Henry being a battalion XO in the midst of a combat operation, we both understood that he had more important tasks at hand than jawing with me. Before he went, I asked him if he had any liaison with the CIA. “More than we ever needed or desired, Jake. That same old story too.”
“True that,” I said. “But I need to talk to somebody from there. Could you put me in touch?”
What a stroke of luck. To one Ranger, another’s word was always good, and Henry and I were as close as any. Having him there meant I wouldn’t be facing uncomfortable hours with professional interrogators—none of whom would rest until they got to the truth of the matter, and any fable I made up would have been more believable than the truth. Henry endorsed my story that I was just a hapless tourist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He later told me about a Cuban they’d captured named “Desi” who’d been ranting that an American secret KGB agent had ordered them not to fight because it was part of a Russian strategy. I assured him that, being locked in a closet, I knew nothing about it, but probably it was just more Commie lies.
By the end of that day Point Salines airstrip was fully secure, and 800 troops from the 82nd landed and deployed to the north. Machine gun fire killed one Ranger in the initial landing foray, and four others were shot en route to rescue American students when they lost their way in their gun jeep and blundered into an ambush, but in general casualties in the operation were light. Their haul of Cuban construction workers from my barracks numbered about 200. The Rangers turned their custody over to a contingent of the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force that arrived later that day—an international unit assembled from around the region to deflect accusations of American Imperialism.
The Rangers arranged a cot and meals for me. I insisted on seeing the CIA guy before I left Grenada, but he wasn’t expected for a day or two. I hung around with nothing to do except stay out of the way. On my third day Grenada was considered under control, and the CIA liaison flew in. As the U.S. Force was anxious to send me on my way, they put me early on his schedule. Sterling Steadfast, I’ll call him, met me in some makeshift quarters. About my age and overweight, he clearly spent his time in an office, not out in the field. He already looked wilted in his business suit and tie. Unlike the CIA eager beavers I’d known in the past, he seemed tired and dispirited. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fonko. They pre-alerted me to your interest in a meeting. I made some inquiries, and it seems you’ve something of a reputation around Langley, though no one had any details they could impart. What’s on your mind?”
“I came across something that might be useful to the CIA. Is intel gathering part of your job?”
“Jake, if I may call you Jake, I would be delighted to gather any and all intel available. Though at this point some people may be doubting that was ever in my job description. You wouldn’t believe the complaints and second-guessing we’re getting left and right about faulty intel for this operation. Didn’t alert the troops to the presence of a second campus. Misestimated enemy troop deployment. Didn’t do this. Fucked up that. As if anybody could produce a detailed assessment for a five-pronged military assault in a week’s time. It’s CYA all the way, as usual. We’ve been beavering away for years down here, focused on subverting Leftist influences—economic sanctions, disinformation, funneling money to the opposition, engineering support from neighboring islands—you were in intel, you know the drill. Then out of the blue, they gave us one week to gather and supply the intel for an air and amphibious assault on a sovereign island nation, with the top brass insisting on iron-tight secrecy and a compartmentalized planning process—the old ‘element of surprise’ ploy. Well, that’s the way to ensure a functional information flow for sure, guys. Communications and force coordination were a tangle from the outset, but of course that’s the CIA’s fault too. So, yes, I’d love to gather some intel to take back with me, some nugget to redeem ourselves. What are you offering?”
“Bank records. You’ve heard of Bank of Credit and Commerce International? Is that of interest to the CIA?”
“BCCI? The Bank of Crooks and Criminals. You’ve got something on them? You bet we’re interested.”
I unzipped my duffle, displaying my wares. “These seem to be ledger books for the last several years, entries in English and Urdu.”
“Urdu?”
“Pakistanis run the bank. It’s their language. Here, take a look.” I extracted the 1982 ledger and passed it to him.
