Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “But what if Waylen doesn’t come outside after dark? What if he lets his dogs crap in his backyard instead?”

  “Then we’ll figure out something else,” said Rogan. “Most of the houses already have their trash out, but his doesn’t. Maybe he’ll put his garbage out, and we can do it then.”

  Vellegio straightened up and said, “There’s the light, this might be it…” The front door of the three-story townhouse was up a flight of nine or ten steps, and was set into a small alcove. A light above the small vestibule had come on, illuminating the steps. They could not see the door itself from this angle. While the two detectives watched, a man walked out onto his narrow porch and turned up the collar of his brown winter coat. A dark beret was pulled down to his ears. He held a pair of dachshunds on leashes. The dogs were anxious to run down the stairs, and the man had to restrain them while he gripped the iron railing with his other hand and descended the steps one at a time. Then the man ambled down the sidewalk away from his watchers. He paused as the dogs did their business in the narrow strip of dirt between the sidewalk and the curb.

  “You sure that’s him?” asked Vellegio. “I didn’t really get a good look at his face.”

  “Who else can it be?” The detectives turned up their own collars, pulled on wide-brimmed fedoras, and exited the car into the cold mist.

  After five minutes, the dogs were scampering back up the steps, followed more slowly by a wheezing Robert Waylen. The light had remained on above the door. Unbeknownst to him, Waylen was trailed up the stairs by two shadowlike figures. Both men were wearing dark coats, and hats that kept their faces shadowed from the porch light above them.

  As Waylen put his key in the door and began to open it, he was suddenly joined by the two strangers on his little porch. The dogs grew even more excited, and Waylen was startled to the point of suddenly backing up against the side of the landing vestibule.

  Patrick Rogan smiled and said, “Don’t worry Mr. Waylen, we’re with NYPD Protective Services.” The detectives flashed their gold shields and credentials. Both of the men were wearing thin gray driving gloves. “May we have a word with you?”

  “At this time of night?” Waylen had fear in his eyes, but relaxed somewhat after seeing their gold NYPD badges.

  “I’m sorry for the late hour,” said Rogan, “but we’ve just received intelligence information about a plot by right-wing extremists to harm you. We regard it as highly credible and very serious. We even think that they’re tapping your phone and hacking your computer, so we couldn’t call or email you.”

  Waylen was wide-eyed. “Excuse me? Who did you say you were?” His dogs were jumping around their legs, adding to the confusion on the crowded alcove landing.

  “I’m Detective Edward O’Grady, and this is my partner, Frank Russo. We’re with NYPD Protective Services. Do you mind if we come in? We’d like to show you some mug shots, and ask if you’ve seen any of these ‘persons of interest’ around your neighborhood.”

  “What? Right-wing extremists? In this neighborhood? Why yes, of course, please come in.” Waylen finished unlocking the door and the three men stepped inside as the dogs rushed between them. After locking two dead bolts, Waylen crouched down and unclipped his dachshunds’ leashes, then stood up and hung them on a brass hook by the door. The dogs immediately tore off and disappeared down the hall, their nails clicking on the hardwood floor. Waylen slipped off his overcoat and hung it and his black beret on another hook beside the leashes. Beneath the coat, he was wearing a navy blue Columbia University sweatshirt and jeans. He was almost entirely bald, except for a ring of curly gray hair.

  “If you’ll please follow me back to the kitchen, the light will be better there. I’ll make some coffee if you’d like, and you can show me the pictures on the kitchen table. The coffee is from Cuba—it’s real coffee.”

  “Real coffee would be great,” said Rogan.

  After Waylen turned to walk down the hallway past his living room, Rogan removed one of the leather dog leashes, and quickly rolled it up and stuffed it into the deep front pocket of his black overcoat.

  In the kitchen at the back of the first floor, Waylen reached up into a cupboard to remove a small jar of instant coffee. “How do you like it?”

