LIMA, Peru — Imagine the ideal fugitive.
He has millions of dollars stashed around the globe. He honed his spy skills as chief of one of Latin America's best espionage services. His international contacts include gunrunners, drug lords, bankers, lawyers, guerrillas, politicians and military officers in the United States, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East.
That sketch of Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's former spy chief, helps explain how he has eluded capture for four months. The hunt for him obsesses Peruvians and intrigues observers across Latin America. The region has a history of odysseys by fugitives, including disgraced political bosses and fallen gangsters: Montesinos' story combines elements of both kinds.
His pursuers are a secretive team of about 80 investigators led by Interior Minister Antonio Ketin Vidal, a hero of Peru's fight against terrorism. The pursuit is a personal duel between old enemies. And it is more than just a cloak-and-dagger epilogue to this nation's year of living dangerously.
As long as Montesinos remains at large, Peruvian leaders worry that he menaces their recuperating democracy. The danger is concrete as well as psychological, according to Jose Ugaz, the special prosecutor investigating allegations that Montesinos built a criminal network as chief of the National Intelligence Service, or SIN.
"There is no doubt that active Montesinos people remain in the system: There are judges, prosecutors, police," Ugaz said in an interview last week. "I have information that people here have been in touch with him as recently as two weeks ago. I think he is absolutely informed about what is going on. And I even think he is still making some decisions."
Investigators believe that Montesinos, who was last spotted about two months ago in Venezuela, has ordered counterattacks. Last month, pro-Montesinos legislators temporarily dissolved a congressional commission investigating him. A witness was threatened after talking to Ugaz by phone, indicating that wiretapping--omnipresent during Montesinos' reign at the SIN--persists. Videotape evidence was stolen from a courthouse.
Most disturbing, many Peruvians believe that Montesinos was behind an accusatory report about interim President Valentin Paniagua broadcast Jan. 28 by a television station tied to the SIN. The allegation of corruption against the president by a former intelligence agent appears to be groundless; Paniagua denounced it as a plot to destabilize his government ahead of an April presidential election.
