Goodbye Mexico Read online

  Ms. Sanchez knocked on my office door and entered. Her eyes were red and she wore a pink sweater, even in the on again off again air-conditioned comfort of the embassy. She placed a stack of messages on my desk.

  “No more see-through, Señor Jack,” she said.

  I had been right with my first impression. The guy was a jerk.

  She pointed to the flashing light on my phone. “Your friend. The nice hombre,” she said and left, pulling the pink sweater together in front and closing the door behind her.

  “Hello.”

  “Jack, ixnay on calling the Halcones about me.” “How in hell did you find out I did?”

  “I’ll tell you later. And by the way, you can still call me Gearheardt. Or Pepe. Either one works.”

  “Pepe?”

  “I’ve been called worse. But if you get any word from Pepe, it’s probably me. Did you meet Crenshaw?”

  “Gearheardt, how do you find out these things? Yes, I met Crenshaw. That’s Major Crenshaw to you, by the way. Do you know him?”

  “I know he’s a real book guy. He’s perfect for what we’re doing. I had to pull major string to get him down here. No pun intended.” We’re doing? Gearheardt and me? Gearheardt and Crenshaw? There were a few loose ends in this budding operation.

  “Jack,” Gearheardt went on, “listen carefully. Get an unmarked embassy car and a driver you can trust. I’m going to give you the addresses of two people you need to pick up. Also take a thousand bucks from the ‘egg money’ (our emergency stash for agents and contract agents), and meet me at the El Diablo. It’s on the road to Queretaro. Ask for Pepe at the desk. They’ll know where to find me.”

  Instinctively I looked around my office as if making sure no one was listening. Lowering my voice, I said, “Look, Gearheardt or Pepe, I’m not sure what the hell this operation you’ve got working is all about. Involving my staff and assets without a clear plan is not a good idea. Maybe you and I should meet first. I need to know a little bit more.” I didn’t trust Gearheardt as far as I could throw him. Unless I needed him to save my life. That I knew he would do without hesitation.

  “Operation?” he said. “What operation are you talking about? These women you’re picking up are the finest in the Zona Rosa. With a thousand bucks, we’ll have a suite, a boatload of tequila and the wildest naked party since training night at Madame Lulus. Get your ass in gear.” He gave me the addresses and the phone went dead.

  I had just decided to start smoking again, which also reminded me to track down the cigarette kid in Chapultepec Park, when Ms. Sanchez buzzed me.

  “Pepe on one.”

  “Gearheardt, I’m glad you called back. What in—”

  “Jack, I’m in a hurry. Bring a gun for me. A Walther if you can get one. Ask the Marine at the front desk if you need help. And whatever you do, don’t let Crenshaw know you know me. Hasta luego.”

  The damn nut. I’d been more or less fat dumb and happy twenty-four hours ago. Getting the hang of the spying business. And now I’m supposed to get a pistol for a guy that is overthrowing Mexico, pick up two women with a thousand dollars of embassy money and drink tequila all night. How gullible did Gearheardt think I was?

  After a quick mental check of my options, I buzzed Ms. Sanchez.

  “Juanita, would you find out if Jorge is driving in the pool tonight. If he is, tell him I’ll be down in half an hour. I’ll be going down the fire escape. If Major Crenshaw comes looking for me, tell him I’m locked in my office. Gracias.” Then, “And Juanita, I will miss the see-through very much.”

  THE HECK WITH IT—CHAPTER FOUR

  AND A DOZEN DEFECTO PERFECTOS

  Gearheardt’s face lit up when he opened the door of Suite 200 of the El Diablo Inn. Until he noticed a lack of women standing anywhere in sight. He was nattily dressed in a smoking jacket, with an ascot of stylish purple and a gold Marine Corps emblem stickpin.

  “Jack,” he said, “I’m not observing any women with you. Tell me they’re in the embassy car straightening their disheveled finery due to the ungentlemanly attacks on them during your journey here. Tell me that, please.”

  “Gearheardt,” I responded, pushing past him into the room, “the women were unavoidably detained. Let’s leave it at that and not get into the part where I am uncomfortable about using an embassy staff car to pick up your prostitutes.”

