The Argentine Triangle: A Craig Page Thriller Read online

“Fabulous,” she said.

  Now, beginning to believe that her enthusiasm might be genuine, he smiled.

  “I’ve never been to Argentina. Tell me about it.”

  His request launched her into a description of how beautiful and exciting Buenos Aires was. She spoke for several minutes with passion about her wonderful country and its capital city. As she spoke, she took generous sips of the wine. He could tell she was enjoying herself.

  “Buenos Aires sounds like Milan,” he said. “The wide boulevards and all that.”

  “You’re right. That’s what all the books say. I’ve never been to Europe, but I’ve always wanted to go. And the Andes mountains in the west are magnificent. We have beaches in the east and the greatest waterfall in the world at Iguazu in the north on the Brazilian border.”

  “Better than Niagara and Victoria Falls?”

  Earnestly, she nodded. “I’ve never seen those, but from what I’ve read, it’s not even close. When you go to Argentina, you have to travel to Iguazu and decide for yourself.”

  He laughed. She was a refreshing change from the hardboiled cynics he was used to dealing with.

  “When exactly are you going to Argentina?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Next couple of days.”

  “I find that American Airlines via Miami is the best way to go.”

  Craig smiled. “I have a private plane on standby.”

  His words made her start. Perhaps she couldn’t imagine having enough money to do that.

  By now their venison had arrived. As the waiter placed it on the table, a cell phone rang in her purse. “Darn. I always forget to turn that thing off.”

  Other patrons were staring at her. “Oh I’m so sorry,” she said, fumbling to pull it out and stop the noise. “I’ll tell them I’ll call back. I won’t talk.”

  He watched her as she held the phone up to her ear. She listened for a minute, then whispered, “No, Edward, I can’t see you tonight. I’m sorry … I told you I’m working on a story.”

  She hung up and turned off the phone. “It’s gone for the rest of the night.”

  That had to be Bryce, Craig decided. “Hope I didn’t keep you from your boyfriend.”

  Her face reddened. “No, no. Just an acquaintance. I’m not married, and I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  Alright, Craig thought. That’s a clear signal she likes me. A green light if there ever was one.

  But a green light for what?

  Craig had made up his mind that he couldn’t possibly sleep with Gina. It wasn’t merely her age and immaturity, but the fact that he was deceiving her. He had to achieve his objective of planting those bugs in her apartment without ending up in bed with her.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “Me for what?”

  “Are you married?

  He recalled the fictitious Barry Gorman bio. Barry had been married once and divorced. Had to stick with the cover.

  “I was married for a couple of years,” he said. “It didn’t work out.”

  “Any children?”

  “Happily not.”

  She smiled at him. That genuine smile. “Jorge said you live in California.”

  “The San Francisco area.”

  “I’ve never been to California. I’d like to go.”

  Craig brought the subject back to Argentina. For the rest of dinner, he let her rattle on about how great the country was and how it made sense for him to invest. All of this chatter made him wonder whether she was following a script given to her by Suarez or Estrada.

  With dessert, Craig ordered a half bottle of Sauterne. She put up a mild protest. “Oh my. I’m not sure I can drink more wine. I’m not used to drinking so much.”

  “Wait until you taste this Chateau d’Yquem,” he told her. “It’s called the nectar of the Gods. There’s nothing like it in the world.”

  By the time she had sipped a little, she was agreeing with him completely.

  While Craig signed the check, she finished the golden liquid in her glass.

  “My driver’s waiting outside,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “That would be great.”

  As they left the dining room, she was wobbling and reached out for his arm for support. “Oh my, I’ve had a lot to drink,” she said.

  “You’ll be fine when you hit the air.”

  Ten minutes later, the blue Cadillac ground to a stop in front of the Watergate building. She said, “This has been the best business dinner I’ve ever had. The best evening.”

  He rested his hand on her shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be over quite yet. I’d love to see the view from your apartment. I’ll bet you face the river.”

  “I do,” she said. “I’m on the top floor. And I have a balcony. You want to come up?”

  He smiled. “If you’re not too tired.”

  In the glow of the streetlights, she nodded her head. “I’m from Argentina. We’re night people.”

  Her apartment was a huge two-bedroom. Craig knew that she didn’t get this on a journalist’s salary, and newspapers didn’t fund expenses lavishly. That meant somebody was bankrolling her. He doubted it was grandma and grandpa. A more likely guess was Bryce or Estrada. Was she really the sweet innocent she seemed to be? Or was this all a great snow job on her part?

  “The apartment is a sublease,” Gina said, as she took off her bracelet, “so don’t think this type of furniture is my taste.”

  Looking around, he saw why she made the comment. The furnishings were starkly modern. All done in whites. White carpet. White sofa and chairs. Glass topped coffee table.

  “I like Italian provincial furniture,” she said.

  As she opened the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony, she said, “Fabulous view from up here.” Craig followed her outside. The clouds from earlier in the day had passed. It was crystal clear with a sky full of stars shining over the Potomac River. He pointed his hand to the right. “Georgetown.”

  Shivering from the cold, she moved up close to him, putting an arm around his shoulder.

