A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  Roth leaned forward. ‘This could actually contribute to the resolution of a tremendously important investigation, Mr Lorentzen. We need to get copies of these documents as rapidly as possible.’

  Lorentzen understood. He was not over-complicated. One of those rare officials who actually considered it was his job to help, not to hinder with explanations of administrative regulations and bureaucratic protocol.

  ‘You’re happy to wait here?’ he said.

  ‘No problem,’ Miller replied.

  ‘I’ll do what I can, okay?’

  ‘That’s all we can ask of you.’

  Lorentzen left the room, closed the door firmly behind him.

  Miller looked at his watch: it was ten after three.

  July 20th, 1981 we landed in Managua. We did not leave until December of 1984. The Nicaraguan electorate wanted the Sandinistas back in power. They wanted the Contras, along with their Yankee support and funding, to be nothing more than another piece of their strained and awkward history.

  Anastasio Somoza Snr. started it in 1936. He assumed the presidency of Nicaragua. The United States assisted him in any way they could. With the National Guards as his enforcement arm, Somoza brutalized the nation. He countenanced and condoned the rape, torture and murder of the populace. He massacred thousands of peasants; he robbed, extorted, smuggled drugs and terrorized anyone who considered opposing him. His Somozan clans seized land and businesses. Nicaragua was his kingdom until the revolutionary Sandinista Party overthrew the National Guard and the Somozan clans.

  The Sandinistas tried to slow the decay. They established a government for the people. Land reform, social justice, the redistribution of wealth. But we, we mighty Americans, didn’t want the people of Nicaragua to own their own country, just as we had resisted and opposed similar self-government plans in Chile. It started with Carter - signing authorization to fund opposition to the Sandinistas. The CIA ran anti-government propaganda in the newspaper La Prensa. Pirate radio stations out of Honduras and Costa Rica told the people of Nicaragua that their new government was nothing more than an atheist puppet of Marxist Russian godfathers hell-bent on destroying the Catholic Church and all that the Nicaraguan people held dear. We put a front organization down there - the American Institute for Free Labor Development. That’s where I ended up. And what did we do? We singled out significant individuals in the Sandinista government’s health and literacy programs, and then we killed them.

  When Reagan took office in January 1981 he stated categorically that the situation in Nicaragua was nothing more than a Marxist Sandinista takeover. He said he deplored what was happening there. Apparently he deplored it so much that he greatly expanded the CIA’s guerrilla warfare and sabotage campaigns. In November, ten months into his first term of office, he authorized nineteen million dollars of taxpayers’ money to assist the Argentinians train a guerrilla force in Honduras. And who were the backbone of this force? Ex-members of Anastasio Somoza’s National Guard, alongside them known war criminals and American mercenaries. It was even rumored that court-martialed and dismissed Special Forces operatives and members of Delta were amongst those stationed in Honduras ready for the push against the Sandinistas.

  By the fall of ’83 there were somewhere between twelve and sixteen thousand troops. They named themselves the Nicaraguan Democratic Force. They became known as the Contras, and they hid out along the Honduran and Costa Rican borders, repeatedly striking in hit and run raids against rural towns and known Sandinista outposts. The CIA were under no illusions. They knew the Contras would never overthrow the Sandinistas. That was not their purpose. They were there merely to slow down the machine, to damage and halt the progress of all Sandinista development projects - economic, health, educational and political. They blew up bridges, power plants and schools. They burned crops, laid siege to hospitals. They destroyed entire farms, health clinics, grain silos, industrial plants, irrigation systems. A group of concerned Americans calling themselves Witness for Peace gathered intelligence on Contra atrocities from one single year. The rape of young girls, torture of men and women, the maiming of small children, decapitations, dismemberment, cutting out of tongues and eyes, castration, bayoneting pregnant women in the stomach, genital amputation, breaking toes and fingers, pouring acid on faces, scraping off people’s skin, summary executions, crucifixions, live burials, setting people on fire.

