He had other things on his mind that was the trouble. The developments
involving Agent Navarro were annoying. Worse than annoying. They
spelled major aggravation. He didn’t give a damn what happened to her.
But if she’d been guilty of security breaches, it reflected badly on
him. Which was totally unfair. And he couldn’t help thinking that it
all started with that goddamn liver-spotted spook at the Internal
Compliance Unit, Alan Bartlett. Whatever the hell that was about.
Several times he’d made inquiries proper, interdepartmental inquiries
and each time he had been rebuffed. As if he had some lowly custodial
capacity at the Office of Special Investigations. As if the OSI itself
weren’t worthy of a civil word. Whenever Dupree thought about it for
too long, he had to loosen his tie. It was galling.
First that bitch Navarro was cherry-picked from his team to go
gallivanting off God only knew where. Next thing, word came down that
she was rotten, had been selling off information to traffickers and
hostiles and whoever else. If so, she was Typhoid Mary, which he kept
coming back to it was bad news for the person she’d reported to, namely,
Arliss Dupree. If Dupree had any sense of which way the wind was
blowing and his career was based on his having that sense a shit storm
was coming his way.
And he was damned if his career was going to be dented by Navarro’s
misconduct or since the charges mostly sounded like bullshit to him by
Bartlett’s double-dealing. Dupree was, above all, a survivor.
Sometimes surviving meant that you took the bull by the goddamn horns.
Dupree had friends of his own friends who would tell him stuff he needed
to know. And maybe paying a visit on the Ghost might help concentrate
the old guy’s mind. Bartlett looked like a god damned vapor trail, but
he was a major power in the department, a mini J. Edgar Hoover. Dupree
would have to deal with him carefully. Even so, Bartlett had to learn
that Dupree wasn’t somebody to mess with. The Ghost spent his days
directing investigations into his colleagues; when was the last time
anybody looked into what he was up to?
Dupree tore open a couple of envelopes of sugar and dumped it into his
coffee. It still tasted foul, but he slurped it down anyway. He had a
lot of work ahead of him. With any luck at all, Alan Bartlett would be
getting a dose of his own medicine.
The rooms at the Sphinx were large and light-filled. There was one
double bed, which they each glanced at warily, deferring any decisions
on sleeping arrangements until later.
“What I still don’t understand,” she said, “is how anyone knew I was
here and why.”
“The Interpol man–”
“Except that I saw him after the package was stolen from American
Express.” She was standing by the tall windows, fiddling with the
sheer, gauzy curtains. “Once the package was stolen, the bad guys knew
I was looking for Strasser. Question is, how did anyone even know to
take it? You didn’t tell anyone you were traveling to Buenos Aires with
me, right?”
He didn’t like her implication, but he ignored it. “No. But did you
make any phone calls from the hotel?”
She was silent a moment. “Yeah, I did. One to Washington.”
“Not hard to tap hotel phones if you have the proper contacts, right?”
She looked at him, visibly impressed. “That might also explain the fake
CIA man. Yes. Did you give Jorgen Lenz any indication–”
“I never told Lenz I was even thinking of going to Buenos Aires, because
at that point I wasn’t.”
“I wish there was a way to get Lenz’s fingerprints, run ’em through a
bunch of databases, see what we turn up. Maybe there’s even a criminal
record. Did he give you anything–a business card, anything?”
“Nothing, as far as I can recall–well, actually, I gave him the
photograph to look at, the one I got from Peter’s bank vault in Zurich.”
“How many people have you shown it to?”
“You. A historian at the University of Zurich. Liesl. And Lenz.
That’s all.”
“He handled it?”
“Oh yeah. Front and back, turned it over. His fingers were all over
it.”
“Great, I’ll have a copy made and send the original off to APIS.”
“How? I get the impression your DO) privileges have been revoked.”
“But Denneen’s haven’t. If I can get it to him, he can pass it along to
a friend in another agency, probably FBI. He’ll figure it out.”