  The room was quite fancy for a Mexican motel. Suite might be a misleading term, but there was certainly plenty of gaudy decorations and two double beds, one in the room we were standing in, and one in the adjacent room. Cold cuts and various beverages, mostly beer, were carefully laid out on the built-in bar. Cut flowers, a specialty of the local market, were arranged in water glasses and milk bottles around the room.

  “I can see you haven’t changed your prudish attitude, Jack. Can you think of a better use of the embassy’s limo than hauling women around?” He sat down heavily on the side of the bed and pulled his ascot loose around his neck. When it wouldn’t slide up over his forehead, he simply reversed it and left it hanging down the back of his head like some sort of purple headdress.

  “Señor,” he said into the phone, “come up to the room and take all of this food. You can give it to the cleaning crew or take it home yourself. My friend forgot that he was to bring the party with him.” He listened for a moment. “That’s a very reasonable and much appreciated suggestion, amigo. And I’m sure the local women are every bit as beautiful as the Mexico City women. But my friend has just informed me he is now a homosexual. Gracias.” He hung up the phone, looking up at me. “I won’t tell you his other suggestion, Jack. But I would be careful passing the front desk when you leave. He thinks you’re cute.”

  “Nice, Gearheardt,” I said. “But I don’t care. You and I need to talk and I knew we wouldn’t get anything accomplished if there were women around.”

  “Define accomplished.”

  I took off my sport coat and threw it on the bed. “Let’s talk about what you’re doing in Mexico. And who the hell you’re working for. Let’s start with that.”

  “What did you think of Crenshaw?” Gearheardt asked, lighting a cigarette. “I think the guy is an Okie. You know what I think of Okies in the CIA, Jack. Remember Argo Buzzard? That low life bastard spread the clap around half of Asia before—”

  “Argo Buzzard is in jail in Phnom Penh, Gearheardt. Don’t start ranting to change the subject. If you know Crenshaw, and evidently you do, you already know what I think of Crenshaw. An agent’s nightmare. By-the-book and with the subtlety of a zealot on acid. Is he in on your ‘taking over Mexico’ scheme?”

  I was walking around the room checking for bugs. Not the crawling kind. Gearheardt was usually careful, but maybe he really did have partying on his mind when he called me.

  “It’s clean, Jack.” He flapped his hand loosely at the room. “To tell the truth, I knew you would pull some kind of trick like this. Good old Jack Armstrong. All American boy.” He ground out his cigarette in a Mexican flower pot. “Did you at least bring me a weapon?” He avoided the Crenshaw question. And he also knew most of my family were Okies.

  I opened my briefcase and tossed the Walther PPK 9 mm pistol to him along with two clips of bullets. “I don’t know how you talk me into these things, Gearheardt.” I sat down in the gaily striped chair after getting a beer from the buffet.

  A knock on the door and two women entered, loaded up most of the beer and food on a cart and departed. “Gracias, Pepe,” they said to Gearheardt, smiling with significant molar exposure.

  “Hasta luego,” Gearheardt said, wagging his eyebrows. The women giggled and left. Together they must have weighed as much as the embassy car.

  Gearheardt was snapping a clip in the pistol and screwing up his face as if trying to solve a painful dilemma. “Jack,” he finally said, shoving the pistol into his belt, “I need you to trust me.”

  “No.”

  Gearheardt looked hurt. “Aw, Jack. You know I would never do anything that I tho
ught would hurt you.”

  “Yes, you would.” I paused and stared at him: my best friend through flight school, the Marine Corps and Air America. “Not intentionally, Gearheardt. I know that. But you have probably the worst judgment in the world. You’re reckless and impatient. A whore monger and a renegade. You drink too much, have no respect for authority, and …”

  “I see you’ve been reading my performance reports, Jack. Do they also say I’m the best damn guy they have? That if someone in the Company needs some shitty job done, they always ask me. Do the reports say that?”

  They probably did. They were also probably footnoted to the effect that anyone ‘running’ Gearheardt needed to have life insurance and at least a good retirement plan.

  No doubt Gearheardt was one amazing guy. A brilliant, fearless pilot, a dyed-in-the-wool Marine, and a friend that you had no doubt would die for you.

