Conspiracy (31 page)

Maracall went on to tell Sharon what he proposed to do. They were shorthanded at the moment because of the International Music and Dance Festival. More foreigners than usual were in town, but the Guardia still managed to keep track of goings-on among the townspeople. “In the manner of the police patrolman on the beat in your American films of past years,” he explained, “they have their sources of information. I will have inquiries made. Also, I should like to use your name, with your permission.”

Advertisements, he said, would be circulated asking for the party who had mailed the letter to Madrid to come forward. If they could say where the letter had been found, possibly the location might be a clue to where Palermo was held.

“If we get no results,” he concluded, “twenty-four hours from now we shall redouble our efforts. This I promise you. We are a smaller town here than Madrid, and so I believe we can afford to be somewhat more responsive. In the meantime, have you seen the Alhambra? The palace and the grounds are very beautiful this time of year.”

Hotel rooms were impossible to find during this peak in the tourist influx, but the captain was an influential friend of the manager of the small hostel inside the palace walls. All it took was a phone call, and Sharon had a room for the remainder of the week. “You’ve been just incredibly helpful,” she said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“If I find Palermo, I will receive thanks enough, my lady,” he replied graciously. Then his eyes flashed and his voice hardened. “Besides, I find it something of a challenge that those who took captive a man I admire would choose my territory as their hiding place.”

That afternoon and evening, advertisements were circulated through the bodegas, restaurants, and hotels of Granada. Whoever mailed a certain letter to a Ms. Foster in Madrid would receive a reward if they could describe its address more fully and tell where they had found it.

Unfortunately the Yamadas had continued on their tour and were now in Valencia, two hundred miles east. No one who arrived to claim the reward could describe what he had supposedly mailed or when he had mailed it.

Inquiries by Guardia patrolmen also yielded no helpful clues.

Accordingly, Captain Maracall took further steps. “We cannot actually initiate a house-to-house search for Palermo,” he told Sharon. “The law does not permit it without stronger evidence, and during the music and dance festival we don’t have the manpower anyway. But we can spread the word that such a search is being planned. We won’t say it’s for Palermo— that would tell them too much. We simply make our presence felt a bit more strongly, and let them scramble to find a new hiding place.”

Wednesday afternoon, as expected, Russia beat Spain three to two, and Argentina demolished the American soccer team, seven to two. 

Agustin Vavra the gypsy was in the
jugar
shop to catch the last few minutes of the Americans’ game on TV. All in the shop agreed that Palermo might have made the difference, assuming he’d had another of his shutouts or that he’d allowed only one goal.

“Do you think he’ll be back for Saturday’s game?” Agustin asked.

“In no way,” said the
jugar
shop proprietor, a gray-faced and emaciated man with tobacco stains on his lips and fingers. “It is not logical that he should return. If he has stayed away from this game voluntarily, why should he show his face on Saturday? And if someone has kept him away, as the papers are now maintaining, why should they want him to play against Spain any more than against Argentina?”

“What of the odds on the game Saturday?” asked another man.

The proprietor licked a long brown cigar, lit it, and wiped his mouth with his hand. “Considering today, I think it logical that the odds in favor of Spain should increase. I shall offer—” He paused to think again and then said triumphantly, “Five to one!”

Agustin had ten thousand pesetas in his pocket. The money represented his winnings from today’s game, plus the contents of a wallet lifted by little Agustin from a departing
gadje
tourist last night. If Agustin got it all down on the game in Seville at five-to-one odds, he could recoup his loss from the previous week. Lora would never be the wiser.

He peeled the bills off his bankroll one by one until nothing but a few singles were left. “I bet this on the Americans,” he said. “I just have a feeling that Palermo may return.”

17

When he got back from the U.S.-Argentina debacle in Barcelona, Dan Richards took Wayne Taggart aside for a talk. Now that Wayne was in charge, Dan needed his approval for the use of a mobile van and two technicians. The UBC grapevine had not come to include Taggart, so he was surprised when Dan told him that Katya Romanova wanted UBC’s help in defecting to America. 

