Chapter 60
The station chief had known every detail of the Argentine plan to invade the Falklands for more than a year. He agreed that it was a good idea and had said as much to the generals.
At the CIA’s headquarters in Virginia, they also thought it was a good idea. Virginia was picking up signal traffic that the Soviets knew all about it – and from the reports sent back by Moscow station to their agents in Argentina, the Politburo were also saying it was a good idea.
In consequence, while the CIA were liquidating socialists and the Soviets were fighting for world revolution, they both agreed with each other.
The CIA station chief’s reports to Virginia had only vague details of how and when the invasion would happen : the situation was constantly changing. Each day, La Prensa and the Buenos Aires Daily Herald were calling for armed intervention. And while the CIA knew what was going on, everyone made sure not to tip off MI6. At such a sensitive time, they were almost unrepresented in all of South America. Most of the reports to London were from the Embassy. Along with the armed forces, the Secret Intelligence Service and everything else was being cut to the bone.
From this, the CIA ‘assumed’ that the British were almost bankrupt and wouldn’t put up a fight, if tested. As for Washington, the State Department was supposedly non-aligned but were ‘an-tie-colonialist’. In the Pentagon, the blowhards claimed that an invasion would be a fait accompli – the British would have to accept it whether they liked it or not. The Argentine military had also sent their best psychopaths and execution squads to bases in San Salvador and Honduras and had proved invaluable to the CIA in fighting the leftists in Central America. Taken together, all of this led the junta to think that they had quiescent American backing.
In this way, a stand-off developed between Washington, London and Buenos Aires. The Americans were appearing to stay out of the picture, while knowing all about the junta’s plans. And the British were waiting to see how far the Argentines would go. The point had been reached where Argentine Marines had secretly teamed up with a scrap metal merchant and were preparing to sail with him to South Georgia later that week. They would claim the islands for Argentina and raise the blue, white and Sol de Mayo flag. This would start the reclamation process. At such a crucial moment, the junta didn’t want anything provoking the Americans to test their loyalty.
Thus, Ashby presented a dilemma. He was a British subject but worked for a large US company : he could not simply ‘disappear’. He was now on the CIA’s radar and once located, would have to surrender the documents and be detained until the invasion was under way and then put on the first flight out. The important thing was to get to him before he could alert the British.
While these events were in motion, by early afternoon, Ashby had decided to carry on with his schedule. As far as he was concerned, if the military were after him, they knew where to find him and then they could deport him. By this time, he’d reached Santa Fe province. He rang his client, the American tyre manufacturer in the city of Rosario and said that he’d be calling that afternoon. Then he rang the brokers and told them to meet him there.
After the usual guided tour by a director who was an American from New Orleans, he spent the afternoon with them in a hospidaje over a few bottles of wine. Then he pressed on to reach his next appointment which was the following morning at a food processing company.
Late that night, he stopped at a drive-in motel around an hour’s drive from his destination the next day. After dinner, he took out the envelope given to him in the cafe. There seemed to be an enormous amount of detail about logistics, troop movements and naval support, the gist of which he could pick up but only very roughly.
The first phase of the plan was to take South Georgia as a preliminary to see if the British would respond. Any assault force would take time to be assembled. Once war was declared and before the British arrived, phase two would begin with the invasion of the Falklands.
This was precisely the information which Trowers in Houston would want to give London. It confirmed everyone’s suspicions. The only thing missing from the documents was the timing. He vaguely recalled reading of a flare-up in South Georgia earlier that year. A scrap-metal dealer had sailed there without proper entry permits. The invasion plans were saying that the metal dealer was going there again – with some Argentine marines who would travel with him under cover. South Georgia would be claimed and the flag raised.
Whether the papers were credible or not, it was only a matter of time before the military would find him. He imagined the fate of the woman they arrested. Like her brother, she would be silenced, never to be heard of again. He decided to ring Chuck Fairweather and told him that he’d been caught up in some local trouble and was going to need the help of the US Embassy to get him out.
“Don’t worry, Robbie,” Fairweather said. “I know the Ambassador down there and it won’t be a problem. Just finish seeing everyone you have to see and we’ll have it ironed out by the time you’re back in Buenos Aires.”
The next morning, when Ashby reached the factory he was to visit, he was met by one of the directors. Accompanying him was Ted Raeburn, the broker from Greene & Grey he’d seen earlier in Colombia.
“You’re here ?” said Ashby. “I thought you’d gone on to Brazil.”
“I was planning to but then I got a call from Chuck Fairweather. He said you were in some sort of trouble. What’s wrong ?”
