Conspiracy (7 page)

Just before coming back to the truck this evening, Sharon had heard the do-or-die warning that Ross Cantrell, the Texas oil magnate who owned UBC, had given to the UBC team. She nodded agreement. “Do you really think all those sponsors will drop us if we don’t make our ratings the first week?”

Larry shrugged. “I don’t want to find out. I also don’t want to find out why Cantrell let them write a ratings figure into their contracts, and I don’t want to find out what kind of inducements the other networks are offering to make our sponsors drop us. I’ve got enough to give me ulcers without looking for trouble.”

“You think we’ll get our twenty-one rating?”

He shrugged again. “Do you?”

“I think we’ve got a chance. It’s summer, so we’re up against network reruns. And the audience should build as the week goes on.”

“It better build. A twenty-one would put us in the top fifteen shows of the week, this time of year. That’s a lot of soccer fans for America.”

“It doesn’t sound so tough. I can’t think of more than fourteen shows I’d rather watch.”

Though she could laugh, Sharon still felt the strain caused by Cantrell’s change of position on the ratings issue. UBC, they had all been told when they were first hired, would be a network concerned with quality programming rather than mass popularity. If there were revenue difficulties, Cantrell had promised, his own personal capital would ensure that the network stayed afloat for at least a full year. He hadn’t mentioned that promise tonight. And he had looked under more strain than usual.

But she djd not have time to speculate on Cantrell’s motives. Even before she finished talking to Larry, the phone on her console buzzed.

Molly Perkins, at the UBC switchboard, was on the line. A middle-aged Texan, she had been part of Ross Cantrell’s oil operation when he formed UBC. Normally Cantrell’s appointments secretary, she was doing double duty on the switchboard while they were in Madrid.

She sounded worried. “I’ve got a young Spanish gal named Maria Coquias here with me,” she said, “and she’s practically begging to see you. Can I send her over right away?”

14

About a minute later, the salesman started his engine. Groves, seeing the cloud of exhaust smoke, got to his feet and made for the doorway. The sandwich and milk he had wolfed down felt like lead in his belly, but now was the important time and he had to move with precision.

He paused in the parking lot to retrieve the single unbroken ampule, and reached the jeep just as the blue Chevy disappeared from view on the eastbound entrance ramp. Groves got in, gunned the engine into life, and drove out smartly, not wanting to let any more distance get between him and the salesman than was necessary. He had anywhere between five and ten minutes—between five and twelve miles, depending on the salesman’s driving habits. The acid from the ampule, crushed by the salesman’s right rear tire as it rolled forward, would take about that long to eat its way through the tread.

When that event occurred, Groves wanted to be immediately behind the salesman, the first car to arrive on the scene.

Out on the highway he felt naked and exposed, but he told himself there was no point in worrying. He hadn’t any choice. If there were roadblocks up ahead by now looking for the jeep, that was too bad. The odds were that they’d be expecting him to stay on the off roads, though, and that they’d be reluctant to stop traffic along the big arteries. Besides, he reminded himself, there were three other main highways he could have taken. If they’d discovered the bodies, they’d have plenty of other miles to cover than the ones he was traveling.

No choice, he repeated to himself. In a way, that had been the case through this whole project, from the afternoon the thin one had awakened him as he dozed on the sand in front of his beach house in Marbella. “You’re working for the
Patrón
again,” the thin one had said, his pale eyes squinting in the glare off the Mediterranean. “If you succeed, you will be considerably more wealthy.” If Groves failed, the thin one had gone on to say, or if he refused, there were police on three continents eager to learn of his whereabouts, assuming the
Patrón
would let him live long enough to be arrested. And to try to escape the
Patrón
was to invite disaster. After all, the
Patrón
had found Groves in Marbella, had he not?

Watching the road, Groves tried to cheer himself. There was hardly any eastbound traffic. Maybe his luck had improved.

The tire blew out and the Chevy started to fishtail coming over a rise. Groves saw it from about twenty car lengths back, rolling along at a sensible fifty-five miles per hour. The salesman was a good driver and controlled the skid, pulling off the road with no more disturbance than to raise a small cloud of alkali dust. Groves slowed to watch the dust and see which way the wind was blowing—from the west. Then he tapped the brake pedal and pulled over behind the Chevy, less than a car length away from the salesman’s now-opened trunk.