“Pakistanis? Running BCCI? Sonofabitch. That explains some things…” He opened it to a random page and looked it over. “I’m not a banker or an accountant, of course, but this looks… hmmmm.” He flipped to another page. “Let me see the one for 1981.” I took 1982 back and gave him the other. “These are day-by-day, month-by-month?” He opened it about two thirds of the way through—August or so—slowly ran his finger down the entries for several pages, then stopped. “Bingo,” he muttered with a chuckle. He closed the book. “Okay, definitely interested. What else?”
“Computer disks from BCCI. A dozen of them. I don’t know what’s on them.”
“You’ve got records and data from the crookedest bank in the world, for the past several years? Do you know the kinds of clients they have?”
“I’ve an inkling, yes.”
“You’ve heard the phrase, follow the money? This material could give us a line on the activities and money flows of a number of groups and activities we track. How did you come in possession of this?”
“I took it from a KGB agent.” Technically true. Grotesqcu was the last man to handle the stuff. “That’s all I can disclose,” I added regretfully.
Steadfast shook his head side to side. “Awesome. I can see why your name circulates around Langley. Tell me, are you on a government assignment here?”
“If I told you the answer to that question, I’d have to kill you,” I joked. “Consider me just a private citizen doing his part to help the cause. As far as anyone’s concerned, I’m stranded down here in need of a little help.”
“I’m not authorized to disburse funds,” Steadfast cautioned. “Tell you what. Let me get on the horn to my office at Langley and see what they say. Can you wait a few minutes?” I could, and he went away.
He returned in a half hour. “Okay, Jake, I think we can make a deal here. What do you want in exchange for your BCCI materials? I can’t outright offer you money, but maybe there’s something we can do for you?”
By then I was grateful just to get out from under their curse. “I need two simple things.” I said. “First, I need a replacement passport, and second, a ride back to the States.” Then I had a thought. “Make that three simple things. Make sure that Todd Sonarr in your agency hears about this. In fact, I’ll give you a message to relay to him.”
“I know of Mr. Sonarr. What’s the message?”
“Describe what I delivered to you and tell him Jake Fonko wants to know if that makes us even now.”
11 | You Can Get It If You Really Want
So many loose ends to tie up in this tangled yarn…
Sterling Steadfast arranged to fly me back to Washington DC with some State Department staff who’d come down to make an assessment and incidentally spend a few days doing the Caribbean on OPM. They expedited the passport process, so getting my new one took only a day. The photo turned out well, I thought. Apparently, whatever APB went out on me after I escaped the Haiti Consulate lockup had been rescinded. The CIA put me up overnight and sprang for a ticket on a commercial flight from DC to LA the next day, economy class. I was sleeping in my own bed by the start of November. With little expectation of success, I called my hotel in George Town to see about the stuff I’d left there. Much to my surprise, they’d left my room undisturbed, since I’d never checked out. Not being fully booked, they’d let room charges continue to rack up against my American Express card in hopes that they’d eventually be covered. I settled the bill, and they sent
my gear to me, including my SIG Sauer. My passport had gone missing, but I had a new one. All’s well enough that ends well enough, as the Bard sort of said.
As for Grenada. The Reagan administration desperately wanted to put a win up on the board, particularly after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon so recently. They touted Operation Urgent Fury as a stunning success, and in some ways it was. We came in fast and completed the job with dispatch. As battles go, bloodshed was slight. Americans—19 killed, 113 wounded: Cubans—25 killed, 59 wounded: Grenadian forces—45 killed, 358 wounded, plus around 25 civilians died. Grenadians were cool with the outcome as most didn’t cotton to the Marxist revolution any more than our State Department did.
What we accomplished was up for debate. The American version claimed we’d stopped the Russians and Cubans from setting up a military foothold, a forward operating base threatening the Caribbean shipping lanes and Venezuelan oil. We justified this view by insisting that the size of the runway and the numerous fuel storage tanks were way beyond necessary for commercial flights. We claimed also that our forces captured a warehouse stacked floor to ceiling with Soviet arms and explosives, “enough to take out half the island had it been detonated.” Counterclaims had it that the airstrip was never intended for anything but commercial flights and that the arms cache was simply a Grenadian army storehouse, greatly exaggerated in our report. Castro released a personnel roster making a plausible case that the Cubans had very little military presence there. Nor was it clear that the American students actually faced serious danger at the time.
