The Argentine Triangle: A Craig Page Thriller Page 28

  She shot to her feet. “That’s ridiculous. Alfredo didn’t kill anyone. You’re slandering a good man.”

  He opened his robe to expose his bruised chest. “You think I got this walking into a door?” He stood up next to her. With his robe hanging open, in a high voice, he said, “Some men grabbed me when I was jogging in Jorge Newbery Park. They tied my back against a tree. They were sent by Colonel Schiller. One of them beat me with boxing gloves until I threw up and passed out. You think I’m making that up?”

  “No,” she said weakly. “But Alfredo didn’t order this.”

  “I agree. He didn’t. It was Schiller, but he’s Estrada’s director of security.”

  “I never liked him.”

  “That makes two of us. But in Bariloche, where Dunn was murdered, Estrada and Schiller were both involved. You have to believe me.”

  “You’ve given me no reason to.”

  “Then fly back to Argentina with me. I’ll let you talk to Antonia in Bariloche, the sister of the dead boy, Pascual. She’ll convince you.”

  Gina looked puzzled. “Why do you care so much if I believe you or not? I’m just one stupid little girl. You don’t love me. Why do you care?”

  It was time to jump off the high board. He held his breath and went for it. “Because I want you to help me block Estrada and Schiller and the other generals from taking over the country again. They’ll—”

  She interrupted him. “So that’s why you got me here. To persuade me to help you spy. We were never going to movie studios and Disneyland. It was all one more big lie.”

  “Please,” he said, trying not to convey the exasperation he felt. “If the generals return to power, they’ll cause so much suffering all over again. You have to know about the Dirty War. You’re a student of history. When you talk to Antonia in Bariloche, you’ll hear what happened to her father and mother. One killed, one gang raped by soldiers. Do you want that again?”

  She was scowling at him. “There were a few evil people in the military then. I don’t deny that. But most, like my father and Alfredo, were trying to fight the Communists who wanted to destroy our country. That’s our history. Don’t you try to manipulate me with a phony version created in the United States.”

  She had given him the perfect opening to use the material about her father in Betty’s folder, but he couldn’t. Not here. Not yet. He shifted topics. “The other reason Estrada has to be stopped is because he’s about to launch your country on another military adventure that will end even worse than the Falklands fiasco. We now know much of his agenda. We know that the border incident last week with Brazil was a fabrication.”

  “It was not.”

  “Read a book called Inside the Gestapo by Jonathan Martin. Schiller’s grandfather did precisely the same thing to justify Germany’s attack of Poland. You think that’s a coincidence?”

  “I never heard of that.”

  “It’s confirmed in Nuremberg testimony. That proves Estrada is planning to launch a major attack on Brazil. I presume his motive is to rekindle nationalistic feelings in the country and ride that horse to the presidency.”

  He took her silence as assent, and he continued.

  “If Estrada attacks Brazil, he’ll be doing incalculable harm to Argentina. He’s dreaming. Delusional might be more accurate. Even if the United States stays out of it initially because of Bryce and his relationship with Treadwell, my country will have to change its position when UN and South American pressure becomes too great. Not only will your boys die again in another senseless war, but nobody will want to have anything to do with Argentina for decades. Your country and its people will be a pariah among nations. It will devastate what’s left of your economy.” He paused to take a breath. “I spent two days with Alfredo in London. He was charming. I enjoyed being with him, but he has to be stopped.”

  She locked eyes with him. “If you know so much, why do you need me?”

  He lowered his voice and spoke slowly, making certain she heard each word. “I want you to tell me everything you know about Estrada’s plans. Also, I want you to help me obtain additional information from him. Without your help, we can’t stop him. It’s that simple.”

  Heavy creases appeared on her forehead. “In other words, you want me to be a traitor and to spy on the man who’s been like a father to me?”

  “I wouldn’t express it that way.”

  “I won’t do it,” she said emphatically.

