Ross Thomas - Missionary Stew

The general smiled. “A few.”

“Well, even the CIA couldn’t slip you that kind of money under the table, but they came up with something just as good, although God knows where they got it. They came up with a ton or two of cocaine.” Citron looked at Yarn. “What was it, one or two? I’m not sure.”

“Two tons,” Yarn said. “And they got it by calling in some past favors.”

“Two tons of cocaine will fetch how much now?” Citron asked.

Tighe thought about it. “Seven hundred and fifty million a ton on the street,” he said. “But wholesale, about thirty-five to fifty million a ton.”

“Which wasn’t quite enough, right?” Citron said. No one answered, so he asked again. “Right?”

“Continue,” the general said.

“So you decided to buy the two tons of coke from the CIA with government money, steal it from yourselves, and then wholesale it in the States. And that’s what you did. All of you.”

Citron stopped talking. After seconds passed, Yarn turned to him. “I think the general would like a few more details.”

“I have to ask a question first,” Citron said.

The general nodded.

“How long have you known my mother?”

“Years. Twenty-five at least. We met in Barcelona.”

“Then you knew her when she was still with Langley.”

The general smiled his acknowledgment. “We were dear friends.”

“I can imagine,” Citron said. “So you went to her, described what you had in mind, and — I suppose — offered to cut her in. She put you in touch with an ex-big-time coke dealer called B. S. Keats. And Keats lined you up with just the people you were really looking for — the Maneras brothers, Jimmy and Bobby. Or Roberto and Jaime.”

“Bobby was just in on the edge of things,” Tighe said.

“Right. So let’s talk about Jimmy, who was B. S. Keats’s son-in-law. He was also a double agent of sorts working for both Cuba and the FBI, and Jimmy must’ve been the one who brought you two in.” Citron looked first at Tighe and then at Yarn. Both men nodded slightly.

“You three worked out the details, am I right?” Citron said.

“The three of us — plus the general, of course.”

“I’ll bet you even had a name for it.”

“We thought we’d call it the Spookscam,” Yarn said, “but it never came to that.”

“It was cute, though,” Citron said. “The idea. The FBI supposedly would catch the CIA red-handed selling cocaine to finance the operation of a repressive Central American dictatorship. Imagine the flap.” He looked at Tighe. “What was in it for the Bureau — South America?”

“Sure,” Tighe said. “It was the Bureau’s peapatch originally, and they’d very much like it back. Central America, too.”

“So that’s how you sold it to them: catching Langley with its hands dirty. Very dirty. And that’s how you got that ton of money you needed to make the buy.”

Yarn smiled. “We just borrowed that from the narcs at DEA. It was confiscated money. We took about all they had.” The memory made Yarn smile some more.

Citron looked at the general. “I have one more question,” he said. “What’s my mother’s connection with B. S. Keats?”

“You don’t know?” Tighe asked.

Citron shook his head.

“She works for him,” Tighe said. “When B. S. got out of the coke trade a few years back, he had all these millions sloshing around, so he set up this dummy corporation and bought himself a going business, or controlling interest in it anyway. He bought the American Investigator.” Tighe paused. “He also bought himself a chain of shoestores, but they’re not doing so hot.”

“Please continue, Morgan,” the general said.

“Well, it’s pretty simple from here on. These two and maybe a half-dozen or so other special agents flew down with the money to make the buy. The CIA, of course, believed they were legitimate drug dealers. These two here stayed on the plane, I’d say, and loaded the coke on while the other FBI innocents paid over the money and then tried to arrest the CIA people. Well, from what I understand, the CIA wasn’t having any. The shooting started. Nine people died: four FBI agents and five CIA people. But the CIA still got what it was after: the money. So the ones who weren’t dead loaded the money up and delivered it here. You did get your money, didn’t you, general?”

The general only smiled.

Citron looked at Yarn. “And you two flew back with the coke, dumped it off with B. S. Keats to peddle, and then went on to Washington with your sad story of how you’d lost not only the coke and the money, but also four men in a shootout with the CIA. And then the cover-up started.” Citron shook his head dubiously. “Did they really believe you in Washington?”

“They didn’t have any choice,” Yarn said. “They couldn’t press charges or the whole story would’ve come out. So they made us swear a blood oath of silence and then fired us. Can you imagine that?”

“What about the other FBI agents — the ones who survived?”

“We took care of them financially — and the pilot,” Yarn said. “If you’ve got enough money you can take care of damn near anything.”

“Except one thing,” Citron said. “Jimmy Maneras. Something had to be done about him before he slipped what he knew to Cuba.”

“B. S. took care of that for us,” Tighe said. “He finally let Jimmy catch him in the sack with what’s-her-name, that daughter of his.”

“Velveeta,” Yarn said.

“Old Jimmy went wild, pulled a gun, and B. S. shot him dead.”

“In self-defense, of course,” Yarn said piously.

Citron nodded. “So that left only brother Bobby — a very scared brother Bobby who skipped to Singapore, where he sold what he knew to a washed-up old hack called Drew Meade who immediately peddled some of it to a political type called Jack Replogle. Replogle knew exactly what he wanted to do with it, only he got killed up in the mountains of Colorado before he could tell what he knew to Draper Haere.” Citron looked first at Yarn, then at Tighe. “Who killed Replogle — you two?”

Tighe nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“So, Morgan,” the general said, “what now, hmm?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Your prediction of events to come.”

“Well, now, I suppose, you take your millions and run. I don’t think you can hold this country together much longer. No one could. Another month or so and they’ll drag you out of here and put you up against that same wall out there.”

“I shall be long gone before that happens. I’ve almost decided on La Jolla — at least, for part of the year.”

“La Jolla’s nice,” Tighe said. “We’re kind of thinking of Buenos Aires.”

“Of course,” Yarn said, “the Bureau, and especially Langley, still aren’t too happy with us, but as long as we help keep it all under wraps, well, they’re not going to be too difficult. They’ve scratched the kitty litter up over worse than this.”

No one had anything else to say for almost a minute. Finally, the general sighed heavily and said, “You know, Morgan, sitting here listening to you just now, one phrase kept popping into my mind: loose cannon.”

Citron said nothing.

Again, the general sighed, even more heavily than before. “Gladys will never forgive me, but I’m afraid I’m going to have you shot.”

Citron only nodded and looked away. As usual, he thought, the prisoner showed no emotion. He merely shriveled up inside. Death in a very hot country. It was not an altogether unexpected end. Ever since Africa, he realized, he had been anticipating it somehow or, perhaps more accurately, dreading it.

“Well, at least you won’t rot in jail,” Yarn said.