Spiral (55 page)

Chapter 56

T
HE
aftershock was political, conspicuous, and ultimately inconsequential. News of the assassination survived the weekend media doldrums and was the lead story on the network news programs through all of Monday, and for three days running, making the front pages of newspapers across the country. In the following week, it received major coverage in
Newsweek, Time,
and
U.S. News & World Report.
Political assassination is always a big story, but this particular killing was immediately recognized as having broader implications.

Within twenty-four hours a special federal commission was established to direct an independent investigation. It seemed that Benigo Gamboa Parra did, in fact, have friends in powerful places. His death caused a flurry of righteous indignation from members of Congress whose somber, measured statements were duly recorded by news cameras and set down for posterity in the
Federal Register.

Pressed by reporters for a comment, a Reagan administration spokesman demurred, saying he did not want to make any premature judgments, but he thought the assassination clearly proved the administration's claim that Central America and Mexico were fertile points of origin from which communist terrorists could launch acts of violent depredation against the United States.

However, it quickly became apparent to the new commission that the carnage of those four hectic days had been plotted and executed not by communists, but by the radical right, and had its sources within the impenetrable labyrinth-world of Mexican politics and society where the laws of logic and reason did not always govern. The commission's enthusiasm cooled rapidly. The Drug Enforcement Administration's recent Sisyphean efforts to establish cooperative law enforcement operations with Mexico had proved how maddening and futile an investigation in that country could be.

Nevertheless, the commission made polite diplomatic inquiries and proposed the formation of a bilateral task force. In the coming weeks, commission spokesmen publicly praised Mexican law enforcement officials for their "willingness to cooperate," while privately they watched the investigation bog down in a quagmire of vague communiques and polite but unproductive meetings. Requests to the Mexican authorities for information regarding the society called
los tecos
disappeared into the abyss of Mexican bureaucracy.

The Houston Police Department receded into the background, with great relief. Haydon, seeing how the investigation was being handled, tried to turn his back on it. In time, he knew, it would drop to the back pages of the newspaper, then disappear from public interest altogether. Still, he often found himself wondering how Negrete had escaped the intense police search that followed the killings at the Golden Way Motel, and how Bias Medrano had made his way out of the United States.

But he also had a more compelling interest in one of the key unanswered questions of the case. Celia Moreno's life had undergone dramatic changes. Haunted by the fact that she had been used by an unknown agency to gather intelligence for unknown reasons, she was preoccupied by the fear that eventually she would be killed for her role. She completely withdrew from her former fast-paced, high-profile life and moved home to live with her elderly mother in the little frame house under the pecan trees. She took a low-paying secretary's job in a complex of dentist offices and made every effort to become invisible.

Haydon tried to assure her that her fears were unfounded, but in truth, he wasn't altogether sure himself. He had his own ideas about the elusive Richard Elkin, and he initiated discreet but increasingly
urgent
inquiries through Mitchell Garner to certain channels of the State Department. In the meantime, he stayed in touch with Celia. Every time she called the police to report strange cars in her neighborhood or dark figures lurking in the streets near her mother's home at nights, Haydon always showed up with the patrol cars and stayed afterward to listen to her rattled preoccupation with potential assassins. Celia became well known to the patrolmen whose beat included her neighborhood. None of the cars she saw, none of the license plates she recorded, none of the men she described ever proved to have any connection to each other, or to anything else that raised the least bit of suspicion. The conspiracy against her life became the special beast of her own imagination.

Then early one evening in late September, Haydon received a call at home from Mitchell Garner.

"Stuart, sorry to bother you, but I've got a man down here at my office who wants to talk to you."

Haydon's mind had been elsewhere. He gathered his thoughts, then felt a surge of adrenaline. "The inquiries?"

"Yeah, right." Garner's voice was dispassionately businesslike.

"We can talk there?"

"There won't be anyone here but the three of us."

"I'm on my way."

Haydon drove the Vanden Plas into the steamy, narrow streets of downtown, through slack traffic and walls of lights rising out of sight into the night above him. He parked in RepublicBank's underground garage, then took the elevator to the forty-eighth floor, where he approached a suite door with a nameplate that read simply "Law Offices." He pressed a black button beside the door and listened for the electronic click. Pushing open the door, he met Garner in the empty outer office.

"This could be what we've been waiting for," Garner said, standing close to Haydon, his voice low and portentous. His tie was undone, and the crisp white shirt under his braces was deeply wrinkled from a long day behind his desk. "Got his call about two hours ago. He said he wanted to talk to you about your inquiries, that he was with the State Department. I told him to come on over. When he got here he gave me a couple of names I recognized from the diplomatic mission in Mexico City. Told me to call them to check him out. I made the calls. He'd given me their
home
phone numbers."

"And we can believe him?"

"We can believe the men who vouched for him," Garner said. "Although I don't think they had any idea why he was here. And they didn't ask. I got the impression they were used to these kinds of calls about this guy." Garner raised his eyebrows meaningfully, then turned and started walking.

Haydon followed his slightly rounded shoulders down a short corridor, past an empty alcove with armchairs for waiting clients, now eerily lighted by the indigo glow of black lights left on for the tropical plants. The city sparkled on the other side of the windows. Garner's office was at the end of the corridor. They walked through the receptionist's office and into Garner's suite.

