“It is too early to tell,” replied the Cartel’s equivalent of a chief financial officer. “I remind you that the money we have already taken completely through the arrangements nearly equals what our normal returns would be. So you can say that we have lost very little other than the gain we expected to reap from our investments.” That sounded lame even to him.
“I think we have tolerated enough interference,” Escobedo said forcefully. “The Director of the American federales will be here in Bogotá later today.”
“Oh? And how did you discover this?”
“Cortez. I told you that hiring him would be to our benefit. I called this meeting to give you the information that he has gotten for us.”
“This is too much to accept,” another member agreed. “We should take action. It must be forceful.”
There was general agreement. The Cartel had not yet learned that important decisions ought never to be taken in anger, but there was no one to counsel moderation. These men were not known for that quality in any case.
Train 111, Metroliner Service from New York, arrived a minute early at 1:48 P.M. Cortez walked off, carrying his two bags, and walked at once to the taxi stand at the front of the station. The cabdriver was delighted to have a fare to Dulles. The trip took just over thirty minutes, earning the cabbie what for Cortez was a decent tip: $2.00. He entered the upper level, walked to his left, took the escalator down, where he found the Hertz counter. Here he rented another large Chevy and took the spare time to load his bags. By the time he returned inside, it was nearly three. Moira was right on time. They hugged. She wasn’t one to kiss in so public a place.
“Where did you park?”
“In the long-term lot. I left my bags in the car.”
“Then we will go and get them.”
“Where are we going?”
“There is a place on Skyline Drive where General Motors occasionally holds important conferences. There are no phones in the rooms, no televisions, no newspapers.”
“I know it! How did you ever get a reservation at this late notice?”
“I’ve been reserving a suite for every weekend since we were last together,” Cortez explained truthfully. He stopped dead in his tracks. “That sounds… that sounds improper?” He had the halting embarrassment down pat by this time.
Moira grabbed his arm. “Not to me.”
“I can tell that this will be a long weekend.” Within minutes they were on Interstate 66, heading west toward the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Four embassy security officers dressed in airline coveralls gave the area a final look, then one of them pulled out a sophisticated satellite-radio phone and gave the final clearance.
The VC-20A, the military version of the G-III executive jet, flew in with a commercial setting on its radar transponder, landing at 5:39 in the afternoon at El Dorado International Airport, about eight miles outside of Bogotá. Unlike most of the VC-20As belonging to the 89th Military Airlift Wing at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, this one was specially modified to fly into high-threat areas and carried jamming gear originally invented by the Israelis to counter surface-to-air missiles in the hands of terrorists… or businessmen. The aircraft flared out and made a perfect landing into gentle westerly winds, then taxied to a distant corner of the cargo terminal, the one the cars and jeeps were heading for. The aircraft’s identity was no longer a secret to anyone who’d bothered to look, of course. It had barely stopped when the first jeeps formed up on its left side. Armed soldiers dismounted and spread out, their automatic weapons pointed at threats that might have been imaginary, or might not. The aircraft’s door dropped down. There were stairs built into it, but the first man off the plane didn’t bother with them. He jumped, with one hand hidden in the right side of a topcoat. He was soon joined by another security guard. Each man was a special agent of the FBI, and the job of each was the physical safety of their boss, Director Emil Jacobs. They stood within the ring of Colombian soldiers, each of whom was a member of an elite counterinsurgency unit. Every man there was nervous. There was nothing routine about security in this country. Too many had died proving otherwise.
Jacobs came out next, accompanied by his own special assistant, and Harry Jefferson, Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The last of the three stepped down just as the ambassador’s limousine pulled up. It didn’t stop for long. The ambassador did step out to greet his guests, but all of them were inside the car a minute later. Then the soldiers remounted their jeeps, which moved off to escort the ambassador. The aircraft’s crew chief closed the Gulfstream’s door, and the VC-20A, whose engines had never stopped turning, immediately taxied to take off again. Its destination was the airfield at Grenada, thoughtfully built for the Americans by the Cubans only a few years before. It would be easier to guard it there.
“How was the flight, Emil?” the ambassador asked.
“Just over five hours. Not bad,” the Director allowed. He leaned back on the velvet seat of the stretch limo, which was filled to capacity. In front were the ambassador’s driver and bodyguard. That made a total of four machine guns in the car, and he was sure Harry Jefferson carried his service automatic. Jacobs had never carried a gun in his life, didn’t wish to bother with the things. And besides, if his two bodyguards and his assistant – another crack shot – didn’t suffice to protect him, what would? It wasn’t that Jacobs was an especially courageous man, just that after nearly forty years of dealing with criminals of all sorts – the Chicago mob had once threatened him quite seriously – he was tired of it all. He’d grown as comfortable as any man can be with such a thing: it was part of the scenery now, and like a pattern in the wallpaper or the color of a room’s paint, he no longer noticed it.
He did notice the altitude. The city of Bogotá sits at an elevation of nearly 8,700 feet, on a plain among towering mountains. There was no air to breathe here and he wondered how the ambassador tolerated it. Jacobs was more comfortable with the biting winter winds off Lake Michigan. Even the humid pall that visited Washington every summer was better than this, he thought.
“Tomorrow at nine, right?” Jacobs asked.
“Yep.” The ambassador nodded. “I think they’ll go along with nearly anything we want.” The ambassador, of course, didn’t know what the meeting was about, which did not please him. He’d worked as chargé d’affaires at Moscow, and the security there wasn’t as tight as it was here.
“That’s not the problem,” Jefferson observed. “I know they mean well – they’ve lost enough cops and judges proving that. Question is, will they play ball?”
“Would we, under similar circumstances?” Jacobs mused, then steered the conversation in a safer direction. “You know, we’ve never been especially good neighbors, have we?”
“How do you mean?” the ambassador asked.
“I mean, when it suited us to have these countries run by thugs, we let it happen. When democracy finally started to take root, we often as not stood at the sidelines and bitched if their ideas didn’t agree fully with ours. And now that the druggies threaten their governments because of what our own citizens want to buy – we blame them.”
“Democracy comes hard down here,” the ambassador pointed out. “The Spanish weren’t real big on -”
“If we’d done our job a hundred years ago – or even fifty years ago – we wouldn’t have half the problems we have now. Well, we didn’t do it then. We sure as hell have to do it now.”
“If you have any suggestions, Emil -”
Jacobs laughed. “Hell, Andy, I’m a cop – well, a lawyer – not a diplomat. That’s your problem. How’s Kay?”
“Just fine.” Ambassador Andy Westerfield didn’t have to ask about Mrs. Jacobs. He knew Emil had buried his wife nine months earlier after a courageous fight with cancer. He’d taken it hard, of course, but there were so many good things to remember about Ruth. And he had a job to keep him busy. Everyone needed that, and Jacobs more than most.
In the terminal, a man with a 35mm Nikon and a long lens had been snapping pictures for the past two hours – When the limousine and its escorts started moving off the airport grounds, he removed the lens from the body, set both in his camera case, and walked off to a bank of telephones.
The limousine moved quickly, with one jeep in front and another behind. Expensive cars with armed escorts were not terribly unusual in Colombia, and they moved out from the airport at a brisk clip. You had to spot the license plate to know that the car was American. The four men in each jeep had not known of their escort job until five minutes before they left, and the route, though predictable, wasn’t a long one. There shouldn’t have been time for anyone to set up an ambush – assuming that anyone would be crazy enough to consider such a thing.