Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [65]
“Let’s keep it formal. It’s too late to make friends.”
“Duncan was born in Cuba,” Hackbart said.
“That’s insane!” Susan said. “Duncan’s no more Cuban than I am. Where are you getting this stuff from?”
“His real name is Bernardo Reyes Díaz. Small detail. I guess he forgot to mention that,” Hackbart said.
“He told me he was half Irish,” Susan said to no one in particular.
“Well,” I said, “you know how the Irish lie.”
Both of them glared at me.
“Díaz—or Duncan, as you knew him—was a lieutenant in the Cuban army,” Hackbart continued. “He served in Angola during the seventies. After that he was an intelligence agent. He arrived in Miami via Spain a few years ago as far as we can tell. In other words, he’s a spy.”
“So much for background checks,” Susan said.
“And they let him into the DEA?” I said. “Wow!”
“Not knowingly, no,” Hackbart said, scowling at me. “There was a real Harry Duncan, a student at the University of Miami who died in a motorcycle accident in 1985. Díaz stole his identity. It’s easy enough to do, and besides, he had help. This town is crawling with Cuban spies. They helped him set things up. The false employment records, the good references, credit history, the whole nine yards. Then he got into the Agency. You want to know how we found all this out? Well, every now and then we catch ourselves a spy, and, as is usually the case, he gives someone up to save himself.” He looked at Susan. “This time it was Duncan.”
“Why’d he join the DEA?” I asked.
Hackbart glared at me. “You ask a lot of questions for a fellow from Minnesota,” he said. “But the answer is, we don’t know. There have been rumors for years that Castro is involved in the drug trade. If they’re true, it may be he wanted someone on the inside to see if we were getting close to anything. Fidel is a first-class asshole, but he has an image to protect. He wouldn’t want it to get out that he was making money off of the narcotics trade through the Caribbean. That wouldn’t look too good to his friends at the United Nations.”
“But Harry didn’t even speak Spanish,” Susan said hopelessly.
“Not to you he didn’t. By the way, he also spoke Russian. Did you know that?”
“So what now?” Susan asked. “You think maybe he went back to Cuba?”
“It’s possible. His cover here is blown. All we know is that he stopped using his cell phone a few days ago. That much we do know, because we’ve been keeping an eye on him for a while now. He had two phones. Two cell phones, that is. One he used for work. The other he didn’t think anybody knew about, but we knew. By the way, do you know a man by the name of Randy Matson?”
Susan hesitated, and once again she managed to keep from jerking her head in my direction.
“I don’t think so,” she said. I let out a breath. “Who’s he?”
“He was a friend of Duncan’s,” Hackbart said.
“Don’t know the name. Should I?” Susan asked.
“Matson makes stag movies. Pornography, but we think that may be a cover. We’ve been watching him, too. Matson had a yacht named The Carrousel. A very nice boat. You’d have to sell a hell of a lot of dirty movies to buy a boat like that. The last time we saw it, he was anchored off Sunset Beach. We haven’t figured out why it was there yet. The coast guard had it under surveillance, but the cutter assigned to the detail got called away on an emergency. They were tracking a boatload of illegals, and they didn’t figure the yacht would leave in the middle of the night, but they were wrong. They’re so underfunded over there it’s a wonder they make payroll, let alone help us out. Now the yacht is gone.”
“Man,” I said, “this is just like the movies!”
Hackbart grinned. “I hope I’m not ruining your vacation, though from the look of that burn, I’d say you’ve already had too much sun. You’ve been to Miami before, haven’t you?”
“Sure, lots of times.”
“I know. I’ve seen you.”
“Really? Where?”
“That I don’t recall, but I’ve seen you.” He stood up. “Doesn’t matter.”
“You ever go to Spurs?” I asked.
Hackbart frowned. “What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing. Just