Authors: David Hagberg
“And later?”
“And later,” Diaz said. “Moscow got to him before Washington. And after Che was gone, Uncle Fidel maybe went a little crazy.”
“Can you help us?” Otto asked.
Diaz looked at them, his mottled face sad, and he shook his head. “I have searched our National Archives, but no such records exist. In any event, it was a situation between the Mother Church and the Spanish government that lasted more than two hundred years. So the legend goes the monks made the trip up into New Mexico along the Jornada del Muerto many times, perhaps dozens. If there are any written records of those expeditions, they would be located in the Vatican Secret Archives in Rome, certainly not open to treasure hunters. But to my knowledge, the Church has never mounted a search to recover what it believes might be its treasure.”
“What about the Spanish government?” Otto asked.
“Now, that’s a different story. Records of the losses were undoubtedly kept, and would be in the Archivo General de Indias, where all the documents from the Spanish Empire in the Americas are maintained.”
“Madrid?” Otto asked.
“Actually Seville,” Diaz said, and he held up a hand before Otto could ask the next question. “I can’t help. It’s a very long story, but I have had disagreements with the staff ever since illegal notes I’d made were discovered and I was kicked out of Spain.”
“But you remember.”
Diaz nodded. “The records of the six treasure sites undoubtedly exist, because the Spanish government mounted two military expeditions to the region—the first in the late 1700s, and the second, undercover during the siege of Alamo to the east. Twelve soldiers in civilian clothes rode up into New Mexico along the Jornada del Muerto but only two returned, empty-handed except for expedition maps and journals.”
“If you can’t help us reach someone in Seville, we’re at a dead end,” Otto said. “None of that stuff will be digitized.”
“But you don’t need me.”
“No?”
“Not if you represent yourselves as treasure hunters willing to split whatever you find with the Spanish government. It would be something new for them, not having to take every successful American treasure-hunting corporation to court.”
Otto was grinning. “Greed,” he said.
“It’s something just about everyone understands,” Diaz said.
FORTY-THREE
Manuel Fuentes got off the elevator on the sixth floor of the Hotel Marquis Reforma and took the stairs up one floor. He hesitated for a moment to make sure the corridor was empty before he hurried down the hall to the suite where McGarvey and Rencke were staying and let himself in with a universal key that had been waiting for him in an envelope, courtesy of the AFI, Agencia Federal de Investigation, when he’d checked in this afternoon.
It was past six, and his DI contact on the ground had phoned to report that the two Americans had taken a cab over to the Palacio Nacional and were inside at this moment. Their purpose for going there was so far unknown.
Donning a pair of rubber gloves, Fuentes quickly went through the contents of the two bedrooms, coming up with a Walther PPK pistol along with a silencer in the overnight bag. These he pocketed, a glimmering of a plan already forming in his head.
In many respects, he felt like a puppet on a chain, his every move directed by Ortega-Cowan, a man he admired and respected and feared and loathed and perhaps even loved a little, all mixed together. But María’s chief of staff was a devious son of a bitch who knew exactly what he was doing.
Yesterday, when it seemed likely that the
coronel
had skipped, he’d opened her office safe and discovered that the Ines Delgado identification papers, along with a fair sum of money and a credit card were missing. From there, he’d traced her military flight from Playa Baracoa to Camagüey, where she’d registered at the Hotel Plaza.
At first, the hotel had seemed to be a mistake on her part because it was right across the street from the train station, where a pair of local DI officers discovered that she had booked a train ticket to Santiago de Cuba under her real name. The obvious conclusion was that she was defecting and would try to reach the American base at Guantánamo Bay.
But casting the net a little wider, the agents discovered the Cubacar rental Hyundai in the Delgado name parked near the train station, and Ortega-Cowan had gone searching for airline reservations first from Camagüey and then Havana, coming up with the Delgado reservations for Mexico City.
“Arrest the bitch at the hotel,” Fuentes had suggested. “We don’t need anything else. Shoot her trying to escape, and we’ve already won.”