He hesitated. “Well, if it enables us to get something on Lenz. Or to
find Peter’s killers…”
“Excellent. Thank you.” She glanced at her watch. “Let’s continue
this over supper. We’re meeting this detective, Sergio whatever, in a
part of the city called La Boca. We can grab something to eat there.”
The cabdriver was a middle-aged woman with flabby arms, wearing a tank
top. On the dashboard was a framed color photo of a child, presumably
her own. A tiny leather moccasin dangled from the rearview mirror.
“A gun-toting priest,” Anna mused. “And I thought the Dominican nuns in
church were scary.” She’d changed into a gray pleated skirt and white
blouse, a pearl choker around her swan neck, and smelled of something
floral and crisp. “He told you that Jurgen Lenz actually owns her
house?”
“Actually, he used the phrase, ‘the man who calls himself Jurgen Lenz.”
”
They entered a seedy working-class barrio on the southernmost tip of
Buenos Aires. On their left was the Riachuelo Canal, a stagnant body of
water in which rusting dredges and scows and hulks were half submerged.
Along the waterway were warehouses and meat packing plants.
“She told you Gerhard Lenz had no children?” Anna’s brows were knit in
concentration. “Am I missing something?”
“Uh-uh. He’s Lenz, yet he’s not Lenz.”
“So the man you met in Vienna, who everyone knows as Jurgen Lenz, is an
impostor.”
“That would be the implication.”
“Yet whoever he really is, this old woman and her stepson obviously fear
him.”
“No question about it.”
“But why in the world would Jurgen Lenz pretend to be the son of someone
so infamous if he’s not?” she said. “It makes no sense.”
“We’re not talking about an Elvis impersonator here, granted. The thing
is, we don’t really understand much about how succession works at Sigma.
Maybe it was his way of gaining a foothold there. Representing himself
as the direct descendant of one of the founders–that might have been
the only way he could worm his way in.”
“That’s assuming that Jurgen Lenz is Sigma.”
“At this point, it seems safer than assuming the contrary. And, going
from what Chardin said, the question with Sigma isn’t what they control,
but what they don’t control.”
Darkness had settled. They were entering an area that was crowded, ill
lit, dangerous-seeming. The houses here were constructed of sheet
metal, with corrugated metal roofs, painted pink and ocher and
turquoise.
The cab pulled up in front of a restaurant-bar bustling with rowdy
patrons at creaky wooden tables or gathered at the bar, talking and
laughing. Prominently displayed behind the bar was a color portrait of
Eva Peron. Ceiling fans turned slowly.
They ordered empanadas and a San Telmo cabernet sauvignon and a bottle
of agua mineral gaseosa. The wineglasses had the per spirant smell of
old sponge. The napkins were slick squares of deli paper.
“The widow thought you were from “Semmering,”” Anna said when they were
settled. “What do you think she meant–a place? A company?”
“I don’t know. A place, I suppose.”
“And when she mentioned ‘the company’?”
“I took that to be Sigma.”
“But there’s another company. Jurgen Lenz–whoever he really is–is on
the Armakon board.”
“How much are you going to trust this Machado guy with what we know?”
“Not at all,” she replied. “I simply want him to find Strasser for us.”
They finished with a couple of humitas, creamy sweet-corn paste in
cornhusk packets, and coffee.
“I assume the Interpol guy wasn’t much help,” Ben said.
“He denied the possibility that Strasser might live here. Highly
suspicious. Interpol was controlled by the Nazis for a time, just
before the Second World War, and some people think it never really
purged itself. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this guy’s in the
pocket of one of these Nazi protection rackets. Now, your gun-toting
priest ”
“My gun-toting priest insisted he had no way to reach Strasser, but I
don’t believe him.”
“I’ll bet he got on the phone to Strasser the moment you were out the
door.”
Ben reflected. “If he called Strasser … What if we could somehow get
the widow’s telephone records?”
“We can ask Machado. He may be able to do it, or know who to reach out
to.”
“Speaking of reaching out, do you know what this guy looks like?”
“No, but we’re meeting him right in front.”