Brian Garfield - Checkpoint Charlie

Cartlidge’s bomb squad lads were our flying wedge. They kicked the door in and we walked right in on him and he looked at all the guns and decided to sit still.

His window overlooked the palacio and the binoculars were on the sill. I said to Cartlidge, “Have a look for the transmitter. He hasn’t had time to hide it too far away.”

The Blond said, “What is this about?” All injured innocence.

I said, “It’s finished, Gregorius.”

He wasn’t going to admit a thing but I did see the brief flash of rage in his eyes; it was all the confirmation I needed. I gave him my best smile. “You’ll be pleased to talk in time.”

They searched him, handcuffed him, gave the room a toss and didn’t find anything; later that day the transmitter turned up in a cleaning-supplies cupboard down the hall.

To this day Cartlidge still isn’t sure we got the right man because nobody ever told him what happened after we got Gregorius back to the States. Myerson and I know the truth. The computer kids in Debriefing sweated Gregorius for weeks and finally he broke and they’re still analyzing the wealth of information he has supplied. I’d lost interest by that time; my part of it was finished and I knew from the start that I’d got the right man. I don’t make that kind of mistake; it didn’t need confirmation from the shabby hypodermics of Debriefing. As I’d said to Myerson, “The binoculars on the windowsill clinched it, of course. When the Venezuelan and the Saudi shook hands he planned to trigger it — it was the best way to hit all three of us. But I knew it had to be The Blond much earlier. I suppose I might have arrested him first before we went looking for the bomb but I wasn’t absolutely certain.”

“Don’t lie,” Myerson said. “You wanted him to be watching you in his binoculars — you wanted him to know you were the one who defused him. One of these days your brain’s going to slow down a notch or two. Next time maybe it’ll blow up before you throw it in the pond. But all right, since you’re waiting for me to ask — how did you pick the blond one?”

“We knew until recently he’d worn his hair hippie length.”

“So?”

“I saw him at the pool toweling himself dry. I saw him shake his head back the way you do when you want to get the hair back out of your eyes. He had a crew cut. He wouldn’t have made that gesture unless he’d cut his hair so recently that he still had the old habit.”

Myerson said, “It took you twelve hours to figure that out? You are getting old, Charlie.”

“And hungry. Have you got anything to eat around here?”

“No.”

I always mistrust Myerson but never more so than on those occasions when he pulls me off a job that’s only half done and drags me back all the way from Beirut or Helsinki or Sydney to hand me a new assignment. Usually it means he’s at his wits’ end and needs me to bail him out.

This time it was a short trip back to Langley. I’d been in Montreal and consequently managed to arrive at Myerson’s lair without the usual jet lag; my only complaint was hunger — there’d been nothing but a light snack on the plane.

It was two in the morning but Myerson keeps odd hours and I knew he’d still be in his fourth-floor office. I trampled the U.S. government seal into the tiles and the security guard ran my card through the scanner and admitted me to the elevator. The fourth-floor hall rang with my footsteps — eerie, hollow like my innards: I was short-tempered with hunger.

“Where do you buy those suits, Charlie,” Myerson greeted me, “a tent shop?”

I hate him too.

I sat down. “It’s late, you’re rude and I’m hungry. Can we get down to it without half an hour of the usual sparring?”

“I guess we’d better.”

I was astonished. “It’s serious then.”

“Desperate, actually. You’ve been following the Quito hijack?”

“Just the headlines.”

“We’re in a bind.”

Myerson’s smile displays a keyboard of teeth reminiscent of an alligator. He rarely employs it to indicate amusement; he uses it mainly when he is anticipating the acute discomfort of someone other than himself.

For a while he smiled without speaking. Then, after he felt he’d struck terror deep into my heart, he resumed.

“The hijackers have nearly one hundred hostages, a Boeing 727 and a variety of explosives and small arms. They have a number of ransom demands as well. They’ve communicated the demands to the world via the plane’s radio equipment.”

“Does anybody know where they are yet?”

“Sure. We’ve known their location from the beginning. Radio triangulation, radar, so forth. It’s a field the Ecuadorians built a few years ago to give their air force a base against the Tuperamo guerrillas. It’s been in disuse since March of last year but the runway was sufficient for the 727, which is a relatively short-roll aircraft. They couldn’t have done it with a jumbo. But they seem to know what they’re doing; undoubtedly they took all these factors into account. We’re not dealing with idiots.”

“Access by road?”

“Forget it, Charlie. It’s not an Entebbe situation. We can’t go in after them. Our hands are tied.”

“Why?”

“International politics. Organization of American States etcetera. Just take my word for it.”

“Then what’s the scam?”

“The hijackers have demanded the release of seventeen so-called political prisoners who are incarcerated in various countries on charges of terrorism, murder, espionage, so forth. What the liberation people think of as victims of political persecution. Actually most of them are vermin, guilty of the vilest crimes.”

“Plus they’re doubtless asking for a few million dollars and a free ride to Libya or Uganda.”

“Yes, of course. Disregard all that, Charlie. The problem is something altogether different.”

“Then why bore me with inessentials?”

“Bear with me. Twelve of the seventeen so-called political prisoners are Ché guerrillas who’re incarcerated in various South American jails. Four in Ecuador, seven in Bolivia, one in Venezuela. Four more are in prison in Mexico.”

“That adds up to sixteen. Where’s the seventeenth?”

“Here. Leavenworth.”

“Who is he?”

“Emil Stossel.” And he grinned at me. Because I was the one who’d put Stossel in prison.

I didn’t give him the satisfaction of rising to the bait; I merely said, “So?”

“So the Latin Americans have elected to accede to the terrorists’ demands temporarily, figuring to nail them after the hostages have been freed. The plane has several high-ranking Latin American dignitaries on board. The OAS doesn’t want to risk their lives any more than it has to.”

I snorted. “They’re already at risk.”

“It’s not for us to decide. The various governments have agreed to turn the sixteen guerrillas loose and give them safe passage to Havana. They’re asking us to cooperate by handing Stossel over to the East Germans in Berlin.”

“Why not Havana? It’s closer.”

“He’s not Cuban. The Cubans would have little reason to grant him asylum — he’d be an embarrassment to them. He’s German. Anyhow that’s the demand and we’ve got to live with it.” Myerson glanced at the clock above the official photograph of the President. “In two hours we’re putting him on a plane in Kansas. It will connect with an international flight at Dulles. He’ll be in Berlin tomorrow night.”

Then Myerson made a face. “It’s asinine, I agree — you don’t make deals with terrorists. These governments are fools. But we’ve got no choice. If we held out — refused to release Stossel — you can imagine the black eye we’d get if the hijackers started murdering hostages one at a time.”