  Reagan named these people ‘freedom fighters’. He referred to them as ’the moral equivalent of our founding fathers’.

  The Senate Committee initiated the Boland Amendment, and thus ‘prohibited the use of tactics for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua’.

  The CIA gave another twenty-three million dollars to the Contras and we stepped up our activities.

  Nicaraguan harbors were mined with three hundred-pound C4 devices. Vessels were arbitrarily destroyed, some of them French and British. Seamen were wounded and killed. Nicaragua’s fishing industry lost millions of dollars from delayed and sabotaged shrimp exports.

  April of 1984 the World Court declared the U.S. actions illegal.

  The Saudi Arabian government secretly arranged with the CIA to fund the Contras at a rate of a million dollars a month. The money was laundered via a bank account in the Cayman Islands, through a Swiss account, and on to the Contras. The accounts were held in the name of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, assistant to Rear Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan’s national security adviser. It would be the better part of three years before the world knew what had happened, and then they would only be given the bare bones.

  Money also came from Israel, South Korea and Taiwan. Reagan’s war in Nicaragua had racked up fourteen thousand casualties. Dead children exceeded three thousand, another six thousand orphaned. In November 1984 the Nicaraguan government officially stated that the Contras had assassinated nine hundred and ten state officials. CIA-backed mercenaries had attacked over one hundred civilian communities and displaced one hundred and fifty thousand innocent people.

  In October of 1984, two months before I left, the Associated Press disclosed a ninety-page training manual entitled Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare. The manual was authenticated by the House Intelligence Committee as a CIA-produced manual for the Contras. I can guarantee that the manual was indeed authentic. The chapters that dealt with covert assassination and sniper work were written by me.

  In Congress, Reagan was asked, ‘Is this not, in effect, our own state-sponsored terrorism?’

  Congress cut all funding. The Saudis increased their commitment to two million dollars a month.

  The deal came to light. Reagan went on TV. He was a trained actor. Lied like a pro.

  He went on to circumvent the ban on military funding by giving the Contras thirteen million in intelligence advice and twenty-seven million in humanitarian aid. Two years after I left Nicaragua, just two years, Congress went ahead and authorized an expenditure of one hundred million for the Contras.

  Ultimately it was the financial devastation of Nicaragua that lost the election for the Sandinistas. In a country where the average annual income had dropped to two hundred dollars a year, the United States proudly handed forty dollars to everyone who voted for the U.S.-favored candidate, Violetta Chamorra. The new American presidential incumbent, George Bush, called the electoral result ‘a victory for democracy’.

  Even now we are condemned by the World Court of Justice at The Hague for ‘the unlawful use of force’ employed in Nicaragua.

  I read a report from a Pentagon analyst a while back. He stated categorically and unreservedly that the United States policy for Nicaragua was a blueprint for successful intervention in Third World politics. He said, ‘It’s going right into the textbooks’.

  I know what we did out there. I know exactly what we did. I saw it. I lived it. It was my life for three and a half years. Catherine was my controller. She relayed the orders. She ferried the instructions and pushed the buttons. Not just for me, for others too. And
how many of us were there? Eventually I lost count. Dozens, perhaps hundreds. We appeared in ones and twos and threes. We seemed to multiply like bacteria, like some invisible virus, and we grew ever more virulent and destructive. What we did became addictive. It became something above and beyond necessity. After a while it was not a job, it was a vocation, a reason to live.

  We went out there to Nicaragua, to Afghanistan, to Tangiers, to Colombia . . . We went out there with our hearts and minds in the right place, and we became something that we never imagined we could possibly be.

  Like I said before, the journey to such a place was brief, almost unnoticed, but the return seems to last forever.

  Perhaps, in that small way, I was so much like my father.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Eight minutes to four Lorentzen returned. He clutched a handful of papers. On his face he wore an expression of quiet determination.