However, Wayne was reluctant to involve the network. “I just got done promising our man from the State Department that we’d be good boys,” he said. “That doesn’t include snatching a Russian chick and then bragging about it. And if you want the truth, if we can’t brag about it, I don’t see anything in it for the network. So we’d be running a needless risk. I guess what I’m telling you is that we won’t do it. She’ll have to find some other escape hatch.”

Dan hesitated. “It’s not really a matter of what’s in it for us,” he said. “I really feel very strongly that she needs our help.”

“Yeah?”

Dan nodded, hoping he wouldn’t have to say any more, that his word and professional stature would be enough to move Taggart to agree with him. 

They weren’t.

“So convince me,” Taggart said. “What’s so special?”

“Can you keep a confidence? This one’s important. It means a life.”

“Hell, I’m terrific at confidences!” Taggart lowered his voice. “I know where so goddam many bodies are buried— how do you think I got this job?”

So Dan told him Katya was pregnant.

“Wow!” said Taggart. “Now that is a piece of news! If we could put that on the air, I’ll bet we’d see a two-percent-share rise the next day!”

He saw that Dan was staring at him. “Of course,” Taggart went on, “I would never ask you to put that on the air.”

“So I can have the truck?”

Taggart nodded. “Try to set it up for the final game, I guess. Unless you can do it before.” Then he cleared his throat. “By the way,” he said, “we’ve got a couple of changes I’ve introduced for the final and the third-place game. For a start, we’re going live for both of them instead of just for the final. And we’re going to take you out of the press booth and Rachel out of the interview studio and put you both down on the field. That way the folks at home will get to see your faces more often.”

Dan was indifferent; the anchor position “upstairs” was the senior post, but he liked field-level work. “Who’s taking my place?”

“I’ll know pretty quickly,” Taggart replied. “A few contractual matters have to be worked out before I can make the announcement.”

18

Following supper that evening, before he went up to take his shift of guard duty over Palermo, Agustin Vavra proudly prepared to tell his wife of his “investment.” Before he could begin to speak, however, she shooed the children and her mother away from the entrance to the cave and dragged Agustin out onto the pathway. The sun had just set, and dusk was coming over the hillside paths.

“They were giving two-to-one odds against America at the
jugar
,” Agustin began. “I put all our reserves in. We’ll come out with fifty thousand pesetas and you can have all the rugs you want.”

She stopped and turned to face him on the rocky trail. Her eyes blazed. “Are you such a colossal fool—” she began, but Agustin held up his hand.

“It is a good wager,” he said. “They do not know that Palermo will be returning for the game. He will make all the difference, just as he has in the others.”

Lora shook her head. “You have not heard what I have to say, for if you knew, you would bite out your tongue rather than utter such foolishness.”

Then she told him. What he had heard Saturday night had been a trick to keep Palermo cooperative. This Saturday morning they were going to kill him. Rojas had already made arrangements with Quetar the undertaker for the disposal of the body. 

“And if they are caught,” she went on, “to whom will the Guardia come with their machine guns? To the owners of the cave! And do you know they are planning a search any day now? The word has been passed; it is only a matter of time before they begin.”

“The Guardia is looking for Palermo here?” Agustin felt his ample belly tighten.

“They seek for Palermo throughout Spain,” Lora replied. “Here some say it is heroin; some say it is jewels from the
gadje
women of the festival. But if they come seeking anything in our cave up there,” she said, “they will find enough to put one fat gypsy in their jail until he rots.”

Just before sunrise the next morning, Rojas came up the trail to the top of the Sacromonte. He was carrying the Polaroid camera Raul had given him, along with a copy of that morning’s newspaper, the
Credenciale
from Malaga.

His face darkened as he found the cave empty.

Scanning the hillside, he located a rotund shape lying in the grass just over the crest. Rojas covered the distance in a few swift strides.

It was Agustin, lying face down. The back of his head was bleeding from a superficial cut.

