Redback (32 page)

‘He’s not going over the fence,’ Marquez said. ‘It’s electrified.’

‘What about the gate?’

‘He went the other way, but maybe he knows another way out.’

Marquez doubted there was another way out. He looked over at Verandas and added, ‘I heard something in the distance as I was locking the gate. I’m not sure what it was, but not all of the hyenas were with Trocca. We need to get the police chief here to go back out there with us and you’ve got to get to two computers in a study. There are two steel doors with reinforced glass and when I tapped on the walls there’s metal there too. I don’t know how you’re going to get through, but I think everything is in those computers. None of the buildings were locked. Not a single door except for that study. I’ll go down to the pen with the police but you’ve got to figure a way to reach those computers. Can you do that?’

‘I’m more worried about the encryption. This guy has the money for the best.’

The police arrived but didn’t want to go anywhere until they had interviewed Chole. It was another hour and a half before Chole was able to say what had happened. He showed the police chief a dart hole in his right side under his ribs. Stoval had shot him there last night and his best guess was that the dart had an animal tranquilizer. He didn’t remember the ride or getting to the house. He came to in a shed with his ankles and wrists in cuffs, and Stoval prodding his face with a stick. He’d lost three teeth. He had five broken ribs. Every bone in his left hand was broken.

He looked at Marquez as he told the police chief, ‘I told him I was going to arrest him for killing two condors. I told him I had proof.’

‘Where did you get it?’

Chole nodded toward Marquez.

They drove back out there in two police vehicles, Marquez and Verandas riding with the chief and another officer. The chief rode in the front seat and the officer drove as they got up on the plateau. As they came alongside the main house the chief turned and said, ‘You wait here.’

They went inside after the police disappeared into the trees. A maid had showed up and was working, but she was frightened when Verandas told her she needed to open the study doors. She wouldn’t do it, but retrieved a hidden key and let Verandas open them. When he sat down in front of the computers she tried to stop him and Marquez guided her out of the room. Verandas got online and checked in with FBI headquarters in Washington. Within minutes they were running a supercomputer at Stoval’s encryption and outside Marquez heard shots fired and then an engine as the police chief and officers returned. The police chief was very direct with Marquez.

‘Get in the jeep.’

‘Did you find them?’

The chief did not answer the question. Despite the cold he was sweating profusely and though he had ridden in the passenger seat on the way out, he was now driving. He drove down the road and through the water, and as if to compensate for the bouncing ride he went slowly up the other side. He kept talking about the hyenas and looked over at Marquez and shook his head as they pulled into the clearing.

Marquez opened his door and got out. He walked toward the iron hoop and a hyena backed away with a bone. The chief fired into the air and the other hyenas moved into the brush.

‘They are disgusting,’ the chief said, and Marquez looked down at a stained shred of Trocca’s shirt. The ankle cuffs were blood-smeared. There was a shoe, but it was empty and chewed. There were other small pieces of clothing and not much else, though there was fighting between the hyenas deeper in the brush. The chief did not want to remain in the open clearing and they got in the jeep. The police chief turned to Marquez, as if explaining to him.

‘You did what you had to do to free the warden and protect yourself. Then we came here as fast as we could. We came straight out.’

‘Yes.’

‘No time was lost at the hospital.’

‘Not much.’

‘None at all, nothing was lost.’

‘OK, no time was lost, but Stoval went into the brush that direction. We need to find him.’

‘Let me finish,’ the chief said. ‘They had the conservation warden chained to the iron hoop. You saw he was badly injured and when you went to rescue him they tried to shoot you.’

‘Trocca fired twice at me.’

‘You could not protect Chole and escape without locking them up first, so you locked up General Trocca and Mr Stoval escaped.’

‘He killed Trocca with a knife before running into the brush.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘My guess is he wanted to draw the hyenas so he could escape. I’m going to go look for him.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘Bring your guns and come with me.’ Marquez pointed at the iron hoops. ‘There are other bones there. You’ll need to search the site. Chole wouldn’t have been the first.’

The chief refused to go but sent his two officers and Marquez led the way through the trees. He moved toward the sounds. They were feeding. No question about that and the officers shot two of the hyenas before they moved away. One of the hyena dragged what was left of Stoval. It was awful to look at and an officer shot that hyena and another pulled Stoval’s remains back into the brush. They were that hungry. Marquez looked at bloodstained shreds of Stoval’s jacket and pointed at the fence.

‘He must have fallen,’ he said, but neither officer was listening. Both shot into the trees and brush at targets they couldn’t see. They backed up the trail taking more random shots and Marquez turned and walked back to the gate alone.

They drove back to the main house and picked up Verandas who looked very happy. An officer searched him to make certain he hadn’t taken anything and Verandas protested as he held his arms out wide, but he nodded to Marquez. He’d gotten it all. They rode back in the chief’s vehicle and nobody had much to say on the road back to Bariloche.

SIXTY-NINE

I
n the 1980s when Marquez was still DEA, the Bahamas were known as the cocaine islands. If you got your start in those days then you heard about the opulence, the boats, beachfront palaces, the cars, parties, and beautiful women who arrived when the money did. Marquez located Anderson’s house and was unsurprised to learn it wasn’t a vacation rental, but that Anderson had recently bought it. It was a nice enough house, a little worn, yet with a wide view of the beach and cay below.

Anderson knew Stoval was dead. He knew the FBI had stripped his computer. And he must have known after years of working with Stoval how meticulous Stoval was. Stoval kept very good records. There were over six hundred photos of the dead dating from 1972 forward. Among them was a recent one of Jack Gant lying on his back out in the desert somewhere. The only clue was two creosote bushes caught in the photo. That narrowed it down to a few hundred thousand square miles.

