W Griffin - Hunters

As he walked to where he knew Ordonez would meet him-one of the smaller, more expensive restaurants in the back of the old building-his mouth actually watered.

Chief Inspector Ordonez was waiting for him and stood up when he saw Artigas coming.

They embraced and kissed in the manner of Latin males and then sat down at the small table. There was a bottle of wine on the table, a bottle of carbonated water, four stemmed glasses, a wicker basket holding a variety of bread and breadsticks, a small plate of butter curls, and a small dish of chicken liver pate.

Jose poured wine for Julio and they touched glasses.

"There must be something on your mind," Julio said. "This is the good Merlot."

"How about seven males, six of them dressed in black, shot to death?"

Artigas thought: I don't think he's kidding.

He took a sip of the Merlot, then spread liver pate on a chunk of hard-crusted bread and waited for Ordonez to go on.

"You don't seem surprised," Jose said.

"I'm an FBI agent. We try to be inscrutable."

A waiter appeared.

Julio ordered a blue cheese empanada, bife chorizo medium rare, papas frit as, and an onion-and-tomato salad.

Jose held up two fingers, signaling the waiter he'd have the same.

"And where are these deceased Ninja warriors?" Julio asked.

Jose chuckled.

"On an estancia-called Shangri-La-near Tacuarembo."

Julio signaled with a quick shake of his head that he had no idea where Tacuarembo was.

"It's about three hundred sixty kilometers due north," Jose said. "On Highway 5." He paused. "I was hoping you might go up there with me."

"That's a long ride."

"Less long in a helicopter."

Julio knew the use of rotary-wing aircraft by Uruguayan police was not common, even for the movement of very senior officers.

"Am I being invited as a friend or officially?" Julio said.

"Why don't we decide that after we have a look around Estancia Shangri-La?" Jose replied.

"Okay." Julio paused. "Tell me, Cousin, would I happen to know-or even have met-the owner of Estancia Shangri-La?"

"You tell me. He is-was-a Lebanese dealer in antiquities by the name of Jean-Paul Bertrand."

Julio shook his head and asked, "And had you a professional interest in Senor…what was his name?"

"Jean-Paul Bertrand," Jose furnished.

"…Bertrand before he was killed?"

Jose shook his head. "He was as clean as a whistle, so far as I have been able to determine."

The waiter returned with their empanadas, and they cut off their conversation. They might have returned to it had not two strikingly beautiful young women come in the restaurant.

They didn't hurry their lunch, but they didn't dawdle over it, either. Twenty-five minutes after Julio had taken his first sip of the Merlot, the bottle was empty and Jose was settling the bill with the waiter.

When they left the former cattle shed, they walked across the street to the Navy base. Julio saw-with some surprise-that the helicopter waiting for them was not one of the some what battered Policia Nacional's Bell Hueys he expected but a glistening Aerospatiale Dauphin. The pilot was a Navy officer. Julio suspected it was the Uruguayan president's personal helicopter.

That meant, obviously, that someone high in the Uruguayan government-perhaps even the president himself-considered what had happened at Estancia Shangri-La very important. [TWO] Estancia Shangri-La Tacuarembo Province Republica Orientale del Uruguay 1405 2 August 2005 As the Dauphin fluttered down onto a field, Julio saw that there were a dozen police vehicles and two ambulances parked unevenly around the main building of the estancia and that there were twenty-five or thirty people-many in police uniform-milling about.

Julio had an unkind thought: Well, so much for preserving the crime scene.

Two portly senior police officers walked warily toward the helicopter. Both saluted Chief Inspector Ordonez as he stepped down from the chopper. He returned their salutes with a casual wave of his hand. Julio remembered seeing him in uniform only once, when Fidel Castro, a year or so before, had come to Montevideo and Ordonez had been head of the protection detail.

"This is Senor Artigas," Chief Inspector Ordonez said. "You will answer any questions he puts to you."

Both of the policemen saluted. Julio responded with a nod and offered them his hand.

"I ordered that nothing be touched?" Ordonez questioned.

"We have covered the bodies, Chief Inspector, but everything else is exactly as it was when we first came here."

Ordonez met Artigas's eyes. It was clear to both they were thinking exactly the same thing: The curious had satisfied their curiosity. The crime scene had been trampled beyond use.

Ordonez gestured with his hand that he be shown.

There were two bodies on a covered veranda. They were covered with heavy black plastic sheeting. Artigas wondered if that was the local version of a body bag or whether the sheeting had just been available and put to use.

A large pool of blood, now dried black, had escaped the plastic over the first body. When, at Ordonez's impatient gesture, the plastic sheeting was pulled aside, the reason was clear. This man had died of a gunshot wound to the head. There is a great deal of blood in the head.

And not a pistol round, either, I don't think. His head had exploded.

The body was dressed in dark blue, almost black, cotton coveralls, the sort worn by mechanics.

What looked like the barrel of a submachine gun was visible in the pool of dried blood. The dead man had fallen on his weapon.

Artigas felt a gentle touch on his arm and looked down to see that Ordonez was handing him disposable rubber gloves.

"This has been photographed?" Ordonez asked.

"Yes, Chief Inspector, from many angles."

Ordonez squatted and pulled the weapon out from under the body. It was a submachine gun, its stock folded. He held it out for Artigas to see.

"Madsen, right?" he asked.

"Yes," Artigas said. "That's the 9mm, I think."

Ordonez raised the barrel so that he could see the muzzle, then nodded.

Artigas looked around and saw a glint in the grass just beyond the veranda. He walked to it. It was a cartridge case.

"Have you got a position on this? And photographs?"

"My sergeant must have missed that, senor," the heftier of the two local police supervisors said and angrily called for the sergeant.

When Artigas went back on the veranda he saw that Ordonez had replaced the black plastic over the body and had moved ten meters down the veranda, where another police officer was pulling the plastic off another body. This one, too, was dressed in nearly black coveralls.

Another large pool of dried black blood from another exploded head.

As he squatted by the body, Ordonez looked at Artigas and asked, "What did you see?"

"A cartridge casing. Looks like a 9mm."

"I wonder where this one's weapon went to?" Ordonez asked, studying the body.

He pointed to a disturbance in the blood that could have been the marks left when someone had dragged a weapon from it.

"Looks like somebody took it," Artigas agreed.

"Yeah, but who?"

The implication was clear. Ordonez would not have been surprised if one of the local cops had taken it, for any number of reasons having nothing to do with the investigation of a multiple homicide.

I'm not going to comment on that, Ordonez thought.

"Both head shots," Artigas said.

Ordonez nodded and then, raising his voice, asked, "Where's the other five?"

The second police supervisor made a vague gesture away from the house. "Four out there, Chief Inspector," he said. "Senor Bertrand's body is in the house, in his office."

Ordonez gestured for him to lead the way into the house.