Rojas kicked him sharply below the buttocks, catching Agustin’s testicles with the toe of his boot. A yell burst forth from the unconscious man and he rolled over, clutching himself.

When he recovered his composure, Agustin found himself looking into the silencer-equipped barrel of Rojas’s ,33-caliber pistol.

“Put that away,
Voivode
,” he said, addressing Rojas by his formal title as chieftain. “It’s true Palermo is gone, but I had no choice. The Guardia were coming to the cave. Someone must have tipped them off. I saw them grouping together over there beyond the wall, and I knew they were planning a surprise raid. So I cut Palermo’s leg bonds and hustled him up here to hide. It was only a short distance, but I made the mistake of turning my back on him. He must have picked up a rock from the trail.”

Rojas’s thick lips curled with contempt. “You lie,” he said. “I heard about your bet in Granada. And your story would not deceive a child.”

Before Agustin could protest his innocence any further, Rojas’s pistol spat out a bullet. A hole appeared in Agustin’s throat. Another, a moment later, opened up in Agustin’s forehead. He fell.

This time when Rojas kicked him, Agustin did not move.

19

Outside Madrid International Airport at exactly nine o’clock the same morning, a light-haired man in a UBC technician’s uniform came to the entrance of the satellite uplink antenna building. He presented his network ID card. The cable connector was the problem, he told the receptionist. The network wanted to install a monitoring device that would register certain fluctuations in intensity among the various color shadings in the signal components.

A short while afterward, his task completed, Raul Coquias left the building. He walked rapidly, anxious to change clothes in his car and drive back to the airport. From there he would take the next flight to Granada and learn why the morning’s photograph of Keith Palermo had not arrived on schedule.

In his car, however, he found Helen Bates. Her dark eyes flashed displeasure at his report.

Raul silently cursed the gypsies and planned Rojas’s execution. He would disguise himself as a
gadje
tourist; Rojas’s family would be forced to witness the shooting in their cave.

“They won’t talk,” he told Helen. “Even if Palermo has escaped and identifies them.”

She shook her head, as though his point was of no consequence. “Our purpose remains constant,” she said. “If not Palermo, then some other American.”

So they would give him a second chance. “When?” he asked.

“If Palermo has escaped, it is likely he will want to join his team for the match in Seville. If he does, you will kill him while the television cameras are on him during the game.”

She told Raul how. Then she gave him a list of backup American targets, in the event that Palermo went into hiding or did not play for some other reason. For a few of the names she had supplied photographs. Raul looked them over as she talked; the targets all seemed to be public figures, mostly entertainers and TV announcers.

“Afterward,” she said, “you will drive away from Seville to the Roman ruins at Italica. In the amphitheater at eleven o’clock I will be there to give you your payment. You will also receive passports for yourself and your family. Those will prove useful if you find it necessary to travel.”

“And Sunday?”

“Sunday will take care of itself,” she said calmly.

20

“I really don’t know why,” Keith Palermo said. He was in the office of a delighted Captain Maracall. Beside Keith on Maracall’s couch sat an even more delighted Sharon Foster. Her hand was linked in Keith’s, and when he gestured as he talked, he moved Sharon’s hand and arm as though they were an extension of his own.

“I could tell the guard was worried;” Keith went on.-He had already told parts of this story; now he was filling in details for the captain’s cassette recorder. “The other two nights he’d just sat at the entrance with a wineskin and his little radio. Last night he was pacing up and down, mumbling something in their gypsy dialect. Something about the Guardia and the
Patrón
. I went to sleep about an hour later than usual, and when I woke up he was standing over me. It was still dark, but he took off the cords around my ankles and said ‘exercise.’ They’d taken me out at night before so I wasn’t particularly aware anything was up.”

“They exercised you after dark?” the captain asked.

“They walked me around. The second night, I got them to let me run in place and do some pushups in the grass. They wouldn’t take the cords off my hands, though. And none of them would speak English. Except for Rojas, their leader. I don’t know if the others understood a word I said to them the whole time.”