“Well, I find it hard to believe that the local manager has a Gulfstream at his disposal. Only a chief executive officer rates that kind of transportation. Maybe the big man is in town at the moment.”
He told her about his tour of the city and about the house and limousine he’d seen. “Anaconda has a big office building here, too. The cab driver says there’s a good restaurant on top of it. Why don’t we try it tonight?”
“Sounds good to me.”
He called the concierge and asked him to make reservations.
Bill drove them to the Anaconda building and agreed to pick them up in a couple of hours. There were four elevators in the marble lobby, but three of them were roped off, and a sign indicated the fourth was to be used to reach Le Caprice, as the restaurant was called. At the top of the building they entered a plush vestibule and walked to an equally plush dining room. They were shown to a small table by a large window and given menus. Cat ordered drinks for them and turned his attention to the view. Cali was spread out beneath them, a carpet of lights, and above them, the Belalcázar statue, spotlighted, gazed down. The menu was in French, and there seemed to be few Colombian favorites among the dishes. The wine list was outstanding, Cat thought, if extremely expensive. Most of the wines were French, and he ordered a good claret with their dinner.
They were on their first course when a large party entered the restaurant and were shown to a huge round table in a nearby corner. Cat counted twelve, and two of them were Anglo-looking women, elegantly dressed. The men seemed a mixture of Anglo and Latino, and all wore sober business suits. One of them interested Cat more than the others. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties, and, in spite of his conservative suit, his hair was long, worn in a ponytail.
Cat nodded toward the table. “I have the oddest feeling that the man with the ponytail is the woman I saw playing tennis at the drug dealer’s house this afternoon.”
“Are you sure?” Meg asked.
“No, but I remember she ran in a masculine way. I think the hairdo may have clouded my judgment.”
Cat glanced frequently at the table. No menus were offered, but food and wine appeared as if the host had ordered everything in advance. As Cat and Meg were finishing, and as waiters were clearing away the dishes from the first course at the large table, the man with the ponytail rose and walked in the direction of the men’s room. Cat got up and followed him for a better look.
The man was smaller than Cat, and his pin-striped suit was closely cut, with double vents, a full skirt, and pinched at the waist. Cat had been buying clothes in London long enough to know a Savile Row suit when he saw one. He was about to follow the man into the rest room, when another, larger man stepped in front of him and said something in Spanish.
Cat shrugged. “I just want the men’s room,” he said.
“One moment, please,” the man said in heavily accented English.
Cat waited a couple of minutes, then the ponytailed man came out and walked past him back to his table, without so much as a glance at Cat. The larger man indicated that Cat could now enter the men’s room. He did so, etching into his mind the memory of the ponytailed man. He was small, five-seven or so, well-built, athletic-looking, fair skin, light brown hair, an intelligent face, with a wide, vaguely cruel mouth. Cat had never seen him before, but he would never forget him, he was sure of that.
Back at the table, Cat lingered over coffee and dessert, trying vainly to pick up snatches of conversation from the larger table. At one point the two women went to the ladies’ room and the bodyguard, who had been hovering nearby, followed them there and back.
Cat and Meg finished their dinner and left the restaurant. As they came out of the building, Cat saw the stretch Cadillac limousine waiting at the curb, and a few yards away, Bill’s taxi.
“Bill,” Cat said, as they got into the cab, “drive around the block and park where we can see the building entrance.” Bill did as he was told.
“What are you going to do?” Meg asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Cat answered. “I just want to see where they go. As he spoke two other, shorter, limousines drove up and parked at the building’s entrance. A few minutes later the party of twelve came down from the restaurant and spent a moment saying goodbyes out front. Two men got out of either side of the stretch limousine and waited as the ponytailed man got into the back seat. The others entered the smaller cars, and all three drove away in tandem.
“Bill, follow them at a discreet distance. If they split up, follow the big car.”
“Mister, you been seeing too many movies,” Bill said, but he followed his instructions.
After a few blocks, the big car turned left, while the other two continued. Bill obediently turned after it. It soon became obvious that they were headed toward the airport. The short road to the Aeroservice hangar turned off the main airport road and was darker.
“Turn off your lights and stop here,” Cat said as they came to the turnoff.
They could see the limousine as it continued toward the hangar. The big Gulfstream was sitting on the apron outside the hangar with its engines running. They could hear the noise over the two hundred yards of distance between them and the airplane. As they watched the two men in the front seat of the car jumped out and opened the rear doors, then two people got out of the car and boarded the airplane. Immediately, the door closed, and the jet started to move, its landing lights flashing over the taxi as the jet turned onto the main runway. A moment later the craft was airborne.
“Drive to the hangar,” Cat said, his voice tense.
When the cab pulled up, Cat got out and motioned for Meg to remain in the car. His heart thumping, he went to the office in the hangar and found the same young man who had showed them the jet that afternoon.
“Hi,” he said, “I just want to get something out of my airplane.”
“Of course, señor,” the young man said.
“I see the Gulfstream is gone,” Cat said. “Was that it I saw taking off as I drove up?”
“Yes, señor. She is off to Bogotá,” he replied. “She will be the last plane to take off tonight. Takeoffs are prohibited after midnight. Noise abatement.”
Cat made a show of unlocking the Cessna and rummaging inside it for a moment, then he went back to the cab.
“Bogotá,” he said to Meg. “We can’t take off until morning.”
“Right,” she said. “Cat, do you remember when the group came out of the office building and then got into their cars?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought the man with the ponytail got into the stretch limo alone. But at the airport, two people got out of the back seat.”
“I know,” Cat said. “One of them was a woman.”
19
The mountains surrounding Cali fell away to the broad, green valley of the Rio Magdalena as the airplane droned its way northeastward toward Bogotá. Then the valley ended and the mountains rose again. Worriedly, Cat rechecked the elevations on his charts. The Anaconda Gulfstream had, undoubtedly, gone to the international airport of Bogotá, Eldorado, with its long runway and concentrations of police and security systems. He had two pistols and a shotgun aboard, and he didn’t want to be looked at too closely. Accordingly, he had filed for the smaller general aviation airport on the other side of the city. The elevation of the field was nearly nine thousand feet, and it was surrounded by mountains that rose even higher.
“I’ve been into this little airport,” Meg said. “I don’t remember it being much of a problem.”