  He raised his hand. “At least go with me to Bariloche and listen to this woman, Antonia, about her suffering under the generals and what happened to her brother. How he was killed by Estrada to keep secret the Brazilian attack.”

  She shook her head vigorously from side to side. “The answer is no. For all I know, this woman will be telling me more lies. She has no proof. She could be lying to me the way you lied to me when you said you were Barry Gorman. Besides, I don’t want to go to Bariloche. I want to go home to Buenos Aires where I have friends like Rosie. Not devious liars and cheats like you and Edward Bryce. I want to have a normal life again. I’m sick and tired of all of these schemes and manipulations. Do you understand that?” Her voice was cracking with emotion.

  “Please. I beg you to reconsider for the good of your country.”

  “The answer is no.”

  Craig was at the end of his rope. He had only one other way of blocking Estrada.

  “I’ll fly you back to Buenos Aires in a private plane. Today. On one condition.”

  “What’s that?” she asked skeptically.

  “I want you to spend one hour in Buenos Aires talking with two women. That’s all. You don’t have to promise to do a thing afterwards. When the hour is up, someone will take you wherever you want to go.”

  “I don’t need your charity. I can get home myself.”

  She reached for the phone. After minutes of being on hold with the airline, she slammed down the phone and looked at him suspiciously. “What do these women want?”

  “Just to talk to you for one hour.”

  “Who are the women?” she asked hesitantly.

  “One is Nicole,” he hesitated for an instant. “The other is Maria.”

  She took her time thinking about his offer. Finally, she said, “Okay, I’ll do it, but only for one hour.”

  Craig used the American Express card Betty had supplied to arrange a private jet to fly him and Gina to Buenos Aires.

  At the San Diego airport, as Craig met with the pilot preparing a flight plan in a room filled with maps of the world, one thought came barreling over the top of a hill and into clear view.

  Dummy, he chastised himself. How could he have missed it.

  That prick Schiller knew that he had only left Argentina for a little while. In Buenos Aires, Schiller had people following Craig incessantly. Schiller would have people monitoring all of the Argentine airports to pick him up on his return. He had been thinking so much about Gina that he had missed it. If he had Gina with him, how in the world could he ever elude his tail.

  As he studied an airport map of the region, trying to decide if there was an airport in Argentina that Schiller might not cover, the answer hit him like a charge of lightening out of the sky.

  Fly into Montevideo.

  The capital of Uruguay was a couple hours drive from Buenos Aires. Schiller had no jurisdiction there. At the airport, he could rent a car and drive himself. The open border between the two countries would enable them to slip into Argentina.

  Not wanting to alarm the edgy and unhappy Gina, he waited until they took off from San Diego to tell her they would be landing in Montevideo.

  “All of the slots at the Buenos Aires airports were taken,” he told her. “We’d have to wait days to land, and I know that you’re anxious to get home.”

  Hell, he’d already lied to her so much. What difference did one more make?

  She didn’t question him. In fact, she was still so angry she was hardly speaking to him as the plane winged its way across the United
States on a flight plan that called for a refueling stop in Tampa. Claiming she was exhausted, she went into the rear cabin, locked the door, and went to sleep.

  Before picking up the phone to call Nicole, he carefully rehearsed in his mind what he would tell her. He had no idea whether Schiller’s intelligence services would be able to monitor the conversation. They might be picking up conversations coming from airplanes outside of the country. To be safe, he had to assume that was the case.

  “Nicole,” he said rapidly, before she had a chance to react. “This is the man who wants to buy your house.”

  An awkward pause, “Yes,” warily.

  “I want to see it one more time. Let’s meet Tuesday at ten in the morning at the house. I’ll be ready to give you an offer.”

  “I won’t budge on the price. If you want it, you’ll have to come up to my asking. I have a great deal of property. I’ll meet you there. We can discuss it.”

  “Good. I’m planning to bring along the woman friend we spoke about the last time we were together.” He was confident that Nicole would remember their discussion about Gina.