  Craig pulled away and said, “I’ve got a great idea.”

  “Whatever it is, I hope we can do it inside.”

  “Of course.”

  Back in the living room he told her, “I love to tango. Do you have any music?”

  “Of course. I may have been stuck in that girls’ school all those years, but I still picked up something of sin.”

  “I didn’t know tango was sinful.”

  “It depends on how you do it,” she said laughing. “Although I don’t think the sisters would have approved of any style.”

  While she put on the music, Craig removed his jacket. He began hesitantly, uncertain how good she was. Once he felt her responding intuitively to his face and his body, not his feet, he realized that he had a facile partner.

  Gracefully, he followed the rhythm, leading her through the erotic, undulating thrusts and motions of the tango, and as he pulled her in tight against him, their bodies fused at the hips and torso and their legs dovetailed. The tango was in her blood. She was a natural for it, full-busted and well-proportioned in her hips and rear, and knew perfectly well how to move her body in time with the music.

  To Craig the tango, the most sensuous of all dances, was like making love on your feet. “Vertical expression of a horizontal desire,” he remembered Angela Rippon had described it. “Sensual coupling, forged by raw emotion. Sexy and synchronized. Salacious and sultry. The dance of desire. The dance of lust.”

  Around and around the white-carpeted floor they glided, their bodies colliding, molding together as one, then pushing apart. She was anticipating his every move, sliding her body against his, then moving with him.

  Perspiration dotted their foreheads, but still they danced, until finally she stopped, pulled away, and stood still, her face flushed.

  “I’m a little tipsy … not used to drinking so much,” she mumbled. “The whole room’s spinning. I better lie down for a
minute. To get a second wind.”

  He led her into the bedroom and helped her onto the bed. Fully dressed, she was on her back. He removed her shoes and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed. She was sound asleep.

  Moving quietly, he went back into the living room and put on his jacket. From the pocket, he removed the two bugs Tim had given him. His guess was that of the three phones in the apartment, she probably used the one in the bedroom the most. He could see well enough with the light shining in from the living room to unscrew the hearing portion of the handset on the pink phone next to the bed and install the bug. The other one could go anywhere in the apartment, but if Bryce was doing her here, then the bedroom was the place for it. He surveyed the room in the dim light and settled on a white wooden night table next to the bed. A lamp sat on top. He pulled the sticky strip off the listening device and slipped it under the top shelf of the table. He fastened it to the center of the wood, where it wouldn’t be spotted.

  Then he took one of the Barry Gorman business cards out of his pocket. On the front, he added his cell phone number. On the back he scribbled, “Had a great time tonight. Can’t wait to see you again. I’ll call on the way back from Argentina.”

  He left the card in the center of the desk in the bedroom.

  Before leaving the apartment, he took one more glance at her. He was now convinced that her innocence was genuine. Gina was out of her league, playing a dangerous game with Bryce and General Estrada.

  Early the next morning, Craig called Alice Dunn from the hotel. She was expecting him.

  As he walked through the door of the McLean two-floor colonial, the woman who greeted him was a shell of the woman he had last seen in Paris. Her eyes were bloodshot. Her long brown hair was scraggly. She had lost twenty pounds, he guessed, and she had only been about 120 to start.

  She hugged him and began crying. His insides were ripping apart with sympathy.

  She pulled away. “Thanks for coming, Craig. You want something to drink?”

  He saw several half empty coffee cups scattered around the living room. Half a dozen ashtrays filled with cigarette butts. She had quit ten years ago.

  “Just some water. Thanks.”

  She brought him a glass from the kitchen. He sat down across a coffee table filled with cups and ashtrays.

  “What’d Betty tell you about Teddy?” she asked.

  “How she recruited him. How …”

  “She’s a parasite. A bloodsucker. They all are in Langley. He gave so much to those people for so long and they wouldn’t let him enjoy the years of peace that he deserved. She refused to tell me where she sent him.”

  He had to give Alice the truth. “Argentina.”

  “Thanks for telling me. He never worked there. Only in Chile and Colombia”

  “That’s why she picked him.”

  “What did she tell you about his situation down there?”

  “That he sent back valuable information. That he was almost finished. Then she stopped hearing from him. A complete blackout. He’s ‘gone missing’ Betty told me.”

  “You think she’s telling the truth?”

  Craig nodded. “I do. What do you think?”

  “That somebody kidnapped him. They’re demanding a ransom and she’s refusing to pay.”

  “Has anyone contacted you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t think it’s that,” Craig said. “Rather, somebody is holding him as a bargaining chip to play later. Or he’s …”

  “Dead,” she completed the sentence for Craig, closed her eyes, and ran her hand roughly through her hair.

  “I’m going to Argentina to find out what happened to him. And hopefully bring him back.”

  “I asked her to give you that job. Did she tell you that?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you hate me for doing that?”

  “Of course not. You and Ted have been my friends for so many years. I’d do anything for the two of you.”

  She rolled her small hands into fists. “Thank you, Craig.”

  “In the meantime, is there anything I can do to help you? Financial or anything else?”

  “With the money Betty paid Ted, I’m fine. All I care about is getting him back.”

  He finished his water and stood up.

