Collateral Damage

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “You were serious then in telling Nigella he won’t survive?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it would be in the best interest of the intelligence agencies for him to live.”

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We wait. I should be hearing something from D.C. shortly.”

  “Look,” said Logan quietly, “I think you took the starch out of her, Jock.”

  Nigella sat slumped in the chair, her head in her hands. She was sobbing. I could almost see the waves of despair rolling across her consciousness. It wasn’t a pretty sight. A beautiful woman had been reduced to a quivering mass of regret.

  “I didn’t enjoy that,” said Jock, “but I want her nervous. We may need to get more out of her. I’m not sure she told us everything she knows.”

  “What’ll happen to her?” asked Logan.

  “She’ll go to prison,” said Jock. “Probably get twenty years, unless she’s implicated in the murders. Then she’ll do life, or if Florida tries her, maybe get a ride on the needle. Everything she owns will be confiscated by the government. She’ll lose her law license.”

  “That’s pretty harsh,” said Logan.

  “Better than what Jim Desmond and those other kids got,” Jock said.

  The three of us left the DEA offices and went to a small café down the block. We ate a leisurely lunch, idly chatting about the case and how things were starting to come into focus. I still had a lot of questions, but they’d have to wait until we got a clearer picture from D.C.

  We were on our way back to the DEA office when Jock’s phone rang. The conversation was short. Jock closed his phone. “We’re going to Washington,” he said. “They’re about finished with Nitzler, but they’re giving us a shot at him in case we have any questions.”

  “What about the killers?” I asked. “The Asians.”

  “They were thugs involved with the drug runners that Nitzler hooked up with. They’re being rolled up by the police this afternoon. They’ll all be in custody before dark.”

  “What can we learn in Washington?” Logan asked.

  “Maybe the truth,” said Jock.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  Doc’s jet landed at Washington’s Reagan National Airport in the late afternoon. We were met by somber men in a black SUV and driven into the Virginia countryside. We took a lane off the main highway and drove for a few minutes past big homes set back from the road. Horses were pastured in the large expanses between the houses. Finally, we came to a driveway leading off the lane. We turned in and drove across some rolling hills to a large house set well back from the street. It was a fairly new house, built in the antebellum style of the Old South. There were long porches and columns in front. The building was clapboard, or an imitation thereof, and painted white with black shutters. An imposing and isolated place.

  We were shown into a living room where a tall man slouched in an upholstered chair, sipping from a tumbler of amber whiskey. He was wearing a white dress shirt, a red-and-white tie that was askew on his chest, dark pants, and wingtip cordovan shoes. His hair was gray and a lot of it was missing. He looked up and his face broke into a large grin. “Jock,” he said, and stood to embrace his visitor.

  “Dave,” Jock said, “this is Matt Royal and Logan Hamilton. Gentlemen, my director, Dave.” No last name. I wasn’t surprised. Jock’s agency didn’t exist publicly. It’s funding came from some black bag dollars that were funneled through the CIA. While there was a lot of cooperation between the agencies, Dave answered only to the president of the United States.

  “At last I get to meet you two. God, you’ve gotten my buddy here involved in some strange stuff the last couple of years.”

  We shook hands. “Can I get you a drink?” asked the director.

  “I wouldn’t mind a little Scotch if you have it,” said Logan.

  “I’ll take a beer,” I said.

  “O’Doul’s,” said Jock.

  The director disappeared and returned with our drinks. It had been a long day that started before dawn in Marsh Harbour. It was still daylight outside, but I felt like I’d done a hard day’s work and midnight was closing in. The beer tasted good, cold and plain good.

  “What have you got for us, Dave?” asked Jock.

  “Nitzler gave it all up, I think. He was using the drug connection to ensure his retirement. The killings were just a sideshow. He’d always wanted to get the men who’d killed his buddy Morrissey, but he’d never had the ability to get at them. His new position in the CIA and his drug connections cleared that problem.”

