CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- He slipped out of Peru on a luxury yacht, foiled Costa
                  Rican immigration with a beard and false identity -- now Peru's fugitive spymaster has
                  apparently undergone plastic surgery in Caracas.

                  The director of a private clinic in the Venezuelan capital said Manuel Antonio
                  Rodriguez Perez, the alias allegedly used by Vladimiro Montesinos to sneak into the
                  country, underwent facial reconstruction last week -- and got away without paying the bill.

                  "Up to today, we thought Manuel Rodriguez was a normal Venezuelan who came in for
                  elective surgery," Luis Ponte, director of the Instituto Diagnostico clinic, told
                  Reuters on Wednesday.

                  "The patient had rebuilding surgery on the nose and eyelids and left with the bill
                  still outstanding," he added.

                  Venezuela's chief police inspector ordered a "serious investigation" into media
                  reports that the Peruvian wanted for money laundering, human rights abuses and
                  corruption, had entered the country.

                  "We cannot confirm this clandestine immigration into the country, but we are
                  going to make a very serious investigation," Chief Inspector Pablo Guzman told
                  reporters.

                  The man behind a corruption scandal that toppled Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori
                  has been on a six-week odyssey around Latin America and the Caribbean.

                  He left Peru's Pacific coast in late October on a private yacht and then crossed
                  Costa Rica with a false Venezuelan passport, Peruvian military officials said.

                  He stole through Costa Rican immigration with a fresh beard on a private plane
                  to the Caribbean island of Aruba, before heading to Venezuela earlier this month,
                  Costa Rican officials said.

                  Registered under the Rodriguez alias, the fugitive spent six nights at a top
                  Caracas hotel near the clinic last week with a woman identified as Emma Mejia,
                  according to newspaper reports earlier this week.

                  Despite the mounting evidence of his presence, Foreign Minister Jose Vicente
                  Rangel dismissed the reports as "speculation and false rumors."

                  "This government has no reason to protect Montesinos and if he was in
                  Venezuela, even under a false name, we would recognize it, try to detain him and
                  deport him," he told a radio interviewer.

                  Newspapers said Mejia gave herself up at the Peruvian Embassy in Caracas last
                  week and was deported to Peru, where she is being held by the government's
                  anti-terrorist unit.

                  The Peruvian Embassy was unavailable for comment.

                  A bribery scandal centered on Montesinos which erupted in September escalated
                  into Peru's worst political crisis in a decade and forced Fujimori from office.

                  The Peruvian Congress fired the disgraced leader last month after he fled to
                  Japan when the corruption scandal threatened to engulf him.

                     Copyright 2000 Reuters.