The Argentine Triangle: A Craig Page Thriller (12 page)

“You don’t know me,” she said in a feisty tone. “Why do you imply that I had something to do with Dunn’s disappearance?”

“It’s precisely because I don’t know you that I’m not sure what to believe.”

“Then listen. Don’t interrogate and accuse.”

He pulled back. “Fair enough.”

“I gave him the name of Pascual Frigero who lives in Bariloche. He drives for the biggest limo company in the area, but he’s also a poet and a musician. He hangs out with a crowd that’s opposed to Estrada and the military people.”

“Who were the foreign visitors coming to meet Estrada?”

“You’re so busy trying to intimidate me that you’re not listening. I already told you Dunn didn’t know. That was the point of his trip to Bariloche.”

Craig had to run out the string with Nicole. At this point, it was all he had. “I’ll have to go to Bariloche and find this Pascual. Tell me about him. How old is he?”

Nicole took another puff and inhaled deeply before responding. “Mid-thirties, I think.”

“Married?”

“No. Lives with his sister.”

“I need a name and address.”

Nicole hesitated.

“I’ll pay you for it. How much was Dunn paying you?”

She laughed. “You Americans always think money is the only reason people do things.”

“For something like this, I’ve found it usually is.”

“Well this time it’s not.”

Craig was surprised. “By helping Dunn and me, you’ve put your life on the line. I’ve read enough about Estrada and his henchman, Colonel Schiller, to know that. If not for money, then why?”

Her face was tight and drawn. She paused to light another cigarette. “You’re a smart man, Barry Gorman. My father owns a shoe manufacturing plant, which makes high-end shoes. Even in this economy, a minority live well. We belong to all the best clubs. This shop is a hobby for me.”

“Then why are you putting your life on the line?” Craig repeated.

“Do you have any idea what happened in my country in the late seventies and early eighties? The last time the generals ruled?”

“I’ve read about the Dirty War if that’s what you mean?”

Her eyes were blazing with emotion. “You have no idea. You were a schoolboy then. Safe in your cocoon in the United States where nobody gave a damn. Here, it was state-sponsored terrorism. The generals claimed that they were attacking the country’s economic problems by eradicating leftist guerillas who were instigators. In fact, they arrested, tortured, or killed thousands and thousands.”

She paused and puffed deeply on the cigarette, blowing out the smoke in circles. “Military patrols roamed the country. Day and night they snatched people from their homes and jobs. Not just leftists. Anyone who dared to disagree with them. Union leaders. Women. Especially women. A third of the ones they grabbed were women from all social classes without any link to the guerillas, just so they could get them into prisons and have their way with them.” She was talking fast now, her voice choked with emotion. “They even took teenagers who campaigned for better school facilities.

“Los desparecidos, we called the ones they took and we never heard from again. They disappeared. This was total repression. Due process of law was cast aside. Nobody knows how many were taken altogether. The best estimate is that twenty thousand were killed. Most were buried in mass shallow graves.” She shrugged. “Many more were tortured. All went without trials.”

“I had no idea the repression and deaths were so widespread.”

“Of course not,” she said bitterly. “Your government did its best to hide the facts. Our generals were an ally in your wars against the leftists in Central America.”

She had a glazed look in her eyes as if she was remembering a specific incident. “The military acted arbitrarily and indiscriminately, making the events all the more terrifying. No one knew when they would hear a knock at the door and find a group of soldiers who came to take a family member away. All normal life ceased. Some who could went abroad. Very few had that option for financial and other reasons. So we lived and we suffered.

“A few dared to speak out. Every Thursday evening a group called Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo defied government threats and intimidation by holding weekly silent protest meetings. Each mother stood with a candle, whispering the names of their children who had disappeared.”

“After civilian rule was reestablished in the early eighties, how many were tried and punished?” Craig asked.

She sighed and shook her head. “Only a handful were brought to justice. There never was a full accounting. It’s disgraceful.”

“So that’s why you put your life at risk to help Dunn. You don’t want the generals to return to power.”

“It’s much more than that,” she said, her face now a mask of hatred. “Estrada is a monster. Even in a group of thugs, he was particularly venal. During the Dirty War, he did things …”

“What kind of things?”

She screwed up her face in a terrible grimace. “I don’t want to talk about it. The point is that Estrada’s not fit to rule my country. And now he’s rebuilt the army. He’s taking poor boys from destitute families and molding them into a tough, fighting machine. I have a friend in the Ministry of Defense who told me that thanks to the weapons you Americans have shipped here in the last few months, the Argentine military is a match for anybody in South America. They’re on a par with Chile, Brazil, and Paraguay, something that seemed inconceivable two years ago. The trouble is that a man like Estrada shouldn’t be armed in this way. Am I making myself clear?”