Of course, there’s no way to know where things would have gone had we not invaded. In any case, they completed the Point Salines airport and named it after the martyred president, Maurice Bishop. Grenada, one more little paradise in that long chain of tropical garden spots, subsequently enjoyed a much expanded tourist trade and established a lively bare boat chartering base.
On the matter of Bank of Credit and Commerce International: In 1988 American Customs Agents arrested five BCCI bankers in Tampa, Florida, plus other bankers and some narcotics traffickers in London and elsewhere on money laundering charges. BCCI ultimately pleaded guilty. An audit by Price Waterhouse in 1990 found a hole of at least $1.7 billion in the bank’s accounts. A second audit revealed that BCCI illegally held controlling shares in First American Bank, an insertion of its tentacles into the U.S. banking system. BCCI bought their shares from Clark Clifford and partner Robert Altman, who as officers of First American had vociferously promoted BCCI’s interests, giving them jointly a profit of $30 million on the sale. Then Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau took up the BCCI case, the beginning of BCCI’s demise. In 1991, a New York grand jury indicted the bank and its two principal officers for fraud, bribery, grand larceny and money laundering. The Federal Reserve Board fined BCCI $200 million for illegally acquiring control of three prominent U.S. banks: First American, National Bank of Georgia (with the assistance of former Carter administration officials) and Miami’s CenTrust Savings. At the end of the year, BCCI entered another guilty plea and agreed to forfeit $550 million.
Two BCCI principals were indicted by Manhattan grand juries in 1992, as were Clark Clifford and Robert Altman. The latter two stoutly denied wrongdoing, claiming they’d been deceived along with the Federal Reserve Board. In other words, they weren’t dishonest, just stupid—a shabby excuse for a high-powered lawyer who had once been a shining star and premier fixer of Democrat politics, including a hitch as Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Defense. After Clifford underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery and a heart attack shortly thereafter, a New York judge dropped the state charges against him, citing his age (85) and deteriorating health. Altman was subsequently acquitted after a four-month trial in New York. The two agreed to forfeit $5 million to settle Federal Reserve Board charges that they knew BCCI owned First American and had lied about it to bank inspectors. Later Clifford and Altman settled the last of the civil lawsuits stemming from the BCCI scandal by giving up their claims to $18.5 million in legal fees and First American stock.
BCCI’s collapse was the world’s largest financial debacle to that date, crashing from assets of $8.5 billion to $0. The extent of American political corruption sustaining it was deemed too wide and deep ever to be fully known. Not that America’s politicians were necessarily desperate to have the story of BCCI corruption fully known. Some critics even alleged that it had been under the protection of the CIA, that it had assisted the CIA in numerous covert operations, and that the CIA may have been instrumental in its getting established in the first place. No wonder Sterling Steadfast so eagerly took up my offer.
It appears Robert Vesco was on to something.
Speaking of Robert Vesco: By the time Clyde Driffter and I met him on Cuba, his star had flamed out, its cinders tumbling earthward. Whatever else he might have been pursuing in Castro’s paradise, he was charged with drug smuggling six years later. He came up with a scheme to run clinical tests of a drug supposed to boost immunity, with the support of the Cuban government. It came to naught. In the 1990s the Cuban government indicted him for fraud and illicit economic activity and acts prejudicial to the economic plans and contracts of the state—suggesting that the Cuban justice system was more direct and straightforward than ours. Sentenced to 13 years in prison, Robert Vesco died of lung cancer two years before he was scheduled for release.
Another case of brilliant mind and formidable talent squandered.