  Tall and thin, with pale blond hair and greenish-blue eyes, he looked patrician in his smoking jacket, even with a purple ascot trailing off the back of his head. I thought of the two of us in the theater in Bangkok years ago, watching David Niven in Casino Royale. That’s us, Gearheardt said as we walked back into the blinding Thai afternoon. If the Marine Corps doesn’t want us, we’ll be spies.

  And now we were. In a cheap Mexican motel smelling of beer and cigarettes, cardboard filling one window, and with a toilet that ran constantly. Ostensibly on the same side, but always never totally trusting even your best friend. Bad guys seemingly everywhere, but mostly in squalorish saloons and run-down hotels. Getting further and further into the scene of ‘bomb and people’ smuggling, and further and further away from the reasons we signed on to this. I wasn’t sure which of us was David Niven, let alone Sean Connery.

  “What about Crenshaw? Is he in on your scheme or not?” I put on my ‘this is serious’ face. “He’s my boss, you know. I can’t be working in operations he knows nothing about.”

  “So you told him about all of your ops right now?” Gearheardt asked with a friendly smirk.

  I didn’t answer.

  “First, Jack, this is not my operation. I’m just simple old Pepe doing what they ask me to do. Sure, I might act like its mine sometimes but—”

  “Damn it, Pepe, I mean Gearheardt, who asked you to do this … this Mexico takeover thing, or what ever it is? I’m not saying I’ll help you, but I sure won’t do a damn thing without some authorization or something like a ‘finding’ document.”

  “The Pygmy.” Gearheardt said it into his hands as he was lighting another cigarette.

  I wasn’t going to be taken in by the bastard. I didn’t smile, laugh, frown, flinch, or react. I just stared at him. But he won the standoff after about two minutes. “The Pygmy,” I repeated.

  “The very one.”

  I stood and picked up my sport coat. As I slipped it on, I started for the door without looking at the guy who was my best friend. Before I was able to open the door, Gearheardt said, “Jack, I’m afraid I can’t let you leave right now.”

  I looked back and the jackass was actually holding a gun on me. In fact the gun that I had supplied him. “You can’t be serious, Gearheardt. Put that damn thing down before it goes off.” There was an ever so slight tremor in my voice.

  “Trust me, Jack. I’ll shoot you in the foot. Come back and sit down. As of now, you’re working for me.”

  “You and the Pygmy.” I sat back down. I reached to the bed and helped myself to one of Gearheardt’s cigarettes.

  The “Pygmy” was a legendary CIA agent. A three-foot bronze man who often wore small animal skins and when stressed spoke by making clicking sounds in his throat. The smell of his cooking fires permeated CIA headquarters at Langley. He alternatively bounded and crept through the halls of the agency. As he rose up through the ranks, he developed a small but loyal following, reportedly assembling his own army of dedicated Pygmy Troops, who he used for his own black operations. And they were also a softball team.

  No one knew for sure but the story was that the Pygmy arrived in CIA headquarters in the luggage of our man in a small African country. He’d hastily departed said country following an incident involving the Prime Minister’s daughter and her mother, even though Agency policy clearly stated that such liaisons were to be avoided. “No tag teams in the palace” was the shorthand.

  Cornered in the DCI’s office that first day, the Pygmy claimed to be an Australian aborigine and demanded to be sent back there. A call to the Australian embassy quickly put the kybosh on that scheme, but the Pygmy made his escape during the phone conversation and eluded capture while somehow obtaining an Agency ID and employment documents. After a few months it became too embarrassing to admit that a Bushman of the Kalahari (another identity the Pygmy claimed) was living somewhere in CIA headquarters. The potential shame of being someone not ‘in the know about things’ being too great to use common sense and ask who the guy squatting in the chair gnawing on small animal bones might be. No one objected when he began sitting in on meetings and briefings

  “So your project is doomed from the start.”

  “I didn’t get the Pygmy’s Blame-o-matic™ coverage, Jack. He really is involved in the deal.”

