11
QUITO, ECUADOR
Wells pulled up outside the arrivals hall at Quito’s international airport as a thickly muscled black man in wrap shades stepped through the sliding glass doors. He carried only a laptop case and a backpack, no bags. Packing light. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Wells leaned over to open the passenger door. He was driving an old Toyota compact, faded green paint, no power doors, standard Ecuadorian plates. Nice and low-profile. “Winston Coyle. As I live and breathe.”
“Cuánto a Quito, señor?”
“For you, my friend, on the house.”
Coyle tossed his stuff in back, sat beside Wells. The sun was a few minutes from disappearing behind the vast ridge of mountains west of the airport, Mariscal Sucre International. It had opened in 2013 after one-too-many close calls at Quito’s original in-town airfield.
“Buenas tardes, Juan Wells.”
Wells was surprised how glad he was to see Coyle. Maybe he thought of Coyle as lucky after their long-shot success in Paris. This mission needed all the help it could get. “You could pass for a native. If the natives were black and could bench four hundred pounds.”
“Solo tres ochenta. Todo el crédito a Taco Bell. Delicioso y sano!” Coyle spoke with the exaggerated precision of a pitchman on Univision.
“Yeah, sure. But, unfortunately, Spanish is not in my skill set, so let’s make America great again and go English only for now.”
“Sí, señor.” Coyle grinned. “Time to get to business, as the white folk say.”
“You know I’m white.”
“I’m not sure what you are.”
When they spoke two nights before, Wells had told Coyle only that he was headed to Ecuador and needed help. You know I’m still at the Farm, right? Coyle said. I won’t let Ms. Ratched send you to the principal’s office, Wells said. That fast, Coyle promised to be on the next plane down.
But with Coyle here, Wells found he wasn’t ready to talk about Enrique Martinez and Hector Frietas just yet, explaining the mess he’d made in Bogotá. For a few minutes, he wanted to keep the fiction that they were on a South American road trip, Johnny and Winston’s Excellent Ecuadorian Adventure. Childish, but even Wells needed a break from the truth once in a while.
“How’d you like the Farm?”
The Farm—the agency’s famed training base at Camp Peary, in southeastern Virginia—had changed in recent years to align with the agency’s new focus on the War on Terror. Case officers spent less time practicing cocktail party recruitments, more on survival exercises and drone handling.
Still, the place retained its summer-camp-like quality. Recruits lived and ate together. Even those who would spend their entire lives behind desks at Langley practiced at the firing range. Like all initiations, the exercises were designed to build cohesion among diverse recruits. In less fancy terms, the agency hoped new officers would leave Camp Peary thinking that the CIA was cool.
Wells visited the place once a year to take questions about deep-cover work. The trips were his last formal connection with the agency. Recruits were told only he was a former field operative who had spent time in Afghanistan, a true but wildly incomplete version of his résumé.
“Farm’s all right. Lots of toys. You know, you’re a legend down there.”
“Hope not.”
“You think that aw-shucks routine works with me?”
“The fewer people who know me, the safer I am.” Anne and Emmie, too, Wells didn’t say. Foreign intelligence services like the SVR rarely targeted the families of CIA officers. No one wanted to start a cycle of retaliatory attacks. But groups like the Islamic State didn’t care. With Coyle’s help, Wells had narrowly thwarted a Daesh attack during his last mission. Anonymity was his best protection.
“These are our guys, John.”
“And?” Wells reminding Coyle of the secret they shared: An agency mole, a senior officer, had betrayed the CIA to the Islamic State.
“Point taken. Gonna tell me why I’m here, or should I guess?”
“Let’s drop your stuff at the hotel, take a walk, I’ll show you what you need to see.”
“Long as the room has two beds. You brought me down here hoping I’d be your rent boy, we’re both gonna be sorry.”
They came over a ridge, and the lights of Quito came into view. “How did you know?”
Quito was one-fifth the size of Bogotá, and five times as nice. The Ecuadorian capital occupied a narrow valley ten thousand feet above sea level. Mountains and volcanoes surrounded it on three sides. The city center dated to the Spanish Colonial era, and, unlike La Candelaria, it was largely safe, even after dark. Ecuador was poorer than Colombia, but Ecuadorian culture was much less violent than its northern neighbor’s. The country’s murder rate was one-fourth Colombia’s.