He nodded. Craig found her compelling. He was persuaded by the sincerity of her words. Though he was anxious to hear what Estrada had done in the past, he didn’t press her.

She continued in a sharp tone. “It’s a formula for disaster for all of us. If I can stop the train wreck from happening, I will.”

“What’s Estrada want to do? Take over the government?”

“To be sure. But he doesn’t merely want to rule Argentina, he wants this to be a country that’s an economic power as well. As a result, most business people support him.”

“Your father, too?”

She shook her head. “Never. Not after what Estrada did in the past, but Papa has to play along. Otherwise, they’ll burn his plant to the ground, the way they’ve done with some other opposition businessmen.”

“Don’t the business leaders who support Estrada know about these terrible things the general did. The ones you won’t talk about.”

She shrugged. “Some do. Most don’t care. They want to forget the past with a collective amnesia and have the country’s economy expand. It’s a Faustian bargain.”

“Get the trains running on time?”

She nodded. “Something like that.”

“In the materials I read Estrada refers to himself as a Peronist. For the life of me, I can’t understand what that means.”

She laughed. “Welcome to the crowd. You obviously know all about Peron and Eva.”

He nodded.

“As a young officer, in the thirties, Peron was sent to Italy for training. There he found something more valuable: a hero to emulate. Mussolini. Since then almost every Argentine politician says he wants to help the poor so he pins the Peron label on himself, hoping he’ll gain labor and popular support. For Estrada, it might fit. Like Peron himself, Estrada is a general bigger than life and equally fraudulent. But I’m outspoken on the issue of our monumental Peron. If you’re committed to doing something to stop Estrada, tell me what I can do to help. And if you’re not,” she pointed to the staircase, “You can go to Bariloche and find out about Dunn on your own.”

He had no doubt that she meant it. This tough-talking, no-nonsense woman had suffered or seen others suffer at Estrada’s hand. He respected her convictions. She would be a valuable ally.

“We have the same objective,” he said forcefully.

“Good,” she replied softly.

“I’m supposed to meet Emilio Miranda. Where does he fit into this?”

“Miranda owns a large oil and gas company based in Patagonia in the south as well as a huge estancia, a cattle ranch, you call it. Also, a winery in Mendoza. He was one of Estrada’s earliest supporters, and he has the general’s ear. Miranda’s a man without principle for whom profit is the only driver. You have people like that in the United States. I’m sure.”

“Every country has them.”

Though he was convinced he could trust her, that she hadn’t set up Dunn, he thought perhaps Pascual had. “Let’s go back to the driver—the poet and musician in Bariloche. I need an address for him, where he lived with his sister.”

Nicole hesitated. “You can’t bother her.”

“Why not?”

“As a young girl, she suffered.”

“And if we don’t stop Estrada, she’ll suffer again. You know that better than I do. Everybody in this country will suffer.”

Nicole rifled through a shoe box filled with papers until she found what she was looking for. He watched her take a blank piece of paper and write down the name Antonia along with an address and telephone number.

“Your filing system is impressive,” he said, trying to add some levity.

When she handed him the piece of paper, her expression was grim. He read it, committed it to memory, and set it on fire with a match in her ashtray.

She looked surprised.

“I’ve memorized it,” he said. “I won’t create problems for her.”

Nicole snarled: “You may not be able to avoid it. Are you finished with me now?”

He shook his head. “I need something else.”

She eyed him with trepidation. “What’s that?”

“Dunn learned that Estrada has a secret headquarters in the north somewhere. Dunn never found where it was and why Estrada needed it. But he thought it was important. You obviously have good sources of information. Will you try and find out for me?”

While she pondered the question, Craig reached into his briefcase and pulled out ten thousand dollars. He placed it on the table as if he were paying for a pair of shoes. “I know you won’t take money for yourself, but you might have to persuade people to give you information.”

She got up, pulled an empty shoe box off the shelf, stuffed the money inside and put it back. “If I manage to get the information, how will I find you to pass it on?”

“I’m at the Alvear. Leave a message that Fiona called to say she has the briefcase I wanted. We’ll meet inside the Metropolitan Cathedral at ten that evening. If one of us doesn’t show, we repeat it at ten the next morning and every twelve hours after that.”

“No. The Metropolitan Cathedral is too dangerous. I have a better place.”

“Go ahead.”

