Prologue

Ford

∦

Sanibel Island, Florida

Friday, 16 January

After midnight

On a moonless winter night, after working late in the lab, Marion Ford anchored his boat and swam to a yacht owned by a killer.

Ford wore swim fins, a black wool cap and cargo pants.  His glasses were around his neck on fishing line, as usual. He had a tactical light in one pocket, a broken wristwatch in another.

Aboard the 43-foot Viking was a man named Bern Heller.  Heller had played two years, NFL, then sold Cadallics while living a secret life as a serial rapist.  He’d murdered a Cuban fishing guide, one of Ford's closest friends.

Heller was free after eleven months in Raiford spent lifting weights, talking sports with the brothers, waiting for his idiot attorneys to get him a re-trial.

Sometimes, alone in his cell, Bern would fantasize about women, the noise they made when they’d given-up.  A mewing sound.  The way their thighs went limp -- total submission.  After years on steroids, remembering that sound was the only way it worked, unless Bern had his fingers on a real live girl.  Something he planned to do soon.

Ford had spotted Bern that afternoon.  Huge man, beer in hand, Bermuda shorts and an orange ankle monitor that looked heavy.  Ford had approached, smiling, thinking Bern might take a swing, but hoping he wouldn’t because Ford knew then, looking into the crazy man’s eyes, what he would do.

“The beating I gave you wasn’t enough, I guess.  You want more?”

Ford had straightened his glasses, eyes shifting from a marina foreclosure notice to Heller’s gold Rolex.  “I could use the work.  It’s been awhile.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Not to you.  I was thinking of  Javier Castillo.”

“Your dink fisherman pal.  If I was guilty,  you think they would've let me out of Raiford?”

Ford was thinking, He’s stoned, as he said, “Okay.  I’ll give you a second chance.”

“I don’t want shit from you.  Damn weirdo with your microscopes and dead fish.  You gonna stand there talking, or take your shot?”

“Maybe later.  I’ve got an early flight.”  Now Ford was looking at the yacht where Heller lived.  “I’ll knock first.”

“Sure  you will.  I won’t hold my breath.”

When Ford said, “You’ll try,” Bern blinked.

Ford knocked now, standing outside the yacht’s salon, ready when Heller pushed the door open, wearing shorts, no shirt, a stubnose revolver in his hand.

Ten minutes later, Heller was in the water, trying to say, “Let’s talk about this.  Seriously,” but there was a rag stuffed in his mouth.

He tried to say, “My goddamn elbow’s busted!” knowing what it felt like because of that game in Green Bay, got blind-sided by one of the Frozen Chosen.  But not as cold then as now, with water sloshing in his ears, his wrists tie-wrapped, floating on his back as the weirdo biologist towed him, kicking with fins.

Bern tried to wrestle free, but inhaled water up his nose.  Tried again, panicking, and felt the ammonia sting of saltwater.

He screamed, “Please,” but made only a mewing noise because of the gag.

The sound – a helpless kitten sound – scared him.  It was familiar.  Thinking about it, Bern stopped struggling.  When he remembered, his muscles went slack.

Ford continued swimming from the lights of the marina, kicking harder, using his right arm to pull.

He had a plane to catch . . . .

. . . .  At 6:45 am, Ford was aboard Delta’s direct to Newark, sitting starboard side, first class, reading the Miami Herald.  A story about Cuba.  Secret documents were surfacing now that Castro was gone.

Disturbing.

Ford had worked in Cuba.  He had also worked in Central America, South America, Asia and Africa.

Ford had told Bern the truth.  His skills were rusty.

As the plane banked over the Gulf of Mexico, he folded the Herald and cleaned his glasses.  Below, wind glittered on water a mile from shore, where Ford had untied Bern Heller, then pushed him overboard, yelling, “Swim!” 

At 3:30 a.m., on winter nights, the lights of Sanibel Island are bright. . . .

