The Argentine Triangle: A Craig Page Thriller Read online

  “I couldn’t miss them.”

  “I have to tell you, your surgeon did a hell of a good job. You look ten years younger. I would have never recognized you.”

  “They should have with what I paid them.”

  “It must be weird for Elizabeth.”

  “I haven’t seen her since. It’s a long story.”

  “Meaning I shouldn’t go there?”

  “Some other time, perhaps.”

  Betty led the way to an orange tiled patio. Three floors below, perfectly manicured grass grounds surrounding a huge swimming pool extended to the sea where three yachts were moored. In the pool a couple splashed each other, The woman was blond, topless, and strikingly attractive. Her companion was an Italian movie star Craig recognized.

  The table was set with English bone china and Christofle silver. Craig saw Betty watching him wince as he tenderly eased down into a chair at the table.

  “I have a bottle of Percocet in my suitcase,” she said. “You want a couple?”

  He pointed to the bottle of 1997 Turriga, an extraordinary red wine from Sardinia resting in a metal holder on the table. “That’ll do the job much better and more enjoyably.”

  “When I look at you, I wonder if you should?”

  “I survived yesterday. Somebody up there must be looking out for me.”

  She poured them both glasses of wine, which he sipped slowly. It was wonderful.

  Then she removed the silver dome from the top of the serving bowl, scooped out cold seafood salad with chunks of calamari, mussels, and scallops, distributing them between the two plates. She picked up the basket of rolls and held it out. Craig took one and dipped it into the excellent extra-virgin olive oil. He didn’t think he’d have an appetite, but it was coming back fast.

  After they both took a couple of forkfuls of seafood salad, he said, “How in the world did you find me?”

  “When I was appointed CIA director eleven months ago, a mysterious postcard arrived in the mail. The picture on the front was an auto racing track near Torino. On the back was a handwritten note that said ‘Congratulations,’ signed by Enrico Marino.

  “It was partly because of your daughter. One time when I took Francesca to the movies when she was a child she told me, ‘One day my dad’s going to be a famous race car driver.’ Besides, I recognized the handwriting and compared it with other notes you sent me over the years. The Internet is marvelous. So when I wanted to find you, all I had to do was Google Enrico Marino. I saw an item that said you were racing in Sardinia this weekend. I was impressed with the other things I read about your new career. You’ve compiled quite a good record for yourself in a short period.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve only won small races. None of the biggies. I was hoping Sardinia would be my breakthrough.”

  “I’ve learned that from now until spring is an off-season for racing so I want to give you something else to do.”

  “You’re my best friend in the whole world, Betty, and I owe you big time for so many things, but no way will I do anything for you or with you as long as Treadwell is president and that asshole Edward Bryce is telling him what to do. Sorry you came so far for nothing.”

  She smiled and said, “I’m going to tell you something that may change your mind.”

  “Nothing will change my mind.”

  “I’m here because Ted Dunn’s gone missing. He was doing a job for me. Alice is desperate. She asked me to get you to help. We want you to find him.”

  She had blurted out her words as if dropping a live grenade on the table.

  Craig’s head snapped back. Ted Dunn was an old friend of his. A relationship that began when Ted had recruited Craig, then a senior at Carnegie Mellon, for the CIA. Ted had been Craig’s mentor in training at the Farm in Southern Virginia. Craig had remained friends with Ted and Alice for more than three decades.

  Craig recalled the last time he had seen Ted and Alice. He had learned they would be vacationing in Paris when he was director of the EU Counterterrorism Agency and took them to dinner at Apicius.

  Ted and Alice had told Craig how happy they were that Ted had retired. They had their health and enjoyed being together after spending so much time apart during Ted’s CIA days in Latin America. He remembered Alice saying, “It may sound trite, but this is our time.”

  Craig sighed deeply. Well, it may have been their time, but it had gotten fucked up. He wondered what in the world induced his friend to get back on the merry-go-round.

  When he had first seen her, Craig thought there was nothing Betty could possibly say that would make him even think about working for her. Now he was willing to listen, but not necessarily do any more than that. And that was only for Dunn’s sake.

  “What the hell was Ted doing for you?”

  “I asked him to do a job in Argentina off the books.”

  “So you want me to go to Argentina and find out what happened to him.”

  “For openers, yes.”

  Craig drank his wine while thinking about what Betty had said. Finally, he shook his head. “My God, Betty. I’m not the right person for that job. Unlike Ted, who knew the territory, I’ve never even been to Argentina … or South America, for that matter.”

  “That’s precisely why you’re right for it.”

  “I hate to turn you down, but you really should get somebody else.”

  “Let me give you an incentive to reconsider.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In doing this operation, you may have a chance for revenge on Edward Bryce.”

  Craig sprang to attention. “What’s he have to do with it?”

  “It’s a complicated story. Now are you ready to listen?”

  Craig drank some more wine. Then he said, “Before I do that, I have to tell you how Bryce behaved toward me in the Oval Office the day Treadwell fired me. I don’t think I ever told you in detail.”

  “That’s right. You didn’t.”