“Take highway twelve north from Buenos Aires. You’ll wind up in the hills. Pass the intersection with highway eight and continue on twelve. About two kilometers after the intersection, you’ll pass a restaurant and gas station on the right. Immediately following, there’s a scenic overlook at the crest of the road. Pull into the overlook and park. That’s where we’ll meet.”

Craig was impressed with Nicole. He closed up his briefcase, preparing to leave when she reached her hand across the table and put it on his arm. “I like you so I’ll give you some advice.”

He wondered what was coming next. “Yeah?”

“Stay here in Buenos Aires and talk to Miranda. Schiller is vicious and sadistic. If he finds out you’re snooping around in Bariloche, he’ll kill you.”

He was moved by her entreaty. The concern was genuine. “I have to know what happened to Ted Dunn. The answer is in Bariloche.”

She squeezed down tightly on his arm with her nails digging into his flesh. “You’d be better not to go.”

Pulling away, he said, “I have to know. Dunn has a wife. She’s my friend, too.”

Nicole sighed in resignation. She added one more bit of advice. “With Estrada, you have to be strong. Tough as nails. He destroys weak people.”

He thought about his dealings with Chinese General Zhou who had planned to wreck the American economy. He had stood his ground with Zhou, refused to be intimidated, even in Beijing when Zhou was trying to kill him and Elizabeth. “I don’t know how to behave any other way.”

“Good.” Now she smiled and reached into a pile of papers and extracted an airline schedule. After studying it for a few seconds, she said, “A plane leaves in two hours from the domestic airport, Jorge Newbery. You have plenty of time.”

“I have a gun,” he said. “Will I be able to take it?”

“I’ll give you a small suitcase. Check it through. They’ll never x-ray it. We’re erratic on security down here.”

She pulled a small black wheelie out of a closet and handed it to him.

“I appreciate your help, Nicole.”

She locked eyes with him. “I’m just glad some people in your American government are smart enough to know they have to block Estrada before he comes to power.”

Craig watched her yank a plastic shopping bag from a box. “When you walk out of here,” she said, “I want you to look like you’ve been shopping for shoes.” She disappeared among the rows of shoe boxes. “What size does your wife or girlfriend wear?” She called to him.

He thought about Gina. She would no doubt love a pair of those beautiful shoes. That wasn’t an option. It would link him to Nicole. “I’m between girlfriends,” he called back.

“I’ll give you one thirty-six and one thirty-eight. Try to find a woman to match,” she said, as she reappeared with the bag.

“Can I pay you for them?”

She smiled. “My shoes are expensive, but ten thousand should cover two pairs. Be careful. I want to see you again someday. Alive. Not in the morgue.”

Bariloche

I
n the plane Craig took copies of
La Nación
and
La Opinion
from a flight attendant and sat down on the aisle in the last row of the business class cabin for the flight to Bariloche. The window seat was empty.

Once the cabin door closed, he scanned the front page of
La Nación
and stopped on the upper right hand corner. An article under Gina’s byline reported on a meeting that the Brazilian president had with President Treadwell at the White House. According to the article, Luiz Dumont, the Brazilian president, was complaining about the huge shipments of American arms that had been made to Argentina in the past few months, and which according to Dumont, threatened “to destabilize the region.”

Gina had interviewed the Brazilian president after the meeting and obtained a quote; “I told President Treadwell there was no reason for Argentina to be so heavily armed, that the United States should cease sending arms to Argentina and begin arming Brazil to the same degree. If the United States continues on this path, Brazil will have no alternative but to seek arms from another supplier, such as China.” So on top of everything else, Estrada was destabilizing the region. But to what end? Border issues among the various South American countries were always flaring up. Estrada must have some reason for putting the Brazilians on edge. Right now Craig couldn’t figure out what it was. Estrada was playing a dangerous game.

As Craig ate lunch on the plane, he continued reading
La Nación
, which was filled with gloomy economic news. The Argentine stock market had fallen sharply in the last week. Health officials were warning about child malnutrition in rural areas. In Buenos Aires hordes of porteños, as residents of the capital were called, came out of the barrios at night to scavenge garbage cans for food and search for paper and other objects they could sell for recycling.

He put down
La Nación
and picked up a copy of
La Opinion
. To his surprise, on the front page, he saw an editorial with a black box around it. Craig began reading.