______________________________________________________

Prologue II

Farfel and Hump

∦

Friday, 16 January

Hotel Nacional

Havana, Cuba

Farfel told the Venezuelan, “More than a month ago, I warned you.  Now it’s too late.  The U.S. government has Castro’s files.”  He exhaled through his nose, touching a finger to his glasses. Amateurs.

The young Venezuelan, his face lathered, sat reading the Miami Herald, Spanish edition.  Farfel, the hotel barber, could see over his shoulder.

Senate Subpoenas Cuban Documents

There was a photo.  Good looking woman, weight of breasts beneath her charcoal blouse.  A powerful man with teeth.  Co-chairs of an intelligence sub-committee, they’d been bickering about the files for months, mostly with the world political community, but also with the CIA.

“Five weeks ago. What did I tell you?”

The Venezuelan had a partner, an aloof New Yorker.  What Farfel had told them was, “You want the files?  Bury one of the politicians alive.  Bury them with oxygen, a little water.  Enough for a couple of days.  It’ll work, I read about it in a book.  The Americans will give you anything you want.”

They’d thought he was joking. 

Now, because Farfel had a razor in his hand, the Venezuelan closed the newspaper.  He sat straighter, thinking, He has cut men’s throats.  I  wouldn’t be the first.

True.

Farfel began stropping the razor fast  – a rare display of emotion for the precise little man with silver hair, moustache, and his glittering silver eyes.  They were alone in the shop with Koken chairs, mirrors, combs in blue disinfectant, the smell of powder and cigars, a calendar on the wall showing Havana’s skyline.

“The article means nothing,” the young Venezuelan said.  He was worried the barber would be insulted if he stood and wiped lather from his face, but was thinking it over as he added, “I have good news.”

“Save your breath. No more excuses.” 

“At least listen.”

“Why bother?  I should be looking for a way to disappear.  They will hunt me the way Jews hunt Nazis.  A boat, maybe.”

The Venezuelan stood and found a towel. To hell with etiquette.  He gave it a moment for effect, but also to move closer to the door.  “Yesterday, it was decided,” he said. “The hole will be dug.”

Farfel folded the razor slowly.

“We were going to tell you.”

“The coffin, too?”

“Yes, as you ordered.  A wooden box with an oxygen bottle.  A container for water – a canteen, I think it is called.”

“Where?”

The Venezuelan said, “Only two people know.”  Said it in a way that implied the New Yorker knew, but the Venezuelan didn’t. He lobbed the newspaper into the trash, his confidence returning.  “There’s something else.  We also have the senator’s schedule.”

He was talking about the good looking woman in the charcoal blouse.

Farfel had told them, “Abduct the female.  Snap photos with the coffin open, the woman staring up. The FBI will soil their pants, do whatever we want.  Old files in exchange for the life of a senator?  Force the Americans to react, not act.”

Farfel’s former assistant, Hump, who was also the son of a dead friend, had made a cinematic gesture, framing the scene.  “I like photos,” he said in his simple way.  “I own a camera.”

The Venezuelan ignored the man.  His deformity was unsettling.

This was back in December, Hump and Farfel, former members of the Cuban Socialist Party talking with the young Venezuelan and the New Yorker on a seawall where the Gulf Stream swept close to Havana, a river of green on a purple sea.

“Maximum leverage without killing.  You told me no one can be killed..”

“But burying a woman –“

“Exactly.”

“You’re asking me to imagine –“

“To imagine the worst way to die.  People will say fire.  They will say falling from the sky in a plane.  Cancer – a few will speak of disease.”

Hump and Farfel had exchanged looks, as if old pros on the subject of torture and death.  They were.

“To understand fear, listen to your spine, not your brain.”

The idea had floated in silence.  Buried alive. . . .

. . . . For five weeks, the foreigners had delayed, insisting on more time.  Even the New Yorker, who’d started it all, appearing in Farfel’s shop one morning, then pressing a note into his hand instead of a tip.

Reading the note, Farfel had felt like a man again. He’d told the Hump, “I don’t care if it is a trap,” as they walked to their first meeting.

It wasn’t a trap.