The travel guidebooks and magazines had taken notice. Quito was a regular stop on the Lonely Planet backpacker circuit. Wells spoke quietly as they walked southwest from their hotel toward the city center. He didn’t want to chance an American overhearing them, likelier here than in Bogotá. On the other hand, the tourist population meant that he and Coyle stood out less.
“Wish you’d called a week ago,” Coyle said after Wells finished explaining what had happened in Bogotá. Including the death of Antonio Guerro, a/k/a Tony from Tampa. Meaning: You screwed up, but it’s done now. Just try not to get anyone else killed down here, John-O. Especially me.
Best part of talking to a Marine who’d fought in Afghanistan was what didn’t have to be said. “Me too.”
“This guy Guerro, his family under control?”
“Looks that way so far.”
Tarnes had ordered the chief of Bogotá Station to tell Guerro’s parents he’d been in El Amparo on agency business. The CIA couldn’t say anything more about what had happened because it was still investigating, and Guerro’s mission was classified. Meantime, Mom and Dad would come to Langley to see a star for their son added to the CIA’s Memorial Wall. Lies upon lies. And the station chief wasn’t happy covering for an operation that he hadn’t known about, Tarnes told Wells. But at least Guerro’s parents would believe he’d died a hero.
Empty gestures seemed to be all Wells had.
Wells had told Tarnes about the safe in the apartment in El Amparo, of course. Under normal circumstances, the agency would have sent in a safecracker. But a field op from Bogotá Station had checked out the building the day before and reported detectives were talking to residents. Asking the Colombian Ministry of the Interior directly about the killings would be a mistake. As a rule, the CIA didn’t much care about street crime in Bogotá. Showing interest in this shooting would raise unanswerable questions.
Guerro’s death was different. He was an American citizen. The Colombians would expect the United States to be interested in what had happened to him. The Bogotá cops had told their FBI liaison they believed Guerro had been alive when he got into the taxi, but the cabdriver who dropped Guerro’s body at the hospital was not a suspect. They’d also said they believed the murder might be tied to the killings of two men in a slum nearby.
The cops figured if the shootings were connected, they resulted from a drug deal gone wrong. Guerro had gone to El Amparo for coke, wound up in a firefight. The fact Guerro wasn’t carrying a pistol when he was delivered to the hospital didn’t bother the police. They assumed he’d ditched it before he got in the cab.
The possible connection with Guerro meant that the cops were showing more interest in the El Amparo murders than they typically did in a slum shooting. Thus, the door-to-door interviews in the building. Still, Wells figured he was safe. As far as he knew, only three people had gotten a good look at him: the taxi driver, the third drug dealer, and Elena. The cabbie had kept his mouth shut so far, no doubt hoping for more money. The other two had their own reasons to keep quiet.
Even so, with the cops still investigating and residents on edge, Wells and Tarnes thought trying to crack the safe would be a mistake for now. Especially since as far as they knew Frietas hadn’t been to the safe house in months. Wells and Coyle would have to look for answers in Quito first.
Now they crossed Avenida 12 de Octubre, a wide, traffic-choked boulevard, and walked down a hilly, tree-lined street flanked by walled homes on both sides. The sidewalks were crumbling, but the neighborhood reflected Quito’s gentrification. A new apartment building rose beside a salon advertising organic facials and a vegan restaurant whose windows revealed communal tables made of driftwood.
“Quito,” Coyle said.
“Yeah, who knew?”
“Frietas lives around here?”
“Next block. But he doesn’t seem to be home.”
Wells explained he’d arrived in Quito the afternoon before, picked up the car and a pistol from the CIA station here. He spent the morning watching the house. Frietas’s wife had left around 9 a.m. But Wells saw no evidence of Frietas. The NSA said his phones were still dark.
“You have a plan to find him? Knock on his door tonight?”
“Let’s wait on that. Start with the Central Bank in the morning. You call, ask for an appointment.”
“Why would he see me? If he’s deputy director for money laundering, or whatever?”
“Because you’re a Harvard professor researching South American central banks. His name came up as a regional expert. Everyone loves Hah-vahd.”
“You look at me, you think Harvard professor?”
“You meet him, great. If not, at least you find out if he’s at the office, give us a chance to follow him home or wherever. I’m gonna watch the house again in the morning. With any luck, I’ll see him. Or a chance to get inside easy. In the afternoon, we’ll knock on doors, talk to the neighbors. If he’s around, someone will know.”
