time had now arrived.

  Julio was a communications specialist. Socorro, during her waiting period, had trained and qualified as a nursing aide.

  Socorro had an additional affiliation. Through friends in Peru she had become a sympathizer and part-time U.S. agent for the revolutionary Sendero Luminoso. Among Latin Americans such crossovers between politically motivated and profit-motivated crime were common and now, because of her dual connection, Socorro held a watching role also on Sendero’s behalf.

  Of the remaining four, three others were Colombians, who had been assigned the code names Rafael, Luís and Carlos. Rafael was a mechanic and general handyman. Luís had been chosen for his driving skills; he was expert at eluding pursuit, especially from crime scenes. Carlos was young, quick-witted and had organized the surveillance of the past four weeks. All three spoke English fluently and had been in the U.S. several times before. On this occasion they had come in unknown to each other and using forged passports with false names. Their instructions were to make themselves known to the same Medellín agent who arranged Miguel’s safe house, after which they received orders directly from Miguel.

  The final member of the group was an American, his name for this operation, Baudelio. Miguel mistrusted Baudelio totally, yet this man’s knowledge and skills were essential to the mission’s chances of success.

  Now, in Hackensack at the Colombian group’s temporary operating center, thinking about the renegade American, Baudelio, Miguel felt a surge of frustration. It compounded his anger with Julio for the careless lapse into plain language during the telephoned report from outside the Sloane house in Larchmont. Still holding the telephone, disciplining himself to subdue personal feelings, Miguel considered his reply.

  The surveillance report had referred to a man aged about seventy-five, who arrived at the Sloane house a few minutes earlier with a suitcase he had carried inside—in Julio’s careless words, “like he plans to stay.”

  Before leaving Bogotá, Miguel had received extensive intelligence, not all of which he had shared with the others under his command. Included in this dossier was the fact that Crawford Sloane had a father who fitted the description of the new arrival. Miguel reasoned: Well, if the old man had joined his son, expecting to see him for a while, it constituted a nuisance but nothing more. The father would almost certainly have to be killed later that day, but that presented no problem.

  Depressing the telephone transmitter, Miguel ordered, “Take no action about the blue package. Report new billing only.” “New billing” meant: if the situation changes.

  “Roger,” Julio acknowledged curtly.

  Replacing the cellular phone, Miguel glanced at his watch. Almost 7:45 A.M. In two hours all seven members of his group would be in place and ready for action. Everything that would follow had been carefully planned, with problems anticipated, precautions taken. When the action started, some improvisation might be needed, but not much.

  And there could be no postponement. Outside the United States, o
ther movements, dovetailing with their own, were already in motion.

  9

  Angus Sloane gave a contented sigh, put down his coffee cup and patted his mouth and silver-gray mustache with a napkin. “I’ll state positively,” he declared, “that no better breakfast has been served this morning in all of New York State.”

  “And not one with higher cholesterol either,” his son said from behind an opened New York Times across the table. “Don’t you know all those fried eggs are bad for your heart? How many was it you had? Three?”

  “Who’s counting?” Jessica said. “Besides, you can afford the eggs, Crawf. Angus, would you like another?”

  “No thank you, my dear.” The old man, sprightly and cherubic—he had turned seventy-three a few weeks earlier—smiled benevolently at Jessica.

  “Three eggs isn’t many,” Nicky said. “I saw a late movie once about a Southern prison. Somebody in it ate fifty eggs.”

  Crawford Sloane lowered the Times to say, “The movie you’re speaking of was Cool Hand Luke. It starred Paul Newman and came out in 1967. I’m sure, though, that Newman didn’t really eat those eggs. He’s a fine actor who convinced you that he did.”

  “There was a salesman here once from the Britannica,” Jessica said. “He wanted to sell us an encyclopedia. I told him we already had one, living in.”

  “Can I help it,” her husband responded, “if some of the news I live with sticks to me? It’s like fluff, though. You can never tell which bits will stay in memory and what will blow away.”

  They were all seated in the bright and cheerful breakfast room, which adjoined the kitchen. Angus had arrived a half hour earlier, embracing his daughter-in-law and grandson warmly and shaking hands more formally with Crawford.

  The constraint between father and son—sometimes translating to irritation on Crawford’s part—had existed for a long time. Mainly it had to do with differing ideas and values. Angus had never come to terms with the easing in national and personal moral standards which had been accepted by most Americans from the 1960s onward. Angus ardently believed in “honor, duty and the flag”; further, that his fellow countrymen should still exhibit the uncompromising patriotism that existed during World War II—the high point of Angus’s life, about which he reminisced ad infinitum. At the same time he was critical of many of the rationales that his own son, in his news-gathering activities, nowadays accepted as normal and progressive.

  Crawford, on the other hand, was intolerant of his father’s thinking which, as Crawford saw it, was rooted in antiquity and failed to take into account the greatly expanded knowledge on all fronts—notably scientific and philosophical—in the four-plus decades since World War II. There was another factor, too—a conceit on Crawford’s part (though he would not have used that word) that having attained the top of his professional tree, his own judgments about world affairs and the human condition were superior to most other people’s.

  Now, in the early hours of this day, it already appeared that the gap between Crawford and his father had not narrowed.

  As Angus had explained on countless other occasions, and did so once again, all his life he had liked to arrive wherever he was going early in the morning. It was why he had flown from Florida to La Guardia yesterday, stayed overnight with an American Legion crony who lived near the airport, then, soon after dawn, came to Larchmont by bus and taxi.

  While the familiar recital was proceeding, Crawford had raised his eyes to the ceiling. Jessica, smiling and nodding as if she had never heard the words before, had prepared for Angus his favorite bacon and eggs, and for herself and the other two served a more healthful homemade granola.