They were in barren country, without any more cover than a creosote bush or two, and some mesquite. Farther back from the road were some small pinions, but too far out of reach to be of any use. Groves climbed over the stick shift of the jeep and stepped out without opening the door, vaulting neatly onto the gravelly soil by the roadside. He grinned at the salesman, who was kneeling by the deflated tire, prying at the hubcap with the pointed end of his jack handle and not having much success.

“Flat, huh?” The wind was at his back, a soft breeze that cooled his neck.

The salesman nodded.

“Fixing to jack her up?”

The man said he was. Groves grinned again and hunkered down beside him, tasting dust. “If you want, you won’t have to mess with your spare. I’ve got one of our army-issue canisters in my jeep. Seals the hole, pumps the tire, and off you go. Good for a hundred miles, minimum. Two hundred on a smooth highway like this one.”

The salesman blinked in the wind. “How much?”

“We’ll test it out first. If it works, I’ll charge you ten dollars. If it doesn’t—sometimes the hole’s too big or the vinyl glue don’t sit right—I won’t charge you at all.”

He thought it over, then grinned. “Let’s give it a try, then. And by the way, thanks for stopping, soldier. My name’s Austin, Barry Austin.”

“Gene Groves, Barry. Lieutenant Gene, they call me back at the base.”

Groves stood up and returned with a small black canister of Cobor. Careful to stay upwind, he crouched down again alongside the salesman, found the valve cap to the deflated tire, and removed it. Then he showed the salesman the black canister.

“We open this little wing nut here first,” he said, “to activate the CO2 charge. Then we’ll apply the nozzle tight against the tire valve.”

Before Barry Austin had a chance to notice that there was no way the Cobor nozzle would fit onto the tire valve, Groves had the wing nut loosened. He held it open for a count of five, holding his breath. “Smells kinda sweet,” Austin said.

Then his eyes widened in surprise and pain. He tried to get his breath, but his chest, diaphragm, and stomach muscles convulsed simultaneously with a sudden violence that seemed to tear his tongue from its very roots. The spasm induced by the gas then triggered the voluntary muscles. Austin’s arms and legs went rigid; his hands balled helplessly into fists; his jaw clamped down on his outthrust tongue, biting it through.

He pitched forward, dead.

Groves held his breath for a full minute, shuddering. No choice, he repeated over and over in his mind, like a litany. No choice.

Two minutes later, hidden from traffic by Austin’s car, he had dressed himself in Austin’s shirt, tie, slacks, and shoes. A good omen, he told himself, that the shoes fit well. He had known that the clothes would be the right size when Austin first stepped out of his car in the parking lot, just as he had known that the man’s sandy hair and facial features were similar enough to his own to confuse his pursuers, if only temporarily.

Groves put the Cobor canister back into the case with the others, pulled up the torn canvas top of the jeep, and clamped the latch on to the windshield hook as best he could. Then, sheltered by the jeep top from the view of passing drivers, he lifted Austin’s body into the jeep and wrestled it into place behind the steering wheel. From a distance the body, dressed in Groves’s army fatigues and uniform cap, would appear to be waiting for a roadside meeting, or resting.

Choosing a moment when no traffic was visible on either side of the highway, Groves hurriedly removed the case of Cobor grenades from the jeep and put it carefully into Austin’s trunk alongside several cartons of drug samples. He slammed down the lid, retrieved Austin’s jack from the roadside, got into Austin’s car, and drove off slowly, along the shoulder. When he had driven far enough so that he could no longer see the jeep in the rearview mirror, Groves stopped and changed the tire.

15

Maria looked desperately unhappy. Her dark eyes, wide like a frightened deer’s, were red with crying, her softly rounded cheeks smudged with tears. As she talked, her hands went nervously to pat her long black hair, braided into a tight bun at the back of her head. “Please, Miss Foster,” she begged Sharon. “We are both Basques, my husband and I. If you report me to the agency, the government will dismiss my husband too. Neither of us will be able to work in Madrid again.”