“They’ll tell us because . . . ?”
“Because we’re investigators from New York that a nameless U.S. company has hired to find Mr. Frietas.”
Wells handed Coyle a photo identification from Kroll, a high-end private security company. It identified him as William Coil, and it came with a New York State driver’s license to match. Wells had his own badge and license. All courtesy of Tarnes.
Coyle flipped the identification back and forth in his hand. “Still seems like a long shot.”
“Only takes one person who feels like talking. Anyway, if we strike out on that, we’ll maybe knock on his door, see if his wife feels like chatting. Somebody knows where he is. Or, at least, when he went missing.”
“What’s the wife’s name?”
“Graciela. I got a decent look at her this morning. For a woman with a missing husband, she was awfully dry-eyed. This is her, by the way.” Wells showed a photo of Graciela, a tall, hard-looking woman with a helmet of black hair and deep-set eyes.
“I’m guessing Elena didn’t look like that. Maybe Graciela thinks Hector took off with her.”
“Or she knows he’s laundering drug money and isn’t surprised he got hit. Their house is nice. Nicer than it should be. It’s up here, see for yourself.”
They turned left onto Calle José Tamayo, a quiet street that sloped southwest toward the big park that held Ecuador’s national museum. Frietas’s house, number 318, was a tall two-story, set back behind an eight-foot-high brick wall topped with steel spikes. A heavy gate protected a narrow driveway along the edge of the property. A big gray Mercedes sedan was visible inside. Behind the wall, a dog barked loudly. Not the over-the-top security Wells had seen in Bogotá, but more than the other houses on the block.
“What’s Graciela do?” Coyle said.
“Statistician in the Ministry of Public Health.”
“Nobody’s paying for that house on a bureaucrat’s salary. Or even two bureaucrats’.”
Wells couldn’t disagree. Frietas depressed him before they’d ever met. The guy was an adulterer and most likely a money launderer. Fine. Wells wasn’t winning any humanitarian prizes either.
What Frietas didn’t seem to be was a terrorist. The NSA had found no links between Frietas and Muslim terror groups. His bank accounts, at least the two the NSA and Treasury had found, had about one-point-three million dollars in them total. He was rich, but not cartel rich. He hadn’t touched the money in the last few days.
In fact, the accounts showed no unusual cash withdrawals in the last couple years. The big expenses were his mortgage, which ran six thousand dollars a month, and two monthly automated transfers of fifteen hundred dollars each to Autolider Ecuador, which turned out to be a Mercedes dealership in northern Quito.
Frietas wasn’t paying those bills on his Central Bank salary. Instead, every so often, he added forty or fifty thousand dollars to the account. The big exception came a year before when he’d added nine hundred fifty thousand dollars to one of them in one big cash deposit. That was by far the biggest deposit he’d ever made. Had he been paid for laundering? Skimmed from a cartel?
In his hours watching Frietas’s house, Wells had seen no other surveillance, no black SUVs making slow loops, no drones whirring. No one cared about Hector Frietas. Aside from Frietas’s boasts to Enrique Martinez and Elena, Wells had no evidence Frietas had anything to tell the CIA. Maybe Frietas had found himself in trouble and decided his best way out was to scam the United States by blowing up the importance of some tidbit he’d overheard. A dumb move, but desperate people made dumb moves. Maybe he’d thought better of the idea and taken off.
Or maybe whoever was after him had caught him and dumped him in the jungle.
Coyle seemed to read Wells’s mind. “I know I’m new at this, John, but I don’t see how this guy plays.”
If Frietas had been from Colombia, Wells could have asked Tarnes to have the FBI liaisons in Bogotá check with the Colombian intel agencies about him. But Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, was an old-school leftist who couldn’t stand the United States. When Fidel Castro died, Correa oversaw a memorial service with full color guard honors. Whatever they might know about Frietas, the Ecuadorian security forces wouldn’t do American investigators any favors.
Wells and Coyle were stuck going door-to-door.
The next day was a slog. At the bank, Frietas’s assistant made Coyle wait for ninety minutes, then told him that Frietas was traveling. No, she didn’t know where he’d gone. Or when he’d be back. Frietas didn’t answer emails. His work and phone voice mails were jammed and not taking messages. Back on José Tamayo, Wells watched as Frietas’s wife emerged from the house, locked up, went to work. Coyle came back around noon, and he and Wells knocked on doors.
