It didn’t really take a million years to reach Bogotá. It just seemed like it did to a man who spent the whole trip sweating bullets. General Reyes was a man who knew his business, and his business, these days, was putting the country back together after the egg had hit the fan. Reyes was neither a Conservative nor a Liberal, as the two sides who’d been fighting for control of Colombia had laughingly called themselves. General Reyes was the Man on a White Horse who’d waited until the fire-eating idealists had whittled themselves down like the Gingham Dog and Calico Cat. Then, with everybody very tired of the noise and wondering when in the hell it would be safe to walk the streets again, Reyes had simply moved in to “restore order” with plenty of machine guns and the usual firing squads.
Captain Gringo got to tense up every time he passed through another checkpoint, but apparently the forged passport and I.D. he carried wasn’t on any of the lists they had. At one mountain station where they changed trains, a fellow passenger didn’t make it. The sleepy-looking sergeant checking papers yawned at the guy, a middle-aged fat man, and said something to the soldados with him. They frog-marched the fat man down the track, around a bend, and one of the women passengers screamed when they heard the fusillade of shots. Then the sergeant smiled pleasantly and told the rest of them they were free to go on. Captain Gringo was glad he hadn’t been seated near the guy they’d caught.
At another stop, some other soldiers took a woman from among them. It wasn’t clear to anyone he was with whether the woman was a suspected rebel or just pretty. Considering his size and Anglo features, they seemed even less interested in Captain Gringo than he’d expected them to be. He didn’t get to use his cover story once on the trip. Apparently anyone on the ruling junta who remembered a tall blond soldier of fortune had assumed he’d be out of the country by this time. The suspects they were really worried about would of course be native Colombians who might be planning the next round.
So, as the last leg of his journey approached, Captain Gringo began to relax, as he was supposed to.
At military headquarters in Bogotá a certain Colonel Maldonado, alias El Arano, was watching his progress on an office map. Captain Gringo’s pins were blue. There were others. Many others. The cool head of Colombian Military Intelligence was notorious for the webs he spun with those coded pins.
They didn’t call Maldonado El Arano because he looked like a spider. He was a rather handsome man who didn’t wear his military decorations or an expression anyone could read. He was coldly correct to other officers and as kind to enlisted men as military discipline allowed. His wife and kids adored him. Few newspaper reporters were aware he existed. He was the most dangerous man in the junta now ruling the country under General Reyes. Some of the wise money sometimes wondered whether General Reyes or Colonel Maldonado was really running the country. But, in truth, there was no rivalry. General Reyes needed El Arano’s talents to keep him on his white horse, and Maldonado didn’t care who rode the white horse, as long as they let him do his own job, his own way.
This wasn’t always easy. Nobody in his right mind would knowingly cross El Arano, for the same reasons prudent men don’t shove a finger into a hornet’s nest But the sardonic Maldonado’s methods were often more subtle than anything a junior officer might have read in Machiavelli, so it was a good idea to check with the boss before you pulled anything as bush league as a triple cross. El Arano didn’t set up double or triple crosses. He set up rows of domino treacheries.
And so an aide was cautious when he entered the colonel’s office with a telegram to say, “That Americano, Captain Gringo, will arrive this evening at six-fifteen, my Colonel. I assume you do not wish for him to see any military police around the depot?”
El Arano turned away to stare at his map-web as he tried to remember the boy was young. When he spoke, his voice was controlled and polite as he said, “On the contrary, Lieutenant. I have crossed blades with this Richard Walker before. He is good. Very good. A bit dramatic for my taste, but a man who thinks well on his feet. He will be expecting a police check at the main depot. Ergo, there should be one! Make certain the men understand they are to act reasonably suspicious, but that they are to let him through.”
“Ah, I understand, my Colonel. We let him through so that our agents may follow him, eh?”