  “Can we talk to him?” Jock asked.

  “He’s in the basement. Help yourself.”

  We finished our drinks and Dave summoned another agent to take us to Nitzler. We found him sitting in a room with no furniture except the chair he sat on. He was wearing navy pinstriped suit pants, a white dress shirt, no tie, no belt, no shoes. He was shackled to a chair that was bolted to the floor. When we entered, he looked up. He was sweaty, tired, the lines of his face etched with exhaustion. “Who’re you?” he asked.

  “I’m Jock Algren.”

  “I know your name. Who’re these guys?”

  “Matt Royal and Logan Hamilton.”

  “Shit.”

  Jock squatted down to eye level with Nitzler. “You want to tell us what the hell you were doing killing people you had no beef with?”

  “No reason not to at this juncture,” Nitzler said. “I know the drill. I won’t be going home.”

  “Then a little truth won’t hurt you,” said Jock.

  “It was part of the misdirection. I figured if the kids were killed, and they were killed by Vietnamese, then if anybody got onto us, they’d think it was the survivors of Ban Touk exacting revenge by killing the children of the men who killed their children.”

  “That’s kind of far out, isn’t it?” asked Logan.

  “Yeah, but I also wanted those bastards who killed Nigel to feel the same kind of pain I’ve felt since his death. If they were just killed, there’d be no pain. This way, they got to suffer before I took them all out.”

  “You’re a cold-blooded son of a bitch,” I said.

  “You have to be to do the kind of work I’ve done for the past thirty years,” he said.

  “Tell me about your efforts to kill me,” I said.

  Nitzler laughed, a dry cackle that made him appear to be unbalanced. “The first time I wanted you hurt bad, scared, out of my face, but not dead. I figured you’d think it was the Laotians and you’d close up shop and forget about us. I didn’t count on you breaking my man’s arm.”

  “And the second time?” I asked.

  “Misdirection. I figured you’d backtrack the dummy we sent and begin to wonder what kind of fools we were. I didn’t count on you finding out who hired the idiot.”

  “John Nguyen,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you know we found John Nguyen?”

  “Your fucking interrogator told me. That’s how you first started to connect the dots and gave up on the Laotian connection.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You screwed up on that one.”

  Nitzler looked at Jock. “The guy from your agency also told me you were Royal’s buddy and had gotten yourself involved. I’ve heard tales about the great Jock Algren for years. If I’d known you were involved we would have played this thing differently.”

  “How so?” I aked.

  “I don’t know. But I would have taken his contacts in the intelligence community into consideration.”

  “Did you hack into Desmond’s computers?” asked Jock.

  “I did. I read all your memos. Very informative. When you guys got the bright idea that Laotians were doing the killing, I thought I’d just let that be. You were going off in the wrong direction so that suited my purposes.”

  “What about the drug money?” asked Jock. “Where did that go?”

  “Some of it went to pay for the Viets I hired to kill
those kids. The rest of it went into my bank account in Switzerland. In the name of Robert Bracewell. Dave and his boys are already on it. I’m sure that money will be in an agency account before the end of the day.”

  “Pretty slick,” I said. “How did you know about Bracewell?”

  “I came across the connection when I was checking out Stanley.”

  “Why Stanley and the Otto Foundation?” I asked.

  “Simple. Maude Lane was Nigel’s older sister. She already worked there and it didn’t take much to convince her to help us get the men who killed her brother.”

  “Why try to implicate Detective Duncan in your operation?” I asked.

  “Standard procedure. When she started the investigation into the murders, I set her up to take a fall if she happened to stumble over something that would implicate me or the agency.”

  “Why lure Katherine Brewster to Anna Maria Island to kill her?” I asked. “Why not do that in Charlotte?”

  “I had nothing to do with her going to Florida. I was getting my team in place for the Desmond boy’s wedding when that idiot Mantella set up his scheme to get her to Florida. It seemed only natural to set them up to take out the Brewster girl at the same time. I thought the chances of law enforcement tying the killings together were slim.”

