Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

The phone rang on his desk and Thorpe picked it up.

“Hello.”

“Director Thorpe, Bob Mendez.”

“Yes, Bob, have you got something for me?”

“We think so. We’ve zeroed in on the cell phone signal. It’s clear as a bell. At a place called Pavas.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s a suburb just a few miles north of San José. It seems that Madriani and the other man are on the move. We were having trouble honing in on the signal downtown. We were getting interference from someplace. Then we realized the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry had an antenna array on top of their building. We were picking up their transmission signals and jamming them by mistake.”

“The ministry?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Thorpe winced.

“Don’t worry, we won’t put it in any reports,” said Mendez. “The good news is, the cell phone is now in the clear. He keeps powering down, so we lose the signal every once in a while. He was moving, but he appears to be stationary now. We’re triangulating the position. We have agents closing in on the area, along with the Costa Rican police. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Excellent. Are you in communication with your agents?”

“I am.”

“Good. Then tell them the following. There is a chance that a woman is traveling with Madriani and the other man.” Thorpe pawed through some papers on the top of his desk until he found the one he wanted. “Her name is Maricela Nitikin-Osa de Solaz.” Agents in Costa Rica had found the name in official records after they realized Maricela had survived the blast at her house and has been seen with Madriani and Herman.

“Tell your agents that it is absolutely essential that the Costa Rican authorities hold her for questioning. Also tell them to make sure she’s given adequate security. We think there’s already been one attempt made on her life. And tell the agents that Justice and State are working on some kind of documentation to get permission from the Costa Ricans so that we can question her. It’s going to be dicey. She’s a Costa Rican national. Tell your agents that if the local authorities let her go, I want a tail put on her twenty-four-seven. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if she tries to leave the country, stay with her.”

“Hold on a second,” said Mendez, “something’s coming in now.” He went off the line for a second. Thorpe could hear voices in the background. Then Mendez was back. “They’re less than a mile from the signal, do you want to hold?”

“Yeah, I’ll stay on the line.”

As Realtors will tell you, location is everything. For us, the good news is that Costa Rica sits dead center, right on the spine of the Americas.

The airport in Pavas is smaller than San José International, known as Juan Santamaría. The Pavas airport caters to domestic flights and eco tours to the coasts. It offers occasional international charters, from small prop jobs to jets, the occasional Citation, and even a Gulfstream or two as we learn today.

Ordinarily you couldn’t touch a charter flight from San José to northern Mexico for anything close to thirteen grand. But the bad economy and the good location have conspired to make things possible. These days, flights coming from the south are often snagged in the air by radio if the passengers are willing to allow a few more on board in return for a good discount.

Today we get lucky. A Gulfstream is already on the ground, sitting on the runway. It is headed from Panama City to Los Angeles and will stop in Mexico City for the couple who are now getting ready to board.

A phone call from the charter desk out to the plane, followed by a quick vote by the other two people already on board, and for a little over eleven thousand dollars all three of us have a ride north.

“Do we get any hors d’oeuvres on board?” asks Herman.

I give him a look to kill.

“Just wondering.” He gives me a moping face. “Been a while since we had breakfast.”

“There is food on board.” The man behind the counter is working the computer, not even looking at us when he says it, so he doesn’t see the broad smile on Herman’s face.

“See, it pays to ask,” says Herman. “Bet you they got beer too,” he whispers in my ear.

The man at the counter barely looks at our passports, just long enough to take the names and put them in the computer, then hand them off to the resident immigration officer a few feet away who punches them with an exit stamp and hands them back to us. We allow Maricela to take the lead on this as she speaks impeccable Spanish and makes Herman and I appear almost civil.

If I’d known, I could have saved us five grand, though I may be happy to be a Canadian citizen on the Mexican end. There are no boarding passes. We just haul our luggage out onto the tarmac. When the three of us climb the steps and get inside, we see the luxury of the deep leather chairs, all of which seem to swivel and recline. The four other passengers are standing next to a center table, munching and clinking their iced glasses.

They turn with broad smiles and introductions to welcome the rest of the partygoers. Hi, my name’s Paul. I’m an international fugitive. Please excuse the blood on my hands. There simply wasn’t time to wash up.

Instead I shake hands and use my Canadian name to make new friends. I haven’t figured out what I do for a living yet, but I’m sure they’ll ask. I take the cell phone from Herman, move to the back of the plane, and make one last attempt to reach Harry.

“We got ’em,” said Mendez.

“Did you get the woman?” said Thorpe.

“If she’s with him, they’ll have her in just a few seconds.”

“What do you mean? Either you have him or you don’t,” said Thorpe.

“The agents are turning onto the street right now. They’re less than a hundred feet from the signal. They’re right on top of them, could reach out and touch them,” said Mendez.

“Can you hear what’s going on?” said Thorpe.

“What do you mean it’s a different tower?” Mendez was talking to someone else. Thorpe could hear more voices, a lot of excitement at the other end. “What?”

“What’s happening?” said Thorpe.

“Sir, there’s a little confusion here. We’re getting some signals we don’t understand. There’s got to be a tower malfunction. The signal’s been handed off to three separate towers. What? How fast?”

“What’s going on?” said Thorpe. “Talk to me.”

“According to our technicians the signal is moving again. Whoever has the phone is doing about a hundred and forty knots.”

“What?”

“That’s about a hundred and sixty miles an hour.”

“I know what a goddamn knot is,” said Thorpe.

“He appears to be on an airplane.”

“Do we have any military assets in the area? WACs, anything that can track it on radar?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, find out. And see if you can get the tower at the airport to call the plane back. Costa Rican police ought to be able to do something. And call me when you know.” Thorpe slammed the receiver down so hard it bounced off the cradle on the phone and onto the floor, where he got up and kicked it.

Nitikin had spent most of his life shielding the bomb and harboring it for a purpose. In his youth, the device was an instrument of the revolution. That Khrushchev would not use it for that purpose and share the power with their comrades in Cuba had angered Nitikin. The revolution was an ideal, pure and pristine. Yakov had never abandoned his country. On the contrary, its leaders had abandoned the revolution. Despite all the years he spent in hiding, Yakov Nitikin was still a soldier.