  “I understand,” Nicole said, tersely.

  “She wants to meet Maria. She may want to hire her or at least hear what Maria has to say about what’s happened in the past on the property and surrounding areas. I find that history is always significant in a situation like this. After all, you’re asking me to put up a great deal of money.”

  “I’ll do my best to have Maria here. I don’t think that should be a problem.”

  “See you then.”

  He hung up the phone and picked up Betty’s red folder. For the next two hours, while Gina slept, he read each and every page that had been copied from United States archival materials. They made grim reading. The crimes perpetrated against the people of Argentina during the Dirty War were horrendous. People disappeared and were never heard from again. Murder, torture of all kinds. Prisoners hung from rods and beaten with clubs that had nails at the end. Women repeatedly raped by guards. Prisoners confined to cages with wild dogs.

  It stunned Craig to confront in black and white how a wonderful country could have fallen into such a black hole. And in all of the papers Betty assembled, one man emerged as the worst monster of them all: General Miguel Galindo.

  Contained within the documents was another troublesome issue. The United States government knew at the time some of what was happening. Craig couldn’t tell how much. The United States certainly wasn’t an active participant in the Communist witch hunt in Argentina, but it did not actively intervene to stop the generals.

  This time would be different, Craig vowed. He had no idea whether Estrada and his fellow generals would wreak as much misery on their own people again, but he intended to do everything possible, down to his last breath, to block them from coming to power.

  He had only one tool at his disposal right now. She was asleep in the back of the plane.

  God help him for what he was going to do to this girl.

  Washington

  Bryce watched Briscoe walk into the office, carrying a thin folder in his hand, with a big smile on his face.

  “I prefer electronic transfer,” the PI said. “I would be uncomfortable walking around with a million dollar check, but if you insist.”

  “Hold all my calls,” Bryce barked to his secretary and slammed the door. He turned to Briscoe. “What do you have for me?”

  “You better sit down for this.”

  Bryce pointed to a brown leather sofa and chair around a marble top coffee table in one corner of the large office. Briscoe sat on the sofa. Bryce on the chair.

  “Cut to the bottom line,” Bryce said.

  “There is no Barry Gorman.”

  Bryce’s head snapped back. “Then who the hell …”

  “You have to let me lay it out. Piece by piece.”

  Bryce was impatient. But Briscoe was entitled to do it his way. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “First, I put feelers out to my contacts in the Bay area, and I have plenty. Nobody had heard of Barry Gorman or the Philoctetes Group. Even in the financial community.”

  “His bio said he went to Stanford. BA and MBA.”

  “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. One of my people tapped into the University’s computer. No record of Barry Gorman.”

  “How about the San Francisco phone number for the Philoctetes Group?”

  “Here’s where it gets real interesting.”

  Bryce leaned forward on the end of his chair. “Tell me.”

  “I have a friend who works at AT&T. He told me that calls to the number on the card you gave me for the man claiming to be Barry Gorman were routed back to …” He paused for a moment, making Bryce wait. Then he continued, “Were routed back to CIA headquarters.”

  Bryce shot to his feet. “That fucking Betty Richards,” he said angrily.

  It had to be Betty herself. No underling would have dared do this. Who the hell did she think she was undercutting his authority on Argentina. Sneaking behind his back. Disobeying Treadwell’s orders. He had the president’s ear in a way she never would. She’d pay dearly for this.

  “You did a good job,” Bryce said. “You’ve earned your money.”

  Briscoe didn’t move. “Wait. I’m not finished yet.”

  Bryce sat back down.

  “I have a good friend at Langley in an important position,” Briscoe said. “He hates Ms. Richards and was willing to help me. So I called Schiller, had him dust Barry Gorman’s suite at the Alvear for prints, and forward them to me electronically. A couple more taps on the computer keyboard and my friend at Langley had them. Isn’t modern technology wonderful.”

