17

 

Sledge breathed easier when their aircraft became airborne. Kristin sat tight-lipped in the aisle seat beside him in the first-class section. Strange that she’d flinched and demurred when he offered her the window seat. She gripped her laptop and the briefcase containing her photographs as desperately as a drowning man would clutch a piece of driftwood.

Worried about convincing her editor or about the CIA appointment in Miami? More likely afraid of going through customs with a forged passport.

“Relax,” he said as they reached cruising altitude. “It won’t be as bad as all that.”

She gave a nervous laugh. “I didn’t realize it showed. We’ve been through so much. I can’t believe we’re almost finished.”

Images from Sledge’s dream of struggling up successive hills flickered before his eyes. But he said, hopefully, “Our debriefing shouldn’t be too much trouble. Then on to New Orleans.”

She turned toward him. “I’d like to ask something while we have time. I saw your passport when we processed in Bogotá. Is your name really Jabez E. Sledge?”

“Yep.” He’d gotten used to people asking. “It’s a Biblical name meaning ‘he makes sorrowful.’ Dad gave it to me because I weighed thirteen pounds at birth. He said if I grew up to be as big as he thought, I’d make a lot of people sorrowful.”

Sledge expected her to comment, but she asked instead, “What does the E stand for?”

He’d gotten used to that question, too. “It stands for Eliel. That’s another Biblical name. Dad worried about how I might use my size. ‘Eliel’ means ‘God is God.’ Dad meant it to remind me that I’m not.”

Her face grew earnest. “So you do believe in God?”

That wasn’t what people usually asked. Well, what did he believe? “I believe He exists, but I don’t think He cares about what goes on down here. Dad thought differently, but it didn’t do him much good.”

He closed the subject by looking out the window. The old bitterness rose again within him. His father, a disabled veteran, returned from Vietnam to find himself a pariah in his home church, yet he attended it faithfully until his death from complications of his wounds. The church people treated him as if he had committed war crimes instead of fighting a war to prevent them. If that was what church people did, Sledge wanted no part of them.

But something in these memories also reminded him of Alita and that elusive thing he couldn’t remember. It hovered at the edge of his consciousness, but even as he reached for it, it was gone. His memory seemed as empty as the blue Caribbean that stretched far away below. Maybe someday…

He must have stared out the window quite a while, for his next awareness was the sound of the engines’ reduced power for the descent to Miami.

“Welcome back,” Kristin said. “You were so far away I thought I’d have to finish this trip by myself.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have been woolgathering.”

“You took time enough to shear the entire flock.” Her voice had an edge, and she was gripping her laptop and briefcase again. “I didn’t mean to spook you with my questions.”

“You didn’t.” He hoped it was true. “I was thinking about something else.”

“You’d better think about our interview with…with whoever it is in Miami. I’m new to this business. I don’t know what to expect.”

You’re really worried about your forged passport and your all-important story, he thought. But he said, “We’ll give them their copy of the photographs, tell our story, and answer questions. After that, it’s their problem.”

She said nothing, but her grip on her laptop and briefcase tightened. Nor did it relax in Miami as she stood, her lips drawn into a tight line, waiting to pass through customs. She couldn’t have looked guiltier if she’d stolen Fort Knox.

The customs official studied her passport suspiciously then said, “Please stand over here, Miss Spinner. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.” He guided her to one side of the line.

Sledge was glad the man didn’t open her briefcase. The photos would be hard to explain, and Kristin looked guiltier than ever. That idiotic identity switch might be ending right here.

Surprisingly, the customs official showed equal suspicion of Sledge’s passport and stationed him beside Kristin. Sledge couldn’t imagine what was wrong.

As they waited, another uniformed attendant stepped forward and said, “Miss Spinner, Mr. Sledge, follow me, please.”

“What about our luggage?” Kristin protested as he led them through a side door and down a hall.

“It will be taken care of.”

She threw Sledge a worried glance, and he answered with a shrug. He was worried, too, but there was no use in showing it.

At the end of the hall, the attendant opened a door and signaled them to enter. They did, and the door closed behind them. The attendant remained outside.

At a small conference table sat a smiling Roger Brinkman and a dark-haired, taciturn man Sledge did not know. Brinkman looked the same as always—the white hair and lined face of a near-nonagenarian belied by the mental quickness of a man thirty years younger. Sledge had only a moment to notice the other’s dour expression before Brinkman made the introductions.

“Miss Spinner,” he said, “I’m Roger Brinkman and this is Brian Novak. He works for the U.S. government and has authority to handle what you have to report.”

So he’s CIA. He’ll be tough to convince.

Brinkman turned to Novak. “Brian, Jocelyn Spinner and Jeb Sledge.”

Novak’s confident handshake announced that he had nothing to prove and didn’t intend to have anything proved upon him. His facial expression remained unchanged.

Brinkman continued, “I’ve given Mr. Novak a thumbnail version of what you told me, but he’ll want to hear the full details.”

His glance signaled Kristin to begin, but Sledge pre-empted. “Pictures first. They’ll save a lot of argument.”

Brinkman looked at Novak, who gave a nod of concurrence. Kristin handed him an envelope from her briefcase. He opened it and studied each photograph, passing it to Brinkman as he finished. After the last photograph, his eyes softened.

“You were right about the pictures,” he said to Sledge. “Grisly stuff. There’s no question that you’re onto something. Now we have to figure out what.”

Kristin told of finding the bodies and being captured by Contreras’s guerrillas. She quickly summarized the confinement and escape but gave full detail about recovering her film and, with Sledge, finding the airstrip and factory. She didn’t leave out anything of importance, Sledge noted with admiration, and she didn’t try to interpret anything she reported. With that memory and ability to distinguish fact from inference, she ought to make an excellent journalist.

