Mexico Way, page 8
Kreeger could not quarrel with that.
2
They drove up into the hill country behind Kerrville in the judge's Lincoln Town Car. They turned off Route 41 onto a paved drive that ran for a mile and a half to an unmanned security gate where the judge had to phone through for the combination on the lock. Behind the high wire, gemsbok and antelope darted across the drive. Across the sprawling game park, giraffes and elands, scimitar-homed oryx and Armenian red sheep browsed among the dwarf cedars.
Hugh Renwick seemed in no hurry to talk about the doper whose trial was set to begin on Monday, and Kreeger did not push him. Both families had been traumatized by the events of the last two days; When the shock of her boyfriend's murder had sunk in, Lucy's doctor had placed her under heavy sedation.
The men dumped their bags in a log cabin decorated with longhorn skulls, and rented a couple of horses from the ranch manager. They spent most of the morning jouncing along the back trails; Kreeger discovered muscles he had not used in years. From a knoll, they watched a movie star in a ten-gallon Stetson and tailored safari kit miss two easy shots at a white curly-horned oryx. For fees ranging up to $7,500 a trophy, the rich and famous could shoot exotics at the YO Ranch year-round.
The judge swung his horse's head around in disgust. Kreeger clipped his mount's flanks with his heels and trotted after him.
"We got some serious drinking to do," the judge called over his shoulder.
Back in their cabin, they relaxed with a bottle of Jim Beam, and the judge proceeded to talk about boyhood escapades, family and friends, Texas politics, a barbecue dinner with President Butler—anything and everything except the issue he had raised on the telephone. Kreeger sensed the depth of his friend's unease. Why did the judge keep holding back? Was he still afraid for his wife and children? Had he received new death threats since the kidnapping?
"Hughie," Kreeger attempted to call him to order. "It's great to sit here shooting the breeze. But you said you needed to talk to me about Quintero."
"That son of a bitch." The judge popped an ice cube between his teeth and bit down hard. "How much do you know about him?"
"I know he's big time. One of the major players. And I guess he likes to eat, since they call him Chocolate Roll."
"Quintero has probably poisoned more American kids than anyone since the Medellin kingpins went down. If I had my druthers, I'd put him on death row. The best I can do is thirty years, hard time."
"And you've got a tight case."
"Tight as a virgin's ass."
"So where's the problem?"
"Quintero wants to deal. About an hour after we heard Donna was coming out—get this, Jim—the Eye-talian suits come strolling in, smooth as cat puke. Offering names. Talking plea bargains."
"That's not your style, to deal."
The judge crossed and recrossed his legs. He had developed a facial twitch, below the right eye, that Kreeger did not remember. Kreeger did not like the way his friend looked.
"What's Quintero offering?" Kreeger asked. "Crooked cops? Mexican officials? What's the bait?"
"Quintero has been doing business with some very important people, on both sides of the border. The way his attorneys tell it, he's ready to leave a few of them twisting in the wind."
"You want to run some of those names by me?"
The judge poured himself a stiff jolt of bourbon, and drained most of it before he said, 'Taco Carranza. He's a big rancher down in Chihuahua. A political type, in big with the Mexican opposition."
Kreeger had heard something about this Mexican called Carranza, but he couldn't place him exactly. He caught the blurred image of a florid, overweight blow-hard denouncing the Mexican government at some rally near the border. How could he be that important?
"Who gives a rat's ass about this Carranza?" Kreeger asked. "Seems to me Quintero's fancy lawyers aren't offering you much of a trade. Guys like Carranza are a dime a dozen. And he's on the wrong side of the border. I thought the least Quintero would do would be to offer you a U.S. bank president and a couple of DEA guys."
"Then you really don't know." Hugh Renwick was reaching for the bottle again. When he next spoke, he sounded abstracted, as if he was working something out in his own head. "I guess they must have bypassed Mexico Station for security reasons."
"Security reasons?" Kreeger echoed, incredulous. "Sounds to me like someone's been spinning you a line, Hughie. You better give me the whole of it."