What Raeburn had said was untrue. He hadn’t heard from Fairweather at all. Instead, Fairweather’s phone had been tapped by the ‘mechanics’ in Virginia and he’d learned of Ashby’s conversation second-hand. Working as a broker at Greene & Grey was merely a cover for travelling throughout the South American continent. Raeburn was the CIA’s station chief in Buenos Aires and had been following Ashby since he arrived in Bogota. He’d been alerted to trouble after Trowers rang Ashby before the start of his tour. Trowers’ phone line had also been tapped.
The CIA never questioned why they should be eaves-dropping on their friends and allies. Their main priority at that time was to eradicate communism from what they considered to be America’s back-yard. If it meant supporting dictators at the expense of the British (who were pinko’s anyway), then so be it.
“Chuck Fairweather rang you ? Well, I’d prefer not to involve you,” said Ashby. He was surprised to see Raeburn whose sudden appearance was unexpected rather than seeing a junior broker from the local office. Also, Fairweather wouldn’t have needed Raeburn. The US Ambassador was the only person the Argentines would listen to.
“It sounds serious. Listen, I know a lota important people here. I can fix it. The police are after you, aren’t they ?”
“How do you know that ?”
“Well, I can tell just by looking at you. Man, you’re a nervous wreck. You’re really worried about something. It sounds bad.”
Ashby said nothing.
“For Chrissakes, tell me all about it, willya ? I promise you, I can put it right for you. I know the top guys here.”
“Alright then. This is what happened. I went to a cafe yesterday and met a girl. She rang me at my hotel the night before. You know how it is..” said Ashby, implying that he thought the girl was of easy virtue.
“Sure, I know, you’re on your own, in a strange country..”
“So, I decided to meet her. I know it was stupid of me. But if I hadn’t, she would just have turned up at my hotel. When I met her, it wasn’t what I expected – she said she had some information to give me – some papers. I don’t know what they are. But as she was leaving the cafe, she was arrested by the police. And now, they’re looking for me.”
Like Raeburn, Ashby had embroidered what had happened, along with his apparent concern about being pursued by the police. He didn’t need Raeburn to intervene and whether he could trust him was another matter. Appearing as a bungling tourist sounded credible. But Raeburn also knew he was lying.
“Jeez man, those papers sound mighty serious
to me. Do you still have them ?”
“Yes, I have them. But I’m more concerned about the girl they arrested and of what they might do to her – after all, you told me what goes on here.”
“What happened to the papers ? Where did you put them ?”
“It’s alright, I’ve got them. I suppose I’ll have to surrender myself eventually. You don’t think they’ve killed her, do you ?”
“Well.....maybe if you gave them the papers back, they might go easy on her. But it sounds like serious stuff to me. I don’t think they’ll just let her walk away from it. They’ll want to know how she got them in the first place. And these guys play rough, when they want to. Now, why don’t you just give me the papers and we’ll see what we can do ?”
“Thanks. Let’s sort it out after we finish seeing the clients.”
They went through the motions of seeing how the factory preserved vegetables. The renewal information for the company’s annual contract with Texas Fire showed a huge increase of five hundred per cent. They were supplying food to the armed forces. At the end of the discussions, Raeburn told the director that he and Ashby had an urgent appointment elsewhere and had to leave. As soon as they were outside the factory, Raeburn continued his campaign.
“Let me have the papers. I’ll keep them safe. I can look after them and we can go and see the cops together.”
“Thanks but I’d rather hang onto them for the moment. I would prefer to hand them over myself.”
“Tell them you thought you were going to a business meeting in the cafe and you knew nothing about the girl. She’s probably just a low-life anyway. She could only have got those documents if they’d been stolen, in the first place. They were probably taken from a high-security operation, like an army base or a government office.”
“She said she wanted revenge because they murdered her brother.”
“A likely story. She’s just a commie agitator out to cause trouble. You know what the commies say – ‘the end justifies the means’. She just played you for a sucker. And those papers could stir up a hornet’s nest in the government.”
“She sounded genuinely distressed.”
“Robert, my advice is to forget her. You’ll have your hands full just explaining how you came by those documents. Have you read them ?”
“It's all in Spanish. I don’t know the language.”
“Well, why don’t we just go and see one of my friends in the police ? If I tell them you were just given them and that these commies targeted you because they wanted to cause trouble, they might let you off and forget all about it.”
“Thanks, though I’d like to know for certain that she’s alright.”
“Well, It's your neck on the line, pal, not mine. Let’s head back to Buenos Aires and see one of my friends. Maybe he can help. Excuse me while I make a call.”