Free Without Honor by David Hagberg

ahead of time in Miami. I called the number he gave me and a woman answered. I told her I was alpha. That’s all. Then she hung up.”
    â€œThat was your emergency signal? Just alpha?”
    Basulto nodded.
    â€œThen Roger Harris must have had some idea of what you might run into. I mean, without any sense of your emergency, just on the strength of that one code word, he was going to drop everything and come to you? Was there a time limit on his arrival?”
    â€œTwenty-four hours. He’d meet me at La Alameda,
a park downtown on the south side. Juárez Avenue. At noon.”
    â€œHe’d just be standing there, big as brass. No fallbacks?”
    â€œIf he was wearing a suit and tie, it would mean he was clean, and I was to walk around the park in a clockwise direction. He’d follow to make sure I hadn’t been made.”
    â€œHe thought there was a chance someone would be there watching him as well as you?” McGarvey asked. He was trying to make sense of this. “I mean, as early as Miami he set up these precautions?”
    â€œI was just following his instructions!” Basulto shouted in frustration.
    â€œBut you liked it. This was exciting.”
    â€œI tell you it wasn’t what I expected. Nothing was like I figured it would be in Mexico City. There were a lot of angry people there. Big things were happening.”
    â€œYes,” McGarvey said dryly. “Did you stay on the streets all night?”
    â€œI went back to the apartment that afternoon. I figured I’d better lay low.”
    â€œWhat was going on at the Ateneo?”
    â€œNothing. Not a goddamned thing. It was spooky as hell. It looked as if the entire operation had been shut down. The American and the Russian show up and bang!—the very next day everything cools off. Nothing happened all that night. I know. I couldn’t sleep. I was awake the whole night, watching. But there was nothing.”
    â€œHarris showed up on schedule?”
    â€œJust like he said he would. He was wearing his suit and tie, and he looked goddamned beautiful to me. I practically ran around the park. He caught up with me in front of the Hotel del Prado, which was right on the corner. He told me to calm down and
took me upstairs to his room on the third floor. It looked out onto the street. He told me to calm down, and he was nervous and crazy. I thought he was on something and I made a little joke, but he practically exploded. ‘This isn’t some kind of a goddamned game,’ he shouted. He said it was my graduation exercise. After this was done, I’d be able to write my own ticket. We’d both be able to call the shots. This was the Company talking, you know, Mr. McGarvey. I mean, if it hadn’t been for Roger I’d be dog meat back home. He asked me to do something for him, and I did it. We were going to have a long association together. ‘Profitable,’ he kept saying. And goddamnit, I believed him.”
    â€œBut it didn’t work out that way,” McGarvey said softly.
    â€œIt wasn’t my fault, goddamnit. I mean, Christ, how was I to know—”
    â€œRoger Harris was evidently in over his head,” Trotter interrupted. “As far as we can tell he made no contact with the Mexico City chief of station. He was working this on his own. It led to his downfall.”
    McGarvey glanced up. “That was July of 1959?”
    â€œCloser to August,” Trotter said.
    â€œRoger sat me down and went through everything I had done, everything I had seen and heard, step by step from the moment I had left him in Miami. I told him about selling the car in Hermosillo, and about my new identification in Guadalajara, and about my apartment. He was mad at first that I hadn’t done exactly what he told me to do, but then when he thought about it, he admitted that I had probably done the right thing. He was a good man, I mean it. A big man. He could admit his