“Dammit,” he whimpered softly, asking whatever supreme being there was just why these things had happened to him. Why me? It was a question he found himself asking more frequently these days, usually when he was…
No, that’s not it. That’s not it. If other people couldn’t handle their booze, too bad, but there was nothing wrong with his drinking. It was just something he enjoyed, something he had done for so long that it seemed second nature, something he…needed!
No! NO! What the hell did Sturgess know anyway? He was just like that Fields asshole in New York. “You need help, George.” What a line! It was easy to cast stones at others when you had your own problems. That was the real thing behind this, he knew. They needed a punching bag, someone to throw their shit at. A convenient target. Why not George? It was that simple and that clear.
Well, he could show them. He could prove that what they thought was a problem had no bearing on his life. It was just a… a thing. A thing he did, like lots of people. Right. If they thought he couldn’t do his job, then he’d just prove to them he could do it better than anybody.
Sullivan stood quickly from the table, putting his blazer on and eyeing the coffeemaker with disgust. He opened the door and stepped into the hall. There was no one around. He didn’t know why until the time on the wall clock caught his attention. That late? No wonder there was no one there. He walked slowly to the elevator, aware that he really wasn’t supposed to leave, but what could they do—make him stay?
He walked out the front of the building into the stuffy air of early evening, walking down the block with a crowd before a cab came into view. Hailing a taxi in L.A. was nowhere near as easy as doing so in New York. Sullivan slid into the backseat.
“Where to?”
He thought for a moment. There was a lot to do. So much. He had to get started, but he really needed… wanted to relax first. “Freddy’s up on Sunset.”
“That a bar, fella?”
For some reason Sullivan couldn’t bring himself to answer. He simply nodded to the cabbie in the rearview mirror.
“Just hang back,” Jorge instructed, instinctively looking over his left shoulder as Tomás pulled into traffic.
“We should have taken him when he came out.” Tomás stepped on the accelerator hard, cutting in front of a stretch black limo that looked so out of place, it wasn’t even funny.
“In front of the FBI? Good plan, Sherlock.”
Fuck you, Tomás thought, as he kept their blue Chevy Lumina a half-block back from the bright yellow cab.
“I was surprised they saved it all,” Dan Jacobs admitted. “Usually don’t get it all.”
He dropped the cassette into a sophisticated triple Record/Play deck in the TS lab. He, Art, and Frankie were alone in the room, which was packed with millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, enough to give a professional sound engineer wet dreams.
“I thought you were into bullets and tire prints, Dan,” Art said with intended good humor. “Not this high-tech stuff.”
“Yeah, well, I always wanted to be a rock star. Never told you that, huh?” Jacobs plugged a trio of headsets, each with one earphone, into a splitter jack on the unit. “While I was in college and working, I used to play in a band.”
“No shit,” Art exclaimed, putting on the headset and trying to picture the straight-laced forensics agent as a long-haired musician.
Jacobs laughed, a little embarrassed. “Yeah. Good old CCR and Doors kind of stuff. We mostly played frat parties, and we weren’t very good. But”—he let out a wistful breath—“I got into recording gear. This stuff, right here, is my passionate closet hobby. My wife loves me when I crank it up.”
Art couldn’t believe it. It reinforced his belief that it was damn near impossible to paint someone with a broad brush, because you inevitably missed some of the more porous areas of their character.
“We’re set,” Jacobs announced. “Frankie, I’m going to have you speak into this microphone. It’s hooked up to this second deck. That way we’ll have a preliminary translation on tape. We can get a real detailed one tomorrow.”
“I’m ready, but remember I was raised with barrio Spanish, so this may be rough.”
“Confidence in you, partner.” Art took out his notebook and pen. “Hit it, Dan.”
There were a few seconds of alternating static and silence before the meat of the tape began. Frankie translated the words as they were spoken.
“The date is October twenty-eighth, 1962. Tape one, reel one, Alejandro Cortez is the… the interpreter.”
There was an obvious stop in the recording after the verbal date stamp, a common practice in official recordings.
“Portero was Cortez’s assistant,” Art told Jacobs, recalling the fax from State.
“Good evening, Premier Khrushchev.” Frankie’s eyes went wide, a second voice converting the words into another language — Russian, she thought. A response in Russian came quickly.
“Good evening, nothing! You are a thief, Castro! A thief!”
There was laughing from the Spanish speaker, the one referred to as…Castro? “You spoke to my brother, I gather. A thief, you call me? Then I shall call you a coward. You let the Americans walk all over you. You come here—”
“You cannot—”
“No! You will listen to me. Premier Khrushchev! I have heard enough of your boasts, and your promises, and your lies.” Frankie could imagine him gesturing grandly. “You came here to thumb your nose at the Americans, and as soon as that pig Kennedy stands up to you, you crumble. Like a brittle piece of glass. The smallest amount of pressure made you break.”
“You have no right to challenge the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics this way! No right on this earth!”
“I have every right, just as every person in my country has a right to expect protection when it has been promised. Promised by you. By YOU!”
“This will not be tolerated, Castro. You cannot expect to come away from this with what you have taken, or with your life.”
“Then take it back. Come take your precious missile back!”
“What!” Art said aloud, his eyes finding those of the other two agents. They were as huge as his.
“I am waiting, Premier Khrushchev. I am waiting…. Come take it. Let the world see that not only can the United States of America make you bow, but let them see that a small country — an ally, no less — can make you kneel. Let the world see this.”
There was a long pause, time enough for the agents’ imaginations to shift into high gear. The scenarios envisioned were all equally frightening.
“President Castro—”
“Do not think that because you suddenly use my title that you can stroke me like a lover. No, no, no.”
“What do you want? What will make you return our property?”
“It is no longer your property. It is ours. It will remain ours.”
“You cannot keep it. I cannot—”
“You can, and you will have to. It is all very easy to explain to your government, Premier Khrushchev. When my soldiers captured the missile, they killed all the crew, and the security troops, of course. Tragic, yes, but necessary. And there was a devastating explosion of the fueling trucks very soon after. It consumed everything. You see, Premier Khrushchev, there is nothing to send back. It is very convenient for you. I will obviously not reveal anything. The only reason anyone would ever know of our acquisition would be if I must use the weapon to defend the Revolution.”