Bergman showed them to a sofa, but Hedger hung back. “Buzz, my headquarters and the Ambassador have offered Catledge any assistance we can muster in finding his daughter, who may still be alive. He thinks her disappearance has something to do with drugs, so I’ll let him brief you, and you can tell him what you’re doing down here and see if you can be of any help to him. Call me when you’re through.” He left them and closed the door behind him.
“I’m confused,” Bergman said as they sat down. “I thought your daughter had been killed.”
“It seemed that way at first, but a lot has happened since.” Cat went through his story yet again.
Bergman looked at him silently for a moment when he had finished. “And the Gulfstream headed for Leticia?”
“That’s what Candis Leigh said she learned. Where is Leticia?”
Bergman stood up and led him to a large map of Colombia on the wall. The country narrowed as it went south from Bogotá. Bergman’s finger went to the southernmost tip of the country. “Here,” he said, “on the Amazon.”
“I never knew the country reached as far south as the Amazon,” Cat said, studying the map.
“Yes, Leticia is at the very point where Colombia, Peru, and Brazil meet. The Amazon turns southeast where it meets the Colombian border. As you can see, Leticia is also at the southernmost tip of a trapezoidal area of Colombia bordered on the east and west by straight borders, on the north by the Putumayo River, and on the south by the Amazon. That area, the Trapezoid, is a hotbed of cocaine-making activity. The coca leaves are grown in Peru and Bolivia, then flown or shipped down the Amazon to Leticia and transported to factories in the Trapezoid, where cocaine is made.” He led Cat to a bulletin board pasted with photographs of shacks and equipment, some of it on fire.
“From there it goes all sorts of places, but mostly north to the Guajira Peninsula, in the northeastern part of the country, from where it is smuggled into the United States.”
“Yeah, I’ve been to the Guajira.”
“No kidding? It’s pretty rough up there.”
“Tell me again — what is it you’re the head of?” Cat asked.
“NAU, the Narcotics Assistance Unit. We were formed to help drug-producing countries cut off the supplies of narcotics at their source, before they can be shipped to the U.S.A.”
“That’s a new one on me,” Cat said. “Are you something to do with the Drug Enforcement Agency?”
“No, the DEA is a law enforcement agency of the Justice Department that operates both in the United States and abroad. We’re part of the State Department; we have no specific enforcement role. Our job is to motivate and materially assist the governments of narcotics-producing and trafficking countries.”
“What sort of luck are you having?”
“Better and better, but it’s a huge problem. These people are working in very remote areas under cover of jungle. They’re hard to find, and when we do find them and wreck their facilities, they start rebuilding right away. We’re dealing with a criminal group that has resources that are greater than those of a lot of countries. A concrete airstrip? Means nothing in terms of money. The Colombians bomb it one day and the next, these guys are repaving.”
“With all that money around, there must be a big problem with corruption, too.”
“Huge. If you’re a police captain out in the sticks somewhere, and you’re offered the choice between a couple of hundred thousand bucks in cash or being shot-gunned in your bed, it’s tough to say no. These people operate at a very high level of violence. The problem reaches higher, too, but for the most part, we think we’re working with a group of clean government officials. Of course, it’s tough to maintain security on an operation when some clerk or secretary may be getting thousands of dollars for just making a phone call to tip off somebody.”
“Are you getting all the resources you need?”
“We’ve got a decent budget, but we could be doing better if we could reach across agency boundaries and get help. For instance, there’s a sort of airplane graveyard in Texas, with all sorts of military aircraft in mothballs — everything from Huey helicopters to C-130 transports. I can put a big aircraft back in shape for less than a hundred thousand bucks, and the Colombians could put it to good use, but I can’t get the airplane. Red tape and interdepartmental rivalries screw it up every time.”
“There’s no cooperation between federal agencies?”
“Oh, sure, there is. I mean, the DEA guys and I are working together with the Colombians right now on something really big, but when you try to reach across from the State Department to the Air Force — well, sometimes I think that dealing with the Soviets would be easier.”
“What is it you’re working on right now?”
“I can’t go into that, but I’ll tell you, in strict confidence, it’s the biggest thing we’ve ever gotten together, and it’s in jeopardy because of just the sort of thing I’ve been telling you about.” He collapsed back onto the sofa. “But enough of my problems; it’s your problem we’re supposed to be talking about.”
Cat sank into a chair. “Yeah, and it looks like I’m going to have to go to Leticia.”
Bergman shook his head emphatically. “Stay out of there. You’ll be mistaken either for a dealer or a narc. If the cops think you’re a dealer, they won’t be nice to you, and if the dealers think you’re a narc — well, the DEA is losing guys in fairly horrible ways. Anyway, you wouldn’t have a chance of learning anything on your own down there.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? It’s the only lead I’ve got.”
“The airplane interests me. I mean, I’ve never heard of a Gulfstream down here. No Colombian business could afford it. That’s a fifteen-million-dollar aircraft; it’s got drugs written all over it. What else do you know about it?”
Cat leaned forward. “Do you think it might have something to do with this big operation you’re working on?”
“Maybe. It’s certainly a new wrinkle.”
“It went to Leticia. Is that where your operation is going to be?”
“I can’t discuss that,” Bergman said, firmly. “Listen, you’ve told me you followed the airplane from Cartagena to here, but you haven’t told me why. I get the feeling you know more about it than you’re telling me.”
Cat leaned back in his chair. He had always had a poker face, and he needed it now. “Maybe. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.”
Bergman had a pretty good poker face, too. He stared silently at Cat for about a minute, then he got up and started for the door. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.
He was gone for a lot longer than a minute. Cat walked around the room, looking at the material on the walls. There were charts showing tons of drugs captured and destroyed, photographs of crude living quarters attached to the factories, pictures of airstrips, rough and smooth.
Bergman came back into the room followed by Barry Hedger and another man, a Latino. “Mr. Catledge, this is Juan Gomez, agent in charge for the DEA in Colombia.”
Cat shook his hand. “Are you Colombian, Mr. Gomez?”
Gomez was big for a Latino, athletic-looking. “Californian,” he said. “Call me Johnny.”
“I’m Cat.” They all sat down.
“Okay, Cat,” Bergman said, “I’ll tell you what’s on, but you can’t go back to your hotel and chat with the bartender about it, understood?”
“Understood.”
“For the last year and a half — especially for the last six months — we’ve been getting reports of a new drug organization, something bigger than anything we’ve ever dealt with before. Rumor has it that this outfit controls huge chunks of coca production in Peru, cocaine manufacture in Colombia, smuggling in the Guajira, and distribution in the United States.”