The Deceivers

by Alex Berenson

  “You’re under arrest. Do you understand?”

  Wells understood she didn’t want a firefight either. He relaxed. Slightly. He didn’t answer, and after a few seconds, she continued in her oddly formal English.

  “I will count to ten, then we come in—”

  “And when the cops find the Mercedes?”

  “The Mercedes you and your friend set on fire? After robbing this house?”

  Wells supposed she could sell that story. Especially if she was really a senior intelligence officer. But she’d spend the rest of her life waiting for the CIA to come after her. “Your friend out there speak English?”

  A pause. Then: “No.”

  “Walk to the gate, I’ll meet you, let’s parley.” She didn’t answer, and he realized the word had confused her. “Talk. Face-to-face.”

  He heard her whisper in Spanish, and the man beside her say, “Sí. Sí.” Then her footsteps, crunching on the road. The city’s noises rose from the valley, cars rumbling over the bridge to Bellavista, a violin playing sweetly in the distance. Wells stepped to the gate, peeked around the edge. She stood a few steps away.

  If she ducked aside, he’d be meat for the guy with the AK.

  “Closer,” Wells said. She took two steps closer, still out of reach. He holstered his weapon.

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “In the house. Watching us.”

  “How did you find this place?”

  “Luck.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “I meant what I said last night. You killed him, I don’t care. I have to know what he had for us.”

  She shook her head.

  “The truth is the easiest way to get rid of me.”

  “If I knew, I’d tell you.”

  Wells stared at her in the darkness, and she met his eyes without blinking. Her eyes were deep and black and pitiless. Wells believed her.

  “What about the Russians?”

  “They came last year, stayed here, left. They needed money moved to the United States. A lot. Too much to do quickly, even for Hector.”

  “How much?”

  “Almost twenty million dollars. They were going to go through Venezuela, but then they decided they couldn’t trust anyone in Caracas, which was smart of them. If they put the money into a Venezuelan bank, they’d never have gotten it out. So they came here.”

  “Your husband laundered money for the cartels.”

  She nodded: Of course.

  “So why was this more complicated?”

  “That money, it runs around South America and Mexico. The narcos, the smart ones, they know they have to wait at least twenty years before they can buy apartments in Miami, anything in your perfect country. Their money just needs to be clean enough that our banks, or the Brazilians—whoever—can handle it. For a BMW in Cartagena, a house in Rio, things like that.”

  “Can’t be cash in suitcases.”

  “That’s right. We call it electricidad. Meaning it can run through the wires. But this money, it was going into the United States. So it has to be much cleaner. Blanco—”

  “White.”

  “What a scholar you are. Yes, white enough to pass the Treasury Department. White enough to spend in the United States without anyone blinking. To do that, even for ten or twenty thousand dollars, is complicated. To do it for twenty million is impossible, at least from Ecuador. Hector needed help from someone in Mexico.”

  “A banker.”

  “Yes. But before you ask, I don’t know his name. Hector called him Z.”

  “Like Mr. Z? Or like Z was a code name?”

  “Just Z.”

  “Which bank?”

  “Maybe Banamex. He’d used them before.”

  Graciela sounded like she’d been deeply involved in Hector’s money laundering. Wells resisted the temptation to push on the subject. Only the Russians mattered.

  “So I’m clear, he told you explicitly that the Russians were headed to the United States?”

  “No, but nothing else made sense.”

  “Did you help them get fresh identities, anything like that?”

  “No. I asked Hector if they needed Ecuadorian passports, and he said no, European.”

  Another clue that the Russians were headed for the United States. Travelers from most European countries did not need American visas, a courtesy that the European Union and United States offered each other.

  “Did you ever meet them?”

  She shook her head. “Hector kept them here. But I heard him on the phone with them.”

  “Did you know if they were FSB?”

  “I never asked.”

  “Okay, they came, they stayed here a couple months, and then?”

  “One day, they left. I don’t know where they went, but I think Mexico.”

  “They flew?” The NSA could probably find the flight manifests and the immigration records.

  “Not from Quito, I don’t think. I think they took a bus to Colombia, then maybe flew to Havana and on to Mexico City. But it could have been the other way, down to Guayaquil and then by ship to Lima and then Acapulco.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble if they were already getting fresh passports in Mexico.”

  “Maybe they worried about someone like you coming to look for them. Anyway, Hector told me at the time that they paid three hundred thousand dollars. I found out later he was lying. They gave him almost two million.”

  That why you killed him? She was staring at Wells as if she was expecting him to ask.

  “And after they left?”

  “He didn’t mention them again. Until the end. He told me the Russians had given him a gift. That he was going to be free from me.” She tilted her head down. Wells couldn’t tell if the memory weighed on her or if she was acting. He wondered if she’d really loved Frietas or if she’d killed him out of wounded pride.

  “He say where he was going?”

  “Only that he was leaving me.”

  “Did he say anything at all about Dallas?”

  “No. But it was only a day or two after the attack.”

  “So Hector said he was leaving. And you shot him.”

  Her head snapped up. He waited for her to jump out of the way, tell the guard behind the Toyota to open up with the AK. But, ultimately, she only patted Wells on the cheek.