  “How did you find out what Mantella was doing?”

  “I’d had the Brewster’s phone tapped. We got the girl telling her boyfriend about the gift certificates and her planned trip to Florida. I had EZGo Travel checked out and we tracked it back to Mantella.”

  “Why kill Garrison?” I asked. “The lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Collateral damage. He tried to save the Brewster girl.”

  “How did you know Katherine would be onboard Dulcimer that evening?”

  “We didn’t. I knew she had a gift certificate for a cruise. I had the team aboard every night, with one of them standing in the bow to take care of the captain when the time came.”

  “Where does Llewellyn fit into this?” asked Jock.

  “He’s a good man. Follows orders. Doesn’t ask questions. He was handy when I got word that Desmond’s plane was in Marsh Harbour. He and a team went straight there, figured out that you’d be in the house on the island, and went to see what was up.”

  “How’d he know about the house?” Jock asked.

  “He didn’t. Not until he got to Marsh Harbour. He found out that Royal had rented a boat and the dockmaster told him that he saw the three of you anchored and fishing in the area of the house. I told Llewellyn to slip up to the house after dark and make sure it was Desmond before he raided the place. I guess we didn’t count on your security measures.”

  “Why?” Jock asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you do it? Betray your country, your agency.”

  “I didn’t betray my country. I just wanted a nice nest egg for retirement and when I came across the smuggling ring during another operation, I figured I could get the money and take out the bastards who killed my buddy. A little retribution.”

  “What about those women and children killed at Ban Touk?” asked Logan.

  “What about them?”

  “You don’t think they deserved some justice, like maybe the execution of the guy who ordered them killed? Opal or Morrissey or whatever his name was?”

  “Fuck ’em. A bunch of slopes. Wrong place, wrong time. We were in a war.”

  “Just collateral damage,” Logan said.

  Nitzler looked at Logan, a hard, defiant look. “Damn straight, bucko.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  On the last day of August, J.D., Jock, Logan, Doc Desmond, and I sat at a table on the covered patio at the Mar Vista pub. The sun had sunk into the Gulf an hour before and a slight breeze blew off the bay chasing the worst of the heat away. The big ceiling fans circulated the air so that the evening was more pleasant than I had expected.

  Jock had arrived on a commercial flight from Houston about an hour before. Doc came from the airport where he’d parked his private jet. The meeting had been arranged the day after we left Virginia. We wanted to give it a couple of weeks for the agencies involved to sort out their options. Somebody would let Jock know the outcome and he would tell us.

  After our talk with Nitzler, the three of us had bedded down in rooms on the second floor of the safe house. We were exhausted from our long day and sleep came easily. The next morning we had called Doc’s pilot Fred Cassidy at the hotel where he’d spent the night, and he flew us to Atlanta. We met with the remnants of Team Charlie and told them that the danger was over, that they could bring their families home, get back to their lives. They wanted to know more, but all we could tell them was that they’d be told everything in due time, no more than a couple of weeks.

  Cassidy had flown us back to Sarasota, and the next day Jock left for Houston. Our adventure was over. J.D. was ribbed by her fellow cops about turning into a fed, but she just laughed them off. The story Bill Lester put out, one that was backed up by Dan Delgado, the special agent in charge of the Tampa office of DEA, was that J.D. had been seconded to the DEA for help in an undercover operation. It had been so hush-hush that the only story anybody could come up with to explain her absence from the key was that she’d disappeared. Lester apologized to his men for the deception and life returned to the desultory tempo of the island summer.

  Jock had been completely briefed by his director and given permission to tell us all that he knew. He didn’t actually have a lot to add. We had learned the gist of the Nitzler operation, as we were now calling it, from Nigella and Nitzler. But the story was not complete, and Jock had come to flesh it out. He reiterated what we already knew, giving Doc more information than we’d given him in Atlanta when we met with Team Charlie.