Castro’s personal possessions, files included, had been stolen by the Americans, and shipped to Maryland in industrial cartons.  Four cartons to a container, thousands of items and documents that had been grouped, not cataloged.  Collectively, the Americans were calling the collection the Castro Files.

A carton labeled C/C-103 (1976-’96) contained details of experiments the Soviets had conducted on American POWs in Vietnam, then Angola, Panama and Granada.  Administrators of the study, working as private contractors, had continued the experiments in Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Pain and fear -- what were the human limits?  The study ended in 1998, when the last POW from Vietnam finally gave-up and died.

The Cuban Program.  The Soviets called it that because Castro had provided three unusual interrogators with special skills.  The men were all scientists, in their way, and were so determined, so exacting, that they soon usurped control from their Russian bosses.

One of the interrogators was a small, fastidious man, whose name was René Soyinka Navárro.  He was the son of a Russian mother and a Cuban KGB officer.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, Navárro had been hired by Al Qaeda as an expert contractor, an interrogator who could obtain information from even the most determined prisioners.  To those countries, he had brought along an apprentice, the son of a fellow interrogator named Angel Yanguez Jr..

From his late father, Yanguez. had inherited a genetic deformity, a cutaneous horn just beginning to grow.  He’d also inherited the nickname, Hump, which he didn’t mind, unlike Navárro who despised his nickname, Farfel.  It had shadowed him since Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam, where POWs had named him for a TV puppet that clicked his wooden teeth at the end of sentences.  Navárro, who wore dentures, made a similar sound when he wanted to emphasize a point.

In Vietnam, prisoners had referred to the Cubans, collectively, as the Malvados – fiends.

The New Yorker’s note had read:  “Americans once begged for your mercy.  Are you willing to beg for theirs?”

How could the New Yorker know about Navárro, if the documents didn’t exist?

The New Yorker and Venezuelan weren’t partners.  They were working for someone.  Farfel had overheard them whisper a name in English.  The name sounded like Tenth Man.  Possibly Tenman – or Tinman . . . .

___________________________________________________________

CHAPTER ONE

    ∦

Thursday, 22 January

Explorers Club, 70th Street

New York City

On a snowy, January evening in Manhattan, I was in the Trophy Room of The Explorers Club when I saw, through frosted windows, men abducting a woman as she exited her limousine.

It wouldn’t have made a difference, but I knew the woman.  She was Barbara Hayes-Sorrento.  Senator Barbara Hayes-Sorrento, a first term powerhouse from the west, who had won the office once held by her late husband.

Well, not much difference.  The senator was my dinner date for the evening.  No romantic sparks, but I liked the lady.

It was six p.m., already dark outside.  The Trophy Room was a cozy place.  Fireplace framed by elephant tusks, maps of the Amazon scattered, a mug of rum-laced tea within easy reach.  I was the guest of an explorer who was also a British spy.  Sir James Montbard.  Friends called him Hooker because of the steel prosthetic that had replaced his left hand.

Hooker was a secondary reason for visiting New York.  The primary reason was the hope of a new assignment from my old boss, a U.S. intelligence chief.  Clandestine work sometimes requires a cover story.  Friends sometimes provide it.

It was no coincidence that Barbara Hayes was free for dinner, or that my neighbor, Tomlinson, had been in the city until the day before, lecturing on “psychic surveillance” at an international symposium.

I had kept my social calendar high profile, and I’d stayed busy.

Hooker and I had been planning a trip to Central America.  He believed that warrior monks had sailed west in the 1300s, escaping with plunder from the Crusades.  He said it explained why, two centuries later, the Maya believed in a blonde, blue eyed god, Quetzalcoatl, and so made a fatal mistake by welcoming the murderous Conquistadors.

I wasn’t convinced.  But renewing contacts in Latin America was important now, so I’d agreed to join his expedition. This was our third night at the Explorers Club, using its superb library. 

When Hooker excused himself to freshen his whiskey, I stood, stretched, and strolled to the widow because it was snowing -- a rare opportunity for a man from the tropics.  I had an unobstructed view of the street below.  It was 70th Street, a quiet one-way, two blocks from Central Park.  It connects Park Avenue and Madison. 