  “You found the bag in the car, with the badge?”

  “Yes. What about his laptop?”

  “I left it with him in the jungle.”

  “So it’s burned.” Wells couldn’t afford to assume and be wrong.

  She nodded.

  “Too bad.”

  “I know. Now you, your friend—you take what you found and drive away. I watch you go. You never come back. Around midnight, there are flights to the Estados Unidos.”

  Wells suspected she planned to torch the Mercedes. And the whole house, too. No matter. The Quito cops would have to handle justice for Hector Frietas.

  “Fine. But before we come out, you drive back down the road.”

  “You think I want to shoot you? Why would I have told you all this?”

  “So I’d trust you.”

  She smiled, said something in rapid-fire Spanish to the guy with the AK. He argued for a moment and then ran back to the Excursion. “All right?”

  “One condition. One murder’s enough. You leave his girlfriend alone.”

  “And how would you know?”

  “Try me.”

  She turned, walked to the Excursion, slowly, not bothering to look back.

  Wells yelled to the second floor. “Coyle! Let’s go!”

  On the way to the airport, Wells recounted the conversation.

  “She killed him,” Coyle said. “Nice lady. We gonna do anything about it?”


  “Not a chance.”

  Coyle looked at Wells, at the road, back at Wells. His big shoulders sagged a little under his sweatshirt. Wells understood. The game could be rough.

  “These Russians come to Quito, Frietas moves money for them. They go. A year later, the attack happens in Dallas. Somehow, he connects them to it. I missing anything, John?”

  “Maybe Frietas lied to her, and it wasn’t the Russians, he stumbled onto something else. But I doubt it. And there’s no evidence that he was moving money for the Islamic State, anything like that. Plus he couldn’t have sold that to us, he’d be implicated, too. And he was sure he had something, so sure he told Graciela he was getting out.”

  “ISIS hates the Russians,” Coyle said. “Can’t see them doing business.”

  “Maybe they made a deal. Enemy of my enemy.” But Wells couldn’t see it either.

  “So what’s next?”

  “Soon as we land in Houston, back to Mexico City.” Wells would call Tarnes, ask her to run the name on the piece of paper, Anatoly Vanin. But Wells wasn’t expecting much. They had to figure out how to check the phone Coyle had found, too, either themselves or by sending it to Langley for the techs to examine. Above all, they had to find Z, the banker who had helped Frietas.

  “One thing we do know,” Coyle said. “These comrades, they went to mucho trouble so they and the money would be clean when they got to the United States.”

  Coyle was right, Wells saw. The care the FSB had taken was the best piece of evidence yet that it was behind the Dallas attack. Russia knew the United States would retaliate if it found out.

  Coyle seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because after a minute he said, “John. Suppose it was the FSB. What then?”

  Wells had no answer. He wished he could call Shafer. Maybe he should. Shafer loved this sort of puzzle. But Shafer was a proud old man. No doubt he was at home, licking his wounds, stewing over Wells.

  15

  DALLAS

  In the end, walking in on Powdy cost Shafer almost two days. The cops weren’t the problem. Barely an hour after Shafer called Duto, a Dallas police officer showed up in Shafer’s room.

  “No charges. Sorry for the misunderstanding.” Given the speed with which the officer had shown, and his obvious nervousness, Shafer suspected Duto might have called the police chief himself. Duto liked making those calls.

  But, the next morning, the skull fracture was the gift that kept on giving. Shafer woke with a nasty headache. Dr. Tyler insisted he have another CT scan before he could go. Waiting for the scan cost four hours, waiting for a radiologist to read it three hours more. By then, Shafer’s headache had faded, with the help of two Vicodin, but so had the day. It was 6 p.m. when he signed the discharge forms and walked out with Rachel.

  He’d called Jeanelle Pitts three times already, left three messages. He was wondering if he’d have to ask the FBI to find her real address when his phone buzzed with a blocked number.

  “Who’s this? Calling me all day.” She had a syrupy Dallas accent—half Southern, half Texan.

  “Ms. Pitts? My name’s Ellis Shafer.” Shafer wished he could ease into this conversation, but Pitts was already irritated. “I wanted to ask you about your FBI interview.”

  “You work for the FBI?”

  “CIA.”

  “Stop it now.”

  “Truth, it’s easier to explain face-to-face.”

  A pause. “You know where I did the interview? I’ll be there tomorrow morning at nine.” She hung up.

  Shafer hated to admit it, but he didn’t mind having one more night to rest.

  He arrived at the Denny’s a half hour early, ordered a Grand Slam. Normally, he liked Denny’s bacon, tiny crispy pieces that seemed almost synthetic. But his appetite was still on the fritz this morning. A bad Jew are you, the Yoda voice in his head told him. He’d wanted two Vicodin when he woke up, forced himself to take only one. Better to be in pain and sharp. Not for the first time, he wondered how Wells endured the punishment he took. But even past forty, Wells trained as though his life depended on his strength and agility. Because it did.

  Shafer sat alone in the booth, Rachel directly behind him. Shafer had decided not to try to explain her presence.