"I guess I've said too much already."
"Hughie! This is me, remember?" Kreeger had never seen his friend look so uncomfortable.
The judge cleared his throat. "I met this son of a bitch, Carranza. I met him here, at the YO Ranch." The judge peered about nervously, as if the Mexican might be hiding in the bathroom.
"Don't tell me he used to be one of your campaign contributors when you were running for state judge."
"Nothing like that." The judge hesitated. He needed 1 to let something out, but he was no longer sure of his footing. He was visibly upset that Kreeger did not know] all about Carranza, and Kreeger could not figure out why.
There was a rap on the door, and the judge hurried to answer it, welcoming the interruption. A ranch hand in denims and a broad-brimmed straw hat stood framed against the white heat outside. There were no telephones in the cabins. The ranch hand had been sent down from the Chuck Wagon, where the guests ate at trestle tables, to tell the judge he had an urgent call.
While his friend went to answer the phone, Kreeger strolled across to the Lodge and made an inspection of the trophy room. Beneath wagon-wheel chandeliers was a mass of years of hunters' trophies—a golden eagle with wings outspread, a stuffed bear, assorted heads. Kreeger pushed through double doors leading into a courtyard which contained a stone wellhouse converted into a beer cooler. He was sucking at a longneck bottle, and worrying over unanswered questions, when Hugh Renwick found him. The judge's expression had changed. He looked relieved and guilty, at the same time.
"That Quintero thing?"
"I hear you."
"I guess we can forget it. Chocorrol Quintero was just found dead in his cell."
"What?"
"No signs of violence. The marshals say it looks like a heart attack. Of course, we won't know for sure till the coroner's had him opened up."
"Goddamn convenient timing," Kreeger observed. "You don't expect me to believe that Quintero died of natural causes the day after he offered to blow the whistle on his friends."
The judge bridled. "Listen, Jim. I had Quintero locked up tight. We were holding him in an isolation cell under my own damn courthouse. I had U.S. marshals watching him day and night—guys I've known for years. No visitors. No roughhouse."
"Yeah? Well, if this had happened in a Mexican jail, I'd sure know what to call it."
"I take exception to that, Jim."
Kreeger noted that his friend was avoiding his eyes. He was also sweating more than seemed normal, even in the warmth of the early afternoon. Damp patches had » spread from his armpits across the front of his shirt.
"Who else knew that Quintero had offered to deal?" Kreeger demanded.
"I don't have to answer that. As a matter of fact, I think we're starting to get on each other's nerves. I'm sorry I dragged you up here."
Kreeger grabbed his friend's forearm. His patience had just run out.
"I want some straight answers from you, Hughie. I risked my goddamn neck getting Donna out, and now you tell me there was no need, because Quintero decided to give up the ghost the weekend before the trial. And you're standing there in a puddle of sweat, and you won't look me in the eye. I think I deserve better."
The judge's long, lanky frame seemed to contract. "I guess you do, Jim. I'm sorry." He eased his narrow buttocks onto the lip of the well. Whatever Hugh Renwick wanted to conceal, the direct appeal to friendship—and obligation—could not be denied. They had been reared in the same hard, inconstant border country, where friendship was the one thing you could count on.
"Okay. So let's start over."
"Your call," said the judge.
"How do you think Quintero died?"
"He had food sent in from outside. From restaurants and such. He was a big eater. One of the marshals says he got a box of candy this morning. I guess he ate the lot."
"What are you telling me? That Quintero was poisoned?"
"Could have been strychnine," the judge reflected. "Looks natural enough. Maybe the autopsy will show, Maybe not."
"Didn't any of your men check what was coming , in?"
"U.S. marshals aren't food-tasters, Jim. Look, nobody in these parts is going to shed tears over a Mexican doper. Maybe whoever sent the candy did all of us a favor."
"You're going to leave it at that, aren't you? I don't envy you your conscience. Who are you trying to protect? Who else knew that Quintero wanted to trade? Did you call your friend Carranza?"
