by Warren Esby
As I pulled over I noticed that the Expedition’s blue light was not permanently fixed to the roof. It was one of those single blue bulbs that you could take on and off the roof and it had a wire that led into the window, I guess to the cigarette lighter or some other power source. There were two men inside that I could see. The driver had on a Mexican straw hat and the other a regular cowboy hat. Only the driver got out but before he did a black Chevy Suburban pulled off the road in front of me to block my way forward. I couldn’t see the occupants since the windows were tinted, but it had California license plates on it. I was told to expect it since many SUVs that were stolen in California ended up in Baja, and many were confiscated by the police or just given to them as bribes or outright presents. They were not usually returned, at least until a later model year was available, and they were pretty well used up if they were returned. I hoped I had enough bribe money for two SUVs and began to get worried. I had only counted on one. The Mexican in the straw hat approached my car and sure enough he had on a police uniform and showed me his identification, which was in Spanish so I didn’t know what it said, but I was not about to question its legitimacy. Instead of asking for my papers, he said,
“Senor, could you please follow that Chevrolet Suburban in front of you to the police station?”
I did. It was not far. When I parked, the policeman asked for my keys, which he handed to his partner in the cowboy hat and then asked me to come inside. It was a small building and I could see a row of jail cells through a door to my left as we passed by on the way to his office. I wondered how long I would have to spend in one of them. When he ushered me inside I noticed an even larger Mexican with a bigger straw hat sitting in a corner looking at his cell phone. He had a big black mustache, but no, he looked nothing like the man driving the black Buick Regal and did seem to have hair visible under the hat. The police officer asked me for my passport and driver’s license and pointed to the chair in front of the desk. He sat down behind the desk. The only thing on his desk was a telephone and one of those calendars that you can use as a desk pad. He examined my passport and driver’s license and placed them in front of him on the desk pad. He said nothing. We waited for what seemed a long time, but was only fifteen or twenty minutes. I didn’t know the exact time since I didn’t have a watch. I was getting very nervous.
The one in the cowboy hat came in with my keys and handed them to the policeman sitting at the desk and left. The one behind the desk then said to me,
“Senor, we are going to let you go now with several conditions that you must fulfill in order for us not to charge you with the unspeakable crime we know you committed in Rosarito Beach.”
I thought about that for a minute and realized they must have a law that they don’t speak about that didn’t allow you to drink alcohol on the beach. He continued,
“You will get in your little car. You will not stop until you get across the border. You will not even stop then because we intend to follow you. You will go home without stopping. You will be followed the entire way. You will do exactly as we say or you will never eat another bean burrito again. And you will not come back to Mexico for at least thirty days. No, wait.” And then he looked at the desk calendar and said, “You will not come back to Mexico for exactly thirty four days. We like tourists to visit Mexico and we especially like tourists such as you to come on that day.” Then he looked over to the large Mexican in the corner and said, still speaking English which he spoke almost accent free, “Anything else?”
The large Mexican said, “Nyet.” I wondered if that word meant the same thing in Spanish as it did in Russian. It apparently does because the one behind the desk turned back to me and said,
“That’s all. You can go. Have a good trip back and remember to do exactly what I said and we’ll see you back here next month. Now follow me.”
I said to myself, “Sure. You’ll never see me down here again.” How wrong I would be.
I followed the Mexican in the straw hat outside. He handed me my driver’s license, passport and keys and I got into the Corolla. He got into the driver’s seat of the Ford Expedition and told me to follow him. Another Mexican got into the passenger seat next to him to ride along. The one with the cowboy hat got into the Chevy Suburban and another Mexican rode along with him. We traveled as a small parade back to the border with the Expedition in front, followed by the Corolla and the Suburban. We had an uneventful crossing. The three vehicles then traveled north on I-5 until we got off at the interstate exit that led to my apartment in Laundromat Town. As we drove into town, the blue light on the Suburban that was following me started flashing so I pulled over. The one in the cowboy hat got out and came over to my driver’s side window. He showed me his identification. He was from the San Diego Police Department but I couldn’t tell his name or identification number because he kept his thumb over that information. I didn’t know if it was real or whether he had jurisdiction in Laundromat Town, but I didn’t ask him about it.