  “About my heart and eggs,” Angus said—he sometimes took a few minutes to absorb a remark that had been made, and then returned to it—“I figure if my ticker’s lasted this long, I shouldn’t worry about that cholesterol stuff. Also, my heart and I have been in some tight spots and come through them. I could tell you about a few.”

  Crawford Sloane lowered his newspaper enough to catch Jessica’s eye and warn her with a glance: Change the subject quick, before he gets launched on reminiscences. Jessica gave the slightest of shrugs, conveying in body language: If that’s what you want, do it yourself.

  Folding the Times, Sloane said, “They have the casualty figures here from that crash at Dallas yesterday. It’s pretty grim. I imagine we’ll be doing follow-up stories through next week.”

  “I saw that on your news last night,” Angus said. “It was done by that fellow Partridge. I like him. When he does those bits from overseas, especially about our military forces, he makes me feel proud to be American too. Not all your people do that, Crawford.”

  “Unfortunately there’s a joker in there, Dad,” Sloane said. “Harry Partridge isn’t American. He’s a Canadian. Also you’ll have to do without him for a while. Today he starts a long vacation.” Then he asked curiously, “Who, of our people, doesn’t make you feel proud?”

  “Just about all the others. It’s the way almost all you TV news folk have of denigrating everything, especially our own government, quarreling with authority, always trying to make the President look small. No one seems to be proud of anything anymore. Doesn’t that ever bother you?”

  When Sloane didn’t answer, Jessica told him, sotto voce, “Your father answered your question. Now you should answer his.”

  “Dad,” Sloane said, “you and I have been over this ground before, and I don’t think we’ll ever have a meeting of the minds. What you call ‘denigrating everything’ we in the news business think of as legitimate questioning, the public’s right to know. It’s become a function of news reporting to challenge the politicians and bureaucrats, to question whatever we’re told—and a good thing too. The fact is, governments lie and cheat—Democrat, Republican, liberal, socialist, conservative. Once in office they all do it.

  “Sure we who seek out the news get tough at times and occasionally—I admit it—go too far. But because of what we do, a lot of crookedness and hypocrisy gets exposed, which in older days those in power got away with. So because of sharper news coverage, which TV pioneered, our society is a little better, slightly cleaner, and the principles of this country nudged nearer what they should be.

  “As to presidents, Dad, if some of them look small, and most of them have, they’ve accomplished that themselves. Oh sure, we news guys help the process now and then, and that’s because we’re skeptics, sometimes cynics, and often don’t believe the soothing syrup that presidents hand out. But skulduggery in high places, all high places, gives us plenty of reason to be the way we are.”

  “I wish the President sort of belonged to everybody, not one party,” Nicky said. He added thoughtfully, “Wouldn’t it have been better if the Founding Fathers had made Washington the king, and Franklin or Jefferson the President? Then Washington’s kids and their children and grandchildren could have been kings and queens, so we’d have a head of state to feel proud of and a President to blame for things, the way the British do with their prime minister.”

  “America’s great loss, Nicky,” his father said, “is that you weren’t at the Constitutional Convention to push that idea. Despite Washington’s kids being adopted, it’s more sensible than a lot else that happened then and since.”

  They all laughed, then becoming serious Angus said, “The reporting in my war—that’s World War II to you, Nicky—was different from what it is today. We had the feeling then that those who wrote about it, talked on the radio, were always on our side. It’s not that way anymore.”

  “It was a different war,” Crawford said, “and a different time. Just as there are new ways of gathering news, concepts about news change too. A lot of us don’t believe anymore in ‘My country right or wrong.’”

  Angus complained, “I never thought I’d hear a son of mine say that.”

  Sloane shrugged. “Well, you’re hearing it now. Those of us who aim at truth in news want to be sure our country’s right, that we’re not being
fed hocus-pocus by whoever is in charge. The only way you can find out about that is to ask tough, probing questions.”

  “Don’t you believe there were tough questions asked in my war?”

  “Not tough enough,” Sloane said. He paused, wondering whether to go farther, then decided he would. “Weren’t you one of those who went on the first B-17 bombing raid to Schweinfurt?”

  “Yes.” Then to Nicholas: “That was deep in Germany, Nicky. At the time, not a nice place to go.”

  With a touch of ruthlessness, Crawford persisted. “You told me once that the objective at Schweinfurt was to destroy ball-bearing factories, that those in charge of the bombing believed they could bring Germany’s war machine to a halt because it had to have ball bearings.”

  Angus nodded slowly, knowing what was coming. “That’s what they told us.”

  “Then you also know that after the war it was discovered that it didn’t work. Despite that raid and others, which cost so many American lives, Germany never was short of ball bearings. The policy, the plans, were wrong. Well, I’m not saying that the press in those days could have stopped that awful waste. But nowadays questions would be asked—not after it was over, but while it was happening, so the questioning and public knowledge would be a restraint and probably lessen the loss of life.”

  As his son spoke, the old man’s face was working, creased by memory and pain. With the others’ eyes upon him he seemed to diminish, to sink into himself, suddenly to become older. He said, his voice quavering, “At Schweinfurt we lost fifty B-17s. There were ten people in a crew. That’s five hundred fliers lost that single day. And in that same week of October ’43, we lost another eighty-eight B-17s—near enough nine hundred people.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I was on those raids. The worst thing afterward was at night being surrounded by so many empty beds—of people who didn’t come back. In the night, waking up, looking around me, I used to wonder, Why me? Why did I get back—in that week and others after—when so many didn’t?”