  Standing behind him, Rogan removed the dog leash from his overcoat pocket. He pulled some of the leather strap back through the hand loop, forming a wide noose, and flipped it over Waylen’s head. Using both hands, he cinched the noose tightly around his neck, pulled him back off balance and nearly lifted him up off the floor. Waylen went loose at his knees, struggling with weak fingers to remove the choking strap. In thirty seconds, the retired professor fell limp, with his eyes still open and his arms dangling at his sides. Pat Rogan lowered him to the linoleum kitchen floor on his back.

  “Okay, Joe, you watch him, and I’ll look for the tape.” Rogan went up the steps to the second floor. According to his brother’s message, this was the location of Waylen’s office. He returned to the kitchen a minute later with a VHS videocassette in a cardboard sleeve. “This one has the right dates, October 20–24, 1983. It’s just like Hugh said it would be: all of his lectures are on tape. He’s got a shelf with hundreds of these things.”

  “What an egomaniac,” said the other detective. “Did he actually think anybody was ever going to give a shit about his old lectures?”

  “Well, at least it makes a good hiding place. Nobody’s ever going to watch hundreds of old history classes. Can you imagine how God-awful boring that would be? I’d rather be Tasered.”

  “What about him?” asked Vellegio, prodding Waylen’s unmoving body with his toe. “He’s still breathing, I think.” The leather dog leash was still twisted around his neck.

  “We should check the tape first. We have to make sure it’s the right one. There’s a video player under the TV in the living room. I saw it on the way in.” The two detectives walked from the kitchen into the adjoining living room and looked around in wonder. The curtains were closed tightly on the 11th Street front windows. Framed portraits and posters of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and other communist luminaries adorned the walls. A red parade-sized banner with a giant black fist occupied most of a wall. A life-sized marble bust of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin scowled from a shelf.

  In a minute the tape was playing, and they were watching a much younger Professor Waylen. He was standing behind a lectern on a raised platform, in front of a classroom of college students. He had dark bushy hair and a Fu Manchu mustache. Instead of a professorial blazer, he was wearing a black turtleneck sweater with a silver peace sign medallion hanging from a chain. Waylen’s mouth moved soundlessly, since the television was muted. Detective Rogan fast-forwarded halfway through the tape, and hit play again. He held the remote control with his gloved hand while they stood in front of the flat-screen television. Both men had been careful not to touch or disturb anything since entering the townhouse.

  And suddenly, there he was. Jamal Tambor himself, just a few years younger than today. His hair was still completely black, his hairline just beginning its long march up his forehead. Tambor was wearing a white oxford shirt, open at the neck. He was sitting at the exact same kitchen table that the detectives had just seen in the next room. Rogan turned up the sound with the remote, and they watched and listened in rapt amazement. The bust of Lenin had been placed on a kitchen counter, so that it would appear just over the unsuspecting Tambor’s right shoulder, menacingly staring at the hidden camera. The iconic print of Che Guevara now hanging in the living room was visible on the wall next to the back door. Beneath Che’s face was ¡Hasta La Victoria, Siempre! Toward Victory, Forever! A tall marijuana bong stood in front of the glassy-eyed future president while he expounded on the necessity for imposing global socialism. A straw and the powdery remains of cocaine could be seen on a plastic tray next to his left elbow.

  Detective Vellegio whistled softly. “Waylen set him up but good. Your brother sure had good information. You want to watch the rest?”


  “No, that’s the right one,” said Rogan, who stooped down and ejected the tape, touching the machine only with a gloved fingertip. “Let’s get out of here. After I drop you off, I’ve got a seven-hour drive clear across to West Virginia ahead of me. I might have to borrow some gas from you to make it on time. I’ll need a couple extra jerry cans. I can’t count on finding an open gas station out there in the sticks. It’s almost five hundred miles, and I have to be there by eight o’clock in the morning, do or die.”

  “Jeez, why do you have to go way out there?”

  “I just do. Somebody in a helicopter is going to meet me out there and get the tape. I swear to God.”