But the neighbors seemed unimpressed, or maybe too impressed, with the Kroll badges. The few who would talk through their gates claimed they didn’t know much about the house at 318. The dog, it barked whenever I walked by. I didn’t slow down, a middle-aged woman five houses down said.
Did you ever see anyone visiting?
They kept to themselves.
Late afternoon, two blocks down, a shopkeeper at a narrow bodega left over from an older, poorer Quito nodded at Frietas’s picture.
“You know him?” Coyle said in Spanish.
The shopkeeper was a small man who had pale brown skin, yellowed eyes, greasy black hair. He looked away, muttered at his dusty shelves.
“He says his memory is as empty as his pockets. Poet and he don’t even know it.” Coyle fished a five-dollar bill out of his wallet, put it on the counter.
The man looked at the bill. “Cinco?” he said softly. Wells laid a twenty beside it. The man tucked the money into his pocket, began what was a very involved story. Coyle listened, didn’t say much. Finally, the shopkeeper petered out, and Coyle turned to Wells.
“Frietas was a drinker. Medium-heavy. Used to come in a couple times a week and buy aguardiente, the local liquor, those down there—” Coyle pointed at the two-hundred-milliliter bottles, small enough to tuck in a coat pocket, on the bottom shelf. “The kind you buy to suck down on the walk back to your house, before your wife sees. He was usually by himself. But maybe a year ago, he came in twice with a group. Not Ecuadorian. White.”
“Some Ecuadorians are pretty white.”
Coyle said something. The shopkeeper interrupted, waving his hands, excited for the first time. “He knows what his people look like. These weren’t from Ecuador. Anyway, they weren’t speaking Spanish—”
“Inglés.”
The shopkeeper shook his head. “Not English.”
“Could it have been Arabic?” Wells offered some Arabic to the guy, received a blank look in return. “German? Alemán? Ich bin ein Berliner?” The shopkeeper shook his head. “Russian? Ya russkiy? Privyet? Spasibo?”
This time, the shopkeeper murmured to Coyle.
“He says maybe the last one. It was a year, he can’t be sure.”
“These people, how many were there?”
The guy tapped his head even before Coyle translated. Wells handed him another twenty-dollar bill, and he started talking again.
“Two women, he thinks, and five or six men. They looked like us.”
“Like us?”
“Policía.” The guy held his hands wide and apart. “Soldados.”
“Right. How could he be sure Frietas was with them? And did he ever ask Frietas about them?”
A short question, a very long answer, with lots of gesturing toward the store shelves.
“They came in together, they bought liquor together, aguardiente and vodka and wine, Frietas paid for all of it. This was over a period of at least a month, maybe two. It was a lot of money, so it stuck with him. Another time, two of them came in on a run without Frietas, and Frietas paid later. He did ask Frietas about them after, he hoped they’d come back. Frietas said they’d gone. That was all he said, and it looked like he didn’t want to talk about it, so that was it.”
“When was the last time he saw Frietas?”
The answer came back fast.
“Maybe two weeks ago. He seemed excited. Nothing specific, he just seemed happy.”
“Thanks.” Wells passed him one more twenty. “Anything else?”
“Algo más?” Coyle said.
“Nada.”
The sun had vanished behind the fifteen-thousand-foot volcanoes west of the city when Wells and Coyle emerged onto Calle José Tamayo.
“You got any good reasons why an Ecuadorian banker would hang with Russian soldiers?” Coyle said.
“And maybe get paid by them, too.” Wells explained the huge deposit Frietas had made the year before. “Time to ask his wife.” Wells was sure now that Frietas wasn’t in Quito, much less at home. Guys like him didn’t just stop drinking.
They walked back to 318. The dog wasn’t in the yard. A fish-eye security camera watched the front gate. Through its thick grille, Wells saw lights behind barred windows. He pushed a buzzer mounted next to the gate. Inside the house, the dog went wild with deep, throaty barks.
No answer. Wells buzzed again.
“Yes?” A woman’s voice. In English. Accented but understandable. “What do you want?”
“We’re investigators. Looking for your husband.”
“Investigators from where?”