  Pitts showed a few minutes late. She was in her late twenties, black, pretty, tending toward heavy, wearing the chunky jewelry that bigger women seemed to favor. Shafer intercepted her as she waited to be seated. “Ms. Pitts?”

  “You? This a joke?”

  “No joke, ma’am. I’ll show you.”

  At the booth, Shafer handed over his identification and a copy of her Form 302 that he’d printed.

  “You really CIA?”

  “We can call them, if you like.”

  “What happened to your head?”

  “I went to Parkside Gardens, looking for you. The manager didn’t like me much.” Shafer was taking a chance, but he couldn’t imagine that this woman would be a fan of William Powdy.

  “Powdy? Keeps the place clean, but he is one nasty mother.”

  “I walked in on him watching gay porn and he popped me.”

  “Hold on. You said gay porn?”

  “Extremely.”

  She grinned. She had a cute chipped front tooth. “Heard him once saying he wasn’t gonna have no sodomites in his apartments.”

  “Those are always the ones.”

  “You know it. So, Mr. CIA . . .”

  Shafer would have to send Powdy a thank-you note. He had given Shafer an instant bond with Pitts.

  “I wanted to ask you about what Ahmed said about being arrested.”

  “FBI told me he wasn’t. Told me he just got tired of me. Got religion. Got crabs. Who knows.”

  “You didn’t think so.”

  “He wanted to bounce, he didn’t need no story. He knew that.”

  More or less what she’d told the FBI.

  “He ever talk about Islam? Ever see him praying?”

  She laughed, a sweet, low tinkle that cut through the workday restaurant noise and lightened the place for a moment. “Shake didn’t care about none of that.”

  “Maybe he hid it from you.”

  “I remember once we were at my place watching TV, Creflo came on. Creflo Dollar. You know who that is?”

  “Preacher, right?”

  “Yeah, from Georgia. Says how believing in God will make you rich. Shake—”

  “You called him Shake?” The nickname hardly made Shakir sound like a hard-core terrorist.

  “Shake and Bake. Shake saw him, said how does anybody believe any of this stuff? He wasn’t talking about Christianity. He meant all of it. He slung coke all night and slept all day, Mr. Shafer. Had no time for Allah.”

  Two sentences that summed up everything Shafer had read about Ahmed Shakir. The waitress came over, and Pitts ordered coffee. “Watching my weight.”

  “You look fine to me.” He heard Rachel cough behind him. “So what happened? How’d Ahmed wind up at that basketball game?”

  “No idea. And I’ve thought about it plenty. Maybe his cousin tricked him somehow. Just drive us downtown tonight, help me out.”

  “That wouldn’t explain how they got the bomb in his car.”

  “No it would not. It wasn’t much of a car, that Hyundai, but he liked it. Took care of it.”

  The coffee arrived, and she poured in a half cup of cream. She caught him looking. “Said I was watching my weight. Watching it go up.”

  “One thing age teaches you, you get old either way, might as well enjoy yourself.”

  She smiled: I accept your apology. “Anyway, Shake told me he got arrested.”

  “He said so explicitly? That wasn’t in here—” Shafer tapped the 302.

  “The real reason those FBI wanted to talk to me, they was wondering if I knew what
Ahmed was gonna do ’fore he did. Accessory. They asked me I ever texted him? I said sure. They asked could they see? Didn’t have nothing to hide, so I showed them. They took a look. After that, they didn’t care much ’bout what I had to say.”

  “It’s standard procedure to look at anyone who was in contact with Ahmed.”

  “Okay, sure, I wasn’t mad. I tried to help even after that. But they didn’t pay no attention. And the thing was, Shake said it wasn’t the local cops who got him.”

  “The DEA?”

  “He didn’t say flat out. But I felt weird that these two didn’t know about it already. I hinted around about it, and they shot me down. You see?”

  “Yeah.” What Shafer saw was that the agents had blown the interview. They’d made her feel like a suspect and then ignored the information she tried to provide. Agents faced overwhelming pressure on an investigation like this. Once they’d cleared her, they would have wanted to move on as fast as possible. An understandable mistake, but in this case a big one.

  “Tell me exactly what Ahmed said. About the arrest.” He still couldn’t bring himself to call the guy Shake.

  “Last time we got together, he came over, we didn’t fool around. He said he couldn’t stay, he just wanted to tell me he couldn’t see me for a while. I asked him why, he said he made a mistake. Got greedy. I asked him when, he said two nights before. I asked him how he got out so quick, he said he couldn’t talk about it. He said he’d be back in a few months.”

  She smiled.

  “What?”

  “You really want to know?”

  Shafer nodded.

  “He said, Keep it sweet for me. ’Cause I’m gonna miss it. That sound like a guy who was about to blow himself up? I said be careful and he told me not to worry, he could handle it. Made me promise not to call him. Then he took off.”

  “And you never saw him again.”

  “Not once. After a couple months, I kinda forgot him, to be honest. You know, dating somebody else, all that. Then one night—”

  She shivered. No need to explain.

  “What did you think he meant when he told you it would be okay?”

  “What do you think I thought? Thought he was dropping.”