His legs were still stiff as he walked out to get his car – he could have taken the courtesy van, but he’d been sitting for too long. The damp heat of a late spring day reminded him of home. Not that he remembered Cuba all that fondly, but his former government had, after all, given him the training that he needed for his current job. All the school classes on Marxism-Leninism, telling people who scarcely had food to eat that they lived in paradise. In Cortez’s case, they’d had the effect of telling him what he wanted out of life. His training in the DGI had given him the first taste of privilege, and the unending political instruction had only made his government look all the more grotesque in its claims and its goals. But he’d played the game, and learned what he’d needed to learn, exchanging his time for training and field work, learning how capitalist societies work, learning how to penetrate and subvert them, learning their strong points and weak ones. The contrast between the two was entertaining to the former colonel. The relative poverty in Puerto Rico had looked like paradise to him, even while working along with fellow Colonel Ojeda and the Machetero savages to overthrow it – and replace it with Cuba’s version of socialist realism. Cortez shook his head in amusement as he walked toward the parking lot.
Twenty feet over the Cuban’s head, Liz Murray dropped her husband off behind a vanload of travelers. There was barely time for a kiss. She had errands to run, and they’d call Dan’s flight in another ten minutes.
“I ought to be back tomorrow afternoon,” he said as he got out.
“Good,” Liz replied. “Remember the movers.”
“I won’t.” Dan closed the door and took three steps. “I mean, I won’t forget, honey…” He turned in time to see his wife laughing as she drove off; she’d done it to him again. “It’s not fair,” he grumbled to himself. “Bring you back from London, big promotion, and second day on the job they drop you in the soup.” He walked through the self-opening doors into the terminal and found a TV monitor with his flight information. He had only one bag, and that was small enough to carry on. He’d already reviewed the paperwork – it had all been faxed to Washington by the Mobile Field Office and was the subject of considerable talk in the Hoover Building.
The next step was getting through the metal detector. Actually he bypassed it. The attendant gave out the usual, “Excuse me, sir,” and Murray held up his ID folder, identifying himself as Daniel E. Murray, Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There was no way he could have passed through the magnetometer, not with the Smith & Wesson automatic clipped to his belt, and people in airports tended to get nervous if he showed what he was carrying. Not that he shot that well with it. He hadn’t even requalified yet. That was scheduled for the next week. They weren’t so strict about that with top-level FBI management – his main workplace hazard now came from staple pullers – but though Murray was a man with few vanities, shooting skill was one of them. For no particular reason, Murray was worried about that. After four years in London as the legal attaché, he knew that he needed some serious practice before he would shoot “expert” with either hand again, especially with a new gun. His beloved stainless-steel Colt Python .357 was in retirement. The Bureau was switching over to automatics, and on his arrival in his new office he’d found the engraved S&W gift-wrapped on his desk, a present arranged by his friend Bill Shaw, the newly appointed executive assistant director (Investigations). Bill always had been a class act. Murray switched the bag to his left hand and surreptitiously checked to see that the gun was in place, much as an ordinary citizen might check for his wallet. The only bad thing about his London duty was being unarmed. Like any American cop, Murray felt slightly naked without a gun, even though he’d never had cause to use one in anger. If nothing else, he could make sure that this flight didn’t go to Cuba. He wouldn’t have much chance to do hands-on law enforcement anymore, of course. Now he was part of management, another way of saying that he was too old to be useful, Murray told himself as he selected a seat close to the departure gate. The problem at hand was about as close as he was going to get to handling a real case, and it was happening only because the Director had got hold of the file and called in Bill Shaw who, in turn, had decided that he wanted someone he knew to take a look at it. It promised to be ticklish. They were really starting him off with a cute one.
The flight took just over two hours of routine boredom and a dry meal. Murray was met at the gate by Supervisory Special Agent Mark Bright, assistant special-agent-in-charge of the Mobile Field Office.
“Any other bags, Mr. Murray?”
“Just this one – and the name’s Dan,” Murray replied. “Has anybody talked to them yet?”
“Not in yet – that is, I don’t think so.” Bright checked his watch. “They were due in about ten, but they got called in on a rescue last night. Some fishing boat blew up and the cutter had to get the crew off. It made the morning TV news. Nice job, evidently.”
“Super,” Murray observed. “We’re going in to grill a friggin’ hero, and he’s gone and done it again.”
“You know this guy’s background?” Bright asked. “I haven’t had much chance to -”
“I’ve been briefed. Hero’s the right word. This Wegener’s a legend. Red Wegener’s called the King of SAR – that means search-and-rescue. Half the people who’ve ever been to sea, he’s saved at one time or another. At least that’s the word on the guy. He’s got some big-time friends on The Hill, too.”
“Like?”
“Senator Billings of Oregon.” Murray explained why briefly.
“Chairman of Judiciary. Why couldn’t he just have stayed with Transportation?” Bright asked the ceiling. The Senate Judiciary Committee had oversight duties for the FBI.
“How new are you on this case?”
“I’m here because DEA liaison is my job. I didn’t see the file until just before lunch. Been out of the office for a couple of days,” Bright said as he walked through the door. “We just had a baby.”
“Oh,” Murray noted. You couldn’t blame a man for that. “Congratulations. Everyone all right?”
“Brought Marianne home this morning, and Sandra is the cutest thing I ever saw. Noisy, though.”
Murray laughed. It had been quite a while since he’d had to handle an infant. Blight’s car turned out to be a Ford whose engine purred like a well-fed tiger. Some paperwork on Captain Wegener lay on the front seat. Murray leafed through it while Bright picked his way out of the airport parking lot. It fleshed out what he’d heard in Washington.
“This is some story.”
“How ’bout that.” Bright nodded. “You don’t suppose this is all true, do you?”
“I’ve heard some crazy ones before, but this one would be the all-time champ.” Murray paused. “The funny thing is -”
“Yeah,” the younger agent agreed. “Me, too. Our DEA colleagues believe it, but what broke loose out of this – I mean, even if the evidence is all tossed, what we got out of this is so -”
“Right.” Which was the other reason Murray was involved in the case. “How important was the victim?”
“Big-time political connections, directorships of banks, the University of Alabama, the usual collection of civic groups – you name it. This guy wasn’t just a solid member of the community, he was goddamned Stone Mountain.” Both men knew that was in Georgia, but the point was made. “Old family, back to a Civil War general. His grandfather was a governor.”
“Money?”
Bright grunted. “More than I’d ever need. Big place north of town, still a working farm-plantation, I guess you’d call it, but that’s not where it comes from. He put all the family money into real-estate development. Very successfully as far as we can tell. The development stuff is a maze of small corporations – the usual stuff. We’ve got a team working, but it’ll take awhile to sort through it. Some of the corporate veils are overseas, though, and we may never get it all. You know how that goes. We’ve barely begun to check things out.”
” ‘Prominent local businessman tied to drug kingpins.’ Christ, he hid things real well. Never had a sniff?”
“Nary a one,” Bright admitted. “Not us, not DEA, not the local cops. Nothing at all.”
Murray closed the file and nodded at the traffic. This was only the opening crack in a case that could develop into man-years of investigative work. Hell, we don’t even know exactly what we’re looking for yet, the deputy assistant director told himself. All we do know is that there was a cold million dollars in used twenties and fifties aboard the good ship Empire Builder. So much cash could only mean one thing – but that wasn’t true. It could mean lots of things, Murray thought,