The judge shook his head. Kreeger could feel him closing up again, and risked everything in a brusque, brutal assault. "What's in it for you, Hughie? Are you on the take? Has this Carranza got something over you?"
The judge straightened his spine. "I have never taken a penny that wasn't owed me, and if you think different, you're no friend of mine."
Kreeger believed him. "Then what are you hiding?"
"It's a national security matter, Jim."
"National security is my business. Either you spit it I out now or I hitch a ride back to San Antone. Who else ! did you talk to yesterday?" Kreeger made a performance out of consulting his watch.
The judge opened and closed his mouth. Then he said, "I talked to old John Halliwell."
"The oilman?" Kreeger frowned. He had a vague recollection of John Halliwell, an oversized good ol' boy in alligator boots, showing off at one of the guest ranches around Hunt. It had been many years back, when Halliwell had made his first millions in the oil patch and Kreeger was a high school kid trying to earn a few bucks by cleaning pools and mucking out stables for the rich crowd who came up in summer to escape Houston's fog and muggy heat. The men, he remembered, talked money in boxcar numbers. The women drank gin fizz or mimosas with breakfast and flirted with the help. Kreeger was quite sure John Halliwell had never noticed his existence. How did a Houston oilman fit into the Quintero puzzle?
The judge responded to the unvoiced question. "It was John Halliwell who set up the meeting at the YO where I met Carranza and some other fellers."
"What was this meeting about?"
"It had to do with how things were going to hell in a handbasket down in Mexico. Crooks in government, commies waiting in the wings. A few ol' boys had a notion of how we could sort things out, so to speak."
"So to speak? You mean these guys are cooking some kind of political operation?"
"I didn't get too involved."
"Then what were you doing at the meeting?"
"I guess John Halliwell wanted to show me off to his Mexican friends, seeing as how I was Harry Butler's finance chairman and all back when he was running for the Senate. Show the pro-American people in Mexico that there's sympathy for their cause up here. You know how it works. I guess old John might have wanted some legal advice, too. Problems with the Neutrality Act, that sort of thing. Though I can't see as how they have any real problems, not with Washington behind this."
"Behind what, exactly?"
"I guess they figure on changing the government down in Mexico, if the bunch in power steal the elections."
"And how do they plan on doing that?"
"I wasn't in on all of the sessions. I shot me a couple of whitetail bucks."
"But you mean they actually plan to get us involved in the Mexican elections, that they've got an operation all set up and ready to go?"
"They call it Safari."
Kreeger didn't speak for a moment. Some things, were finally starting to make sense. Specific queries to his, office from some people in the Butler administration— questions that had no relevance, made no sense at the’ time. But surely this thing couldn't have gotten that far out of hand.
"Okay, this Safari operation, what gives you reason to believe that it has Uncle Sam's blessing?"
"Why, one of your high panjandrums from Langley came down specially."
"From Langley?"
"That's what they told me. Talked like it, too. Didn't say one damn thing in honest American."
"Did he have a name?"
"Cantwell. Mr. Cantwell."
Kreeger had never heard of a CIA officer called Cantwell. Of course, the Agency was a large bureaucracy. It was possible also that Cantwell was a work-name. Or camouflage for a flimflam artist. As the judge told it, Cantwell's message to the gathering at the YO Ranch had been succinct. The U.S. Administration and the intelligence community had given their full endorsement to a covert operation designed to install a reliably pro-American government on the south side of the Rio Grande. In this effort, the U.S. government was counting on private enterprise for funding and support, because of the constraints imposed on Washington by "un-American" elements in Congress and the media.
"That's about the sum of it," said the judge. "It sounded like a pretty good idea to me, as long as they can keep it under wraps. But nobody contacted me after I drove away, and I didn't give the thing much thought until Quintero's lawyers came up with the name of this asshole Carranza. He didn't say much at the meeting. He seemed to be mostly there for the honey hunt."
To anyone familiar with old-time Texas hospitality the phrase needed no elucidation. A honey hunt was a game of hide-and-seek played with hookers.