I could see Barbara Hayes-Sorrento as she got out of her car.  She wore a charcoal coat,  stockings and high heels.  Her briefcase looked darker for the confetti swirl of snowflakes

The woman was leaning into a limo, saying goodbye to a fellow passenger when a taxi rear-ended the limo from behind.  Not hard.

I knew that the passenger was a teenager from Minnesotta she had mentioned earlier, on the phone. A kid named William Chaser, who’d won an essay contest, and an escorted trip around the city.  Something to do with the United Nations. Barbara had volunteer to meet him at the airport.

When Barbara jumped back, surprised, a man wearing coveralls and an odd pointed cap stepped to the driver’s door, blocking it.  A smaller man grabbed Barbara’s shoulder.  Her reaction was a warning glare.

The woman’s expression changed when the man didn’t let go.  Barbara swung her briefcase, but missed.  It tumbled into the slush.  Barbara tried kicking.  One sensible black shoe went flying.

I was turning toward the stairs as the man began pushing her toward a taxi that had stopped in front of the limo.  The woman’s lips formed a cartoon O of shock.  Her mouth widened into a scream.

It was a silent scream.  The Explorers Club is one of the brick and marble tall ships from a previous century.  Neither car horns nor a lady’s scream could pierce her elegant armor . . .  .

_____________________________________________________________

CHAPTER FOUR

Will Chaser

    ∦

Curled in a dark space he knew was the trunk of a car, fourteen year old Will Chaser had vomited and nearly messed his jeans, he was so scared at first.  Now, though, he was numb enough to do some thinking.

Long as I live, I’ll never enter another essay contest, doesn’t matter the prize.  I should’ a written the goddamn thing myself.

Which he hadn’t done.  Not a word.  Was amazed, in fact, the contest people never doubted.

“We are pleased to recognize a young Indigenous American who comprehends the complexities of international relationships . . . . ”

A line from the official letter of congratulations.  Using “Indigenous” instead of “Native,” which was irritating, because Will had to go looking for a dictionary.  Then using “comprehends,” like the judges were surprised to discover a Skin who wasn’t too damn stupid. 

“You don’t have to be a genius not to be stupid.”  A line from his so-called foster granddad, old man Bull Guttersen.

As a kid on the Rez, Will had done some dumb things.  He’d been kicked out of three schools and arrested twice.  Math was weak, his spelling worse.  But he wasn’t stupid.  Ever.

Will was aware early on it would take a special effort for someone like him to win a state-wide writing contest. Five pages, neatly typed?  Margins just so, with a title page and numbers at the top?  Not with so much competition in a state filled with brainy, corn-fed Minnesotans.  Half of them know-it-all Splittails with parents who acted like their crap didn’t stink.  Faces might crack if they smiled, and not because of the damn wind chill factor – wind chill being Minnesota’s way of bragging about their shitty weather, while sounding smart enough to move south if they wanted.

Great Falls registered the lowest temperature in a nation this morning, 30° below, not counting wind chill.

They were proud of that?

“Somewhere in Minnesota, there’s a freakin’ tombstone reads, ‘One below, not counting wind chill,’ I shit-thee-not.”  Bull Guttersen again.

On the plus side there were blonde girls who showed a warm interest in Will’s dark skin, his rodeo muscles and warrior hair -- girls being what had gotten him into this mess to begin with.  After the Rez in Seminole County Oklahoma, blondes appealed to him because they struck him as exotic.

When Will showed old man Guttersen the contest booklet, Bull had read aloud, “Win five days in New York City . . .  United Nations tour . . .  Run for Secretary General,  International Youth Council . . .  teens from all over the world.”

The old man had tossed the booklet on the table.  “Left-wing candy-asses, that’s who’s behind this boloney. Never made a payroll in their lives. What hooked you is them pictures.  Splittails from Sweden, Denmark, Berlin.”

Which was true, of course.  That was the good thing about the old man, Will didn’t have to lie.