“New York.” Wells lifted the Kroll badge to the fish-eye.
A pause.
“You come. The other one stays outside.”
“Racist,” Coyle muttered under his breath.
The gate’s deadbolt shot back, echoing on the street.
“You heavy,” Coyle said.
“You know I’m not.” Wells had left his new pistol in the room safe. “She’s just nervous. Wait here.” Without waiting for Coyle’s answer, Wells pushed open the gate and stepped inside.
The yard was long and narrow, stretching eighty feet between the side walls, and twenty-five from the gate to the front door. Wells pushed the gate shut. As it locked behind him, floodlights mounted on the corners of the house clicked on, revealing a landscaped garden with what looked like a koi pond on the left and small flowering trees with beautiful purple blossoms on the right.
Wells lifted his hands, walked slowly down the path to the front door. The dog yammered. If it was as mean as it sounded, Graciela wouldn’t need any other weapon.
When he was ten feet away, the door swung toward him. Graciela stood just inside the door, the dog next to her, a German shepherd, ninety pounds of fur and teeth. The shepherd lunged for Wells. Graciela needed all her weight to tug it back. She said something in Spanish, and the shepherd sat. Unwillingly. Its mouth still open.
“Are you armed?”
“No.”
“Sit down. Now.” Precise, careful English, from years of language training. She wore a shapeless dress, and up close her face was solid, unattractive but dignified. Look at me or don’t, I don’t care.
Wells went to a knee, his hands still up.
“On your bottom. With your hands on top of your head.”
A posture that would ensure Wells couldn’t escape if she unleashed the dog. Nonetheless, he sat.
“You okay, John?” Coyle said from the street.
Coyle might as well have been in another galaxy, for all the good he could do. Wells ignored him. Graciela stepped out of the house. She stopped when she was five feet away, the dog a foot closer. It opened its mouth wide and ran its big pink tongue over its lips. Like an offensive tackle at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Career stuck in a rut? Time to try something new?
“What’s your name?” Wells said to the dog.
“Rosa,” Graciela said.
Rosa grunted and sat. Wells, also sitting, could see unmistakable proof Rosa was male. “Doesn’t that mean pink?”
“Yes. My husband thought it would be funny. What is it you want?”
Wells made himself ignore the shepherd. “Your husband called a mutual friend a few weeks ago. Said he had information he wanted to sell. I came down to see him, but he disappeared.”
“Information for your company?”
The truth seemed like the best option. “For the U.S. government.”
“You said you were a private investigator.”
“In this case, I’m working for the Central Intelligence Agency.”
She shook her head. “Why would I talk to you?”
The usual reasons. Money and favors. “Besides the fact that we’re trying to find your husband? We can pay if you help us figure out what he wanted to tell us.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Wells needed to control this conversation. He couldn’t do it sitting on his butt with an attack dog making eyes at him. “I promise, I’m here to talk. Nothing else. I’m going to get up now. Don’t sic the dog.” Before she could argue, Wells popped to his feet, his hands still on his head.
Rosa growled, but Graciela held his leash.
“Beautiful house,” Wells said. “You work for the Ministry of Health, yes? Your husband works for the Banco Central?”
Her face tightened against the implicit question: How do you pay for it? Wells couldn’t tell yet if she wanted to protect Frietas or would turn on him.
“You said CIA business?”
“That’s right. You know, Hector has a girlfriend. Her name’s Elena.”
Her smile didn’t make her any prettier. “Hector has lots of girlfriends.”
“This one, he brought her to Bogotá with him. He owns an apartment there.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve seen it.”
A long pause. “Do you think I stayed married to him for the money?” she finally said. “I was raised to believe that divorce is a sin. A mortal sin.”
Even the Pope doesn’t think that anymore. “Ms. Frietas. The only reason I mention Elena is that I met her last week in Bogotá.” And when I say met, I mean tied up.
“Good for you.”
Wells decided to press. “She said Hector had promised to take her to the United States with him.”
“You’re lying.” But she said the words without heat, seeming to know he wasn’t.
“Whatever information he had, he thought it was valuable. Enough that he could get a visa for himself. And Elena, too.”
She led the shepherd inside, slammed the front door. Wells stood in the yard, replaying the conversation. It puzzled him, down to the most basic fact: Why had she let him in?