  ‘I have moved mountains,’ he said as he sat down once more. He set the sheaf of papers on the table ahead of him, and then picked up each in turn and handed it to Miller.

  ‘Copy of Mr McCullough’s police department ID card, his social security card, and a copy of the address confirmation bill he used from the telephone company. I also have a copy of the original account application form he filled out.’

  Miller looked through the papers, passed them in turn to Roth.

  ‘Mr Lorentzen, I am indebted to you,’ Miller said. ‘You really have done the most remarkable job here. The police department is grateful, very grateful indeed.’

  Lorentzen was happy to have solved the problem.

  Minutes later he was wishing Miller and Roth the very best in their investigation, standing at one of the front windows, watching them until they disappeared around the corner. He stayed there for a moment longer, and then he turned and went back the way he’d come.

  Twenty-five minutes later, out through the worst of the late afternoon traffic, Al Roth and Robert Miller stood on the sidewalk facing a run-down tenement block on Corcoran Street. They had walked both sides of the street for a good ten minutes. Roth had checked the house numbers twice. There was no escaping it. The address that McCullough had given the Washington American Trust, the address that had been confirmed by an AT&T billing, was nothing more than a derelict building, seemingly unoccupied for years.

  Miller stood there for some time, hands buried in his pockets, his expression a combination of disbelief and resignation. An unstoppable sense of inevitability now seemed to pervade everything to do with this case. Names that didn’t match social security numbers. Unpaid pensions to vanishing police sergeants with fictitious addresses. Photos beneath carpets, shreds of newspaper under mattresses . . . none of it really connected, and yet all of it felt the same.

  ‘Back to the precinct,’ Roth said. ‘Need to check on the social security number and see if AT&T ever had such a customer as Michael McCullough.’

  Miller didn’t reply.

  Took them another half an hour to get to the Second. By the time they arrived it was quarter after five. Roth went down to the computer suite in the basement while Miller went upstairs to see Lassiter. Lassiter was gone, some meeting at the Eighth. Had left word that if either Miller or Roth showed up they were to call him on his cell. Miller figured it could wait until they had something to tell him.

  Miller checked for progress on the APB. He spoke to Metz briefly, listened to him bitch about the number of time-wasters that called up on something like this. The whole thing was dispiriting. ‘Always the way,’ he told Miller. ‘The lead that looks the most promising is a waste of fucking time, the obvious waste of time turns out to be the thing itself. I tell you, man, this is just so fucking frustrating.’

  Miller left Metz in the first floor hallway and went back to his room.

  Roth had returned. ‘You wanna guess?’

  Miller smiled, raised his eyebrows. ‘The social security number is bullshit.’

  ‘Nope, the social security number is not bullshit. It really does come up with Michael McCullough, but the Michael McCullough it comes up with died in 1981.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘That’s right. 1981. Our Sergeant McCullough, sixteen years of loyal service and retired from the Washington Police Department in 2003, has actually been dead for the better part of twenty-five years.’

  ‘No,’ Miller said. ‘No fucking way.’ He dropped heavily into his chair. ‘What in God’s name is going on here? Does none of this actually go back to a real person?’

  Roth shook his head. ‘I called AT&T as well. They said they have no such address on their system, and as far as a customer named Michael McCullough is concerned, they did have one but he discontinued his service in 1981.’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Because he died, right?’

  ‘I can only assume it’s the same guy.’

  ‘Jesus Christ . . . so what does this leave us with?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Roth said quietly. ‘In essence we have nothing, Robert. Fact of the matter is that every lead stops dead. The person doesn’t exist. The address is bullshit. The phone bill is fabricated to get an account opened to receive a pension that never comes. None of it makes sense because it’s not supposed to make sense, and when it can’t make sense it’s because someone intended for it not to make sense. You get what I’m saying?’

  Miller nodded. He took a breath, closed his eyes. He massaged his temples with his fingertips. ‘So we’re back to square one,’ he said. ‘Back right where we started.’