  Detective Vellegio just shook his head and smiled. “If you say so. No problem with the gas. But what about Waylen? He’s still breathing, and he got a good look at us.”

  “Well, then I guess we can’t leave him breathing. Besides everything else that commie traitor has done, we both know he’s a cop killer, even if he got the charges dropped by some commie rat judge. Well, it’s finally payback time. Forty years too late, but hey, better late than never.”

  “So how are we going to do it?” asked Vellegio, pointing to an ashtray next to an easy chair. “He’s a smoker. Maybe he was smoking in bed, and he started a house fire?”

  “Nah, we don’t want to do that to his neighbors. Plus that’d bring the fire department straight down here tonight, and we need to keep it low-key for a while.”

  “I like the idea of a suicide,” said Vellegio. “We could put him in his bathtub and slit his wrists with a razor blade. That’d make it easy to clean up any trace evidence at the same time.”

  Rogan said, “Me personally, I’d like to stick a nail bomb up his ass. Like the one he built for the 35th precinct.”

  “It’d be hard to make that look like a suicide,” Vellegio laughed.

  “Maybe he was playing around with explosives for old time’s sake, and he had a little work-related accident? It happens.”

  “Get serious, Pat. You have any explosives on you?”

  “How about a rope? That’s always a good way for a traitor to get it.”

  “People might not believe it was suicide,” said Vellegio. “They might think he had a little outside help.”

  “Why would they think that? But even if they do, so what? Suicide or a traitor’s death—hanging works either way. Let people wonder. Let it be a mystery. As long as we’re careful and we don’t leave any trace evidence, nobody will ever know for sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll go with that. What about his dog leash?”

  “Yeah, that’ll work,” Rogan agreed. “Plus it’ll cover up the ligature marks on his neck.”

  “How long do you figure until he’s found?”

  “A few days? He’s not teaching anymore, so it might be a while. We should open a bag of dog food in the basement, and make sure those two mutts got plenty of water.”

  “He’ll be plenty ripe by then,” Vellegio observed. “He’ll stink up the whole place.”

  “He’s been stinking up this city for forty years. Where should we do it?”

  “There’s a transom between the kitchen and the dining room. We can just toss the leash over it. After we hoist him up and tie it off, we can lay a kitchen chair on its side. It’ll look like he stood up on it and kicked it away. Like the commie traitor just couldn’t live with his guilt anymore.”

  “Yeah, that’ll work good,” agreed Rogan. “You get his shoulders, and I’ll get his legs—we don’t want to leave any drag marks. Then you hold him up, and I’ll throw the leash over the transom. He doesn’t have to be high up off the ground, just as long as his feet don’t reach the floor.”

  ****

  The Campers, the Ravens and some of the Missionaries spent their last evening at Sergeant Major Charlie Donelson’s house near Clarksville. The Campers were Boone Vikersun and Phil Carson, who were bound for Camp David. The Ravens were Lieutenant General Armstead, Ira Gersham and Doug Dolan, who were continuing on to Site R, inside Raven Rock Mountain. The Missionaries, led by Colonel Tom Spencer, were staying behind at Fort Campbell to spread the gospel among the 5th Special Forces Group, the 101st Air Assault Division, the other Special Forces Groups, the Ranger Battalions and any other Army units they could reach with their message.

  In a guest bedroom with a full-length mirror, Carson and Boone were dressed in blue officers’ Army Service Uniforms. They were ensuring that every detail was correct under the watchful eyes of Colonel Spencer, who was also wearing his own blue ASU as a model for comparison. In addition, Boone wore the gold braid aiguillette of a general’s aide-de-camp around his left shoulder. Bibi Donelson, dressed in a form-fitting red and black silk dress of her own design and creation, was ready with needle and thread to make any additional alterations as required. Phil Carson had been out of the Army for decades, and it took him a while to become comfortable with coming to attention and rendering a salute not as an enlisted man, but as a one-star brigadier general. Inwardly he felt doubt and turmoil, but he gritted his teeth and continued to practice. He felt like an actor and an imposter, and he was in fact both of those things. His mission was to be an effective actor and im-poster tomorrow, so he took his practice very seriously.

