There was a place, up-country it was rumoured, for such things, and no one ever came back. Dumping cadavers at sea, like the secret police of Galtieri in Argentina, was not necessary; it was not even required to break a sweat with a shovel and pick. A naked body pegged out in the jungle would attract fire ants, and fire ants can do to soft tissue in a night what normal nature needs months or years to achieve.

He knew the man from Langley was coming and chose to offer him lunch at the yacht club. It was the best restaurant in town, certainly the most exclusive, and it was located at the base of the harbour wall facing out over a glittering blue sea. More to the point, the sea winds at last triumphed over the stench of the back streets.

Unlike his employer, the secret police chief avoided ostentation, uniforms, medals, and glitz; his pinguid frame was encased in a black shirt and black suit. If there had been a hint of nobility in his features, thought the CIA man, he might have resembled Orson Welles toward the end. But the face was more Hermann Goering.

Nevertheless, his grip on the small and impoverished country was absolute, and he listened without interruption. He knew exactly the relationship between the refugee from Yugoslavia who had sought sanctuary in San Martin and now lived in an enviable mansion at the end of a piece of property Moreno himself hoped one day to acquire, as did the president. He knew of the huge wealth of the refugee and the annual fee he paid to President Munoz for sanctuary and protection, even though that protection was really provided by himself.

What he did not know was why a very senior hierarchy in Washington had chosen to bring together the refugee and the tyrant. It mattered not. The Serb had spent over five million dollars building his mansion and another ten on his estate. Despite the inevitable imports to achieve such a feat, half that money had been spent inside San Martin, with tidy percentages going to Colonel Moreno on every contract.

More directly, Moreno took a fee for providing the slave labour force and keeping the numbers topped off with fresh arrests and detainees. So long as no peon ever escaped or came back alive, it was a lucrative and safe arrangement. The CIA man did not need to beg for his cooperation.

"If he sets one foot inside San Martin," he wheezed, "I will have him. You will not see him again, but every piece of information he divulges will be passed on to you. On that you have my word."

On his way back to the river crossing and the waiting plane at Parbo, McBride thought of the mission the unseen bounty hunter had set himself; he thought of the defences, and the price of failure-death at the hands of Colonel Moreno and his Black-Eyed experts in pain. He shuddered, and it was not from the air-conditioning.

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, Calvin Dexter did not need to return to Pennington to collect any messages left on the answering machine attached to his office telephone. He could make the collections from a public phone booth in Brooklyn. He did so on August 15th. The cluster of messages were mainly from voices he knew before the speaker identified himself. Neighbours, legal clients, local businessmen, mainly wishing him a happy fishing vacation and asking when he would be back at his desk.

It was the second to last message that almost caused him to drop the phone, to stare, unseeing, at the traffic rushing past the glass of the booth. When he had replaced the handset, he walked for an hour trying to work out how it had happened, who had leaked his name and business, and, most important of all, whether the anonymous voice was that of a friend or a betrayer.

The voice did not identify the speaker. It was flat, monotone, as if coming through several layers of paper tissue. It said simply: "Avenger, be careful. They know you are coming."

24 The Plan

When Prof. Medvers Watson left the Surinamese consul the official was feeling slightly breathless, so much so, he very nearly excluded the academic from the list of visa applicants he was sending to Kevin McBride at a private address in the city.

"*Callicore maronensis*," beamed the professor when asked for the reason he wished to visit Suriname. The consul looked blank. Seeing his perplexity, Professor Watson delved into his attachŽ case and produced Andrew Neild's masterwork: *The Butterflies of Venezuela*.

"It's been seen, you know. Unbelievable."

He whipped open the reference work at a page of coloured photographs of butterflies that, to the consul, looked pretty similar, barring slight variations of marking to the back wings.

"One of the *Limenitidinae*, you know. Sub-family, of course. Like the *Charaxinae*. Both derived from the *Nymphalidae*."

The bewildered consul found himself being educated in the descending order of family, sub-family, genus, species, and sub-species.

"But what do you want to do about them?" asked the consul. Prof. Medvers Watson closed his almanack with a snap. "Photograph them, my dear sir. Find them and photograph them. Apparently there has been a sighting. Until now the *Agrias narcissus* was about as rare as it gets in the jungles of your hinterlands, but the *Callicore maronensis*? Now that would make history. That is why I must go without delay. The autumn monsoon, you know. Not far off."

The consul stared at the U. S. passport. Stamps for Venezuela were frequent. Others for Brazil, Guyana. He unfolded the letter on the headed paper of the Smithsonian Institution. Professor Watson was warmly endorsed by the head of the Department of Entomology, Division Lepidoptera. He nodded slowly. Science, environment, ecology, these were the things not to be gainsaid or denied in the modern world. He stamped the visa and handed back the passport.

Professor Watson did not ask for the letter, so it stayed on the desk.

"Well, good hunting," the consul said weakly.

Two days later Kevin McBride walked into the office of Paul Devereaux with a broad smile on his face. "I think we have him," he said. He laid down a completed application form of the type issued by the Suriname Consulate and filled out by the applicant for a visa. A passport-sized photo stared up from the page.

Devereaux read through the details. "So?"

McBride laid a letter beside the form. Devereaux read that as well. "And?"

"And he's a phoney. There is no U. S. passport holder in the name of Medvers Watson. State Department is adamant on that. He should have picked a more common name. This one sticks out like a sore thumb. The scholars at the Smithsonian have never heard of him. No one in the butterfly world has ever heard of Medvers Watson."

Devereaux stared at the picture of the man who had tried to ruin his covert operation and thus had become, albeit unwittingly, his enemy. The eyes looked owlish behind the glasses, and the straggly goatee weakened instead of strengthened the face.

"Well done, Kevin. Brilliant strategy. But then, it worked; and of course all that works becomes brilliant. Every detail immediately to Colonel Moreno in San Martin, if you please. He may move quickly."

"And the Suriname government in Parbo."

"No, not them. No need to disturb their slumbers."

"Paul, they could arrest him the moment he flies into Parbo airport. Our embassy boys could confirm the passport is a forgery. The Surinamese can charge him with passport fraud and put him on the next plane back with two of our marines as escort. We arrest him on touchdown, and he's in the slammer, out of harm's way."

"Kevin, listen to me. I know it's rough, and I know the reputation of Moreno. But if our man has a big stack of dollars, he could elude arrest in Suriname. Back here he could bail within a day, then skip."

"But, Paul, Moreno is an animal. You wouldn't send your worst enemy into his gripÉ"