  ‘Unless something comes from this picture we have . . . unless someone identifies this guy and he does in fact have something to do with Catherine Sheridan . . . or maybe he can just tell us something about her that opens up another line of investigation.’

  ‘Enough,’ Miller said. ‘I’ve really had enough for today. I’m gonna cut out, go get some rest. Can you tell Metz and whoever else that if anything comes up they should call one of us?’

  ‘Sure I can. You think I should stay here?’

  ‘Go home,’ Miller said. ‘Way this thing is going I don’t think either of us are gonna be home long. Lassiter hears we’ve gone he’s gonna call us right back in.’

  ‘I’ll go see Metz before I leave,’ Roth said.

  Miller sat there, head in his hands, for the better part of half an hour, and then he rose, exhaustion like a deadweight on his back, and made his way out of the building and down toward the car. Didn’t know what he would do. Didn’t want to think about it. Enough was enough for now.

  By the time he reached Church Street he was having difficulty keeping his eyes open.

  Harriet called to him as he made his way through to the stairs.

  ‘I’ve been up all night,’ Miller told her. ‘I am so tired, so damned tired.’

  ‘So go sleep,’ she said. ‘Go sleep, and when you are done sleeping you come down here and eat something and tell me what is going on with your life, okay?’

  Miller smiled, reached out and took her hand.

  ‘Go,’ she said. ‘I will make food for you.’

  Upstairs, Miller took his overcoat off and collapsed in a chair in the front room. He did not ask himself where the investigation was going. The sense of foreboding looming over his thoughts was something he tried not to think about. He did not question his own sense of responsibility for the death of Natasha Joyce. He did not ask himself if his own life was in danger. He tried not to picture Marilyn Hemmings’ face, the brief personal conversation they had shared. He did not think of Jennifer Ann Irving, the way she had looked when her body had been found. Like Natasha Joyce. Like someone had stamped her to death. The IAD investigation, the endless questions, the unaccepted answers, the sleepless nights, the newspaper reports, the assumptions, the accusations . . .

  The sense that life had closed down, and then it had opened up again and presented him with something that was big enough to kill him.

  He had been fooling himself. The Irving case, the death of Brandon Thomas - these things were not
hing in the face of what was now happening.

  It was nineteen minutes past six, evening of Wednesday the 15th of November. Catherine Sheridan had been dead for four days, Natasha Joyce a little more than twenty-six hours.

  Robert Miller’s cell phone would wake him at quarter after eight, and Al Roth would be on the other end of the line, and Al Roth would tell Miller something that would stop his heart. Just for a second, no more than that, but it would stop his heart.

  Two hours of calm before the storm. Just for a little while the world slowed down for Robert Miller, and for this - if nothing else - he was grateful.

  My first killing was not significant. Nowhere near as significant as I had believed it would be.

  My first killing was a small man in a beige suit. It took place on September 29th - a hot day, somewhere in the nineties - and the small man in the beige suit had dark sweat patches beneath his arms. Sweated so much it went through his shirt, through his jacket, and the smell of him filled the narrow confines of the office where he worked. All I knew was that he was involved with La Allianza, the Alliance, and he had something he should not have had, or he knew something he should not have known, or he planned to say something to someone that he should not say. It didn’t really matter.

  Managua was a nightmare of its own creation. There were numerous safe houses and hotel rooms scattered across the city, all of which were changed frequently, used perhaps once or twice, everything paid in cash. I did not speak Spanish, but Catherine did. Place names were bastardized into American slang. Batahóla Norte and Batahóla Sur became North and South Butthole respectively. Reparto Jardines de Managua became simply the Gardens, Barrio el Cortijo became the Farmhouse, Barrio Loma Verde was known as Green Hillock, and the street names - Pista les Brisas, Pista Heroes y Martires, Paseo Salvador Allende became Breezes, Martyrs and Salvador. It was easier to remember, and for those who did not speak English it served to confuse them.