  “Well anyhow, he put me through a cross-examination. The great trial lawyer jumped to his feet and pointed a finger at me. Let me show you.”

  Craig sprang out of the chair. As he moved toward the middle of the patio, the room became bleary. He felt queasy and reached for the edge of the table to steady himself. He missed and knocked over a glass of wine, collapsing into a heap next to his chair on the stone patio.

  The nightmare woke him. He and Elizabeth were tied to stakes in a dusty field in the mountains of Morocco. Ahmed, the terrorist, and one of his henchmen were on horses at the end of the field. Spears in hand, they were ready to charge Craig and Elizabeth. “No,” he cried. “Don’t die. No.”

  He shot to a sitting position, his body in a cold sweat, his teeth chattering. He was in a strange bed. The sheets were soaked with perspiration. A woman came running into the room. It was Adriana in her nurse’s uniform, who felt his pulse, then his forehead. She clamped a cuff over his arm and took his blood pressure. “Swallow this,” she said and shoved a pill into his mouth. She held up a glass of water and forced him to drink a little.

  “Where am I?” he asked.

  “In a bedroom in a hotel suite.”

  Then she put his head back down on the pillow and placed a cool, damp cloth against his forehead. He fell asleep.

  Buenos Aires

  “I’m worried,” Colonel Schiller said to General Alfredo Estrada, as he sat across the desk with his shaved head and wire-framed glasses.

  The two of them were alone in Estrada’s large corner office in the Argentine Defense Center.

  “You shouldn’t be,” Estrada said calmly. “Our operation is on schedule. The meeting with the Brazilian generals went well. They’re on board. Young men are flocking to join the army. Thanks to Gina and Edward Bryce, the arms are flowing from the United States.”

  “You’re leaving out the American who was meeting with Pascual in Bariloche. I now have information on Pascual.”

  “Tell me,” Estrada snapped.

  Schiller pulled a thin file fro
m the briefcase at his feet and began reading. “Pascual Frigero. Thirty-nine years old. A native of Bariloche, he spent two years at the university in Buenos Aires majoring in literature, then dropped out and returned home. Now a part-time limo driver, he played the guitar and sang in nightclubs in his hometown frequented by a drug-using crowd. He belonged to a gay and lesbian group and wrote left-leaning poetry. His sister, Antonia, lives in Bariloche. She’s married to a bookkeeper. Has two children ages five and seven, both girls. Pascual’s parents had been Communists. Both were killed in 1982 when their espionage had been uncovered. The details are available in an army report I can give to you.”

  General Estrada waved his hand. “I don’t need that.” He pushed back from his desk, stood up, and paced around the office. Dressed in a freshly-pressed brown army uniform, he was an imposing figure. He was a tall and broad-chested man with a thin mustache and coal-black hair parted in the middle. He had a scar above his right eyebrow. There were two versions of how he had gotten it. Supporters claimed he had received a knife wound in a battle with Communist insurgents in 1979, when the military junta ruled the country. Alone on the street at night, he had been ambushed by a gang of six and had fought his way out—killing all of them.

  His opponents contended that the wound had been inflicted with a sword by a fellow officer whose wife he had seduced. The jealous man had attacked Estrada when the general was screwing his wife. Naked, she had watched in horror the battle that left her a widow.

  Estrada encouraged both accounts.

  “You worry too much,” Estrada said.

  “I’m your director of security. It’s my job to be concerned about threats to our operation.”

  Estrada didn’t like being challenged. He whirled around and stared hard at Schiller, who glanced away.

  “Because of Bryce, I have control over President Treadwell’s Argentine policy.”

  “It’s possible someone in the American government may be acting on their own. Making an end run around Treadwell and Bryce.”

  “That’s your job to find out.”

  Estrada cut across the room to a table that held a map of South America. Without saying a word, he focused his attention on the map, signaling Schiller that their meeting was over.

  Estrada heard Schiller leave the office and close the door.

  He ran his finger along the northeastern boundary of Argentina, along its border with Brazil. It was amazing, Estrada thought, that Argentina, which he loved so dearly—a country rich in land and natural resources, a nation of artisans and talented people, with more than half ethnically Italian like his own ancestors who came from Sicily—could have been for centuries such a chronic underachiever economically and militarily. And then it became the butt of jokes throughout the world after the war for trying to take back from Great Britain the Falklands, to which his country was fully entitled.

  Well, all of that was about to change. Under his leadership, Argentina would be elevated to its rightful position as the preeminent military and economic power in South America. At the same time, he intended to raise the standard of living for the people. They wouldn’t merely have pride in their country’s accomplishments; they would be better off financially. They would revere him for what he did for them.

  Estrada had developed a blueprint for seizing power in Argentina and had prepared the first step in his larger plan. He was ready to move. The next month was critical. No one would stop him.

  Porto Cervo, Sardinia

  With his head still on the pillow, Craig opened his eyes. Looking through the window of one of the bedrooms in Betty’s suite he saw a gorgeous fireball of a sun rising straight ahead over the Gulf of Olbia. His whole body ached. His mind was fuzzy. He remembered fainting at lunch on the balcony, and he was embarrassed. He dressed quietly, then slipped out of the suite for a walk along the beach. He had to focus his thinking before he met with Betty again.

