Paul Devereaux was in his office as early as usual and crisply laundered. He handed a file to his subordinate. "That's him," he said, "our interloper. I spoke with our friend in the south. Of course, it was three of his thugs who brutalised the charter pilot. And you were right. They are animals. But right now they are vital animals. Pity, but unavoidable."

He tapped the file. "Code name Avenger. Age around fifty. Height, buildÉit's all in the file. There is a brief description. Now masquerading as U. S. citizen Alfred Barnes. That was the man who chartered the deeply unfortunate Mr. Lawrence to fly him over our friend's hacienda. And there is no Alfred Barnes matching that description on State Department files as a U. S. passport holder. Find him, Kevin, and stop him. In his tracks."

"I hope you don't mean terminate."

"No, that is forbidden. I mean, identify. If he uses one false name, he may have others. Find the one he will try to use to enter San Martin. Then inform the appalling but efficient Colonel Moreno in San Martin. I am sure he can be relied on to do what has to be done."

Kevin McBride retired to his own office to read the file. He already knew the chief of the secret police of the Republic of San Martin. Any opponent of the dictator falling into his hands would die, probably slowly. He read the Avenger file with his habitual great care.

Over two hundred miles away, in New York City, the passport of Alfred Barnes was consigned to the flames. Dexter had not a clue or shred of proof that he had been seen, but as he and charter pilot Lawrence had flown over the mountain pass in the sierra, he had been jolted to see a face staring up at him, close enough to take the Cessna's number. So, just in case, Alfred Barnes ceased to exist.

That done, he began to build his model of the fortress hacienda. Across the city, in downtown Manhattan, Mrs. Nguyen Van Tran was myopically poring over three new passports.

It was August 3, 2001.

23 The voice

If it is not available in New York, it probably doesn't exist. Cal Dexter used a lumber shop to create a trestle table with a top of inch-thick ply that almost filled his living room.

Art shops furnished enough paints to create the sea and the land in ten different hues. Green baize from fabric shops made fields and meadows. Wooden building blocks were used for scores of houses and barns; Model Makers Emporium provided balsa wood, fastdrying glue, and pasteon designs of brickwork, doors, and windows.

The runaway Serb's mansion at the tip of the peninsula was made of LEGO from a children's store, and the rest of the landscape was down to a magical warehouse providing for model railway enthusiasts.

Railway modellers want entire landscapes, with hills and valleys, cuttings and tunnels, farms and grazing animals. Within three days Dexter had fashioned the entire hacienda to scale. All he could not see was what was out of sight to his airborne camera: booby traps, pitfalls, the work force, security locks, gate chains, the full strength of the private army, their equipment, and all interiors.

It was a long list and most of the queries on it could only be solved by days of patient observation. Still, he had decided his way in, his battle plan, and his way out. He went on a buying spree.

Boots, jungle clothing, K-rations, cutters, the world's most powerful binoculars, a new cell phoneÉHe filled a haversack that finally weighed close to eighty pounds. And then there was more; for some he had to go out of state to places in the United States with more lax laws, for others he had to dive into the underworld, and others were quite legal but raised eyebrows. By August 10th, he was ready and so were his first ID papers.

"Spare a moment, Paul?"

Kevin McBride's yeoman face came around the edge of the door and Devereaux beckoned him in. His deputy brought with him a large-scale map of the northern coast of South America, from Venezuela east to French Guiana. He spread it out and tapped the triangle between the Commini and Maroni Rivers, the Republic of San Martin.

"I figure he'll go in by the overland route," said McBride.

"Take the air route. San Martin City has the only airport, and it is small. Served only twice daily and then only by local airlines coming from Cayenne to the east or Paramaribo to the west." His finger stabbed at the capitals of French Guiana and Suriname.

"It's such a god-awful place politically that hardly any businessmen go and no tourists. Our man is white, American, and we have his approximate height and build, both from the file and from what that charter pilot described before he died. Colonel Moreno's goons would have him within minutes of debarkation. More to the point, he'd have to have a valid visa and that means visiting San Martin's only two consulates: Paramaribo and Caracas. I don't think he'll try the airport."

"No dispute. But Moreno should still put it under night and day surveillance. He might try a private plane," said Devereaux.

"I'll brief him on that. Next, the sea. There is just one port; San Martin City again. No tourist craft ever puts in there, just freighters and not many of them. The crews are Indians, Filipinos, or Creoles; he'd stand out like a sore thumb if he tried to come in openly as a crewman or passenger."

"He could come in off the sea in a fast inflatable."

"Possible, but that would have to have been hired or bought in either French Guiana or Suriname. Or he could be dropped offshore from a freighter whose captain he has bribed for the job. He could motor in from twenty miles off the coast, dump the inflatable, puncture it, sink it. Then what?"

"What indeed?" murmured Devereaux.

"I figure he will need equipment, a heavy load of it. Where does he make landfall? There are no beaches along San Martin's coast, except here at La Bahia. But that's full of the villas of the rich with bodyguards, night watchmen, and dogs.

"Apart from that, the coast is tangled mangrove, infested with snakes and crocodiles. How is he to march through all that? If he gets to the main east-west road, what then? I don't think it's on, even for a Green Beret."

"Could he land off the sea right on our friend's peninsula?"

"No, Paul, he couldn't. It's girded on all seaward sides by cliffs and pounding surf. Even if he got up the cliffs with grappling irons, the roaming dogs would hear the noise and have him."

"So he comes in by land. From which end?"

McBride used his forefinger again. "I reckon from the west, from Suriname, on the passenger ferry across the Commini, straight into the San Martin border post, on four wheels, with false papers."

"He'd still need a San Martin visa, Kevin."

"And where better to get it than right there in Suriname, one of the only two consulates they run? I reckon that's the logical place for him to acquire his car and his visa."

"So what's your plan?"

"The Suriname Embassy here in Washington and the consulate in Miami. He'll need a visa to get in there as well. I want to put them both on full alert to go back a week, and from now on pass me details of every single applicant for a tourist visa. Then I check every one with the passport section at State."

"You're putting all your eggs in one basket, Kevin."

"Not really. Colonel Moreno and his Ojos Negros can cover the eastern border, the airport, the docks, and the coast. I'd like to back my hunch our interloper will logically try to get all his kit into San Martin by car out of Suriname. It's far and away the busiest crossing point."

Devereaux smiled at McBride's attempt at Spanish. The San Martin Secret Police were known as "Black Eyes" because they and their wraparound black sunglasses struck terror into the peons of San Martin. He thought of all the U. S. aid heading in that direction. There was no doubt the Suriname Embassy would cooperate to the full.