Maldonado sighed and murmured, “God give me strength.” Then he said, “No. That big Yanqui will spot any tail we can put on him. I keep saying this over and over. I wish someone would listen. I want Richard Walker, alias Captain Gringo, to pass through our checkpoints unmolested. I want him to take the usual countermeasures and make certain he is not being followed. I want him to move about the city in complete freedom. I don’t want any of our agents going anywhere near him! That big bastard is dangerous and I see no need to risk one of our people when we don’t have to.”
“Very well, my Colonel. Your orders shall be carried out to the letter.”
The colonel turned from his map with a pleasant smile. He saw his junior was totally confused, despite his willingness. Maldonado said, “I know where Walker is going. I know what he is going to do. He is going to do exactly what I want him to do. Frankly, I find it rather amusing to be using the notorious Captain Gringo for my own pawn this time.”
“A most dangerous pawn, if I may be allowed an opinion, my Colonel.”
Maldonado’s eyes flickered slightly, the way a shark turning in deep water roils the surface. Then he shrugged and said, “I seldom allow a junior officer to have an opinion, but I am in an indulgent mood and your father is an old friend of mine. I shall tell you something of this Yanqui, Captain Gringo. I want you to know he is good. I don’t want you to think he’s as good as they say he is. Nobody could be.”
“My Colonel has had dealing with him before, no?”
“Yes, and I confess he made me look bad. I thought at first I was dealing with the usual soldier of fortune. Since then I have had time to study the man’s background. He is not the usual lazy bully with a zest for violence. Until about a year ago he was a U.S. Army officer, a graduate of West Point with a good record in the Yanqui’s Indian Fighting Army. Before he started giving people down here a hard time, he was learning tricks from Apache and Mexican border raiders. Unfortunately, he has a very good memory. So what we are dealing with is a trained professional soldier with a rather alarming grasp of guerrilla tactics.”
“They say he is very good with the new machine gun, too.”
“That is unfortunately all too true. Walker is more than a good shot. He’s an ordinance expert. The woods are filled with soldiers of fortune who know how to shoot. Captain Gringo, in a pinch, can repair or even make a gun. He can run almost any kind of machinery and seems to understand that new Marconi wireless business. He can navigate a vessel on the high seas. He once surprised some people alarmingly with a lighter-than-air balloon. I would not be at all surprised to see him at the tiller of one of those new horseless carriages, if there was one around here for him to steal. But, fortunately, there aren’t many in Bogotá at the moment. One must think about things like that when Captain Gringo is in town!”
The aide blinked in surprise and blurted, “For why would he steal a horseless carriage in any case, my Colonel?” and Maldonado chuckled almost fondly before he replied, “To get away, of course. I assume he’ll begin to suspect a trap as soon as he’s been in town a few hours. We shall, of course, have a highly visible roadblock set up near the railway depot as soon as he leaves the vicinity. My plan won’t work if he tries to backtrack for Buenaventura.”
“He won’t be able to get to the train again, my Colonel. May one ask just where you want for him to go? Forgive me, I do not understand your plan at all.”
Maldonado said, “You’re not supposed to. I forget who it was who said that two can keep a secret if one of them is dead, but he was right. Are there any new developments on Captain Gringo’s little friend Gaston?”
The aide shook his head and said, “No, my Colonel. Frankly, I was afraid the Frenchman could have sent another message to his big friend after we intercepted the first one he put on the rebel underground telegraph.”
Maldonado shrugged and said, “Impossible. Once we’d, ah, amended the original message and sent it via our own agent, Captain Gringo never went back to his old haunts. Ergo, even if Gaston somehow got another through, Captain Gringo’s had no chance to get it. He has been in my maze since he left the cantina down in Buenaventura. Now, all we have to do is keep him headed in the right direction with a minimum of danger to our own people. So this discussion is over, Lieutenant. I want you out on the street, keeping it cleared. I’m going to be very cross with you if there’s a firefight I hadn’t mapped out ahead of time.”
“I’ll do my best, sir. But what if he starts a fight with us?”
“Damnit, Lieutenant, Captain Gringo won’t shoot our agents if they don’t get near him. Get out there and make sure they don’t!”