“Pull into the next parking lot and go to the back of the building,” he said.
We were back on Pacific Coast Highway and the building housed a store that specialized in surf boards and other beach equipment and apparel and closed at six. I did as he told me. When I parked the Corolla, the Ford Expedition parked next to me and the Chevy Suburban parked directly behind me. The one in the cowboy hat got back out of the Suburban and came over to the Corolla and opened the front door.
“Get out,” he said. I did. “Now give me your keys.” I did that too. “Do you have a spare set?” he asked.
“At home,” I answered.
“Good. Now go home and don’t come back until tomorrow morning. We know you can walk home from here. It’s only a few blocks. I’ll lock your keys in your car so no one will steal this piece of shit. You can have it back tomorrow. Now go.”
I went. I glanced back as I turned the corner of the building we were parked behind. They seemed to be unloading some things from the Corolla’s trunk and putting them into the Suburban. There seemed to be a good deal of whatever it was. The trunk seemed to be very full. I kept going and increased my pace until I got home, which was only a few blocks away. I remained inside for about half an hour. I figured they would finish by that time. Then I thought it would be safe to leave my house. No, I didn’t go back to the Corolla. Instead I went to a Mexican restaurant that I liked that was still open and was in the opposite direction from where the Corolla was parked. I ordered a bean burrito and ate it on the spot, just to show I still could. Although I now knew I was a full-fledged San Diegan, I didn’t really care anymore. I only cared that I was still alive.
The next day I went back and got the Corolla. Sure enough the key was in the ignition and the car was locked. I looked in the trunk. It was almost empty. They had taken the spare tire, I guess to make more room. They had apparently forgotten one of the packages. I shut the trunk without looking in it and drove the Corolla home. I took the package out of the Corolla and into the apartment/garage. It was a big brown paper grocery store bag and I looked inside with trepidation expecting to find drugs. Boy, was I surprised. There were no drugs. The paper bag was filled with money, hundred dollar bills to be exact. Used hundred dollar bills all wrapped in equal sized packets. There were one hundred packets each with fifty one hundred dollar bills in them. I counted one packet and assumed the rest had the same amount. I then counted the number of packets and did the multiplication of five thousand per packet by one hundred packets. I came up with a figure of five hundred thousand dollars. See. I told you I’m good at math. But being good at math didn’t help my present situation. I wasn’t good enough in math to calculate the odds that they would let me live when they found out I had five hundred thousand dollars of their money. I didn’t know all the variables and probability was not one of the math areas I was that good at.
I guess I would just have to wait for someone to come and get the money and perhaps kill me in the process. Since they hadn’t killed me yet,
perhaps the odds of my survival were greater than I assumed. I thought to myself that there was probably hell to pay back in old Mexico for whoever had made the mistake of leaving this package of money behind. I was wrong. It turned out it was not a mistake and that it was not one of the variables that would add to my chance of survival. My immediate problem was that I needed a place to hide the package. I decided that the best way to hide the package was to just leave it in plain sight, so I left it in the corner of my apartment with my empty duffel bag, suitcase and shredded sleeping bag. I didn’t even try to put it inside one of those items. I figured that if they wanted to come and get it while I was gone, then they could have it. No one else would suspect I had anything else of value inside except for the television, and that had only cost me twenty bucks.
Chapter 17
Nothing happened during the whole next week. I still continued to go to work and inject and/or kill various laboratory animals. On the following Saturday, just after taking a shower and getting dressed, and as I was about to go out, there was a loud knocking on my door. No one had ever come over since I moved there without calling first, so naturally I was a little nervous as I opened the door. To my relief, momentarily at least, it was not anyone I recognized. There were two medium sized and rather stout middle aged men standing there with not unfriendly looks on their faces. They looked kind of like affable salesman who had eaten a few too many doughnuts or had a little too much ice cream. They introduced themselves. One extended his hand and said,
“Good morning Alex. My name is Ben.” The other offered his and said, “Just call me Jerry.”
