Events slid around the bend and went careening downhill for Suárez in November 1979. Suarez had been meeting with Pritchard—the two men would spend eight hours at a crack, arguing their way through a long lunch—and Pritchard invited him to the United States to speak at the First World Conference for World Sea Turtle Con­servation. According to Pritchard, Suárez had initially thought that those who opposed him were obstructionists, sen­timentalists who didn't like killing, vegetarians, hippies. "But," Pritchard told me, "he was impressed by scientists, by reasonable men with facts at their fingertips." Pritchard saw the conference as a process of give-and-take, a learning experience for Suárez, who he felt was coming around to a more rational approach.

The Justice Department's José Toro, unknown to Pritchard, attended the con­ference for entirely different reasons.

"Mr. Suarez," Pritchard told me, "was very nervous. He was speaking in the largest room of the United States State Department to 500 of the most knowledgeable sea-turtle experts in the world."

Worse, members of the World Wild­life Fund had put copies of the Outside article on every seat. Two unidentified men, described to me as "large and probably Mexican," went from seat to seat, confiscating the reprints. No matter, the WWF people handed out more re­prints as the delegates entered the room. They had also arranged showings of the ABC Sportsman segment.

Suárez spoke before an unresponsive and surly crowd. As he stepped off the podium, he was surrounded by federal agents and handed a subpoena. Apparently he panicked. Suárez fled. He flew back to Mexico, leaving his clothes and luggage in his hotel room.

"I knew," José Toro told me, "that there was a great quantity of olive ridley meat involved, and that seemed to point to Mr. Suárez. We had no legal proof, however, and the subpoena only involved his records. I went into the investigation with an open mind, but when Mr. Suárez fled, we began concentrating on him."

Toro and other agents took up the paper trail once again. Names on letterheads submitted to United States Customs led to a group of Cuban businessmen in Miami, and inquiries there led to another group of Cubans in Mexico City. There, Toro, who was born in Puerto Rico and of course speaks fluent Spanish, began looking for the man any investigator wants to find: the fellow with a gripe.

On Toro's list of people he wanted to talk to was a man named Martin Zacarias. It looked to Toro as if Zacarias has once been involved in the conspiracy but had been somehow muscled out of the business. There were three separate meetings in Mexico City, and because Zacarias was no longer involved in the business, Toro felt justified in granting him immunity in exchange for information. On the third meeting, Zacarias produced a sample customs document, written in pencil. It contained the precise wording used in the customs declarations for the illegal meat.

Zacarias said that the sample document had been drawn up during a meeting in Mexico City sometime in December of 1977. At that meeting he and other individuals present had conspired to fraudulently mislabel olive ridley meat and export it to the United States. One of the individuals present was named Antonio Suárez.

Taking this information to the grand jury in Miami, Toro was able to obtain an indictment against Suárez, PIOSA, and five other individuals and corporations. Suárez hired the best lawyers he could find and returned to the United States only after plea negotiations had been completely worked out. On October 28, 1981, Suárez pleaded guilty to all charges and paid a total of $50,000 in fines.

Antonio Suárez eventually quit the turtle-slaughtering business. "No," Toro told me, "that was not part of the plea negotiations. I think that we denied him the United States market, and perhaps the business is no longer profitable." Toro, who shares a Latin background with Suárez, thinks there may be something else involved. "Antonio Suárez," Toro said, "is a very proud man, very concerned with dignity. He is very Latin in that respect. I think it was devastating to his ego to stand before that judge, to be declared guilty, to acknowledge that he engaged in criminal acts. I think for him the worst humiliation came at the arraignment, when they took him downstairs for fingerprinting and mug shots.

"You could," Toro said, "almost feel sorry for him."