  Blame-o-matic™ coverage was the system the Pygmy had developed and sold inside the CIA. Basically it was his personal guarantee that he would take the blame for any mission, scheme, idea or project that failed. At first, the Project Leaders sought him out as soon as a mission began looking shaky. But the Pygmy quickly developed a new product which allowed you to obtain a statement of full responsibility—signed by the Pygmy and notarized—that you could submit along with the request for project approval. Then everyone could relax and not worry about who was going to get blamed for screwing up missions. The Pygmy became wildly popular and a ‘player’ around the Agency.

  “He’s actually running this op. And he wants you on the team.”

  “The softball team?”

  “There is no softball team.” Gearheardt sounded insulted that I wasn’t taking him seriously.

  “You mean the Bushmen of the Kalahari aren’t really the division champs?”

  “That’s enough, Jack. You’re just going to have to trust me.”

  “Or you’ll shoot me?”

  “Or I’ll shoot you.”

  I leaned back in my chair, staring at insanity. “Gearheardt, I don’t believe for one minute that you would shoot me. But if it’s important enough for you to even act like you would, I’ll listen to you.”

  “Now I have to shoot you, Jack, or you’ll think I’m a pussy.” He laughed, laid the pistol on the night stand and picked up the phone. “I could use some coffee. What about you?”

  The coffee the desk clerk sent up wasn’t bad. Gearheardt had him supply a large pot, as if we were going to be talking for quite a while.

  “So what’s the story, Gearheardt? No more jacking around. Tell me the mission, what the authority chain is, and what you want me to do. I’m not saying I’ll do it.”

  Gearheardt was in shirtsleeves, shoes off and feet propped on the chair next to his bed. He looked up and saw me with a notebook. “Hey, amigo, no notes. This is stuff they need to get when they’re blow-torching your nuts, not find in your pocket at the cleaners.” I put the notebook away.

  “I’ll get to the best part and work backwards, Jack. On May Fifth, which is of course Cinco de Mayo, some kind of half-assed independence day or some shit—”

  “Your cultural sensitivity is inspiring, Pepe.”

  “Yeah, but anyway, you’re no doubt aware that this Cinco deal is special this year.”

  “They’re also going to announce the Dallas Cowboys exhibition game. I assume that’s what you’re referring to.”

  “You got it. All eyes focused on Mexico City of course.” Gearheardt was becoming more animated. He rose from the bed, brushing the cigarette ashes from his shirt front, and began pacing around the room. “That gives us only a few days to get everything in place. That’s why I need your
help, Jack. I need the resources of the embassy, but without the bullshit. Or in other words, without their involvement.”

  “So Crenshaw doesn’t know.”

  “I didn’t say that. Everyone knows what they need to know.”

  “I know hardly anything. So I must be at the bottom of the need-to-know chain. Right?”

  Gearheardt stopped pacing and sat down on the bed opposite my chair. Our knees were practically touching as he leaned toward me. “Au contraire, Jack. You know next to nothing because you are one of the key people.” He reached behind and grabbed the coffee pot, filling my cup and then his. “You know how we always used to think what dumb shits the higher up guys were in Air America, the Agency guys? Well, in Angola I figured it out. Gon helped me figure it out, so he deserves some credit.”

  “And what did you figure out? You and Gon.”

  “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see the brilliance? The higher up you go in the Agency, the less you know. Hell, near the top they only have a vague idea of what we do operationally.”

  “I assume this all has something to do with the Mexico mission you are supposedly on.”

  Gearheardt looked pensive. “Yes,” he said absently. “You know, Jack, when I was in college this guy I knew went to Mexico on spring break. I was too broke to take a break, but this guy, Cecil I think, came into my room when he got back and he had a stack of pictures. Post cards, kind of. And the one on top was two Mexican girls naked and one of them was fooling with a mule’s tool. The other girl was just looking at the camera and she seemed sad, you know. I thought about that for a long time and wondered what kind of a country has post cards with naked girls and mules. Every time I would mention Mexico to the guys on campus, they would roll their eyes and say ‘wow, those Mexican women’ or something like that. Can you imagine if we had things like that and some French guys were saying ‘man, I want to go to that America on spring break. They have women who will suck a donkey’s dick.’ That would be kind of sad, wouldn’t it, Jack?”