“The retreat toward the plant makes sense, now,” Manchon said.
“As does the presence of the Russian your government inquired about,” Ojeda added. “Now they ask for another thing.”
“Yes, we do,” Paredes affirmed, his choice of words very careful.
“The map.” It was handed to Ojeda by Manchon. The colonel studied it for a moment, his eyes surveying the options of advance for his new mission. “Captain, you will move the brigade as planned toward Guilermo Moncada. The loyalists will be forced to advance toward you. If not, it would allow you access to the coastal roads. They will come to a fight. As you do this, I will take three companies to Juragua. We will skirt the swamps and be in position to do as our American friends wish.”
“The swamps, Colonel,” Manchon said, biting his lip. “Even if you do not enter them, you will have no roads, no vehicles to carry heavy weapons.”
“We will carry what we need.” Ojeda looked to Antonio. “Will we not, Papa Tony?”
I had to say ‘we’. “Yes, we will.”
“Get the men ready, Captain,” Ojeda ordered. “We have a long walk ahead.”
“From the lab, sir,” the director’s secretary said as she handed over the report. “Plus a UID from Miami. And your mail.”
“Thank you, Sally,” Jones said politely, not wanting another scolding from the person who kept his office— and the Bureau, sometimes — in order. He paged through the workup the Audio/Visual Section had done on the tape. “Ninety-two percent probability that it is Castro speaking,” he read aloud. Any doubts that he or anyone might have still harbored had just gone out the window.
All the Bureau could do now was try and find the guys who had killed the keeper of the tape — and of one of his agents. That search was about to swing into high gear according to the latest briefing from the Deputy A-SAC of the L.A. office. Jones’s role was limited to waiting. He had become proficient at that over the years but had never come to enjoy it.
Miami. Jones turned his attention to that. It looked as though the tap team might have come up with something. He opened the envelope that had been sealed down in the crypto room and read the summary first. A D.C. number. A name. Samuel Garrity. Referred to… What? ‘The director’s desk’! He flipped through the transcription of the conversation, reading it only once. Greg Drummond was gonna love this. So would a jury in the near future, Jones thought, if this Garrity guy didn’t cop a plea bargain. The director wondered who the guy was to have access to the head of the CIA. He’d know soon enough, after a quick call to the DDI. Arrest warrants would be issued soon after that.
Jones dialed the DDI’s office and waited, paging through his mail as Drummond’s secretary checked to see when he was due back. He came upon the other report from Miami, the one he should have read after his wonderful night of sleep in the lounge. He scanned the summary, which always preceded any verbatim transcription of a recorded conversation, and stopped cold on the mention of a single name: Portero. Jones read further, then on to the transcription. My God. These were the murderers of his agent, and they were being… controlled?… by the same person who…
“What the hell is going on here?” Jones asked the air.
“Director Jones, Mr. Drummond should be back from the White House in five minutes.”
“Thank you.” Jones punched up a clear line. “Get me L.A.”
He looked down at the transcription again. An address, even. “Stupid sons of bitches.” Whatever was going on, however it was connected to the CIA leak, at least he knew exactly where the killers of Special Agent Thom Danbrook were, and he cursed himself for not reading the report when it came in. It would have saved L.A. a lot of legwork, among other things.
“Damn the fool!” General Alexander Shergin swore. The loudness echoed through the antiquated secure telephone system that connected the underground headquarters of Voyska PVO to Moscow.
“His intelligence prostitute no longer seems so credible,” the interior minister said from his fourth-floor office near the Moscow Ring Road. Sixty kilometers away, the commander of the nation’s air-defense forces grunted angrily.
“A fucking R-12 left in Cuba,” Shergin scoffed, using the old Soviet designation of the missile known to NATO as the SS-4. “And a new Chinese booster. Hah! And Castro has it pointed at us! What other fairy tales did the American tell?”
“None of consequence. Of course, he promised to provide evidence that his fantasy is true.” Bogdanov stubbed his cigarette out and swung his chair to face the window. Flecks of white pierced the darkness as he looked to the city center, toward the lighted ornate spires of the Kremlin. “He and Yakovlev are sitting there now trying to convince themselves that the Americans’ story is somehow possible.”
“With the evidence, no doubt.” Shergin laughed. “The Central Intelligence Agency is adept at uncovering ‘evidence.’ ”
“Yes,” Bogdanov agreed. He took another cigarette from the case on his desk and lit it, using the lighter his father had given him. He had “liberated” it from a dead German at Stalingrad half a century before. “But this will not end in their favor. The time to move has come.”
There was a surprising pause from the general. “When?”
“Before the sun rises. Before the Americans have a chance to play out this little scenario they have concocted in order to lay blame on Castro.” Bogdanov blew the smoke from his lungs loudly. “Before that missing submarine has a chance to loose its missiles. Yes, Aleksandr Dimitreivich, before that can happen, we will be in power, and the Americans will learn that even though the Motherland is blind, that does not mean even for a second that she is without strength, or without the resolve to use it.”
“And Marshal Kurchatov? He could be a problem, even from where he is.”
Bogdanov laughed. “A man with no voice is as dangerous as a child. Cut him off.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
BEST LAID PLANS
Art watched from his Bureau Chevy parked half a block from motel number three, an inviting sort of place that had no name, just a price listed in faded neon. In his early days with the Bureau, when stakeouts and tails were procedures still to be learned, he had wondered why bad guys, especially the ones who could afford not to, would choose places like these to hide out in. The answer came not in the accommodations, but in the management, who ran their businesses with a see-no-evil, hear-no-evil attitude. Literally anything could go on behind the numbered doors, and as long as the bills were paid — in cash, up front — there was no need to question the activities.