“Nobody came with me,” Anders said

“All right.”

Crobey dismissed the taxi and they walked together through a dusty passage, bordered with scrubby bougainvillea and oleander; Crobey led him erratically through the turnings and kept looking back. No one was following them; Anders was beginning to be annoyed by the excessiveness of the precautions when Crobey led him out onto a paved street where a Ford Bronco waited at the curb with Carole Marchand behind the wheel. Anders tipped the passenger seat forward and climbed into the back; Crobey got in and Anders said, “Good evening.”

“My condolences,” she said, “and I mean that.”

“Were you two followed last night?”

“Yes,” Crobey said. “We shook them.”

His hands wrenched at each other; he turned his stare out the window because he didn’t want to cry again, not in front of them. “You know she was a little wacky, all right, she was far too young for the likes of me, none of it made any sense anyway—just a kid from the office they assigned to run errands for me. She was Cuban herself, you know. For a while I even suspected she might be a plant. Then after a while I didn’t give a damn.”

“Now you know she wasn’t a plant,” Carole Marchand said mildly.

No, he thought, actually he didn’t know that at all. Maybe Rosalia had been the target after all—how could he be sure they weren’t afraid she’d expose them? Maybe they’d known she was falling in love with Anders. Maybe they’d killed her to keep her silent.

What he said was, “They’re going to pay for it. I don’t much care why they did it.”

Then he thought, Pull yourself together, you’ve got to be cold now. He needed dispassion. He said, “This bastard Cielo—presumably Rodriguez—bought some fairly heavy weapons from a dealer in Mayaguez. Mainly mortars and a couple of small artillery pieces. They were delivered to a farm. That’s all the dealer knew about it—he took the money and delivered the merchandise. I ran a check on the serial numbers of the banknotes. They match the numbers on some of the ransom bills—if we need more confirmation of that kind. I had a look at the farm where he delivered the guns. Nothing there now, they’ve cleared out. Most likely they used it just once and they’ll never use it again.”

“Do you mind coming to the point?”

Anders said, “I reported to O’Hillary. A few hours later he got back to me. This is off the record now. Officially we’re still engaged in the hunt for these terrorists. But unofficially my orders, as of noon today, are to lose the file down behind the file cabinet somewhere. You see the connection?”

“Right,” Crobey said. “The arms buy makes our boy respectable.”

“Spell it out for me,” Carole Marchand commanded.

“They’re picking up heavy ordnance,” Anders said. “This buy will be one of dozens, I imagine. They’ll spread the purchases around to avoid drawing too much attention. It begins to look like a major paramilitary operation. You can buy a lot of weapons for ten million dollars. O’Hillary’s analysts likely have it sized up that Rodriguez shows every sign of intending to mount a well-equipped mobile striking force for an attack on Castro’s headquarters.”

“With a handful of men?”

“We don’t know for sure how many men there are, do we. Anyhow look what the Israelis accomplished at Entebbe with a handful of troops. It’s not numbers that count in a palace coup—it’s tactics and planning. They could wipe out the Cuban leadership if they handle it with enough sophistication.”

She said, “That’s a farfetched extrapolation from a few flimsy clues, isn’t it?”

“The agency works that kind of scenario all the time.”

“In other words O’Hillary thinks Rodriguez may have a chance of overthrowing Castro so he’s ordering you to keep hands off?”

“It’s one possibility.”

“It’s what I thought all along,” she said, “more or less.”

“There’s another possibility,” Anders said. He felt so weary he could hardly get the words out. “Your idea that there had to be someone here in San Juan with enough political clout to sic the local police on Harry—somebody with that much clout might also have enough influence in Washington to put pressure on the agency to soft-pedal the investigation.”

She said, “And the murder of Rosalia—one of your own agents—doesn’t even put a dent in those policies. You folks sure are expendable.”

Anders managed a lopsided hint of a smile; and Crobey said, “Are you filing for a divorce from O’Hillary?”

“Not yet. Officially I’m still under orders to locate the terrorists. Locate ’em but keep hands off. Those are the orders I’m obliged to obey, aren’t they? After we locate them—we’ll see.”

Crobey said to Carole Marchand, “The first rule is cover your ass. Glenn doesn’t think of himself as a bureaucrat but it rubs off on everybody.”

“As opposed to Harry here, who’s of pure and noble character,” Anders said without heat. “You’re both missing the point. If I can show legitimate orders then I can maintain my freedom of action. There’s no point going out of my way to shut off communications. I may as well keep making use of the apparatus as long as it’s available to me. And to hell with O’Hillary’s private instructions.”

“Watch closely, ducks, and you’ll notice that amazingly enough, at no time do his hands leave his arms.”

“As of now,” Anders went on, feeling the anger rise within him, “I’m in this right up to my hairline. No more reservations. I want to nail these bastards and to hell with Fidel Castro. Put a gun in my hand and Rodriguez in the sights—that should settle the question quick enough.”

Something made a sudden noise—a slam of sound: The truck jiggled and Anders went into his pocket for his gun, whipping his eyes around—it was two kids: Their baseball had bounced off the truck fender.

“Jesus.”

Crobey climbed out and the kids scuttled back. Crobey went along the curb and picked up the baseball. He talked in Spanish to the kids and tossed the baseball to one of them; the kids swallowed and nodded their heads and put their backs to him and ran like hell. Crobey got back into the truck. He glanced at Anders. “Shooting them wouldn’t have done a whole lot for your image, Glenn.”

Anders was rattled; it was clear to all of them; excuses or apologies wouldn’t change it. He didn’t really care. His future had been shot down last night with a bullet on the steps of El Convento. That had been his second chance; now he’d missed it. It was time to quit: Take early retirement and put O’Hillary out of his life and mark time in an Arizona suburb ranchette writing letters to the editor and taking up hobbies.

There was only one possible escape from that: The sense of justification he might derive from destroying the destroyers who’d taken Rosalia from him.

Crobey said mildly, “That house in the next block with the pink Pinto in the carport—that’s Rodriguez’s house.”

“What?”

“He hasn’t been back since that night he ditched your plainclothes cop,” Crobey said. “Will you relax a little?” He tipped his head toward the house he’d indicated. “The wife’s name is Soledad. They’ve got three girls, various ages, the oldest about fourteen I think. Or maybe twelve—kids grow up faster these days, don’t they. The family name on the mailbox is Mendez. Ernesto Mendez, that’s the name he goes by when he’s not being Cielo and/or Rodrigo Rodriguez.”

A battered camper-bodied pickup truck came crunching down the street, turned in at a driveway and let off a woman with her hair in yellow plastic curlers who began to unload brown grocery bags from the seat. Crobey’s voice went on, droning in his ear with that faint Liverpudlian overlay: “The neighbors believe him to be an adjuster for a casualty insurance company, which is a fair dodge because it explains his absences—he’s away investigating claims. He belongs to a local National Guard regiment, the kind where they train every Thursday night and one weekend a month. A couple of old pals of mine have been asking questions around. They’ve come up with some interesting bits and pieces. This National Guard outfit has a little rat-pack of noncommissioned officers all of whom seem to have served with Mendez-Rodriguez at some unspecified time in the past, for which I tend to read Bay of Pigs. It turns out, on inquiry, that every last one of the members of this little rat-pack happens to be away on important business at the moment—extended business trips.”