Some have told us that we are foolish and subjecting our families and employees to great risk by speaking out. However our obligation to the noble profession of journalism and to the wonderful country of Argentina compels us to break our silence. There is a cancer in our land, pernicious and growing. That is the movement of Alfredo Estrada and his fellow generals. Many of us remember all too well and painfully the horror of the last rule of the generals from 1976 to 1983. Those who value and cherish freedom cannot permit this to reoccur. Already, honest citizens are being murdered for speaking their minds. We, the editors of this paper, are aware of the risks we are taking in making this plea. Our names are well known. Should we die suddenly, do not mourn us. Do everything possible to eradicate this cancer and defeat Estrada.
—
The Editors

The editorial rocked Craig. He had spent his CIA career in the Middle East where Americans had fought and died trying to create a semblance of democracy for people far from the United States in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, Estrada was planning to curtail freedom in one of the most important countries in the United States’ backyard—in South America. The rights of the Argentine people deserved as much protection as the Afghans and Iraqis.

No, even more, Craig thought. The United States always had a special relationship with South America, dating back to the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Moreover, a military dictatorship in Argentina was likely to spill over to other South American countries. Freedom was always tenuous on that continent. And as freedom was snuffed out, waves of immigrants would try to get into the United States.

Craig recalled Betty telling him about Estrada’s trip to Beijing. Estrada’s regime might expand its relationship with China, trading oil and other natural resources the United States needed in return for arms. And once armed, Estrada could make a move, with Chinese support, on one or more neighboring countries—Chile, Brazil, or Paraguay—to seize their oil and other resources. This would destabilize the continent, creating a devastating problem for the United States. So while the editors of
La Opinion
were terrified of what would happen to the Argentine people if Estrada seized power, Craig saw a whole set of additional adverse consequences for the United States.

As Craig put the paper down, he thought about Nicole’s warning to him. She, much more than he, knew how dangerous the situation was and the risk he was taking. There was no turning back.

“We’re on our final approach to Bariloche,” the flight attendant announced. Craig looked out of the window at the pristine blue waters of the lake below. Snow was on the ground in the hills above the lake, but it wasn’t fresh. The roads looked clear.

Once he hit the frigid mountain air, Craig realized that spring hadn’t yet come to Bariloche. In the small terminal he bought a blue ski jacket with thick, fluffy material in the lining.

On his way to the Avis counter, he spotted, standing near an exit, a heavyset man with a red, beefy, pockmarked face who was watching him. The man wasn’t making any effort to leave the small terminal.

He’s planning to follow me, Craig decided.

Craig rented a bulky SUV with four-wheel drive. He climbed into the vehicle, studied his map, and then set off.

The sign at the end of the access road pointed toward the left for the city of Bariloche. This was where Antonia, the sister of the driver, Pascual, lived. After what Nicole had told him about Antonia, he couldn’t risk endangering her. If he was being followed, he had to lose his tail before he approached her house. Craig turned to the right. In a matter of minutes, he was on the main road circling the lake, which was on his left. Traffic was light. A maroon sedan was behind him, hanging back, making no effort to close the gap or to pass, even when Craig slowed to a crawl. That had to be the red-faced man.

In an effort to lose him Craig sped up as he reached a curve in the road. He saw a tree lined driveway and turned in. Confident he couldn’t be seen from the road, he waited ten minutes, then pulled back out and drove in the opposite direction. The maroon sedan was parked along the side of the road. As soon as Craig passed it, the driver of the maroon sedan executed a U-turn and resumed following Craig.

He must have worked with the Avis people to plant a tracking device on my SUV, Craig decided.

Craig decided not to stop to locate the tracking device and destroy it. That could come later. For now, he continued following the lakefront road until he saw a cutoff on the left that climbed into the hills. He turned off and began a gradual ascent in a deserted area. There were no houses or other buildings that he could see.

Through the rearview mirror, he watched the maroon sedan trailing. Suddenly, he got a queasy feeling in his stomach. He may have outsmarted himself by isolating the two of them this way with the red-faced man behind him. Unwittingly, he had given his adversary the superior position, reversing their relationship, so that red-faced man was now the hunter and Craig the hunted.

Maps were useless on these mountainous back roads. Craig was determined to get back in control. Using his best driving skills, he revved up his speed in the bulky SUV and shot forward, picking his turnoffs from one muddy dirt road to another by instinct while trying to avoid taking curves so fast that the SUV would roll over. No matter how fast he went, the maroon sedan kept pace. The man was a good driver. Craig figured his car must have four-wheel drive.

A few kilometers ahead, at the crest of the mountain, Craig spotted a building that looked like a cabin or a hunting lodge. There were no cars in sight. His guess was that it was deserted.

Hunched forward and gripping the steering wheel, he floored the accelerator, kicking mud from the rear tires. He wanted to get to the cabin quickly, as much ahead of his pursuer as he could.

