The Mordida Man (6 page)

“Was?”

Coombs nodded. “She was found dead early this morning in London. In Hammersmith, to be precise. By some children. She had been tied to a chair and garroted. Also tortured. Burned.”

“Why?”

“We don't know.”

“Can't you guess?”

Coombs hesitated, because he never liked to guess about anything. “It's possible that she may have been the one who betrayed Felix to his abductors, whoever they might be.”

“This Anvil Five bunch killed a lot of people, as I recall.”

“Seventy-two to be precise,” said Coombs, who always strove to be just that. He started ticking the dead bodies off on his left hand. “Fourteen in Manila. Thirty-two in that EL AL plane at Brussels. Sixteen in the Gatwick shootout. Six more in Rome—not counting nine kneecappings there. And those four in Beirut, who were probably Israeli agents, although that was never confirmed.”

“And there're just five of them?”

“Only five. And now without Felix and the de la Cova woman there are only three.”

“Who finances them?”

“At first they were self-financing. Bank robberies and kidnappings. French banks exclusively, for some reason, and Italian kidnappings. Usually either Rome or Milan. After the Beirut killings, Qaddafi offered them sanctuary in Tripoli. Felix and Qaddafi hit it off immediately, kindred souls, I should imagine, and became extremely close. After that, Anvil Five didn't have to worry about money. When Mourabet came to power after Qad-dafi's death, he and Felix developed an equally close relationship. Perhaps even closer. In fact, someone floated a rumor that it was Felix who actually did for Qaddafi but we're confident it was only that, a rumor.”

The President studied Coombs coldly for several moments and then seemed to reach a decision. He opened a desk drawer, took out the small Gucci box, and placed it in what seemed to be the exact center of his desk. “I want you to see something,” he said and removed the lid.

Coombs looked. “Mercy!” he said, which was as close as he ever permitted himself to an exclamation. “An ear, it would seem.”

“My brother's.”

“Your brother's,” Coombs said in a flat tone which he believed to be full of commiseration.

“They sliced off my brother's ear and sent it by the Nigerian Ambassador to impress me with the seriousness of their intentions. I believe them. I believe that unless Felix is released by whoever's got him, the Libyans will kill both my brother and Miss Rhodes. You say you don't know who has Felix. My question is: Can you find out?”

“We can try, Mr. President.”

“Try.” Try was obviously not what the President had in mind.

“Yes.”

“What's your best guess—the Israelis?”

Coombs let doubt spread over his face. “A possibility, except that if the Israelis had Felix I think the entire world would have heard about it by now. You see, the problem is that the Libyans have made a great many enemies during the past ten or twelve years. When the oil money really started flowing, Qaddafi began messing about in the internal affairs of other countries—the Philippines, Somalia, Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Chad, Malta, Uganda for a while, even Iran. He had all that oil money to play with, so some of it went to finance terrorist groups like Anvil Five. Qaddafi even pensioned off a couple of burnt-out cases at a thousand or so a month. So we must assume that whoever abducted Felix must have wanted to strike back at Libya. It's a possible assumption, at least.”

It was difficult to tell whether the President had been listening. His gaze was directed at some spot just over Coombs's left shoulder.

Still staring at the spot, he said, “I'm going to have to lie. Through the Nigerian Ambassador I'm going to let the Libyans believe that we really do have Felix. That's my first lie. My second lie will be to the media about my brother's whereabouts. And third, I'm going to have to lie about why the Libyans went home in a snit. None of these lies will stand up for long.”

“No,” Coombs said. “They won't.”

“But I will lie to keep my brother alive and to keep United Parcel from delivering his fingers and toes to me one by one. And while I'm busy lying I want that outfit of yours to do two things.”

Coombs nodded carefully.

“First, I want you to find out where they have my brother stashed. If it's a city, I want the exact address and the phone number. I want the map coordinates. If it's a room, I want to know how many windows it's got. If it's a tent, I want the color.”

“That may be … difficult, Mr. President.”

“Difficult or impossible?”