“Not yet,” Ortega-Cowan had said. “We don’t know why she’s going to Mexico City, unless it’s to meet with McGarvey or Rencke.”
“What do we do, just let her go?”
“For now. But you’re leaving for Mexico City this evening, so you’ll be there before she does. I want you to organize a couple of teams at the airport to find out where she goes, and another team to watch for the Americans.”
“I’ll get help from a couple of El Comandante’s friends on the AFI.”
“Nothing hands on,” Ortega-Cowan warned. “We need to keep this completely below the radar. Because of the attempt on her life that very nearly succeeded, and her father’s recent death, the good
coronel
is working from seclusion for the time being. I merely want to know what the hell she’s up to.”
“What about the recording equipment at her house?”
“She switched it off.”
“Then she knew that she would be leaving the country and she wanted to leave no trace.”
Ortega-Cowan smiled patronizingly. “You’ll make a very good chief of staff. But first we need to bring her down.”
“Seems to me that she’s doing a good job of her on her own,” Fuentes said.
There was nothing else of interest in either bedroom, and five minutes after he’d entered the suite, he let himself out and went downstairs to his room, where he used his cell phone to place an encrypted call to Ortega-Cowan.
“Where are you at this moment?”
“In my room,” Fuentes said. “But listen, I found a pistol and a silencer in their suite.”
“I hope you took them.”
“Of course.”
“There’s been a new development. The
coronel
did not check into the Four Seasons where she had reservations. Instead she came back to the airport about the same time McGarvey and Rencke were arriving from Atlanta.”
“We didn’t spot her anywhere near them,” Fuentes said.
“I had a hunch and did a computer search of all flights leaving about that time—flights to anywhere. Ines Delgado flew out first class on an Aeromexico flight to Miami.”
Fuentes’s breath was all but taken away by the news. “The bitch is defecting after all.”
“I don’t think so. If she was, she would have gone to Washington not Miami. If she’s recognized on the street, she won’t last five minutes before someone puts a bullet in her brain.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know, but I want you to fly over tonight and take charge of DI operations on the ground. We need to know what she’s doing.”
“What do you want me to do about McGarvey and Rencke?”
“Where are they at this moment?” Ortega-Cowan asked.
“They were followed to the Palacio Nacional, evidently to meet someone there because they showed up at the north entrance, which at this hour is not usually for the public.”
Ortega-Cowan was silent for a long moment.
“Román?” Fuentes prompted.
“Give me a minute, I’m on my computer.”
A full minute passed before Ortega-Cowan was back. “It could be the Spanish gold after all,” he said, and he almost sounded as if he were out of breath.
“What nonsense are you talking about? It’s nothing but a fairy tale.”
“Maybe not. Because in addition to the government, the Palacio Nacional is also home to Mexico’s National Archives. The curator is Dr. José Diaz.”
Fuentes was startled. “I think I know this name from El Comandante’s journal. I think he was here in Mexico City with Uncle Fidel and Che and the others.”
“And where would men such as McGarvey and Rencke go to find out about Spanish gold in the New World?”
“Ay, Jesús,”
Fuentes said. “I’ll go over there right now.”
“I don’t want you to interfere with McGarvey or Rencke. Wait until they leave, and then have a little chat with Dr. Diaz and find out what he told them.”
* * *
By chance, McGarvey and Rencke were just climbing into a cab when Fuentes was paying his taxi driver and getting out, not more than two car lengths away. McGarvey glanced over his shoulder and their eyes met, but if there was any recognition in them, Fuentes couldn’t see it. And moments later, they drove off.
Ortega-Cowan had sent a two-year-old photograph to Fuentes’s phone of Dr. Diaz taken from a
National Geographic
article on Aztec ruins, and as it began to get dark, he waited at the corner, where he had a good sight line of the Palacio’s north exit. But the plaza across the street, and the sidewalk in front of the building were busy, and as it was, Diaz walked right past him before he recognized the archive’s impeccably dressed curator.