As they came in, a man in his early fifties stood up from the chair where he had been sitting in front of Garner's desk. He was tall, maybe six-four, with neatly trimmed ginger hair shot through with gray. His ruddy complexion appeared to be suffering from overexposure to the sun. It wasn't the sort of skin that would ever tan. He seemed in robust physical condition, far better than most men his age; his eyes, pale gray and alert, were reading Haydon's curiositj with a curiosity of their own.

"Stuart Haydon," Garner said. "This is Karl Heidrich."

Heidrich smiled unenthusiastically, locking his eyes on Haydon's as they shook hands. "Sit down, sit down," he said with a curl congeniality, urging Haydon to another chair as if the office were hi; own. Garner walked around behind his desk.

Though Haydon had initiated the inquiries, this man had askec to see
him.
He decided to remain quiet and let Heidrich take th( initiative. It was something Heidrich seemed used to doing.

"I'm stopping over in Houston for only a few hours," Heidricl said pointedly. "I've got a flight out of Intercontinental at twelve thirty, so we don't have a lot of time."

He didn't say where he was from or where he was going. Haydon studied his face, which was settling into the heavier structures of that of an "older" man. It portrayed no uneasiness, and Haydon got the feeling that Heidrich's familiarity of manner was due more to the fact that he was a constant traveler accustomed to meeting people than to an extroverted personality. There was an air of self-sufficiency about him that had a larger dimension than that ordinarily exhibited by a confident executive. Haydon guessed he was a man used to walking into unstable situations, quickly assessing them, and taking control

"I'll get right to the point, Mr. Haydon," Heidrich said. "Mr Garner has already checked me out." The flicker of a smile again "And I'm sure he's already told you I'm with the State Department. Some of the people there think you have a right to a degree of clarification regarding your inquiries. I'm here to try to answer whateve questions you have."

He stopped, looked at Garner, and then back at Haydon.

"That shouldn't be difficult," Haydon said. He wasn't going to say any more. He knew damn well Heidrich was thoroughly familiar with every communication Haydon had initiated. There was no use wasting time pretending otherwise. He looked at Heidrich in silence.

A subdued expression of bemusement grew slowly on Heidrich' face, then faded.

"All right," he said, crossing one leg over the other, giving it a boost with the help of a hand at the back of the knee. "You know you can believe what I have to say, but you're going to have to be satisfied with . . . abbreviated information. After I'm through here, we're going to assume your concerns have been satisfied. You understand that?"

"I think so," Haydon answered.

"Okay. I'm not going to give you a foreign-relations lecture," Heidrich said. "I know you're both aware of the administration's feelings about the importance of Central America and Mexico to our national security. It's not been an issue that's warranted a lot of media attention until the last few years, but that same attitude's been shared by every president in this century.

"As a result, U.S. intelligence gathering has a long history in Mexico. Our network of
orejas
—ears—down there is unsurpassed anywhere in the world. We pay them well for what they do. With their godawful economy the way it is, it's not hard to recruit them. We've got them in the trade unions, in the universities, in the dissident factions, in the police, in all levels of government ... all levels. Very little happens there without our having seen it developing in advance. Sometimes, in small ways, we can influence events; sometimes we can't. Sometimes we want to, sometimes we don't."

Heidrich reached into an inside coat pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and returned the pack. From another pocket he retrieved a lighter. But he didn't light the cigarette. Instead he gestured with it, not in any hurry to smoke. Once again he cut his eyes at Garner, then brought them back to rest on Haydon.

"Benigo Gamboa," Heidrich said, "was one of these sources inside the Portillo administration. Inside the
tecos
... it was Daniel Ferretis."

Haydon was jolted. Gamboa. Yes. He had speculated that. But Daniel Ferretis? Christ, that was unexpected. His mind raced back over the events. He couldn't make any sense out of Ferretis's role, considering what had happened. The truth, or the small part of it this man was about to reveal, was going to be complicated. He waited.

Heidrich pocketed his lighter. "When Portillo's presidential term ended in 1982, his administration left a wake of financial scandals. Some of the people we'd worked with, including Gamboa, were deeply involved. We helped them get out of the country. Many of them fled Mexico with enormous sums of money. We figured that was their business, Mexican business. We didn't get into the legal-possession question. This was four years before Marcos and Baby Doc. It was different then. They'd helped us, so we were returning favors. No moral judgments, just business. A number of them ended up here in the States, but they left a lot of enemies behind in Mexico.

"After the country had had some time to assess the damages, to see the real extent of its financial losses, the
tecos
appointed themselves avenging angels. The reasons are too complicated to go into, but we eventually got wind of the assassination plots . . . though not from Ferretis. In groups like the
tecos,
the more volatile, unpredictable organizations, we maintain more than one informant. But they work compartmentally, none of them know the others exist—that way we have the advantage of varying perspectives. In this instance it made all the difference. By holding out on us, Ferretis implicated himself. It took fast work to sort this out, to get a general picture of the setup, but we did it."

Heidrich inhaled deeply from the cigarette and blew the smoke to one side. He seemed to be considering his words before he spoke again.

"That put us in an interesting situation," he said. "The truth is, Mr. Haydon, Gamboa had become a problem for us. Since coming to the States he'd been acting as if our people owed him a lot of favors, even though we'd made it clear to him we considered the accounts between us squared away. He was strictly on his own. But Gamboa tried to milk an association he should have put behind him, using his former relationship with us as leverage in his business dealings. Very risky. Way out of line. He dropped a few names trying to put together some real estate deals. Too many names. He definitely had become a liability. This thing with the
tecos . .
. well, we decided if they got him, it wasn't something we were going to make a big stink about."