insane!”
Liesl laughed, bitterly, without mirth. “It’s all relative, isn’t it,
this question of what makes sense and what does not. How much of your
own well-ordered life makes sense any longer?”
A week ago, he was spending his days in the “development” department of
Hartman Capital Management, cultivating old clients and new prospects,
flashing on his charm like high beams. It was no longer a world he
could inhabit; so much of what he’d grown up knowing was a lie, part of
a larger deception he could scarcely hope to penetrate. Cavanaugh was
assigned to you, Peter had said. The Corporation–this
Sigma group, whatever it was seemed to have operatives everywhere. Was
that why his mother had been so insistent that he return to the family
firm after Peter’s death? Had she believed that he would be safer
there, protected from dangers, from threats, from truths he could only
begin to fathom?
“Did Peter ever learn anything more about this Sigma Corporation? About
whether it had an ongoing existence?”
She pushed her hair back nervously, her bracelets jingling. “We learned
very little that was concrete. So much remained conjecture. What we
believe believed is that there are shadowy corporations and private
fortunes that are devoted to erasing their origins. They’re ruthless,
these firms, as are the men funded by these companies. They’re not
troubled by such details as morality. Once they learned, somehow, that
Peter had a paper that could reveal their involvement in Sigma, or that
of their fathers maybe expose these complicated corporate arrangements
that were made during the war once they learned this, they didn’t
hesitate to kill him. They will not hesitate to kill you, or me. Or
anyone else who threatens to expose them or stop them, or who simply
knows too much about their existence. But Peter also came to believe
that these individuals had gathered together for larger purposes. To…
orchestrate matters in the world at large.”
“But when Peter and I spoke, he merely speculated that some of the old
board members were protecting their own fortunes.”
“If he had had time, he would have told you more of his theories.”
“Did he ever talk about our father?”
She grimaced. “Only that he was a hypocrite and a world-class liar,
that he was no Holocaust survivor. That he was actually a member of the
SS.” She added sardonically: “Apart from that, of course, Peter loved
him.”
He wondered whether the irony didn’t conceal a kernel of truth. “Listen,
Liesl, I need you to tell me how to get in touch with your cousin, the
lawyer. Deschner ”
“Matthias Deschner. But for what?”
“You know why. To get the document.”
“I said, for what?” She sounded bitter. “So you can be killed too?”
“No, Liesl. I don’t plan to be killed.”
“Then you must have some idea of why you must have this document that I
can’t possibly think of.”
“Maybe so. I want to expose the killers.”
He braced himself for an angry barrage, but was surprised when she
answered quietly, serenely: “You wish to avenge his death.”
“Yes.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mouth was contorted, twisted downward, as
if to hold back another spell of weeping. “Yes,” she said. “If you’ll
do it–if you’re careful–as careful as you were in coming here–nothing
would make me happier. Expose them, Ben. Make them pay.” She pinched
her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Now I must go home. I must say
goodbye.”
She seemed outwardly serene, but Ben could still detect the underlying
fear. She was a strong and remarkable woman, a rock. I’ll do it for me
and for you, too, he thought.
“Good-bye, Liesl,” Ben said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Good-bye, Ben,” Liesl said as he got out of the car. She looked at him
for a long time. “Yes, make them pay.”
CHAPTER TWELVE.
Asuncion, Paraguay
The taxi from the airport was a rattling old Volkswagen Beetle, not as
charming as it had first appeared. It seemed to have no muffler. They
passed graceful Spanish colonial mansions before entering the traffic
choked downtown, tree-lined streets crowded with pedestrians, antique
yellow trolley cars. There were more Mercedes-Benzes than she’d ever
seen outside of Germany, many of them, she knew, stolen. Asuncion
seemed frozen in the 1940s. Time had passed it by.
Her hotel downtown was a small, shabby place on Colon. Her guidebook
had awarded it three stars. Evidently, the guidebook’s author had been
paid off. The reception clerk warmed to her considerably when she began
speaking to him in fluent Spanish.
