As soon as he had finished here, and with the two interlopers, he would pack up his team and equipment and head for San Miguel de Allende, a city in Mexico's colonial heartland some 375 kilometers to the east.
44
As expected, the audit had turned up nothing to cause him any concern, but the phone call from Colonel Warren Rodman was another matter entirely. Burke Hill found it difficult to concentrate on financial matters after that disturbing conversation. He would have found the strange story almost unbelievable except for two factors. If Rodman was a retired Air Force helicopter pilot, he had likely seen service in Vietnam. That meant he had probably been exposed to mortar fire. The observation would not have been merely the result of a wild imagination. The other point concerned the setting. It was definitely a terrorist concept, firing from the back of a dump truck. He was familiar with cases where homemade mortar tubes had been attached to the bed of a truck. And a terrorist training operation fit right in with Roberto Garcia's report about Shining Path guerillas in the area.
It wasn't long after receiving the Colonel's call that Garcia stopped by to give Burke an update. One of his staffers from the Amber Group (those with intelligence backgrounds who worked both as legitimate public relations practitioners and, when called on, as clandestine intelligence agents) was in Guadalajara and had been asked to look into the report. Posing as an American network TV news correspondent, he had picked up word of five strangers arriving together in Tequila. One was definitely identified as Peruvian. They were last seen in the company of a big Mexican and a gringo with a German name.
Still, Burke would have stuck with his original assessment that it was a matter of concern only to the Mexican authorities except for one distressing point, Rodman's insistence of a tie-in with the Foreign Affairs Roundtable. Burke was much closer to the Roundtable than he had admitted on the telephone. He knew Adam Stern was a staff member and he had recently met the organization's president, Laurence Coyne. He had been introduced by his boss, Nathaniel Highsmith, president of Worldwide Communications Consultants. Nate was a longtime Roundtable member and had just nominated Burke for membership. The organization would do an investigation of his background, "strictly routine," Nate had said, and the board would vote him in at its July meeting.
One of Worldwide's first employees, Burke had worked with Nate for nearly four years now. He simply could not conceive of Nate Highsmith being involved in any group that would sanction what Warren Rodman had described. A well-dressed, distinguished looking man with concerned blue eyes and bountiful gray hair, Highsmith was in his early sixties. Nate had headed a multinational conglomerate at thirty-five and possessed a half-billion-dollar net worth by age forty. A student of the intelligence field, he had served a brief stint as CIA Deputy Director for Operations, then took over an old friend's failing advertising agency, building it into one of Madison Avenue's biggest. It was at that point, with the Cold War gone the way of the Ice Age, that the President, his National Security Adviser and the CIA Director had proposed what became Worldwide Communications Consultants. It was different from the normal CIA front in that it had quickly become a legitimate, thriving financial success. Highsmith had total control over his operation and accepted only secret expense reimbursements from Langley for intelligence activities.
Burke was using the desk in a small office borrowed from an account executive when the phone rang late that afternoon. It was his executive assistant, Evelyn Tilson, calling from Washington.
"I marvel at how you manage to encounter such interesting people," she told him in her usual flippant style. Evelyn was a sharp-witted, sharp-tongued divorcee who was pushing fifty and hating it.
"I trust you have the pedigree on Colonel Warren Rodman," Burke replied. He had contacted her immediately after getting the disturbing phone call from Guadalajara.
"That I have, Your Grace. Remember the infamous mission to Iran back in ninety-one, when the mullahs' men manhandled a special operations helicopter? Colonel Rodman — he's known as 'Roddy'—was the pilot. He was pretty well bashed up in the crash, then got himself court-martialed for a slip-up that caused him to miss a recall message. Took a disability retirement and tried to drown his troubles in booze. Lost his wife, then moved to Mexico."
"Not too good, huh? Doesn't sound like somebody you'd want to put your full faith and trust in, does he?"
"Not at first blush. But I talked to a friend at the Pentagon. She's secretary to one of the big moguls in the Air Force. She said he had a reputation as a top-flight commander and was the best helicopter pilot around. That's why he was chosen for the mission. He's an Air Force Academy graduate and a combat veteran of Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf War. Nobody knows how many hush-hush missions he's flown. My friend remembers people saying he would probably have been found not guilty at the court-martial except for his big mouth. Seems he blasted the powers that be and claimed he was railroaded. General types don't take kindly to that sort of conduct."
That put a little different spin on things, Burke thought. "Anything been heard of him since he came to Mexico?"
"Not much. He apparently hasn't been back to the States. I heard his copilot from the Iranian mission went with him and helped him bury the booze. Apparently he has a part-time job flying helicopters around Guadalajara."
"Thanks for your usual masterful job," Burke said lightly. Evelyn was also a master at repartee, and he had long since learned the futility of trying to top her.
"Anytime, sire. By the way, how are the twins? Have you talked to Lori?"
"The day I got here," he said coolly. His frown would have frozen hot coffee. Evelyn knew him like the back of her hand. If she wasn't so damned valuable that he couldn't do without her, he would fire her. "You really know how to hurt a guy. For your information, I'm calling her the minute I get back to the hotel."
She chuckled. "Sorry for the needle. Just trying to keep you out of trouble."
As she had done on more occasions than he cared to recall. "You're forgiven, I think. I'll be in touch."
Roddy Rodman did not sound like a man who would be prone to repeating dubious tales or exaggerating his observations. Burke glanced at his watch. It would soon be five. Rodman had called before leaving Guadalajara. They should be on the ground by now. Burke didn't have his own transportation as Garcia strongly recommended against fighting Mexico City's nightmarish traffic. Burke had suggested the two visitors take a taxi to his hotel, where he would meet them in the lounge.
Burke was sipping a glass of chablis when two men were escorted to his table.
"Mr. Hill?" said the one with light brown hair, offering his hand. He appeared the older of the two. "I'm Roddy Rodman. This is Yuri Shumakov. I'm afraid things have gotten a bit worse since I talked to you the first time."
"Sit down," Burke said, motioning to the chairs at his small round table. "Worse how?"
"This bastard Nikolai Romashchuk. He's the ex-KGB man I mentioned. He and a Mexican cohort tried to kill us."
Burke frowned. What the hell was going on here, he wondered? "Tell me about it. And about this business of the dead writer and Adam Stern."
They huddled in the lounge, Burke with his wine and Rodman and Shumakov drinking beer, as the Colonel described his experiences starting with Bryan Janney and the man known as "Baker Thomas." Shumakov followed with the account of his brother's death and the events leading up to his tracking Romashchuk to Guadalajara. He still held off on any mention of the special project he had taken on at the behest of General Borovsky. It would only muddy the water, he thought, since it didn't fit in with everything else that had been taking place.