Montesinos chase cloaked in mystery

BY TYLER BRIDGES

 LIMA -- Two months after fleeing Peru following a stunning loss of power,
 Vladimiro Montesinos is perhaps the most wanted man in Latin America, staying
 just ahead of the law even though traces of his presence have been reported in
 several countries.

 According to some reports, Montesinos is traveling with a mistress, has had
 plastic surgery to avoid capture, and apparently has enough money to buy or rent
 yachts so he can slip in and out of whichever country he chooses.

 Since he hasn't been making himself available for interviews, however, all of the
 reports remain unconfirmed, even though some of the information was provided by
 former bodyguards testifying under oath to a congressional panel that wants to
 know all about the millions he has reportedly stashed away in Switzerland.

 Montesinos, the disgraced former head of Peru's intelligence service under
 ex-President Alberto Fujimori and invariably described as the shadowy power
 behind the throne, may be gone from Peru, but he is surely not forgotten.

 He is facing a host of corruption accusations here: selling weapons to Colombian
 guerrillas, trafficking in drugs, laundering money, arranging the torture and murder
 of Fujimori opponents and bribing congressmen.

 Former foes believe that, after 10 years as the second most powerful man in
 Peru, he continues to exert influence and pose a threat to anyone he considers
 an enemy.

 ``His spirit and his people are still active in Peru,'' says Baruch Ivcher, a television
 station owner who was forced into exile in Miami by Montesinos and Fujimori in
 1996 after broadcasting reports linking them to drug trafficking.

 Ivcher returned to Peru early this month, and there are reports he has been
 followed by an armored car and by two men on a motorcycle without a license
 plate. ``Montesinos still has a lot of people in the government,'' Ivcher says.

 As a result, many of Montesinos' opponents remain on edge. ``I do not buy
 completely the story we have been told,'' says Alvaro Vargas Llosa, author of a
 recent book that provided extensive evidence that Montesinos oversaw death
 squads. ``There's something in the story that smells fishy. It could be a
 convoluted way to distract attention.''

 Others believe he really has left Peru.

 ``Maybe he's in Panama or maybe he's in Ecuador,'' suggests Carlos Escobar, a
 former state prosecutor forced into exile during most of Fujimori's 10 years in
 office.

 ``He could be in Peru or in Paraguay,'' offers Santiago Pedraglio, a political
 analyst. ``He has a lot of money hidden away, more than $70 million.''

 ``I still think he's here,'' says Alejandro Toledo, the front-runner in Peru's upcoming
 presidential election. ``There are a lot of theories. But who knows where he is?''

 Pedraglio stresses that Montesinos knows how to stay ahead of the authorities:
 ``As Mao said, make a feint to the east and attack to the west. Montesinos is an
 expert in disinformation.''

 Montesinos left Peru for Panama on Sept. 24, seeking political asylum. On Oct.
 23, he returned to Peru over Fujimori's objection and went into hiding. With
 Fujimori's political fortunes beginning to plummet as 12 congressmen defected to
 other political parties, the president personally led a hunt for the man who helped
 mastermind his rise to the presidential palace in 1990 and then kept his secrets
 during the following decade.

 In recent days, Peru's newspapers have published front-page articles providing
 additional details of Montesinos' recent international travels. Earlier this month,
 three of his bodyguards told a congressional committee that they helped him
 escape Peru on Oct. 29, on a yacht bound for Ecuador's Galapagos Islands.

 After a week in the Galapagos, Montesinos made plans to fly to Venezuela until
 he learned that he would have to stop in Guayaquil, where he feared being
 detained. Montesinos then once again embarked on the yacht, this time bound for
 a small island off the coast of Costa Rica and now joined by his mistress.

 Meanwhile, on Nov. 19, having stopped in Japan while on a trip to the Far East,
 Fujimori stunned Peruvians by announcing that he was resigning as president and
 would remain indefinitely in Japan.

 On Nov. 23 or 24, Montesinos sailed toward Costa Rica but switched yachts and
 disappeared. Venezuelan police officials said last week that Montesinos stayed
 at Caracas' Hotel Avila from Dec. 7-13 under an assumed name. On Dec. 13, a
 plastic surgeon remodeled his nose and eyelids, according to Venezuelan
 intelligence authorities quoted in the local news media.

 Where Montesinos went next has not become public, but the circle may be
 closing around him.

 The son of a man who sympathized with Lenin and the Soviet Union -- hence his
 first name, Vladimiro -- Montesinos rose through the military ranks but was
 accused of falsifying documents and was jailed briefly in the mid-1970s.

 He was drummed out of the armed forces, then resurfaced as an attorney for drug
 traffickers and for police accused of ties to drug traffickers.

 During the 1990 election, when Fujimori, an obscure college professor, came from
 nowhere to defeat the writer Mario Vargas Llosa -- the father of Alvaro Vargas
 Llosa -- Montesinos is widely believed to have quietly resolved a tax problem that
 could have kept Fujimori from taking office.

 Once in power, Fujimori tapped Montesinos to head the intelligence service.
 Montesinos soon extended his reach over all of Peru's armed forces.

 It was on Montesinos' watch that Fujimori eliminated two murderous guerrilla
 groups, the Shining Path and Tupac Amaru, earning the thanks of a grateful
 nation.

 Herald special correspondent Lucien Chauvin contributed to this report.