  She walked him to the door. As she opened it, she spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Please, Craig. Don’t leave him in some hellhole to die. Find him and bring him home.”

  Her words cut through Craig like a machete. “Please … I’m begging you …”

  From the Dunn’s house, Craig told Vince to drive him back to Tim Fuller’s office on K Street.

  Tim was waiting for Craig in the reception area. “State of the art technology’s incredible,” Tim told Craig. “Let me show you.”

  Craig followed Tim to a room marked “Sound Lab” in Tim’s suite of offices. A technician, wearing a set of earphones, was watching wheels turn behind glass on a console resting on a large table. A printer was spitting out a transcript.

  “We have a voice recognition system,” Tim said. “Everything the bugs pick up is fed to a computer that prepares a written transcript. If anything critical is ever garbled in the typing, we can go back to the oral.”

  Craig glanced at the white clock with the black hands on the wall. It was five minutes after two in the afternoon, almost fifteen hours since he had planted the bugs and left Gina. “Any useful information yet?”

  Tim grinned broadly, showing teeth stained with nicotine from cigars.

  “Depends on what you consider useful,” Tim said with a lascivious grin.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Same old Craig. When our subject woke up at 9:24 this morning, the first words out of her mouth were, ‘Oh, I can’t believe I did that with him.’’’

  Craig blushed. “Who’d she say that to?”

  “Herself, I think. Nobody responded. What exactly did she do with you?”

  Craig dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “Tell me what else you picked up.”

  Tim handed him three bound volumes of transcripts and pointed to an empty office. “Go read them for yourself, pal.”

  As Craig sat down at the desk and opened the first volume, he hoped there wouldn’t be a call from Gina to Estrada. She was immature, little more than a schoolgirl in some ways. But he liked her. He didn’t want her to be the general’s pawn in Washington. The first transcript came from the telephone bug and was made at 9:50 a.m., less than half an hour after she woke up. An outgoing call from Gina to Rosie.

  As he read, he realized Rosie was a good friend of hers back in Argentina.

  Gina described Craig as suave and debonair. She then told Rosie in detail everything she and Craig had done. At the end, Rosie said, “I can’t believe you fell asleep. He would have been great in bed.”

  “I’m not worried. I’ll see him again.”

  “Well, you better be careful, Gina. These are much older men you’re involved with.”

  The second transcript was a call Bryce had made to Gina. As he suspected, she had canceled her date with Bryce last evening to go out with him and Bryce was furious about that, forcing her to apologize repeatedly. Craig learned from the transcript that Bryce would be taking her to the White House that evening to a party with the president and then to see a movie. Bryce was turning 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into a bordello. She had to be doing this for Estrada. He bristled thinking about her in bed with Bryce. She couldn’t possibly like that old fart.

  These two transcripts were interesting, but no smoking guns. Then he picked up the third one. Bull’s-eye. General Estrada calling her at 11:02 that morning.

  Estrada: Did Barry Gorman call you?

  Gina: Yes. Yesterday afternoon.

  Estrada: Why didn’t you call me. I told you to call me.

  [A pause.]

  Gina: Well, nothing much happened.

  Estrada: What did he say?

  Gina: That
he was planning a trip to Argentina to consider making some investments. He wanted to know whether this was a good time.

  Estrada: What did you say?

  Gina: It’s an excellent time. Our economy is starting to rebound.

  Estrada: What else?

  Gina: That was pretty much it.

  Estrada: Didn’t he want to see you?

  Gina: No. he sounded very busy getting ready for his trip to Argentina.

  Estrada: Okay. Now what about the surface-to-air missiles and rocket grenade launchers Bryce promised they would ship? When will we receive them?

  Gina: I don’t know.

  Estrada: Well, ask Bryce. I need them.

  Gina: I’ll do that. I promise.

  Estrada: And call me with the answer soon. This is important. Do you understand?

  Gina: As soon as I can.

  Craig nearly felt ill when he finished the transcript. Estrada had used Gina to put her in this position with Bryce. Estrada was despicable.

  Why hadn’t she told Estrada she had been with him last evening? Shame for what they had done and how she behaved?

  Was she afraid it took away from Estrada’s primary mission for her—the one of sleeping with Bryce to receive the weapons he needed?

  She could have told Estrada they had dinner. Maybe she wasn’t a good enough liar and afraid Estrada would have forced the rest out of her.

  Craig closed up the transcript and thought about calling or seeing Betty to give her a report of what he had learned so far before he left for Buenos Aires. Quickly, he rejected the idea. The money and guns he needed from her were already locked in the vault at the Four Seasons. He didn’t want to risk blowing his cover.

  Time to go to Buenos Aires, he decided. He placed a call to Wilmington, North Carolina, where a private charter company maintained a fleet of jets. “We’ll meet you at Dulles Airport in two hours,” the dispatcher said.

  Craig finished packing and was about to leave his room at the Four Seasons when the phone rang. It was Jorge Suarez.

  “When are you flying to Buenos Aires?”

  “In a couple of hours.”

  “Excellent.” Suarez coughed and cleared his throat. “There’s one suggestion I forgot to make yesterday.”