  The colonel saluted first and brought his stiff hand to the bill of his Army officer’s peaked cap, until Carson returned the honor more quickly and a shade more casually, as befitted a flag-rank officer.

  “General Harper, I think you’ve got it,” said Colonel Spencer, while they stood a few feet apart.

  “As you were, Colonel,” said Carson, and they dropped their arms.

  “How do you feel about briefing the Operation Buffalo Jump CONPLAN?” asked Colonel Spencer.

  “You’re not going to quiz me on it, are you? As long as I don’t have to give the whole PowerPoint presentation, I can hold my own.”

  “Well, that’s all right, then. You just have to know enough to mingle and converse intelligently during the meet-and-greet.”

  “It’s all the acronyms that are the real killers. Like TPFDD.”

  “Time-phased force and deployment data,” Colonel Spencer recited automatically. “It rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it? How about M-day?”

  “That’s when the mobilization of reserve forces begins.”

  “JSCP?”

  “Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan, that’s an easy one. Your turn now, Colonel. What’s the JOPES?” Carson pronounced this word like “hopes.”

  “Joint Operation Planning and Execution System. Is that one in your CONPLAN?”

  “Along with about twenty others. Don’t worry, I made some cheat sheets. And I’ll study some more on the flight up to Maryland.”

  “Did you get your new ID cards?” Colonel Spencer addressed this question to both Phil Carson and Boone Vikersun.

  “We did,” said Boone. “And they look perfect, as far as I can tell. But they have a magnetic strip and all this digital computer crap on them these days, so there’s no way to be sure. Not until the Secret Service checks them anyway.”

  Colonel Spencer looked both men in the eye and said, “It’s a leap of faith, gentlemen.”

  “Fearless men, who jump and die,” said Phil Carson, reciting a line from the old ballad that was chiseled on every Green Beret’s soul. “But we’ll try to avoid that second part if we can.”

  “Roger that,” said the colonel. “But we’ll still jump, no matter what the outcome.”

  “Airborne, sir,” Boone said softly.

  “All the way,” finished Colonel Spencer, who then pulled himself up to a rigid position of attention and slowly rendered one more perfect salute, but this time not for practice. Boone Vikersun and Phil Carson, dressed as a major and a general, returned the colonel’s salute and held it.

  Bibi Donelson, who had not said a single word, crossed herself in the Catholic way, with tears welling in her eyes. Tomorrow was D-Day. Even she knew that much about the Army.

  30


  The Blackhawk departed Fort Campbell in darkness, its pilots wearing night vision goggles. Dawn found them above Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains. With a pair of external tanks attached, they could make the flight to Camp David without refueling. Four decades after Vietnam, Phil Carson found himself on a helicopter flying into a dangerous situation. Once again, there was the strong possibility that a return flight would not be necessary.

  Mist and low clouds hung in the long shadows between the folds of the mountains. The terrain below reminded him of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, especially the zigzag meandering streams and rivers. Of course, in Southeast Asia only a defoliated area would ever be so free of leaf cover in the triple-canopy jungle. Here, it just meant that it was January, with freezing temperatures doing the work instead of Dow Chemical. Even with the troop doors closed and the cabin heat on, it was cold flying at 7,000 feet.

  The four Blackhawk rotors gave this helicopter a different sound from the heart-thumping wop-wop-wop of the two-bladed Hueys he had flown aboard in Southeast Asia. To this day, the distinctive sound of any two-bladed Bell chopper caused his adrenalin to flow and his pulse to race. Even after four decades, today’s flight took him back to the land of firebases, air assaults, cross-border insertions and hot LZs. The vibration, the stink of burning kerosene and the scream of turbine engines was the same. But instead of web gear, an M-16 and a rucksack, he had a briefcase packed with folders, binders and papers.