Bull, who was experienced at promotion, had done some thinking.  “Know what?  You being a half-breed minority Injun might just scratch their itch.  A delinquent, too – that can’t hurt.  But you ain’t suggesting you write this article yourself?”

Will had replied, “What?  You think I’m some Liberal Lakes dope?  There’s a teacher at school who likes me – Ms. Thinglestadt.  I’ll get her to write it.”

Which won the boy a nodding smile of approval from the old man.  “Never thought I’d be saying this – considering you once offered to shoot me -- but there are times I’d be proud to call you my son.  I shit-thee-not, Pony Chaser.”

Bull used ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ having grown-up Amish, driving a buggy and putting up hay until he went into pro wrestling and became worldly.  ‘Pony’ was a name from a bit on Garage Logic, three hours of radio better than HBO. The old man was a reliable judge of entertainment after years in a wheelchair. 

Bull had a bias for TV westerns, which he admitted.  Gunsmoke, Roy Rodgers, anything John Wayne ever did.  All related to his profession, six years wrestling as Outlaw Bull Gutter, four years as Sheriff Bull Gutter.  Still had the cowboy hats, one black, one white.

“Pony Chaser,” Bull told Will, was a decent ring name if Will ever showed an interest. Not as good as Bull Gutter, or Crazy-Horse Chaser, but better than “Shadow Chaser” which sounded like a candy-ass name, or “Whiskey Casher” which risked might have a negative influence on teenage boys who didn’t have the benefit of Will’s experience in life.

“Get some size on you – earn it, so to speak – Crazy Horse might be the name that gets you into the World Wrestling Federation. I’ll let you know.”

As the car hummed along, Will was surprised how strong the old man was in his mind.  Sour old white guy – Caspers, they called white guys on the Rez, which had something to do with a cartoon ghost.  But Guttersen still had backbone even though his spine had been broken doing a cage show in Muscatine.

“Act fearless – the world’s full of cowards eager to believe.”  Otto Guttersen, the philosopher.

“Life’s not like poker.  Win or lose, attack.  Keep gambling because once you cash those chips, you’re screwed.”  The man could go on for hours, and often claimed the boys down at Berserker’s Grill said he should write a book.

Attack.  Exactly the way Will had decided to handle this situation.

First thing he did was stop blaming himself. While it was true he’d cheated his way to New York, the moron really to blame was the big, goofy-looking guy wearing glasses.

“Get back in the car!”  the man had yelled, an order which Will had obeyed out of respect for being in such a big city.  That’s who was to blame for getting him into this mess.

If Will had kept walking – helped the woman senator, as he intended – no telling how things might have worked out.

The senator was rich, she had to be, and had a nice smile.  She smelled good, too, with interesting curves, for a woman so old, which she pretended to want to hide. But she didn’t, not really, wearing her suit jacket open to give Will a look at her blouse, the way buttons strained, then showing him a flash of black bra as if it were accidental.

It wasn’t accidental -- as his English teacher, Ms. Thinglestadt, had proven to him back in Minnesota.

Pretty girls – something else that had gotten him into this fix.  Well . . . a pretty woman, because Will couldn’t rightly think of a teacher as a girl.  Not after charming Ms. Thinglestadt for three careful months, and finally getting her to invite him home to seduce him.

Bull had agreed it was smart, the way Will had made her beholding by proving his trust.  Meeting the woman late in the park off Minnehaha and 46th, no one around but a few drunken Skins.  Handing her the baggie of weed, then pocketing her money before telling her how heavy it made his heart, seeing his ancestors living like shit-faced bums.

Will had almost most used the word fire-water but decided, no, not everybody watched westerns.

Mrs. Thinglestadt was a type.  A milky skinned female eager to advance equality by helping her inferiors, one at a time.  But smart, in her way -- obviously smart enough to write a prize-winning essay.

So he couldn’t rightly blame her . . . unlike the jerk who’d ordered him back in the limo.  A man named Dr. Marion Ford, Will would learn later.

Will was thinking:  Big goofy-looking dork.  If I ever lay eyes on him again, just wait!

MORE TO COME

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