A minute later, the door creaked open. Wells tensed, wondering if Graciela was about to set Rosa on him. But she walked out. Alone. Wearing a jacket big enough to hide secrets. Or a pistol. “This may sound strange, but I love Hector. Más vale estar solo que mal acompañado, my mother said. But he made me laugh, and it’s hard to make an ugly woman laugh. Are you telling me the truth? About the girl?”
Wells saw: Graciela would betray her husband if Wells stayed out of her way. “Yes.”
“I don’t know what he knew or where he is, that’s the truth. But the last few weeks, he’s been upset. Nervous. He was coming home late, asking me if anyone was watching the house.”
Wells wondered why Frietas hadn’t touched his bank accounts if he was in trouble. Maybe he’d made a mistake so big that a million dollars wouldn’t begin to fix it. “Was anyone? Watching?”
“Once I thought I saw someone, but I wasn’t sure. Then, maybe two weeks ago, his mood changed. He was happy. Wouldn’t tell me why. He never told me anything about where the money came from. He said it would be safer for me, and I believed him.”
Wells didn’t believe her. Maybe she hadn’t known all the details, but she had to have known the money wasn’t clean. He didn’t argue, but she seemed to see his skepticism. She pushed past him.
“Come on, let’s get your friend off the street.” She pulled open the gate, waved Coyle inside.
“Gracias.”
“Stick to English,” she said to Coyle. “So, no, he didn’t tell me anything. But he was in a better mood, I could tell. Then he disappeared. This was eight days ago. He told me he was going to Bogotá.”
Another reason she’d believed Wells about Elena. “You weren’t surprised when he didn’t call?”
“Not at first.”
Wells thought now that Frietas’s disappearance was unrelated to whatever he’d been trying to sell to the United States. Or related only because it made him take a chance that had gotten him in trouble. Like someone had spotted his name on an airline manifest.
“You have any idea where he might be?”
She shook her head.
“Was anyone helping him launder money? Inside the government, maybe?”
“If there was, I don’t know who. Truly, he kept it away from me.”
And you never asked. But the question of what Graciela had known was a distraction from the real issue: What had Frietas wanted to tell them? “Last year, did he bring any Russians over?”
“No.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Coyle said, grabbing her attention, “but did your husband have a safe house here?”
“A what?”
“I mean, is it possible he owned another house in Quito? Or rented one? The reason I ask is that we’ve been told he spent time with Russians about a year ago. Maybe they weren’t staying in a hotel.”
Wells didn’t like the interruption, but Coyle was right. If the Russians had been in town for as long as the shopkeeper remembered, they would have been conspicuous in a hotel. Wells doubted they’d stayed at the Russian embassy either. The apartment in Bogotá proved Frietas liked his own properties. Why wouldn’t he have had one in Quito, too?
“Another house?” Graciela weighed the idea. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
Wells thought she was protesting too much. From the way Coyle looked at Wells, he thought so, too.
Maybe they’d touched a nerve, or maybe Graciela was tired of talking. She nudged Wells toward the gate. “Now, please. You need to leave.”
“Just a few more questions. Your husband was no fool. He thought his information would be worth millions of dollars and a U.S. passport. Help us, they’re yours.”
“Fine. Two minutes.”
“Just to be clear, when did you last see Hector?”
“The morning he said he was going to Bogotá. Eight days ago. Normally, he would go for three or four days.”
“Did he give you any reason to think this trip would be different?”
“No. But then he didn’t call. Three days ago, I started to worry. I called his secretary, friends at the bank. No one’s heard anything.”
“He drove himself to the airport?”
“Yes. He has a Mercedes like mine.”
In the U.S. and Europe, luxury cars often came with automatic emergency roadside assistance programs that used the car’s own cellular link to broadcast their location in case of an accident. The link could also be used to find the cars if they were stolen. But Wells didn’t know if Mercedes offered the program in Ecuador or if it would work if the car had been turned off since the previous week. He’d ask Tarnes to find out.
“Can you give us the plate number?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. Now, listen, you really must leave.” She shook her head. “Whatever’s happened to Hector, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
She shoved them toward the gate. Wells didn’t want to upset her, not with the shepherd inside and neighbors all around, though she didn’t seem upset. He couldn’t read her at all.
The gate slammed. Wells and Coyle looked at each other.
“Weird,” Coyle said.