“Difficult,” Coombs said at last, seeing no good reason why he should lose his job. “May I ask what you intend to do with the information?”

“No.”

“I see.”

“Second, I want you to find out who's got Felix and to get him back. I don't care how you do it or how much it costs. You've got carte blanche.”

“I'd like that in writing, Mr. President.”

“I don't blame you,” McKay said. He took out a sheet of White House stationery and started writing. He wrote only one sentence, signed it, read it over, and handed it to Coombs. “That do?”

Coombs read the sentence slowly. “Yes, sir,” he said. “That will do nicely.”

It was just twenty-four hours after the November election when Bingo McKay had walked into the President-elect's suite on the eighth floor of the Skirvin Tower Hotel in Oklahoma City, looked around, and told everybody to get out—including Dominique, the future First Lady.

The President-elect hadn't questioned his brother's order. Instead, he grinned and asked, “What's up?”

“There's a guy I want you to meet.”

“Who?”

“Sit down, kid,” Bingo McKay told the President-elect, “and listen real good.”

Jerome McKay sat down with a very weak Scotch and water and a fond amused smile. “Jesus, Bingo, you've got that end-of-the-world look on your face again.”

“Just listen. One of these days, something might happen. I don't know what or when. But it might be messy and I might not be around.”

Jerome McKay had started to say something, but his brother held up a hand. “Just listen. If I'm not around, then you're gonna have to have somebody you can depend on who can fix things—just like I can sometimes fix things. You following me?”

“It's not hard.”

“That's why I want you to meet this guy now—get to know him. He can fix things.”

“But not for free?”

“No, he charges pretty good.”

“Have we used him before?”

“You really want to know?”

Jerome McKay slowly shook his head. “But he's good, you say?”

“He's good.”

“What's his name?”

“Paul Grimes.”

The second meeting ever between Paul Grimes and President McKay didn't take place in the Oval Office. They met instead in a small denlike room on the third floor of the old Executive Office Building. Between them on the desk, still in its Gucci box, lay the severed ear of Bingo McKay, which the President hadn't yet decided what to do with. Later he would wrap it up in a Baggie and place it in a White House freezer.

The meeting took place forty-four minutes after the President had met with the Director of Central Intelligence. Paul Grimes studied the severed ear for a moment, sighed, read the Libyan letter, read it once again, and looked up at McKay.

“Well, sir, I'd say old Bingo's gone and got himself into just one hell of a fix.”

“I want him back,” the President said. “I want them both back.”

Grimes was silent for several moments. Then he sighed again. “It'll cost.”

“Can it be done?”

“I didn't say that. All I said was that it's going to cost.”

“How much?”

Grimes shrugged. “A couple of hundred thousand up front right off the bat. More later. Probably a whole hell of a lot more.”

The President picked up the phone and Grimes noted with appreciation that it was answered immediately. McKay looked at Grimes. “Where do you want it?”

Grimes thought for a moment. “London,” he said. “Barclays.”

“Your name?”

Grimes shook his head. “Crosspatch Limited.”

Into the phone the President said, “Call Wheeler down in Oke City and tell him to transfer two hundred thousand out of that Doremi contingency account in Liberty National to Cross-patch Limited, Barclays, London.”

As the President hung up the phone without saying either thank you or goodbye, Grimes found himself staring again at the still open Gucci box. “They really cut it off, didn't they?”

“They cut it off.”

“How much time have I got?”

“Not much. Ten days maybe. No more.”

“Not much.”

“No.”

Once again Grimes sighed. “Well, if I can get hold of this one guy I'm thinking of, I can—”

The President interrupted. “I don't really want to know.”

Grimes nodded thoughtfully. “No, sir, it's probably better if you don't.”

“I just want them back. Both of them.”

Grimes rose abruptly, smoothly, the way some very fat people do. “Well, I'll sure see what I can do, Mr. President.”

7

Seven hours after the body of the man called Felix fell a little more than a mile into the sea, the Boeing 727 he had been shoved out of landed rather bumpily on the private potholed runway at the northern tip of the Caribbean island that for 204 years had been a British possession and was now a self-proclaimed Democratic People's Republic.

