“No. I mean how’d he know I’d be in San Juan at all?”

“Are you asking me?” She ripped the page off her pad. “He’d like to meet you tonight at half past seven for dinner at the Tres Candelas in Old Town. He said he’d be bringing a guest.”

“Carole Marchand?”

“He didn’t mention a name.”

“All right. Why don’t you come along?”

“Love to. I’ll put on something slinky.”

He regarded her husky ripe shape. “Sure. You’d better ring O’Hillary for me and put it on the scrambler.”

O’Hillary—smooth, avuncular, elegant: “Glenn, how are you? Any fix on Rodriguez?”

“Not yet.”

“Can you be overheard?”

“Only by my assistant.”

“Ask her to leave, will you?”

Anders cupped the mouthpiece. “He wants privacy.”

With genial disgust Rosalia lifted her nose into the air and went out, pulling the door shut with a quiet reproachful click.

“All right. I’m alone.”

O’Hillary said, “This project of yours has consumed a lot of time in briefings and meetings. It’s becoming a tedious football.”

“What am I supposed to do about that? Drop the ball?”

“It’s not quite that simple, as I’m sure you appreciate. As you know, Glenn, there are varying factions of opinion on this issue. There is, not to put too fine a point on it, an ambivalence in the Administration’s attitude. On the one hand an Ambassador was victimized, an American murdered, and the Administration can’t be seen to condone terrorism—”

Can’t be seen to. That summed up O’Hillary all right.

“At the same time,” O’Hillary went on, “there’s also the matter of the current efforts to ameliorate relations with Cuba.”

Anders could picture him tipped back in his wingback swivel chair with his silk-clad ankles crossed, gently palming the distinguished wave in his silver hair and staring whimsically at a point about a yard above the President’s official photograph.

O’Hillary said, “Conversely Castro is still, in an unofficial way, the enemy. There’s the sticky affairs in Somalia and Ethiopia—and we have people among us who still haven’t forgotten the history of the Angola affair. In certain eyes Fidel Castro remains the bad guy. In regard to the Rodriguez group, there’s still a faction here that takes the understandable position that he who is my enemy’s enemy is perforce my friend. To be blunt, this faction—numbering not an inconsequential few persons in high places—is engaged in the attempt to persuade the Administration to let Rodriguez run and see if perhaps he won’t take care of Castro for them. As a result we’re in dubious straits, my friend. We’re in grave danger of being short-circuited by conflicting orders.”

Whenever O’Hillary turned pedantic and longwinded it meant he was preparing a smoke screen. O’Hillary had an abstract fondness for intrigue as an end rather than a means. He had an infallible intuition for gothic complexities—he thrived on deceptions even when they were superfluous; he was a success in his profession because he had mastered the skill of trick marksmanship—shoot first, then draw a bull’s-eye around the bullet hole.

The principal of survival in Langley was Cover Your Ass; ultimately the decision would come down on one side or the other and O’Hillary would be ready, either way, to end the match with a perfect bull’s-eye—a neat trick and one that might require the sacrifice of a subordinate or two.

Anders knew he had to listen very carefully to O’Hillary now: It wasn’t what O’Hillary said but what he didn’t say.

“I do hope you’re not recording this, Glenn. If things backfire we mustn’t make the error of leaving tape-recorded evidence of our misstatements about, must we.” Like a disagreeable schoolmaster, Anders thought, O’Hillary selected his tone for its prim offensiveness.

“It’s not being recorded.”

“Good. Your instructions—from me, not from above me, and not in writing—are to proceed with the investigation, to locate this man Rodriguez and his little Sherwood Forest band, and to report personally and directly to me and to no one else. You’ll consult with me before taking action of any kind. And you will not take the police or anyone else into your confidence. In other words you must proceed henceforth without police assistance.”

“Then how am I supposed to find them?”

“Wits. Ingenuity.”

“And what am I supposed to tell the police?”

“Tell them the leads proved false. Pull them off the case.”

“You honestly expect me to find Rodriguez without any help?”

“I do. If there’s a man who can do it it’s you.”

“You can butter me up all you want,” Anders said, “but you can’t have me for breakfast. This opens up a provocative can of beans. You want me to find Rodriguez but then keep hands off him. That’s pointless.”

“We must be prepared for whatever decision comes down, mustn’t we. We can do that only by performing thoroughly the task to which we’re officially assigned—the task of intelligence-gathering. Once we fix Rodriguez’s location we can then take whatever action we’re ordered to take. In the meantime nothing is to be filed through normal channels. You’re on your own and I’m your only contact with the company. Understood?”

“In other words if the Administration decides to let him run you don’t want the record to show we knew where to lay hands on him. You want to keep it private because you don’t intend to produce it until it’s absolutely clear you’ll be applauded for producing it. Christ—what a grisly waste,”

“Regardless of provocation you’re to take no action that might jeopardize security. You understand your instructions, don’t you? You’re to find Rodriguez. But you’re to do it in such a way that no one except me knows you’ve done it. Not Rodriguez, not the police, not the agency. No one.”

“We’ll see.” Anders smiled, anticipating the response.

“Don’t give me evasive answers!” He could have heard O’Hillary without a telephone.

It made him laugh aloud. “You’re so easy to string along. Mind your blood pressure. I understand the orders—we may have an argument about it when I get back but I understand them. Anything else on your mind?”

“As long as you’re on the phone you may as well bring me up to date.”

Chapter 12

She awoke stiff and grumpy to the buzz of a distant tractor. Sunlight stabbed in through holes in the cheap blind.

It was too rustic for words. She had to pick a barefoot path across weeds to the privy; she accomplished her morning toilette at the kitchen sink with the aid of the compact mirror from her handbag.

There didn’t seem to be a soul in the house. She was glad of that; it gave her time to collect herself. She dressed in a plaid shirt and blue jeans and desert boots; and rummaged through the Spartan kitchen.

Last night, she thought, they seemed to have reached an understanding of sorts. Her last glimpse of him had discovered a defiant and lascivious grin. She had responded in kind.

It was inevitable, in the circumstances, that she would be tempted toward an unhealthy attachment: Crobey was the only remotely familiar object in this alien world, the only bridge between her and the sanity she’d left behind. But she had to guard against trusting him too much.

As if summoned by her mind a car crunched into the yard. She went to the kitchen door and looked out—it was Crobey but it wasn’t the same little shoehorn car he’d had last night. This one was a high square Bronco, a coiled-cable winch on the front bumper, a drab green paint job and big-lugged tires that looked like cross-country equipment. Undoubtedly it was four-wheel-drive. Crobey stepped down and glanced at her, not smiling, and reached into the back of the truck, from which he lifted a heavy rucksack. He carried it toward the house.

Carole made an ineffectual and self-conscious swipe at her hair. “Good morning.”