Her room had high ceilings and peeling walls, and, since its windows
opened on to the street, was incredibly loud. At least she had a
private bathroom. But if you wanted to keep a low profile, you didn’t
stay where the gringos stayed.
She drank an agua con gas from the “honor bar,” a minuscule refrigerator
that barely cooled its contents, then called the number she’d been given
for the Comisaria Centrico, the main police station.
This was no official contact. Captain Luis Bolgorio was a homicide
investigator for the Paraguayan policia who had sought the American
government’s help by telephone on a few murder cases. Anna had obtained
his name, outside channels, from a friend in the FBI. Bolgorio owed the
U.S. government a few favors; that was the extent of his loyalty.
“You are in luck, Miss Navarro,” Captain Bolgorio said when they spoke
again. “The widow has agreed to see you, even though she’s in
mourning.”
“Wonderful.” They spoke in Spanish, the language of business; the
everyday language here was Guarani. “Thanks for your assistance.”
“She’s a wealthy and important lady. I hope you’ll treat her with the
greatest respect.”
“Of course. The body … ?”
“This isn’t my department, but I’ll arrange for you to pay a visit to
the police morgue.”
“Excellent.”
“The house is on the Avenida Mariscal Lopez. Can you find your way
there in a taxi, or do you need me to pick you up?”
“I can get a taxi.”
“Very well. I’ll have the records with me that you asked for. When
shall we meet?”
She arranged with the concierge for a cab, then spent the next hour
reading through the file on the “victim” though she had difficulty
thinking of such a criminal as a victim.
She knew that the manila file folder Alan Bartlett had provided her was
probably all the information she was going to get. Captain Bolgorio was
helping only because the occasional technological assistance he got from
the U.S. government’s NCAV bolstered his own success here, made him look
good. One hundred percent quid pro quo. Bolgorio had arranged to have
Prosperi’s body held in the morgue.
According to Bartlett, Paraguay was notoriously uncooperative on
extradition cases and had been a popular refuge for war criminals and
other international fugitives for decades. Its odious and corrupt
dictator, “President for life” General Alfredo Stroessner, had seen to
it. There had been some hope for improvement after Stroessner was
toppled in 1989. But no. Paraguay remained unreceptive to extradition
requests.
So it was an ideal place of residence for an aging villain like Marcel
Prosperi. A Corsican by birth, Marcel Prosperi essentially ran
Marseilles during and after World War II, controlling the heroin,
prostitution, and weapons dealings there. Shortly after the war ended,
as the I.C.U file detailed, he escaped to Italy, then Spain, and later
Paraguay. Here, Prosperi set up the South American distribution network
for heroin out of Marseilles the so-called “French connection”
responsible for putting snow-white Marseilles heroin on the streets of
the United States, in collaboration with the American Mafia drug-kingpin
Santo Trafficante, Jr., who controlled much of the heroin traffic into
the U.S. Prosperi’s accomplices, Anna knew, included some of Paraguay’s
highest officials. All of this meant that he was a very dangerous man,
even after death.
In Paraguay, Prosperi maintained a respectable front business the
ownership of a chain of automobile dealerships. For the last several
years, however, he had been bedridden. Two days ago, he had died.
As she dressed for her meeting with the widow Prosperi, Anna mulled over
the details of the Prosperi and Mailhot cases. Whatever she found out
from the widow, or from the autopsy, she was willing to bet that Marcel
Prosperi didn’t die of natural causes, either.
But whoever was murdering these men was resourceful, well connected,
clever.
The fact that each of the victims had been in Alan Bartlett’s Sigma
files was significant, but what did it reveal? Were there others who
had access to the names attached to those files whether in the Justice
Department, in the CIA, or in foreign countries? Had the list somehow
been leaked?
A theory was beginning to emerge. The killers for there had to be more
than one were probably well financed and had access to good
intelligence. If they weren’t acting on their own, then they’d been
hired by someone with money and power but with what motivation? And why