The island was twenty-seven miles long and a mile wide at its widest point. Down its spine ran a chain of mountains whose highest peak lacked just two feet of being a mile high. On the island lived 28,047 citizens, according to the last census, which had been taken in 1974 by the British just six months prior to independence. The census had neglected to count some four or five thousand citizens who lived up in the mountains where there were no roads.

Most of the island's citizens, nearly twenty thousand of them, lived in the capital of the republic, which was situated on its southern tip. At the northern tip was the old Mecarro coffee plantation consisting of nearly 640 acres. The landing strip was located on the plantation, which the Democratic People's Republic had leased for five years to the American for a million dollars, all of which went into the public coffers, plus another $200,000 in cash, which had gone into the pockets of the Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior, and the Minister of National Security.

No coffee grew on the old Mecarro plantation. No coffee had ever grown there. A rich Colombian called Mecarro had leased the land in 1936 and built himself a fine house. The next year he had planted coffee. The year after that, 1938, the great hurricane had roared by and wiped out the coffee, miraculously sparing the fine house, which had been taken over by an order of nuns. The last member of the order had died just three years before. The Mecarro plantation had stood vacant until it had been leased by the American, who was immensely rich. He was also wanted by the police of seven countries, which is the principal reason he had come to settle in the island Democratic People's Republic. The republic had no extradition agreements or treaties. None at all. The American had already applied for citizenship.

The sixty-three-year-old pilot and the sixty-five-year-old copilot of the 727 helped the man called Arnold carry the doctor off the plane and dump him into the rear of the jeep that was driven by Jack Spiceman, the ex-FBI agent. The doctor was dead drunk.

Arnold climbed into the seat next to Jack Spiceman. When the jeep didn't move, Arnold said, “Let's go.”

“What about Felix?” Spiceman said.

Arnold made his right hand go out and then down in a steep plunging motion.

“No shit?” Spiceman said.

“No shit.”

Arnold wasn't his real name, of course. His real name was Franklin Keeling, and he once had been a highly valued, highly trained, totally trusted employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1975 he had been fired with rancor after $200,000 in gold disappeared in Angola. Keeling had been entrusted to deliver the gold to a right-wing Angolan revolutionary called João Machado. Nothing was ever heard of Machado or the gold again except for a signed receipt, which Keeling produced in his own defense. The validity of the receipt bitterly divided seven CIA documentation experts. Four thought it was genuine; three insisted it was a fake. Nonetheless, Keeling was fired. Nine months later, after he had spent the $200,000, Keeling went to work for the immensely rich American who now sat across from him in the main drawing room of the old Mecarro mansion and listened to his explanation about why Felix had forgotten how to breathe.

After finishing his explanation, Keeling lit a cigarette and waited to see what the rich American would say. He was fairly confident it would have nothing at all to do with Felix's death. The rich American's mind didn't work that way.

“How's the book coming?” the rich American asked.

To while away his spare hours on the island republic, Keeling sporadically worked on a manuscript which was a steamy, implausible account of his fifteen years with the CIA. Keeling thus far had managed the difficult feat of making the manuscript both dull and libelous.

“Page 218,” he said.

“Ransom, I think, don't you?” the rich American said. “Ten million at least.”

Constant extrapolation was needed to carry on a conversation with the rich American, whose mind roamed unknown planes. The rich American's name was Leland Timble and at nineteen he had been graduated summa cum laude from Cal Tech into the waiting arms of a Hughes think tank with headquarters in Malibu. Timble had spent five years with the Hughes firm thinking about computers. Then on one warm August afternoon in 1976, using only the touch-tone telephone in his Santa Monica apartment for a terminal, Timble had transferred thirty million dollars from the First National banks in Tulsa, Fort Worth, Omaha, Denver, Memphis, Portland, and Indianapolis to a blind account in Chase Manhattan and from there to numbered accounts in Panama and Nassau. Timble was twenty-four then; now he was twenty-nine.