Novak questioned her closely for descriptions of Contreras’s foreign visitors. “The photo of Erich Staab helps. Our people are finding out what they can about him.”

Brinkman said, “My people shadowed him when he arrived in Houston. He boarded a flight for Seattle, and I have someone assigned to tail him when he lands.”

Novak acknowledged with a nod and asked if Sledge had anything to add.

“Only this,” Sledge said. He laid on the table his handkerchief containing the metal shard. “I picked this up at the massacre site. No extra charge for the handkerchief.”

“Good,” Novak said, ignoring Sledge’s attempt at humor.

Then Sledge’s ornery nature got the better of him, and he asked, “Am I talking loud enough for your microphone?”

“Yes.” Novak’s expression never changed, nor did he elaborate. “Tell me about the cargo you saw loaded onto the aircraft.”

Sledge described the boxes and the mortar shell he’d seen. He went on to describe the men near the building and the protective clothing they wore. Taking his cue from Kristin, he made no inferences about the nature of the factory.

Nor did Novak state any. With a glance, he invited questions from Brinkman, who answered with a shake of his head.

Kristin wasn’t letting them off that easily. She fixed her gaze on Novak. “What do you think we’ve found?”

The government man gave her his first smile of the interview. “Something pretty serious, I think, but we’ll have to let the experts work on those photos and check some other things before we’re sure. Until we do, I’ll have to ask you to keep quiet about this.”

Kristin’s face colored. “But…uh…my friend…will need to publish her story.”

She almost blew the masquerade that time, Sledge thought.

If Novak noticed anything unusual, he didn’t show it. He settled his dour gaze on her. “Tell your friend it’s a matter of national security. She can write all she likes about being kidnapped and the guerrillas’ being responsible for the first massacre. But she mustn’t talk about the second massacre or finding the factory. At least for the next couple of weeks.”

“But her editor—”

“Will probably play ball with us. Most of them do, within reason. Tell your friend we’ll contact her editor as soon as we know where we stand. Eventually, she’ll get her story.” He stood. “Thank you for coming in. You’ve given us valuable information.”

Sledge and Kristin also stood, as did Brinkman.

The latter handed Kristin a business card. “You may want to contact me sometime. If I’m not there, someone will reach me.”

As Kristin thanked him, Sledge saw Novak squeeze something in his coat pocket.

Turning off the recorder. Something off-the-record is coming.

“Thank you, Mr. Sledge.” Novak shook his hand again. “The rescue was a tough job, and you seem to have handled it well.” Without looking around, he added, “And thank you, Kristin.”

She gasped and her face colored.

Novak’s smile finally reached his eyes. “Falsifying a passport is a felony, but I’m grateful for your information, and I’m not in the law enforcement business.”

Kristin looked subdued. “How did you know?”

“Going back for the film. It didn’t make sense for Jocelyn to want it more than you did, so we looked you both up in the Radhurst yearbook. But I wasn’t certain until I saw you.” He looked pained. “But do take time to straighten out that passport. You’re too good a reporter to waste time in jail.”

 

****

 

Brinkman watched Novak with amusement as the footsteps of Sledge and Kristin faded down the hall. Free of bureaucratic entanglements himself, he wondered how his friend would approach the problem.

Novak made a wry face. “The director will love this. Someone we don’t know has built a clandestine chemical weapons factory in a friendly nation that has no capability for dealing with it. It’s going to be messy.”

Brinkman laughed. “The operation itself or the bureaucratic wrangle of deciding what to do?”

“Both.” Novak showed a wry grin. “I don’t suppose your organization would—”

“Definitely not. We don’t do covert operations.”

“You handled the rescue for Steve Spinner.”

“Spinner worked that directly with Sledge. We only made a few contacts for them. But back to your problem: you need more than this report to recommend action.”

Novak sighed. “I’ve already requested aerial photo coverage of the area around Chozadolor.”

“Satellite?”

“You know better than to ask that. You haven’t had a clearance for years.”

“Now you’re talking like one of those bureaucrats you hate. After that, I shouldn’t tell you some things I’ve heard recently…maybe related, maybe not.”

“Will you tell me, or do I have to jump through hoops?”

“Only four or five. Look, the factory is the immediate problem, but we have two others beyond it. Diego Contreras isn’t capable of setting up that factory by himself. So we have to find the source of his information and materials. And the money. Someone has to be bankrolling that operation. Then there’s the problem of the weapons already shipped from the factory. Where did they go, and how can we stop them from reaching the wrong hands?”

Novak looked glum. “OK, so we have three problems. Any ideas other than shadowing Staab?”

“Maybe something on the weapons already shipped out. It’s conjectural, but it may connect. One of our Army’s radar operators in Colombia told my people a story about slow-moving aircraft flying north out of central Colombia with no flight plan.”

“That happens all the time. Drug flights.”

“Could be. What caught the radar operator’s attention was that out over the Caribbean—just before they flew off of his scope—the aircraft turned northeast.”

Novak shrugged one shoulder. “So the druggies make deliveries somewhere between Puerto Rico and Grenada.”

“Come off of it, Brian. You know as well as I do, Grenada would be due east. Use the information or not—it’s all the same to me.”

“I’ll talk to our radar people.” He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “If it comes to an operation against that factory, I’d like to get Sledge in on it.”

“He won’t be interested. He’ll be too busy spending the small fortune Steve Spinner paid him.”

“His interest doesn’t matter. I notice he holds a reserve commission in the Army.”

“You found that out, did you?” Brinkman shook his head in mock disappointment. “Shame on you, Brian. Sometimes I think you’re as unscrupulous as I am.”