Somehow I wasn’t surprised they knew my name. “What can I do for you?” I asked of my appropriately named guests who I thought were very harmless, but were anything but harmless as it turned out. Each showed me identification that indicated that they were with the Central Intelligence Agency. Uh oh, I thought to myself.
“You can let us in so we can have a chat.”
They came in, looked around and Ben said, “On second thought, let’s get some breakfast. Have you eaten yet?”
“No.”
“Good. We have, but we can have brunch while you have breakfast and we talk.”
They had a big, black Cadillac Escalade Hybrid outside and we all got into it. I sat in the back and Ben drove.
“Let’s go to the Torrey Pines Inn. They have great lemon pancakes,” said Jerry. Then turning to me he said, “You’re place stinks but we like the neighborhood. We’ve cased it out.”
“What do you like about it?” I was obviously curious.
“Well for one thing, it has a Baskin Robbins right across the street and you can see your little garage from it,” said Jerry.
“And it has a gelato place right down the street,” added Ben.
“Is that your favorite ice cream, Baskin Robbins I mean?” I asked Ben and Jerry.
“When we can’t get Haagen Dazs, it is,” Jerry said. Go figure.
We drove down I-5 and made small talk about the weather and San Diego and cars. I asked them how they liked the Escalade Hybrid. They didn’t.
“We used to have a Ford Expedition and it had a lot more pickup than this one,” said Ben, “but ever since the government bailed out General Motors we can only buy GM SUV Hybrids, so we use these now.”
I asked them if they ever used Buick Regals.
Jerry looked at me a little curiously and said, “You know only the Russkis use Buick Regals. We can’t use them even if we wanted to.”
“How come they only use Buick Regals?”
“We have an arrangement with them. If they buy GM products, they get hassled by our boys a lot less frequently than if they buy a Ford or a Japanese brand. And they can’t
use Cadillacs since that’s what we use, so they usually get Buicks.”
“I see.”
We got to the restaurant and they asked for a booth in the back, out of hearing from anyone else. We sat down and ordered. They insisted I have the lemon pancakes which they ordered as well. I wasn’t about to argue.
“So what’s this all about?” I asked.
Ben started. “It’s simple. We’re thinking of making you an offer you can’t refuse. You know. We’re thinking of offering you the opportunity to become a double agent.”
I looked at him with surprise and said, “Don’t I have to be a single agent before I become a double agent?”
They both thought that was very funny and started to laugh.
“Boy, what a sense of humor. I think we’re going to enjoy working with you,” said Jerry. Then he continued. “Look. We know you’re a Russian agent. If you weren’t you’d be no use to us. With what you’ve done, you’d be considered a traitor or a criminal or both and we’d have to get rid of you. And we have plenty of evidence to prove the criminal charges at least. If the higher ups didn’t agree to kill you for some reason, you’d spend the rest of your life in jail. On the other hand, since we’re sure you’re a Russki, you’re very valuable to us if we can turn you into a double agent and use you. Provided we can trust you. Then we won’t have to kill you or send you to jail which should make you happy. This is kind of an interview. A meet and greet and an interview at the same time.”
“I see,” I said trying to get my thoughts in order. “But if I am an agent, as you seem to think, as soon as I agree to do that, won’t the other side kill me instead. It seems like I can’t win.”
“Well, we can probably keep that from happening,” said Ben. “We can keep a close eye on you and protect you,” and I knew he was thinking of the Baskin Robbins across the street by the look on his face. “But of course there’s some risk or else you wouldn’t be a valuable asset. And at the end of the mission, we can give you an alias and put you in our double agent protection program. It’s like a witness protection program, but for turncoats if you know what I mean.”