And about Jake Fonko: I landed at LAX intact in mind and body. Sadder? Not really. Wiser? I wouldn’t be surprised. Poorer? Not by a penny. Even after I covered Evanston’s loan and paid off my American Express charges, my advance on the fee for the original job pretty much broke me even for my adventures. So, worst case, I landed back where I started. More assignments would come along. I’d have to put off new wheels for a while, but I could live with my Vette a little longer. Then it dawned on me—as two week vacations in the Caribbean go, I could have done a lot worse. I toured one of the world’s choice regions, saw new places, learned about sailboat cruising and never lacked for interesting things to do. Looking back, I rather enjoyed it.
I drove down to Pacific Palisades a few days after I got back to check in with Mom and Evanston. I soon lost Mom with my tale—when I mentioned my flight over the Virgin Islands, she fixated on the vacation a canasta club buddy had taken on St. Thomas Island (“They drive on the wrong side of the road. Evanston, you will have to take special care when we go there.”) and tuned out. But Evanston took it in raptly, particularly the BCCI aspects. That was years before their shit hit the fan, and his ears perked up at possibilities of massive billable hours for his international law firm. He asked a lot of specific questions, a few of which I could answer, and he chuckled at the context in which Clark Clifford’s name came up. No love lost there. He also mentioned some buzz circulating around his network about the Cuban MIG I’d brought down and the intel I’d delivered to the Company. Two more gold stars on my covert resume, he thought. “Jake,” he sighed, “I really appreciate those business cards and that address book you took off Clark Clifford’s boys, but I only wish to God you’d saved out just one of those floppy disks for me.”
Not long after that a letter with a Russian stamp came in the mail. The note inside, on a sheet of paper with a logo I recognized, said: “Congratulations, Jake. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving man. The goods were pure gold.” Below these few words was a “Γ”, a Russian “G.” Okay, Grotesqcu sent the note. But what happening was he referring to? What goods? I guessed that meant the BCCI stuff—what else could it be? The rest of it, I couldn’t fathom.
Mystery solved a few days later. Another letter arrived, this in a fine parchment envelope embossed with the return address of one the major American philanthropic foundations—I’d best not name it here. The gist of the letter, on similar parchment with a similar embossed letterhead, was:
Dear Mr. Fon
ko:
Our board of overseers occasionally sees fit to make unpublicized awards to individuals we recognize as having made significant contributions to the cause of World Peace. We believe your recent accomplishments qualify as such a contribution, and we are pleased to award you the enclosed honorarium in appreciation of your outstanding achievement. This award will not be publicly announced, nor is there any accompanying certificate or other formal token of recognition. We caution you not to seek press coverage or any other public celebration or other mention of this award, as in that event we would regretfully be forced to publicly repudiate it and to take forceful steps to ensure the return of our emolument.
With sincerest thanks and etc., etc., etc.
Also in the envelope, I found a check in six figures. Whether it was coincidence or irony, I can’t say, but it was drawn on First American Bank. Okay, I got the message: take the money, zip your lip and run like a thief.
That solved the wheels problem but revived the wheels dilemma. I spent some time checking out Vettes, Porches, Maseratis and the like. Then I realized—sports cars are fun but damned inconvenient. Time to grow up. I needed more cargo capacity. Widening my search, I checked out sport utility vehicles, SUVs. Jeep Cherokees caught my eye. A test drive convinced me, and I traded my Corvette in on a 4-door wagon with a heavy-duty roof rack.
And then what? I heard reports of snow in the Rockies. Snowboarding was catching on, something I could get into. The kitty was flush enough for a few months vacation. I’d just had a taste of the tropics. Why not be a snow-bum for a while? Must be something like a surf-bum, only colder. Cheyenne, Wyoming, wasn’t far from the Tetons and the Colorado ski towns. I bet Dana Wehrli would take to snowboarding, or at least to hanging out in ski resorts on her days off. (Yes, her birthday card was in my pile of mail when I got home.) We could write it off as weather-babe field trips. LA sporting goods stores offered a poor selection of snowboards. Too early in the season, too far from the action. No problem, I’d pick one up in Cheyenne.
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 19