Fuentes turned and started to follow the old man, but Diaz walked less than fifty feet to the bus stop. He was frail looking, not more substantial than a scarecrow, but he was carrying a bulging leather briefcase that had to weigh at least ten kilos.
When the bus came, Diaz boarded, told the driver he was going to San Esteban, paid his fare, and sat two rows back. Fuentes got on just ahead of eight or ten others in time to hear the doctor’s destination, which he repeated to the driver, paid his fare, and found a seat a few rows farther back.
The small community on Highway 57, which was part of Mexico City’s ring road, was located just beyond the Plaza de Toros, less than five miles as the crow flies from the Palacio, but with the heavy work traffic, it took nearly an hour to get there.
Diaz got off the bus with a dozen others and trudged a block and a half to a ten-story apartment building. Fuentes caught up with him just before the curator went inside. No one else was around.
“Dr. Diaz, I have come from El Comandante on a matter of some importance.”
Diaz turned, startled, but he was interested. “He’s dead.”
“Yes, and I was with him when he passed. He asked me to give you an important piece of information. But it had to be done in person not over the telephone or Internet. Is there someplace nearby where we can talk in private?”
“My apartment upstairs.”
“I think that the American CIA may have planted microphones sometime earlier today. It’s why I’m here to warn you about an American by the name of Kirk McGarvey, who may have been traveling with a partner. You’re not to talk to them under any circumstances.”
“But they were in my office this afternoon,” Diaz said. He was concerned.
“My God,” Fuentes said. “We have to talk.”
“Across the street, in the park,” Diaz said.
It was very dark and the park, though small, had many trees and benches here and there along a meandering path. Fuentes chose a spot that was completely out of sight of the apartment building, and he and the doctor sat down.
“This information was very important to El Comandante. What was it those two men came to see you about?”
“May I see some identification?”
“Of course,” Fuentes said, and he handed over his diplomatic passport, which Diaz had to hold up to a stray bit of streetlight filtering through the trees. “El Comandante warned me that the Americans would be looking for information about a treasure in Spanish gold buried somewhere in the U.S.”
“That’s exactly what they came to ask me about,” Diaz said.
“What did you tell them?”
“That I couldn’t help.”
Fuentes relaxed a little. “Very good, Doctor. You did the right thing.”
“You don’t understand,” Diaz said. “In truth I could not help, because I have no information.” He handed the passport back. “What is the Cuban government’s interest?”
“Some of that treasure belongs to us.”
Diaz smiled. “Fidel had the same thought, and I told him before the revolution that he was dreaming. Spain would never entertain such a claim. At best, you would be tied up in an international court for years.”
“Is that what you told the Americans?”
“I advised them that only a treasure hunter would have any possibility of convincing Spain to cooperate. In any event, none of that money would go to the Cuban government.”
“I think that you are wrong.”
Diaz smiled. “Old men often are.”
Fuentes got up and walked a few paces away, where he took out McGarvey’s pistol and screwed the silencer on the end of the barrel. He turned back as Diaz was getting to his feet, and shot the old man once in the forehead, killing him instantly.
Wiping the pistol down, he tossed it a few paces away into the bushes and walked through the park, where he found another exit, then went in search of a cab back into the city.
* * *
It was fairly late by the time Fuentes had the cabbie drop him off a couple of blocks from the hotel. He found a small café, where he sat at a sidewalk table, and after he had ordered a coffee, he phoned Ortega-Cowan and told him everything that had happened.
“It is about the gold after all.”
“But Diaz said he told them nothing, because he knew nothing. We could still be chasing a fairy tale.”
“Men such as McGarvey don’t believe in fairy tales,” Ortega-Cowan said. “You’re flying to Miami tonight, but first I want you to make an anonymous call to the police and tell them that you saw a murder being committed. They’ll find the pistol, and if they’re in time, they might just delay McGarvey long enough for you to find out what the
coronel
is up to.”
“If I find her, I think it would be best I kill her and we can get on with things.”
“No,” Ortega-Cowan said.
Fuentes had to laugh. “Don’t tell me that you believe in fairy tales?”