“For lack of a better word. Let’s walk and talk.”
They worked their way down José Tamayo while Wells filled Coyle in on the first part of the conversation.
“Why let us in at all?” Coyle said when he finished. “She doesn’t know us, her husband’s missing, she knows he’s into something. We’re obviously not local. The sun’s down. Why?”
The same question that stumped Wells.
“And, okay, she has the dog, but then she puts him away and lets me in, too. Two of us.”
“By then, she figured we weren’t a threat.”
“How, exactly, did she figure that?”
Wells stopped mid-stride.
He had all the pieces of the puzzle, he’d just needed Coyle to shake them loose. Why Frietas had insisted on having the meeting outside normal agency channels. Why he and Graciela openly lived so richly. Why he hadn’t touched his money.
“Statistician, my ass,” Coyle said, beating Wells to it.
Graciela was an Ecuadorian intelligence officer. One senior enough to have a cover identity. She had let her husband make the dirty money, keep it in his name, pay for the house and the cars. He took all the risk. Maybe she’d grown tired of his affairs. Or lost her temper when she learned he was running off with his mistress. He’d wanted to keep the meeting secret because he was afraid she’d find out. But she had anyway. Or maybe he’d blurted out the truth the morning he was headed for Bogotá. Either way—
She’d played Wells and Coyle decently, though she’d professed her complete ignorance too many times. Even the most naïve wife had some idea how her husband was making money. She’d agreed to talk because she would want to know why a pair of Americans were looking for him.
Wells wondered if Graciela would set the security forces on them now that she knew what they wanted. He didn’t think so. She wouldn’t want too many questions about what had happened to dear old Hector.
“You think she killed him?” Coyle said. “Father of her children?”
“Possible.” More than possible.
“What did she do with the body?”
“Stuffed it in the Mercedes, went for a drive. Parked it in that flophouse of his. Notice how fast she sent us packing after you brought that up?”
The theory made sense to Wells. If she’d killed him in the heat of the moment, she wouldn’t have an alibi or a plan to dispose of the corpse. She was a strong woman, and Frietas a small man. She was big enough and tough enough to have stowed his body in the trunk while she figured out her next move. Maybe she had already driven into the Ecuadorian jungle, set the Mercedes on fire, left her husband’s corpse as a feast for the jaguars and the wild pigs. But she couldn’t have taken the Mercedes very far off road. Someone would have spotted it already. Which meant the car and Frietas’s body were probably still close by.
“Here’s the thing. I don’t care if she killed him. I only care if she can help us.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if we find the body, or figure out where it is, we make a deal with her.”
“No justice for Hector?”
“Hector should have kept it in his pants. Next question. How do we find him?” Wells explained his idea about the Mercedes. “It’s a long shot, but it’s probably the best place to start.”
“Can we try the guy at the bodega first?”
“How so?”
“It slipped past me at the time, but remember what he said about how they came in without Frietas and he paid later? Let’s say they bought a couple weeks’ worth of booze. Let’s say the house isn’t close. Maybe it’s way up one of these hills. They walk down. Are they going to want to drag a bunch of bottles all the way back up themselves? No, they’re going to have our friend bring it for them.”
“Maybe they took a taxi.”
“Maybe. Never hurts to ask, though.”
Back at the bodega, the shopkeeper was closing. He didn’t look thrilled to see them, but he nodded them inside. Wells handed him another twenty, and Coyle started asking questions. Even before the shopkeeper finished his answer, Coyle’s smile told Wells they were onto something.
“He says they told him to deliver it on his motorbike that time. They gave him the address—”
“Coyle. I’m starting to like you.”
“Hold on. He can’t remember where exactly, but it was on this side of the valley, high up, where the streets end.”
“We need an address, not a sonnet.”
“He thinks he can find it if we take him around. He wants two hundred dollars.”
“Dos cien,” the guy said, flashing his yellow teeth at Wells. “Dos cien dólares.”
“We can manage that,” Wells said. “Let’s go. Vamonos.”
“Mañana.” The guy shook his head and spoke to Coyle.
“He says he has twin girls, they turn ten tonight, he won’t miss it, doesn’t care how much we pay him—”
“Fine.” They would lose a night to the daughters of an Ecuadorian bodega owner. Wells could live with the delay, considering how much progress they’d just made.
Long as the guy didn’t change his mind overnight.