  “Who were the Vietnamese involved in this thing?” asked Doc.

  “They were part of a drug cartel operating on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. There are a lot of Vietnamese fishermen in that area. Most are scrupulously honest and hard working, but a few of them decided to make a killing importing drugs in their fishing boats.”

  “Kind of like those guys down in Everglades City a few years back,” said J.D.

  “Same thing,” said Jock. “The Vietnamese fishermen would offload drugs from a mother ship way out in the Gulf and bring the drugs in. Sometimes the money is too easy to resist.”

  “How did Nitzler get involved with them?” Doc asked.

  “He was running an operation against one of the Mexican drug cartels and he stumbled onto the Vietnamese connection in Mississippi. He had the ones involved picked up and told them they would be put in prison if they didn’t cooperate with him. They began to funnel some of their money into the Otto Foundation. It was essentially protection money paid to Nitzler to keep him from putting them out of business. When Nitzler needed some people to handle the killings, the leaders supplied a few of their enforcers.”

  “Are they still running drugs over there?” asked J.D.

  “No,” said Jock. “All the evidence was turned over to DEA and they made the busts.”

  “What about the enforcers working for Nitzler?” asked J.D.

  “There were only three involved in the killings,” said Jock. “One, the woman who was there at the first attempt on Matt’s life, was the sniper. She took out Doc’s son, the Fleming boy, and young Lemuel up in North Dakota. The other one, the slasher, killed the Dixson girl at the University of Virginia and tried to take out Matt on the beach. The third guy was the one we knew as John Nguyen. He broke the Dulcimer’s captain’s neck.”

  “Where are they now,” asked Doc.

  “Unfortunately, they died in a car wreck,” said Jock. “They were found in a sedan that ran off the road and submerged in a lake in North Carolina. They were passengers in a car driven by a CIA officer named Barry Nitzler. The driver had a blood-alcohol content of about three times the legal limit. All four had been dead for a couple of days when the car was found.”
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  “What did they do about Llewellyn?” I asked.

  “He’s fine. The CIA took him back. He was following orders of his boss and had no reason to suspect anything illegal. Neither did any of his team members. He’s probably in for some ribbing, but otherwise his career is safe.”

  “What about the rest of them?” Logan asked.

  “Nigella pled guilty to the money laundering and all charges relating to the murders were dropped. The prosecutor would have had a hard time proving that Nigella had anything to do with them. She’s going to be in prison for the next fifteen years. Her aunt, Maude Lane, got the same sentence. She’ll probably die behind bars. The other Vietnamese who were involved are going to prison on a whole raft of charges. They’ll probably never get out.”

  Doc shook his head. “All these years and that damn war isn’t over yet.”

  “It may never be over,” I said. “At least during the lifetimes of those who fought there.”

  “Just think,” said Doc, “one man with an agenda, a ruthless bastard named Nitzler caused all this. The deaths at Ban Touk, our kids, and now Nitzler himself, the man who started it all. In a way, he set up his own death that day in Vietnam when he decided to have us kill those women and children. Logan thought the people after us might have been the avenging angels of Ban Touk. Turns out it was just the same pissant who ordered the deaths of those poor people.”

  “Maybe in the end,” said Logan, “we were Ban Touk’s avenging angels.”

  “I guess we were,” said Doc. “I guess we were.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  Logan, Jock, and Desmond said their goodbyes. Logan was going to drive the other two to the airport. J.D. and I sat alone in the quiet of the late evening, savoring the gentle breeze wafting in from the bay. She was sipping a glass of wine as I worked on my last beer of the evening. We were quiet for a few minutes, lost in our own thoughts.

  I felt her hand rest lightly on top of mine and looked up into those startling green eyes. She was smiling, a bit sadly perhaps. “Matt,” she said, “I’ll never forget that you came to find me in the Bahamas.”