Vollard was a man with a plan. Not a man alone. His sponsors were very highly placed in Saudi Arabia, with every possibility of rising even higher, should their master plan work out.
Beltran was in position to foil that plan or facilitate it. If he foiled it, Vollard would hit back hard, initiating the destruction of Beltran's Gulf Coast network, if not Beltran himself.
Beltran liked the plan. Despite his own acquisitive instincts, he retained enough of the old revolutionary snobbery to despise Washington and the current Administration.
A side benefit was that it would also put a hurting on Caracas and the Chavez regime.
Venezuela's oil wealth had put communist Cuba in the position of being a poor relation. This would knock some of the cockiness out of them.
The newfound Cuba/Venezuela alliance had forced Beltran to work closely with Colonel Paz here in New Orleans for the last six months. He'd had a bellyful of Paz, of his thuggish ways, massive conceit, vulgarity, and rudeness. That alone would have convinced Beltran to seal his deal with Vollard.
The huge payday that awaited successful completion of the mission didn't hurt, either.
The plan required a fall guy. A patsy. Its Saudi backers had tagged Caracas for the role. Venezuela was closely allied with Iran, the Saudis' arch-nemesis. Caracas and Tehran dominated OPEC, throwing their weight around, trying to take over the world oil market.
Vollard's strike would be engineered to make it look like Venezuela's handiwork.
That would push Washington's buttons. The Administration was already sore at the socialist regime, the Hearthstone Initiative's free-oil-for-the-U.S.-poor being only the latest Chavez finger stuck in Washington's eye. It would jump at the chance to hang one on Venezuela.
The frameup required the planting of the dead body of Colonel Paz at the scene of destruction, in a place where even the bumbling Yanquis couldn't fail to find it.
That was Beltran's bit. It made sense. He was close to Paz, professionally speaking, and therefore in the best possible position to betray him. He knew Paz's comings and goings, friends and associates, watering holes and hideaways. Knew his routine, his pattern.
Beltran had set up the hit. The plan was to liquidate Paz when he emerged from his girlfriend's apartment in the early morning hours and eliminate his bodyguards at the same time. Quietly. The bodies would be loaded into the utility truck and taken away.
His limo would be stolen for future disposal at some optimally incriminating spot, preferably linking it to a few more major crimes.
The corpses of Paz and the bodyguards would be delivered to Vollard's riverfront base at Pelican Pier, where they'd be put on ice — literally packed in ice coolers to retard the signs of dissolution, decay, and rigor and throw off the timetable of any medical examiner seeking to establish the time of death.
At zero hour, they'd be taken to the scene of destruction and planted there for the Americans to find, clinching the case for Venezuelan involvement in a massive terror strike.
Such was the plan, anyway, as devised by Beltran.
He'd supplied some of the personnel, including two Cuban shooters illegally in the United States, and one of his most valuable players, Beatriz Ortiz. Her revolutionary fervor was impeccable. All Beltran had had to do was feed her a line about Havana's wanting Paz hit for counterrevolutionary activities, and she was ready to go. The Generalissimo planned to have her killed upon completion of the Paz job; she was a dangerous fanatic who knew too much about his operation and had to go.
Vollard liked to keep an eye on things and his hand in all mission-related activities, and had put his top noncom, Hermann Ost, in on the job to make sure it was carried out properly. That hadn't worked out so well.
Vollard and Beltran had both agreed on including Dixie Lee in the hit. A hometown boy, he knew the turf and could do the talking if the team ran into any interference from citizens or the law. He, too, was slated for demolition post-Paz; Vollard and Beltran would both feel easier when the volatile gunrunner with the long prison record was permanently silenced.
All Beltran's intricately laid schemes went out the window, however, when the hit went sour. Not having been there, he was unable to conceive of how the team had made such a botch of things. He'd underestimated Paz, a quick and cunning killer. And he was unaware that CTU had become involved, in the persons of Jack Bauer and Pete Malo, who'd helped polish off the hitters and by so doing allowed Paz to escape.
He knew this, though: now he was in danger of being made the patsy, the fall guy.
No less than his masters in Havana, his new partner, Vollard, demanded results. Never mind that his top kick Ost had been present; it was Beltran who'd failed to deliver on his promises.
That was how Vollard would see it, and how he'd tell it to his Saudi backers.
Beltran knew that, because that's the way he would have handled it himself.
Paz knew nothing of Vollard and his master plan; he knew Beltran, and the presence of Beatriz and the Cubans would set him on Beltran's trail. Not to mention alerting Havana to the spymaster's double dealing. Once his bosses started scrutinizing Beltran's doings, he'd zoom straight to the top of their priority kill list. Assuming Paz didn't get him first.
It was then that Beltran demonstrated a flexibility of mind rarely possessed by men half his age, the ability to make a 180-degree turn and reverse field to salvage what he could of a situation that had gone sour.
He'd routinely surveilled not only Paz but other key members of the Venezuelan infrastructure, overt and covert, in New Orleans. One target of opportunity now immediately stood out: Raoul Garros.
Scion of an oligarchic clan closely tied to Chavez, Garros had proved a particularly useful tool for the new regime. He was young, handsome, charming, educated, spoke several languages fluently, and had a first-class education and grounding in business.
He was also an opportunist of the first rank, with a talent for backstabbing and a total lack of scruples when it came to betraying former friends and associates of questionable loyalty to the new President and his much-touted brand of 'twenty-first-century socialism.'
Garros was the urbane face of the new regime, seemingly embodying the best of the old and new orders. He was a key executive in LAGO's corporate hierarchy in New Orleans. It was no accident that his post at the state oil company had thrown him in close contact with Susan Keehan by way of the Hearthstone Initiative.
That was the brainchild of the strategists of Chavez's military-intelligence clique back in Caracas. A simple plan: put lady-killer Raoul in close proximity with rich, available Susan Keehan and let nature take its course.
Now they were engaged to be married. An enviable alliance for both families: clan Garros would be plugged into one of America's richest families, one whose wealth was matched by its political clout; while the Keehans would have a son-in-law who was a pillar of the new establishment in Venezuela, giving them entree into that country's oil wealth.
Which provided Beltran with a chance for a quick score. Grab Garros and hold him for ransom.
The Keehan woman was besotted. She would pay. Thanks to her family connections, she had the ability to get hold of a good deal of money fast. That was vital, because with Vollard and Paz coming after him, Beltran would have to move fast to get out of this with a whole skin.
Beltran had the organization to pull it off — for a limited time only, because the botched Paz hit and its repercussions would soon be heard in Havana. His bosses would move quickly to curtail his extraordinary powers and freedom of movement. He had to complete the kidnapping and ransoming fast.
Beltran had mobilized the Supremo cell for the operation. Political kidnappings were nothing new in their line of work. His Havana-decreed authority and autonomy served him well; Monatero assumed as a matter of course that he was carrying out the directives of Cuba's Maximum Leader.
Beltran's network routinely kept tabs on Garros as well as other leading members of the consulate and LAGO, so it was easy to locate him at the Mega Mart building. Raoul's lifestyle also facilitated the snatch. He relied on his solid-gold cover and credentials, rarely if ever traveling with bodyguards, complaining that they cramped his style. Knowing that they all reported back on his doings to Paz.
Involving Supremo was a further cutout, covering Beltran's tracks and further muddying the waters. At this point, nothing would serve his purposes better than a good, hot shooting war between Paz's death squad and the Cuban spy cell. Chaos was his friend and would aid him in making his getaway.
By the time the gun smoke had cleared and the body count had been toted up, he'd be long gone with a cool
