The Argentine Triangle: A Craig Page Thriller (10 page)

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.