“In Mexico? You guys are damned arrogant.” Crobey leaned across the table and touched his arm, arresting him. “Sit still a minute. I’ll tell you who the client is if I have your guarantee it goes no farther than this table. You don’t report it back to Langley and nobody harasses the client.”

“How can I sign a blank check like that?”

“The client’s an individual. Not a government, not a terrorist gang, not a corporation. One person. Vulnerable. Now you see the point?”

“A Cuban?”

“No. If you want I’ll try to set up a meeting—just you and me and the client, no minions. Fair enough?”

Anders bit into it and began to chew; and Crobey said harshly, “It’s farther than I intended to go. It’s more than I owe you. And I’ll tell you this—if you turn it down I’ll rub your fucking nose in it. I promise you I’ll make it a point to find those guys before you do and then I’ll make sure O’Hillary hears about it. Your ass will be grass.”

“Don’t threaten me, you cheeky bastard.” Anders grinned at him. “I don’t scare, remember?”

“That’s because you’re a bloody fool.”

Anders said, “At last we understand each other.”

“Right.”

He extended his hand; Crobey grasped it. Anders said, “All right. Who’s the client?”

“Carole Marchand.”

“Who?”

“The Lundquist boy’s mother.”

In astonishment Anders sagged back in his seat. He must have been gaping; Crobey leered at him.

Then Crobey said, “Your turn at the wicket now. I want to know everything you’ve got.”

Crobey’s claim was too wild to be disbelieved. Still Anders said, “I’ll want to talk to her.”

“I told you, I’ll arrange it,”

“All right.” He bought it. Time might prove him an imbecile but he had to take the chance.

He began to talk, keeping back nothing of consequence; Crobey was a good listener, he didn’t interrupt. After a little while Rosalia came into the bar expectantly eager but Anders, after curtly introducing Crobey to her, shooed her away; the girl looked so crestfallen it made Crobey laugh. When she was gone Anders resumed his litany.

Afterward Crobey squinted shrewdly. “Most of it won’t get you anywhere. You’ll find the guy they hired the ketch from but he won’t know anything—they’ll have used a blind front for that, a cut-out, some guy without a face. Boats don’t leave tracks. The eleven politicals, they’re a dead end, too—likely they don’t know who rescued them. But then you’d already discounted that. Your theory about it being a caper strictly for the ten million bucks—that’s cute but I don’t buy it. I think they’re in it for nationalist reasons, they’re not just thieves.”

“Why?”

“Because—I told you—I know who the head man is.”

“It’s time you gave me the name.”

“If I give you the name, what will you do with it?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. My client thinks your people are determined to sweep the whole thing under the rug.”

“Your client’s wrong, as far as I know.”

“As far as you know?”

“I can’t read minds,” Anders said. “Who’s the terrorist?”

“He used to go by the name of Rodrigo Rodriguez, believe it or not.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He was one of the pilots who washed out of that Cuban flight school I ran in Alabama. I think he was kicked out before you got there.”

“Rodrigo Rodriguez? What kind of name is that?”

“Far as I know it’s the name his parents gave him. But I’m sure he’s got something else in his passport by now. I’ve already checked out the Rodriguez angles. All blind alleys. He’s covered his tracks beautifully.”

“That’s why you came to me?”

“There’s a limit to how much legwork can be done by one man with a sore leg. You’ve got armies—your people can sift a thousand leads through the strainer and come up with a clue. Give me that clue and I’ll find the guy for you. I know him a little, I know how he thinks.”

“What makes you connect this Rodriguez with the terrorists?”

“He was a kid then, it was long before the Bay of Pigs and I don’t know what happened to him afterward, but in those days he had what your military types like to call leadership qualifications. Tough, bright and blokes liked him.”

“But he washed out of pilot training.”

“You don’t have to be an expert sharpshooter to be a good general, do you.”

“All right.”

“I got onto the idea because of the report that was filtered back from Ortega—something about the guerrilla leader wearing a beard and a big belly. It put me in mind of Rodrigo Rodriguez in his Santa Claus suit at the Christmas party in 1960.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Well it wouldn’t have occurred to me if that was all I’d had. But I started from the obvious premise that the beard was phony. If that was phony then maybe the belly was phony. Then we got the interesting tidbit from one of the Mexican hostages that the leader had a Puerto Rican accent. Rodrigo has a Puerto Rican accent—he’s Cuban by birth but his family ran a business in Puerto Rico. They were in the rum trade in a minor way. Rodriguez and his brother went to school in Mayaguez. Which brings us to another point, the brother. I think his name was Julio. Actually there were three of them, like musketeers, inseparable—the two Rodriguez brothers and a young brute by the name of Vargas. Now Vargas used to smoke Gauloises. And Julio Rodriguez used to read pulp magazines all the time. Science-fiction pulp magazines. You see where it all points?”

“Flimsy,” Anders said. “Flimsy as hell.”

“It was,” Crobey agreed, “until I showed Ortega an old photograph of Rodrigo.”

“Ah.”

“Ah indeed. I didn’t tell Ortega the name of the guy in the photograph but he identified it.” Crobey’s hand came out of his pocket with a two-by-three glossy. “Keep it, I’ve got a bunch of them.”

“From where?”

“Florida. I went through the files of the old Free Cuba outfit. Hardly more than a shell nowadays but they’ve still got a secretary and an office. She remembered me from Alabama.”

The face in the photograph was striking enough. Enormous square cheekbones and bleak eyes overhung by great ramparts of bone. Hard, but you sensed the capacity for compassion—that must be the aspect that invited people to like him. There was intelligence in it, and stubborn boldness.

Crobey said, “You wouldn’t have tumbled him. He hasn’t been affiliated with any of the organized exile groups since sixty-three. As far as I know there’s no record of his escaping from prison in Havana but he must have. He was one of the troops captured at the Pigs.”

“What rank?” Anders was businesslike when he needed to be.

“Second lieutenant I guess. Platoon leader, or that’s what I heard. It’s a long time ago. I think he was one of the ones on Red Beach. Lucky he didn’t get shrapnel up his ass.”

“I see the problem. He’s had fifteen years to establish a new identity.”

Crobey said, “You can probably get your hands on his fingerprints from some file or other. That might help a little.”

Anders doubted it; he knew of no case in which a fugitive had been found on the basis of fingerprints. But he had to try.

Anders said, “For all practical purposes you’re simply handing him over to me. Why?”

“I’ll reach him before you do, Glenn. Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t see how. Not with what you’ve given me.”

“We’ll see. Do you still want to talk to the client?”

“What does she want?”

“She wants a little justice. Just a little justice.”

“Vengeance is mine.”

“You ever read Francis Bacon?”

“Maybe in high school. I don’t remember.”

“Revenge,” Crobey quoted, “is a kind of wild justice. Bacon.”

“The lady’s angry then.”

“You could say that,” Crobey agreed. Then he got up to go. “I’ll be in touch.”

Anders watched him beat a path among the tables. Highly puzzled, Anders finally slid out of the booth and went toward a phone.