When it was finished, the flight training facility would have, quite separate from the small cluster of civil-passenger sheds, an expanse of prefabricated dormitories for the cadets, cottages for the instructors, repair and maintenance workshops, aviation gas tanks for the turboprop Tucanos and a communications shack.
If anyone among the engineers noticed something odd, no mention was made of it. Also constructed to the approval of a civilian from the Pentagon named Dexter, who came and went by civil airliner, were a few other items. Gouged out of the rock face of the volcano was a cavernous extra hangar with steel doors. Plus a large reserve tank for JP-5 fuel, which Tucanos do not use, and an armory.
"Anyone would think," murmured Chief Petty Officer O'Connor after testing the steel doors of the secret hangar in the rock, "that someone was going to war."
CHAPTER 4
IN THE PLAZA DE BOLIVAR, NAMED AFTER THE GREAT Liberator, stand some of the oldest buildings not only in Bogota but in all South America. It is the center of Old Town.
The conquistadors were here, bringing with them, in their raging lust for God and gold, the first Catholic missionaries. Some of these, Jesuits all, founded in 1604 in one corner the school of San Bartolome, and not far away the Church of St. Ignatius, in honor of their founder, Loyola. In another corner stood the original national Provincialate of the Society of Jesus.
It had been some years since the Provincialate officially moved to a modern building in the newer part of the city. But in the blazing heat, despite the favors of new air-conditioning technology, the Father Provincial, Carlos Ruiz, still preferred the cool stones and paving flags of the old buildings.
It was here, on a humid December morning that year, that he had chosen to meet the American visitor. As he sat at his oak desk, brought many years ago from Spain and almost black with age, Fr. Carlos toyed again with the letter of introduction requesting this meeting. It came from his Brother in Christ, the dean of Boston College; it was impossible to refuse, but curiosity is not a sin. What could the man want?
Paul Devereaux was shown in by a young novice. The provincial rose and crossed the room to greet him. The visitor was close to his own age, the biblical three score and ten: lean, fastidious in silk shirt, club tie and cream tropical suit. No jeans, or hair at the throat. Fr. Ruiz thought he had never met a Yankee spy before, but the Boston letter had been very frank.
"Father, I hesitate to ask at the outset but I must. May we regard everything said in this room as coming under the seal of the confessional?"
Fr. Ruiz inclined his head and gestured his guest to a Castilian chair, seated and backed in rawhide. He resumed his place behind his desk.
"How can I help you, my son?"
"I have been asked by my President, no less, to try to destroy the cocaine industry that is causing grievous damage to my country."
There was no further need to explain why he was in Colombia. The word "cocaine" explained it all.
"That has been tried many times before," said Fr. Ruiz. "Many times. But the appetite in your country is enormous. If there were not such a grievous appetite for the white powder, there would be no production."
"True," admitted the American, "a demand will always produce a supply. But the reverse is also true. A supply will always create a demand. Eventually. If the supply dies, the appetite will wither away."
"It did not work with Prohibition."
Devereaux was accustomed to the feint. Prohibition had been a disaster. It had simply created a huge underworld, which, after repeal, had moved into every other possible criminal activity. Over the years, the cost to the U.S. could be measured in trillions.
"We believe the comparison fails, Father. There are a thousand sources of a glass of wine or a dram of whisky."
He meant, But cocaine comes only from here. There was no need to say it.
"My son, we in the Society of Jesus try to be a force for good. But we have found by terrible experience that involvement in politics or matters of state is usually disastrous."
Devereaux had spent his life in the trade of espionage. He had long ago come to the view that the greatest intelligence-gathering agency in the world was the Roman Catholic Church. Through its omnipresence, it saw everything; through the confessional, it heard everything. And the idea that over a millennium and a half it had never supported or opposed emperors and princes was simply amusing.
"But where you see evil, you seek to fight it," he said.
The provincial was far too wily to fall for that one.
"What do you seek of the Society, my son?"
"In Colombia, you are everywhere, Father. Your pastoral work takes your young priests into every corner of every town and city…"
"And you wish them to become informers? For you? Far away in Washington. They, too, practice the seal of the confessional. What is told to them in that small place can never be revealed."
"And if a ship is sailing with a cargo of poison to destroy many young lives and leave a trail of misery in its wake, that knowledge, too, is sacred?"
"We both know the confessional is sacrosanct."
"But a ship cannot confess, Father. I give you my word no seaman will ever die. Interception and confiscation is absolutely the limit I have in mind."
He knew that he, too, would now have to confess to the sin of lying. But to another priest faraway. Not here. Not now.
"What you ask could be extremely risky; the men behind this trade, foul as it is, are utterly vicious and very violent."
For an answer, the American produced an item from his pocket. It was a small and very compact cell phone.
"Father, we were both raised long before these were invented. Now all the young have them, and most who are no longer young. To send a short message, there is no need to speak…"
"I know about texting, my son."
"Then you will know about encryption. These are encrypted far beyond the powers of the cartel ever to intercept. All I ask is the name of the ship with the poison onboard, heading for my homeland to destroy its young people. For profit. For money."
The Father Provincial permitted himself a thin smile.
"You are a good advocate, my son."
The Cobra had one last card to play.
"In the city of Cartagena is a statue to Saint Peter Claver of the Society of Jesus."
"Of course. We revere him."
"Hundreds of years ago, he fought against the evil of slavery. And the slave traders martyred him. Father, I beseech you. This trade in drugs is as evil as that in slaves. Both merchandise human misery. That which enslaves need not always be a man; it can be a narcotic. The slavers took the bodies of young people and abused them. Narcotics take the soul."
The Father Provincial stared for several minutes out of the window across the square of Simon Bolivar, a man who set people free.
"I wish to pray, my son. Can you return in two hours?"
Devereaux took a light lunch under the awning of a cafe in a street running off the square. When he returned, the leader of all Colombia's Jesuits had made his decision.
"I cannot order what you ask. But I can explain to my parish priests what you ask. So long as the seal of confession is never broken, they may decide for themselves. You may distribute your little machines." OF ALL his colleagues in the cartel, the one Alfredo Suarez had to work with most closely was Jose-Maria Largo, in charge of merchandising. It was a question of keeping track of every cargo, down to the last kilogram. Suarez could dispatch them, consignment by consignment, but it was vital to know how much arrived at the point of handover to the purchasing mafia and how much was intercepted by the forces of law and order.