  He took the path through the trees that followed the shoreline and lead to the beach. The emerald green waters were gently lapping against the sand.

  At the edge of the water, clearer than he had ever seen in the Mediterranean, he reached down and scooped up a handful of pebbles. After rolling up his pants legs he waded in and began skipping them.

  In the cool light of the morning, he had to decide if he wanted to take Betty’s assignment.

  Trying to help Ted Dunn was a powerful factor. The possibility of settling his score with Edward Bryce was even more compelling.

  And weighed against those was how shabbily he’d been treated twice by the powers in Washington. Regardless of what she said, he’d be dealing with more than Betty. Was he willing to endure all that political crap again?

  Yes, dammit. It will be worthwhile if I can destroy Edward Bryce.

  Still, he knew there was something else that made him agree—his feelings toward the United States. His father, who owed his life to the US Army, having been rescued as a small boy from Nazi carnage on a farm in Northern Italy, had instilled that love for the United States into Craig.

  “Never forget,” his father had told Craig, in a hospital room hours before he died, “This is a great country.”

  He had learned long ago that working for the United States in espionage meant accepting all the political stuff that went with any organization. It meant working with people like Betty, who were good, but often restricted in what they could do by those above them. It also meant dealing with some despicable people like Edward Bryce. And there were others like him. Craig would have to remind himself constantly that he’d be serving the American people.

  With determination, Craig turned and headed back toward the hotel.

  As he entered the suite he saw Betty sitting on the patio sipping coffee and staring out to sea. He poured himself a cup from the silver thermos on the table and sat down next to her.

  This was awkward. “I’m sorry about yesterday … I don’t know what happened. I …”

  She stared at him sympathetically. “You don’t have to apologize. I had your nurse and doctor from the hospital come out here to examine you.”

  “What’d the old geezer say?”

  She cracked a smile. “That you had been a damn fool not to follow his advice and rest longer at the hospital. The nurse was sure the wine did you in. Then when you stood up abruptly, your blood pressure dropped precipitously.”

  “And you didn’t tell them it was really the memories of my encounter with Edward Bryce.”

  She laughed. “What I’m sitting here wondering,” she said, “is whether I’m being fair asking you to do to this. It involves going to Argentina to find out what happened to Ted and to complete the job I sent him to do. You’ve never even been to Argentina. And you have already done so much for our country.”

  “Yeah, I know that. I took a walk along the beach this morning. I sorted some things out for myself.”

  “And?” she asked expectantly.

  “I’m prepared to do it.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Absolutely. Now, tell me what I’ll need to know.”

  “Breakfast is inside. We’ll eat while we talk.”

  He followed her to the suite’s dining room. While Craig, starving, devoured pieces of an incredibly sweet green melon, she began talking.

  “This all began about six months ago. I received a report from our station chief in Beijing that General Alfredo Estrada, head of the Argentine Armed Forces, had made a secret trip to Beijing, where he met with the top Chinese civilian and military leadership. Estrada didn’t meet with President Mei Ling, but we’re seeing increasing signs that she can’t control her top military people. Perhaps not even the top civilians.

  “Anyhow, there weren’t any press announcements of Estrada’s visit. Nothing public. As you might imagine, it rang alarms for me. As it would have for you.”

  Craig nodded.

  Betty continued, “The Chinese already have a foothold in South America … in Venezuela. That continent is too close to t
he United States to risk it falling under Chinese influence. We’re not talking some remote place like Afghanistan. This is our own backyard. Besides, the place is rich in natural resources, which we need.”

  Craig stopped chewing and interjected, “There’s plenty of oil under the Atlantic off the coast of Argentina and Brazil.”

  “Exactly. And on top of all that, we can’t afford instability in Argentina because it will lead to instability elsewhere in Latin America. That in turn will inevitably produce new waves of immigrants heading north and creating a major problem for us. So in a morning briefing with President Treadwell, I told him what our station chief had reported from Beijing about Estrada’s visit, and that I planned to set up a special task force in the agency to find out what Estrada had in mind.”

  Craig put his fork down. He was listening intently. “And?”

  “Treadwell told me, ‘Lay off Argentina. Edward Bryce has the point for that.’ Those were his exact words. I was so stunned I nearly fell off my chair.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I were.”

  “I did some investigations of Bryce. As you know, he’s a powerful Washington lawyer and close friend and confidant of Treadwell. What I learned is that they’ve been close since they were roommates at Yale. Bryce started his own Washington law firm. It grew into a mega international organization with offices around the world. He began as a successful trial lawyer. Now he’s a power broker and an influence peddler. Apparently Treadwell has blinders on when it comes to Bryce.”

  “I’ll testify to that.”

  “I did a little more quiet checking and found, again to my surprise, that we were supplying arms to Argentina. Large quantities and sophisticated stuff, including advanced fighter jets, surface-to-air missiles, and tanks. I learned from a source in DOD that Treadwell told them to ship whatever Bryce put on a shopping list.”