On the last turn, he narrowly missed slipping off the road. Holy shit, he thought, it was a helluva long way down. He had no intention of duplicating his crash in Sardinia. He straightened out, then blasted through a small decrepit wooden gate and into the parking area on the side of the cabin. In an instant, he was out of the car, racing toward the front door of the cabin, Beretta in his jacket pocket. He grabbed the rusty doorknob and twisted. The door was locked, but it was old. When he smashed his shoulder against the rotting wood, it easily gave way.

Inside, he took stock of the cabin. It had a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. No clothes or other signs of occupancy. The kitchen led to a wooden patio in the back, surrounded on the side, away from the house, by a wooden fence about three feet high. Crossing the patio, he saw beyond the fence a sheer drop, several kilometers straight down to a mountain stream.

He ran back into the cabin, leaving the door open to the patio in the back and ducking into one of the bedrooms, where he hid behind a heavy wooden chest. Through the bedroom window, he had a clear view of the patio. As he expected, the red-faced man thought he had gone out through the door in the kitchen to the patio.

Craig watched him pull a gun from his pocket and walk slowly across the patio toward the fence. When he reached the edge of the wooden deck, he stopped and peered over the fence, gun in hand, looking for Craig.

That was Craig’s signal to move. He ran back into the kitchen and out onto the patio.

From a distance of ten yards, Craig shouted, “I have a gun aimed at your back. Raise your hands and don’t turn around.”

The man followed the command.

“Toss your gun down the hill. Then raise your hands again.”

Once he complied, Craig ran up behind the man, looped his left arm around his neck and pressed the Beretta against his right temple.

“Now you’re going to answer some questions,” Craig barked.

“Anything. I don’t want to die.” The man was trembling.

“Tell the truth, and you’ll live. Otherwise you’re a dead man.”

Sweat was flowing down the man’s red, pockmarked face. “What do you want to know?”

“Why did you follow me up here?”

“I didn’t,” the man responded in a halting voice.

Craig jammed the gun so tightly against his flesh that the end of the barrel made an indentation. “You’re lying. Now tell me, or I shoot.”

The man hesitated.

Craig pressed the gun hard. “Tell me now.”

“Colonel Schiller sent me,” he stammered. “To keep tabs on you.”

“Why’d you pull out your gun?”

“I can’t get caught, or the colonel …”

Craig saw fear in the man’s eyes. “You have a cell phone. Don’t you?” Craig asked.

The man nodded. “In my pocket.”

“I want you to take it out slowly. Then call Colonel Schiller and tell him you lost the man you were following. That’s all. You got that?”

“I got it.”

If he made the call, Craig planned to take his cell phone, knock him out, and tie him up, making sure there were no other phones in the cabin. Then he would disable his car. That should give Craig enough time to meet Antonia and get out of Bariloche.

“Okay. Put one hand in your pocket. Nice and easy. If you say one other word, I’ll blow your head off.”

The man placed his right hand in his jacket pocket. As he began to lift it out, everything happened so quickly that Craig thought he was in a video that someone had turned to fast-forward. First the man’s right hand, gripping a shiny metal object, shot out of his pocket. With a jerking motion he brought it up and smashed the metal object against Craig’s wrist, knocking the Beretta from his hand. Helplessly, Craig watched it slide across the patio.

To his horror, he saw that the metal object wasn’t a cell phone, but a switchblade knife.

The man pressed a button and out snapped a long blade, glistening in the sun. He had fast movements for a large man. With the knife, he lunged for Craig’s chest, but Craig darted away. All he struck was the heavily padded sleeve of Craig’s ski jacket. The knife was embedded in the lining, and the man had trouble getting it out.

That was the break Craig needed. Ignoring the pain in his wrist, he raised his right arm and swung it in a powerful backhand motion with all the force he could muster, going for his assailant’s face. As he did, the man lifted his leg and aimed a powerful kick for Craig’s groin. Craig felt a jolt of searing pain just as the back of his hand struck the man’s face. It was a direct hit on his cheek and the side of his nose. Craig heard the crunching sound of bones breaking, but that wasn’t all. The man was off balance when the blow came. It was so powerful that it propelled him toward the fence.

From the ground where Craig was clutching his genitalia and writhing in pain, he watched the heavy, bulky man crash through the rotten wood of the fence. From the force of Craig’s blow, his assailant was now on the precipice of the cliff, leaning down the hill, trying desperately to straighten up and move back toward the cabin. Craig wanted to pull himself up to help the man. But he was barely conscious himself. That coupled with the pain prevented his body from responding. He watched the man pitch over the cliff, screaming, “Help,” and roll like a boulder side over side all the way down to the creek in the gully below.