She gave her head two abrupt shakes, as if to clear her mind. The shakes made her long auburn hair swirl and almost writhe. Winfield patted her shoulder and removed his hand just as she said, “Well, fuck Daddy dear. You wait in the living room and I’ll tell him you won’t leave till he comes down.”
“He’s not in bed, is he?”
“No, but he spends a lot of time upstairs in the front bedroom, keeping an eye on the street. I don’t know who he’s expecting. Maybe a delegation of those Kurds he helped fuck over years ago.”
She handed back the sack of liquor and started slowly up the stairs. The General watched her for a moment, then turned and headed for the living room, wondering whether it was still stuffed with the relics and leavings of the past four decades.
Chapter 11
The living room offered five reminders of plain Danish modern from the 1960s. A wealth of chrome, glass and leather represented the ’70s, and the ’80s were remarked by three flexible floor lamps that hovered over easy chairs, as if about to pounce. The only artifact from the 1990s was a new 32-inch Sony television set. On the nearby VCR were four gaudily packaged rental videos, all of them pornographic. Winfield was reading their titles when Henry Viar entered the room and said, “You want ice?”
“Not really,” said Winfield as he turned to examine Viar — all six-foot-four of him — who now appeared to weigh less than 160 pounds. He noticed Viar had lost more than weight. He also had lost much of his hair and the loss made the long, long face look even longer. Yet, it remained a tight, closed-up face, the kind that belongs to someone who no longer goes out much, orders most of his food and drink by phone and speaks only in monosyllables to those who deliver it.
“You look awful,” Winfield said.
“I know how I look,” Viar said. “But that doesn’t mean I give a shit.” He pointed his big chin at the sack of Scotch that rested on a chrome and glass coffee table. “You ever gonna uncap that?”
Winfield removed the bottle from the sack, the cap from the bottle and asked, “Should we use glasses?”
“You want ice, too?”
“You already asked that and I said no. But I would like some water.”
Viar turned, hurried through the dining room and into the kitchen. He was back moments later, carrying a glass pitcher of water in one hand and two mismatched tumblers in the other. After he set everything down, he watched carefully as the General poured generous measures into both glasses and added water to one of them.
“We going to drink or just sip?” Viar said.
Winfield added another ounce or so to his host’s glass. The tall man bent over, picked it up, drank nearly half of the straight Scotch, came close to smacking his lips, but instead lit an unfiltered Pall Mall with a kitchen match. He then lowered himself into an easy chair (circa 1967, Winfield thought), put his feet up on its ottoman and said, “No lectures.”
“No lectures,” Winfield agreed, sat down on a cat-clawed couch that needed slipcovers and resumed his inspection of Viar, noting the frayed button-down blue shirt, chino pants and brown loafers. The pants and shirt, neither clean nor soiled, looked as if they might have been slept in. The loafers looked expensive but neglected.
Winfield’s inspection seemed to amuse Viar, who smiled and said, “Some days I don’t get dressed at all — just sit around in my under-drawers. Disgusting, isn’t it?”
Instead of agreeing or disagreeing, the General said, “Let’s talk about nineteen-eighty-nine.”
“Why not nineteen-sixty-eight? That was another swell year.”
“I prefer ’eighty-nine.”
“What if I say go fuck yourself?”
“Then I’ll use blackmail.”
“That same old Panama crap? I don’t think so.”
“It might not land you in Leavenworth, Hank, but it’ll certainly end your pension.”
Viar thought for a moment, then smiled sourly and said, “I’ve wondered why you and that wacko outfit of yours hadn’t already used it. The Panama stuff. Then I figured it out. It’s because of Shawnee. You don’t wanta do anything that’d hurt Violet’s kid.”
“She’s also yours.”
“You always had a yen for Violet, didn’t you?” Viar said, then leered and asked, “Ever get anywhere?”
The General rose, feeling both ridiculous and determined. “You want to keep your pension or not?”
“Sit down, goddamnit.”
The General resumed his seat on the couch, picked up his drink, tasted it, put it back down, examined Viar for a few seconds and said, “Toward the end of nineteen-eighty-nine, during the month of November, you were in El Salvador.”
“So?”
“Doing what?”
“I was agency liaison with Salvadoran intelligence — with the DNI or, auf Englisch, the National Intelligence Directorate. What I was really doing was loafing my way toward the end of a long and distinguished career, my last role being that of an aging GS-16 bagman.”
“Was there a large payoff during the first two weeks of November?”
Viar smiled. “So that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Winfield said. “Was there?”
“Maybe.”
“Who got it?”
“Like I said, I was merely liaison to Salvadoran intelligence.”
“Who got the money, Hank?”
“The fucking Atlacatl battalion eventually got it, who else?”
“You handed over the money to U.S. Army advisers, who then gave it to the Atlacatl battalion?”
Viar only nodded and drank more whisky.
“How much?” the general asked.
“The battalion wanted five million but we gave ’em less than half, which is about what they expected. Two-point-four million dollars.”
“For the time, was that a large, medium or small amount?”
“Well, since Washington had already sunk about four billion into that mess, it wasn’t significant money — except to those who divvied it up.”
“What were the mechanics of the transfer?”
“Be more specific,” Viar said and drank the rest of his whisky.
“What was the money actually carried in?”
“A great big old gray Deutsche Post mailbag. A real monster. Sealed.”
“How was it sealed?”
“With a quarter-inch wire cable and a big glob of solder. The seal itself was a steel engraving of Mickey Mouse pressed into the solder. A generous nation’s little joke.”
Winfield picked up the Scotch bottle, went over to Viar and poured him another ounce or so. Once back on the couch, the General asked, “Why a German mailbag?”
“Because if it fell off a truck, we could blame it on the Krauts.” He smiled slightly. “Another joke. The bag was just handy. That’s all.”
“You picked up the money where?”
“The embassy. Where else could Langley pouch it to?”
“Then?”
“Then I went to see our Army guys, the advisers who’d make the payoff to the Atlacatl brass.”
“Who were our Army guys?”
“A colonel and a captain.”
“You gave them the money?”
Viar nodded.
“Then what?”
“Then the three of us counted it.”
“And after that?”
“After that they call in a major — a guy with good Spanish — who’ll make the delivery. They tell him what they want him to do and he says swell. Then he asks how much is in the bag and they say two-point-four million. He says fine, let’s count it. The Colonel tells him it’s already counted. Not in my presence, the Major says, then respectfully requests, in the interest of what he calls fairness and accuracy, that we count the fucking money again. So we did. The four of us.”
“Then what?”
“Then we put it back in the German mailbag and seal it back up with wire, solder and Mickey Mouse. After that, we watch the Colonel tuck it away for the night in his big safe — all this in the presence of Major Doubting Thomas.”