The Casanova Embrace (38 page)

Dobbs closed the file on his desk. His eyes stung and he
pressed thumb and middle finger into the lids, gently massaging them.
Information! It had rolled off the papers like a moving oil slick, drowning him
finally. There were facts, supposition, speculation, conclusions, theories, a
hodgepodge of bureaucratic justification, heavily layered with the manure of
intelligence.

He had, he knew, ignored all that, seeking beneath the
surface, into the heart of it. And he had found nests of maggots crawling
beneath his own skin. Because he was dead, the fire of life cold, he did not
foresee what was coming. What did he know of a woman's ecstasy and how close it
was to scorn? Love, he knew now, could be fashioned into a deadly weapon. It
was something Eduardo had understood, and that understanding had bested him.

Had he really pieced together the essence of the man from
all this litter? Why hadn't he done it before? He had known what was happening.
Eduardo's every move was known. The women were also in the net. Had he
deliberately let them kill him? He looked around his familiar office, felt
Eduardo's presence again. I killed you, you bastard, he hissed. And I would
have given anything to have lived and died in your place.

He had, of course, reached the official conclusion
immediately, as he had watched them cart off the remains. Now he was the CIA
man again, the professional.

The official line, spinning now in Dobbs' brain, was that
Palmero was wasted by the DINA because of his influence in this country. What
an absurdity! The man was a bungler, although the missions he had instigated
were quite clever. Yet they could have been aborted by a single word from
Dobbs. Let them do it, Dobbs had decided at the time. Shake things up a bit.
Sooner or later they would have to intercede anyway.

He looked over the FBI on-scene, quick report. No strange
prints. The bomb was traditional, the usual plastic job with the battery
operated clock. Simple. Direct. A bit messy, but programmed for overkill, not
one of these noisy, just-for-warning pops.

Viewing it dispassionately, Dobbs concocted a number of
dead-end theories he could project to the FBI, although he knew he detested the
waste of money and manpower. The investigation would be interminable and the
poor agents would be put upon, castigated by both their superiors and all those
gullible lefties who would beat their breasts and insist that the fellow was
done in by the Junta. Wonderful, he decided, shaking his head at the stupidity
of it all. He sat down again and studied the photographs of the man under the
light, the smooth face, the small moustache, the intense, obsessed look. Then
his eye wandered to the photographs taken that morning, the mutilated remains,
the abused flesh. Surely, he knew we were watching him? Did he also know what
the women would do? And were they really all Miranda?

The instrument was passion, and the death weapon was
passion, the double-edged sword. Which explained nothing to him, since he could
not feel it, had not ever felt it. Just give me that power for one week, Dobbs
pleaded, mocking himself, and I would submit to the ritual of death.

It was getting late. In the distance, over the treetops, he
could see the relentless lights of the rush hour traffic. There was work still
to be done. The destruction of records, the death of the information, the
reshuffling of personnel, the obliteration and recycling of facts. It annoyed
him that he could not do the same with his own brain. He hoped he would forget
it someday, but he knew that was now impossible.