When Kreeger had a chance, he jotted down the handful of names the judge could remember. Besides Carranza and Halliwell, Renwick had mentioned a couple of Texas bankers, a high-priced attorney who was reputed to be the Governor's fixer, and a string of Mexicans whose names he did not recall, except for a Monterrey fat cat who was introduced as Raúl.
If Kreeger had heard about the secret meeting at the YO Ranch under different circumstances, he might have felt more relaxed about it. Every time there was trouble in Mexico, well-heeled rightists from across the border huddled with their Texas business partners to talk conspiracy and revolution. Nothing had come of it for more than a century. The mental pictures Kreeger formed of a small squadron of Learjets and Piper Cherokees parked at the YO's landing strip, of stretch limos circling the Lodge, of good ol' boys panting after hookers through the mesquite, were colorful, but hardly more than that.
What riled him was the mysterious Mr. Cantwell's claim to speak for the CIA. Cantwell, no doubt, would prove to be just another one of the swarm of con men and Beltway bandits who used the CIA for a cover. Kreeger would be a great deal less happy if Cantwell turned out to be a bona-fide CIA officer, because that would mean the Director had decided to cut Kreeger and Mexico Station out of a clandestine operation on their own turf.
What made Kreeger quite certain he needed to follow up the judge's leads as hard and fast as he was able was the fact that there was blood on the floor. A Mexican doper had apparently been killed in his cell, to stop him from disclosing the names of one or more men who were part of something called Safari. Maybe Safari was a blind for a new attempt by the drug cartels to rebuild their; networks. Maybe it was more. Whatever their motivation, the men Judge Renwick was dealing with had demonstrated that they were ready to kill on American soil. And that they were skilled enough to reach inside a maximum security cell to do it.
3
From a pay phone in the Chuck Wagon, Kreeger dialed the number of an apartment in Bethesda.
“Collect from Mr. Galloway," he said when the operator came on the line. Galloway was one of Kreeger's numerous aliases. He had been carrying the pocket litter for it—driver's license, Social Security card, plastic— when he crossed the border, in place of his black diplomatic passport. It was a name he was sure Dorothy would remember.
“Jim? What's up? Where are you calling from?"
“I need a favor, Dot. I need you to have the Director authorize a quick trip to Washington to consult. I'll be there Monday."
“You got it. Is this good for a dinner?"
"You pick the restaurant. As long as they don't serve mole."
Dorothy Hyslop was the CIA Director's secretary, but before that, she had worked for Kreeger in a succession of foreign postings, and a strong bond had developed between them. And a true friendship, as well.
Dorothy was a charter member of a league of similar Washington-based women that Kreeger thought of, lovingly, as the Mollycoddlers' Club—ladies of a certain age who had sacrificed their personal lives to the care and . feeding of powerful men, and the preservation of the offices they held. Without the Mollies, by Kreeger's observation, the government of the United States would rapidly grind to a halt.
“You take care, Mr. Galloway."
As Kreeger hung up the phone, it struck him that “Mr. Cantwell," too, sounded the kind of name that belonged on CIA-issue pocket litter. Dorothy would be the ideal person to check that out. No Registry clerk would question an inquiry from the Director's suite.
SIX
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1
On Monday morning, as Kreeger drove his rented car along Route 123 toward McLean, Virginia, he saw an Acura parked close by the exit for the CIA. In it sat two men in suits, one of them with a notepad in plain view, He marked them as novice spies from one of the new Central European services. From the old days, when he was first assigned to the Mausoleum, Kreeger remembered East European agents sitting out on the road, copying down the license tags of CIA employees on their way to work.
He logged in at the Mexico desk and rode the elevator up to the seventh floor. Dorothy gave him a friendly I hug in Director Wagoner's outer office.
"He's not happy," she reported.
"This too shall pass," Kreeger intoned. Behind his broad grin, he wondered whether the Director had heard something about his sudden disappearance from Mexico Station.