The two women were alone in the control truck. Sharon was still at her console, where she had been working on schedules and assignments for the next few days. Maria was sitting in Taggart’s chair. “That doesn’t sound fair to me,” Sharon said. “Why should the government do that to your husband?”

“Raul is a security guard here at the stadium. He and everyone in his immediate family must have a clear record, no exceptions. Especially during
El Copa Mundial
.”

“They’d fire him, even though all you took was one ticket?”

Maria gave a short, bitter laugh.-“It seems unreasonable to you? That is because you are not Spanish, and not Basque either. The government has a great mistrust of all Basques. Even though many of us do not want separation from Spain and do not support the terrorists, Spanish officials mistrust those of us who work here. They would rejoice at the excuse to send us away.”

“But if you knew that, why did you take the ticket?”

She shook her head, her fingertips dislodging wisps of black hair from her braids. “I was foolish,” she said, after a long moment. “I thought Senõr Taggart would not miss only one. He was fanning them out in his hand like playing cards, asking me which people of influence in Madrid would want a ticket and what sort of favor he would be able to get from each one in return.”

“The quid pro quo,” Sharon said, knowing the “favor” Taggart would likely have asked from a woman as attractive as Maria. “Did he know you wanted a ticket?”

“Yes.” She bit her lip. “I offered to buy one, but he said he did not want money. I did not like the way he spoke to me, but I wanted the ticket. I told him about Miguelito, my little brother who lives with us, but he only laughed. He said—”

“Wait a minute, I don’t understand. Where does your little brother come into this?”

“I wanted to give him the ticket.” She cleared her throat. “He would not know that I had stolen it. You see, Miguel is only eleven. Two years ago, when we lived outside Rachelplona, there was an accident. A soldier shot him, and his leg never mended properly. He is ashamed of his crutches, yet he lives for
futbol
. The players, they are his gods that he worships. We tried to buy him a ticket, but only standing space was available to the public. Miguelito would never be able to manage there among the crowds of big men. But Senõr Taggart had tickets for seats.”

“And Wayne Taggart knew about your little brother?”

“He said that if I wanted a ticket badly enough, I would find a way to get one. Then he excused himself; he said he had to leave his office for a short while. He said that perhaps by the time he returned, I would have thought of a way.” She paused and looked up at Sharon, her eyes searching for understanding. “I am not -naive. I knew what he wanted. It made me angry. That is why I stole—or tried to steal. As it turned out, he was too clever for me and came back before I had expected him.”

From her handbag, Sharon took out one of her own complimentary tickets. “I want you to have this,” she said, handing it across the console to Maria. “And I want you to continue working for UBC, if you will.”

Maria stared at the ticket and at Sharon as though unable to believe what she saw or heard, stammering her thanks both in Spanish and English.

“Forget it,” Sharon said. “I’m just sorry it had to happen. Not a very good introduction to American TV people, I’m afraid. I’ll see you in the morning, all right? We start here at eight.”

“You are kind, Miss Foster.” Maria had her voice under control now. “I would like to be able to repay your kindness.” Her eyes were on the stack of papers in front of Sharon. “And I see you’re working late. Is there something I might do to help you finish sooner?”

“Can’t think of a thing,” Sharon said, automatically. Then she remembered. “No, I take that back. You might tell me if you know of a working photocopy machine around here that I could use. Ours is jammed, and I’ve got to get copies of these camera placements made for tomorrow morning’s rehearsal.”

“Oh, let me do it for you,” Maria said eagerly. “I can take your papers across to the security office for the stadium. Raul is on duty tonight, and I can borrow his key and have your copies back here in ten minutes.”

Good, thought Sharon. That would save some time, and maybe when Maria was through, she would feel as though she had returned Sharon’s “kindness.” It embarrassed Sharon to have Maria feeling obligated to her for something that was only a matter of common decency.

“Okay,” she said. “I need six copies, of the first page only. As a matter of fact, one of the copies is supposed to go to stadium security. If you could leave it there with a note from me explaining what it’s for, that would save me time in the morning.”