  “And?” Bryce asked anxiously.

  “He came up with a match. Craig Page.”

  “No shit!”

  “He must have had extreme plastic surgery.”

  “We have to be damn certain of this.”

  “That’s what I told my friend. He had their top man look at the prints. Then he explained that the Agency had two sets in their files for Craig Page. One from when he joined the agency out of college. The other from when he became director a year ago. Those match. However, following the second set, when he had the plastic surgery, he must have had skin grafting in an effort to remove his prints. But they partially came back. Enough to make a match with the prints Schiller forwarded from the Alvear. Also, I have confirmatory information.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My friend told me that Betty Richards and Craig Page were extremely close when he was with the agency. So it would make sense that she would reach out to him to do this job off the books. My friend also made a good guess about when she recruited him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “A couple weeks ago, she made a sudden trip to Sardinia. Reason for trip was vacation. Betty Richards never takes vacations and Craig Page lived in Italy between CIA stints. So I think it’s a lock. Now you have it all. A home run.”

  Bryce transferred the million dollars electronically to Briscoe’s account. When the PI was gone, Bryce picked up the phone and called Schiller.

  The colonel listened to Bryce’s report about Barry Gorman in silence. At the end, he said, “How certain are you of this conclusion?”

  “The fingerprints you forwarded to Briscoe matched those for Craig Page on file at the CIA. There is no Barry Gorman. No $10 billion. Only Craig Page, a CIA agent working for Betty Richards.”

  “Craig Page,” Schiller said. “The former CIA director?”

  “Yes. He had plastic surgery. He and Betty Richards were close.”

  “I thought Barry Gorman was a phony all along. Every time I suggested it to Estrada, he dismissed me. Well, he won’t be able to do that now.”

  “One other thing, you can tell General Estrada this CIA agent has been romancing Gina Galindo and undercutting my efforts to help Argentina.”

  “Don’t worry. I will do that.”

  Bryce now expected Gina to
come crawling back to him. And as for Betty, he would use this information to nail her with Treadwell.

  “There is one other thing,” Schiller said.

  “What’s that?”

  The colonel coughed and cleared his throat. Bryce guessed he was hesitating about whether to tell Bryce about something. Finally, Schiller said in a soft, conspiratorial tone, “Are you truly a friend of Argentina, Edward?”

  “Absolutely. I was the one who persuaded President Treadwell not to intervene if an attack occurs, exactly as General Estrada asked me to do in Buenos Aires.”

  “Excellent. Then I would like to ask you to be with President Treadwell very early Wednesday morning. That’s tomorrow morning. To make certain that Treadwell sticks with his decision. If you know what I mean.”

  Bryce knew exactly what Schiller was saying. The colonel had given him the time for Argentina’s attack, and he had given Schiller the information to destroy Craig Page.

  Buenos Aires

  As Craig slowed the car to a stop in front of Nicole’s house, Gina said, “One hour is all I will give you.”

  Nicole was standing in the driveway restraining her two dogs. The Dobermans were barking furiously.

  Craig reached into the trunk and extracted the black duffel containing Betty’s red folder.

  Inside the house, Nicole asked them, “Would you like something to eat or drink?”

  “Nothing for me,” Gina said. “I’d just like to use a bathroom.”

  Nicole pointed her up the stairs. Once she was gone, Craig said anxiously, “Is Maria here?”

  “In the kitchen waiting until I come for her.”

  “Good.”

  “I can understand why you didn’t want to say anything on the phone. Now that you’re here, you want to tell me what this is about?”

  “Gina’s close to Estrada, and she knows a great deal. She could help us big time, but so far she hasn’t been willing to cooperate. I’m hoping she’ll change her mind when she hears Maria’s story about Benito.”

  Nicole sighed. “I figured it was something like that. You better let me walk Maria through it. She’s terrified. Afraid it will get back to Estrada and he’ll kill her and her family.”