Now that statement made me feel good. Then I asked,
“Why do you think I’m a Russian agent? And why do you think I’m a traitor or a criminal?”
It was Jerry’s turn to answer. They took turns so the lemon pancakes wouldn’t get cold. “We know you were born in the U.S.A. In fact we know a lot about you. So if you are a Russian agent then of course you’re a traitor since we’re pretty sure you’re working for them or did. As far as the criminal charges are concerned, we know you’ve been charged with breaking and entering and the charges have been dropped by the woman whose apartment you broke into and whose extremely valuable heirlooms you destroyed out of sheer meanness. Although we don’t know if that qualifies as a hate crime, since she’s of Irish descent and you’re Russian, we could probably make it stick. Hate crimes are easy to prove these days. But that’s small time compared to murder. We’re pretty sure you killed Ivor Federov, although the evidence is circumstantial. Your professor seems to think you snuck out of an important meeting that would determine whether or not you got your Ph.D. under the pretext of going to the bathroom, and ran over to the gun range, shot Ivor and ran back in time to be awarded the degree. He said you were gone a long time and were covered with sweat and out of breath when you got back. He said he thought you would have no trouble killing someone. He said he thought you could do it without thinking because you acted like you had a heart of stone when dealing with laboratory animals. He described you as being a cold blooded killer when it came to killing animals, and that you did so like someone with ice water in his veins. He also thought you must have nerves of steel since, if you did in fact kill Federov, you were able to calmly and graciously return to collect the congratulations for passing your exam. As Jerry described all the things my professor said about my blood, veins, nerves and heart, all I could think of was that this was the professor who taught Freshman Anatomy. And it was obvious he was familiar with attributes of my anatomy that I didn’t know I had.
Ben took over. “Now the evidence is circumstantial. The department head wouldn’t confirm those observations, but of course he hadn’t seen you work with
the laboratory animals like your thesis professor had. We, on the other hand, will take all the nice things your professor said about you as a recommendation since he knows you better, and we like those good solid attributes he described. Of course, we knew that it would be hard convicting you of murdering Ivor on circumstantial evidence, so we decided we needed an additional criminal charge in case the higher ups decide that it’s jail for you rather than death. That’s why we had to wait for you to go to Mexico. Now we have you on drug running charges. We videotaped the whole operation and the payoff and everything. And the cash you have has recorded numbers, so we can use it as evidence. Boy, it was easy. I guess the Russkis don’t train you guys the way they used to. Of course, being in a sleeper cell, like you are, they don’t really give you much training, do they?”
I realized the last was a rhetorical question. But I did ask, “Why do you think I’m in a sleeper cell?”
Now it was Jerry’s turn. “Okay. I’ll tell you how much we know about your side’s sleeper cells since it’s common knowledge, and it doesn’t matter because we never learn about them until they’re activated like yours was. Sleeper cells, as we understand them, are usually the children or grandchildren of Russian immigrants like you and Igor and Vladimir and consist of precisely three people. They are activated for a single mission and then disappear and return to Russia with their parents, if the parents are still alive, or they are sometimes killed if they know too much. I bet you didn’t know that,” he said smiling at me and hoping to fill me with doubt about how much I wanted to remain loyal to the Russians if I was an agent as he believed. “We thought that Ivor may have been part of it at first, but he ended up dead before the mission is over so it couldn’t have been him. We think you killed him because he either discovered you or you coerced him into helping and had to get rid of him. We think it’s the latter since he worked for a professor who was designing a new guidance system for a stealth drone. And we know the mission isn’t over because our sources tell us the information you were supposed to provide hasn’t been passed yet. If Ivor was a member of the sleeper cell, he wouldn’t have been eliminated until after the mission had been completed. We need to see that information before it gets to Mother Russia, and we’re willing to cut a pretty generous deal with you if you cooperate. That’s why we arranged to have this little meeting this morning. We know you’ll need time to think about it, so we’ll give you a week or two, but no longer. We can’t take a chance so we’ll get rid of you after two weeks if you make the wrong decision.”