No one at the FBI could say yet who had ordered the hit on Gant. The client hadn’t been identified, but the Gant hit was in Stoval’s files. It was nothing personal toward Gant, strictly part of a business enterprise. Stoval trafficked in death on a scale bigger than anyone had ever imagined. In the file on Gant the client was anonymous, but it was recorded that a quarter million dollar fee was paid to a hit team of two men and one woman.

Desault and Hosfleter believed it was Ben Marsten, Gant’s old friend and the wealthy founder of 1+1Earth, who had him killed to break the link to himself. Hosfleter thought it was Marsten who’d tipped them. According to Desault, she had a whole theory about the hit squad making contact with Gant through Marsten and then convincing Gant to let them help him escape. Hosfleter believed the hit team moved Gant’s vehicle to Tioga Lodge, and maybe Gant thought he was home free and on his way to Mexico when they pulled off on a sandy desert road.

Terri Delgado was the most recent photo. The two Zetas that killed her were identified by name. Both were arrested in Dallas later the same day. That was the way Stoval had his files set up. It was all there so that if he ever went down, many people would go with him. Or maybe the files were carefully kept so that if the day ever came and he needed to trade, he had information.

Marquez had his own theory. He figured Stoval had the files and photos so anytime he wanted to he could have the pleasure of revisiting the thrill. He kept files on his hunts and the photos there were the standard photos of the proud hunter near the body of an elephant or black rhino or one of the last tigers, whatever it was he’d shot, the same photos we’re used to seeing mounted on a wall in a bar or bragged about in a club. There were records also of animal trafficking and Marquez knew he’d be months unraveling those.

The murder files went back to 1972. The earliest shots looked like old Polaroids that lately were scanned into computer files. Among the first were four women, one left alongside railroad tracks, one in an alley, two on road shoulders. In the San Francisco Field Office everyone wanted to see the photo of Gant, but Marquez never looked at the Gant photo. He did study the early photos and especially one of a woman lying on a road shoulder. There was no notation of money paid and his guess was that Stoval took the photo himself.

He remembered from Billy’s tapes that her hair was black and that there was a field of maize behind her body as there was in this photo. There wasn’t a name on this or any of the earlier killings with women, but he felt sure this was Billy’s wife, Rosalina. She was as beautiful as Billy had claimed.

He found Anderson outside on a deck, sitting on a lounge chair with a glass pitcher of margaritas sweating on a glass table next to him. Kerry wouldn’t look away from the ocean yet, but offered to get Marquez a glass so he could drink with him, and when Marquez didn’t take him up on it, said, ‘I knew it would be you.’

‘No, all along you thought it was going to work, and now it isn’t.’

Marquez looked past the coconut trees and the beach to the purples and blues of the Caribbean. He looked back at the tiled deck. Anderson wore red shorts that finished just below his knees. He wore sandals and a Washington Nationals baseball shirt. Near the pitcher of margaritas was a form half filled out for box seats for the Nationals’ next season.

‘Are you going to look at me, Kerry?’

‘I’m going to look at this view as long as I can.’

‘That won’t be much longer. They’re in the air but almost here. Was it all about money?’

‘It was about needing something to look forward to. I couldn’t have gone on without it.’

‘How does it feel now?’

‘Terrible.’

‘There are some things I need answered before they get here.’

Anderson took another long drink. ‘In Washington they called me Mr Information. Go ahead.’

‘I want to ask you some questions about Jim Osiers.’

‘What would you like to know? When James Gardiner-Osiers was born? That was March 23 1955, and though you worked with him I’ll bet you didn’t know that for a long time his name was James Gardiner-Osiers. He was raised by his mother who divorced his father because he ran around with other women constantly. In gratitude to his mother, Osiers dropped her name, Gardiner, as soon as he hit eighteen. That’s what happened in Loreto. He was just trying to be like the old man. Getting him to fall for the girlfriend was easy. He’d waited his whole life for that. I got everything ready then for later. I left it muddy. I left it so it could be solved when the time came and I was ready to pull the plug. I needed someone because the leaks were going to end when I left.’

‘You set him up with Alicia?’

‘No, they found her, but she didn’t know any better. The Salazars knew the Americans would back off once they found out about the pregnant girlfriend. I knew he was vulnerable.’ He turned and grinned drunkenly. ‘I was the analyst. They were right about his tastes and Stoval liked the idea.’

‘So why frame Sheryl Javits?’

‘The leak needed to be found before I retired. Sooner or later, someone would figure out information wasn’t flowing anymore and start looking at me. Her ex-husband took bribe money. We got her through him. He had a story for her. We worked it for a couple of years and when they divorced he gave her the money. By then, she already believed the cover story.’

‘Phelps has been arrested and she’s out.’

Anderson waved his hand, dismissing that, saying, ‘I knew Stoval had records of everything. He was a fascinating man with an incredible memory.’ He added with odd pride, ‘I made it almost twenty years.’

‘But you didn’t make it, Kerry.’

Anderson gave another drunken grin, poured himself another drink and lifted a towel on the small glass table to show Marquez a gun.

‘You’d better take it away before I use it on myself. How much time do I have?’

‘Maybe an hour.’

‘I’d like to watch the ocean until then, if I can.’

Marquez picked up the gun and removed the clip. He pictured Anderson in prison a decade from now, small and gray, sitting on his bunk working on a baseball box score.

‘You have to answer some questions for me now,’ Anderson said. ‘How was I listed in his computer?’

‘By a code name and number and you’re not alone. You’re listed under US government employees. It’s the bank transfers that are going to nail you. Every date of every payment is in there, along with what he got for it.’

‘So why are you here first and they’re not here?’