Covert Warriors pa-7
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“Or words to this effect,” the President said. “Read it aloud, Madam Secretary, so everybody will be on the same page.”
Cohen took the sheet of paper, glanced at it, and began, “This is apparently a draft,” and then read the letter aloud:
draft draft draft draft draft draft draft draft draft draft
{This would be better on Martinez’s personal, rather than official, stationery} date
My dear friend Zeke,
I come to you to ask for an act of Christian charity and compassion.
As a devoted father and family man yourself, you know that once in a while-perhaps more often than we realize-every family produces a worthless son, even a murderer.
Such is the case with the Abrego family, a thoroughly decent family who work a small farm in Oaxaca State. They have had two daughters and a son, Felix. According to Bishop (need a name) a truly wise and Christian man, whom I have known for years, and who brought this to me, Felix started to go bad when he was twelve, and despite every prayerful thing his mother and father and his priest tried to do for him, kept moving ever faster on the path to hell.
Bishop (Whatsisname) knows this, because earlier in his career he was the Abrego family priest. And as a wholly honest man, Bishop (Whatsisname) is as willing as I am to admit that, guilty as charged, Felix Abrego fully deserves the punishment laid upon him by an American court for brutal acts of murder. He is currently imprisoned, for life, without the possibility of parole, in your federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
Senora Abrego, his sixty-seven-year-old mother, has been diagnosed with a particular nasty cancer (get a name for the cancer?) and has less than four (two? three?) months to live. She is confined to her bed, and can get around only in a wheelchair.
Obviously, she can’t travel to Colorado, and she wants to see her son for a last time before she dies. I’m imploring you to help me arrange that.
What I propose is this:
There are at least a half dozen “open” Policia Federal warrants involving Felix Abrego. They have not been actively pursued because it was reasoned that since he is already confined without the possibility of parole, it would be a waste of time and money to try to convict him of something else.
I have been told there is a provision in U.S. law whereby a prisoner like Felix Abrego may be released from prison into the custody of the U.S. Marshal Service and taken for interrogation to a foreign country, such as Mexico.
In this case, if you would use your good offices to approve a request from the Policia Federal to bring Abrego to Mexico for interrogation, your Marshals would transport him to the Oaxaca State Prison, where they would turn him over to prison authorities.
This would permit the Policia Federal to interrogate him. And it would also permit Senora Abrego to visit her son for the last time before her death. Once that inevitably happens, Abrego could either be returned to the United States to complete his confinement or, alternatively, tried here. In this case, there are so many charges against him here that he would almost certainly be sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in a Mexican prison.
If in your good judgment something can be worked out, please call me at your convenience and we can work out the details.
With warm regards,
Your friend
Ramon
“Well?” the President asked when she had finished.
“Mr. President, what is it you wish me to do with this?” Secretary Cohen asked.
“I told you. Get it to McCann and have him take it to President Martinez.”
“Mr. President,” Attorney General Crenshaw said, “the long-standing policy of the United States has been never to negotiate with terrorists.”
“Who’s negotiating with terrorists?” Clemens McCarthy replied for the President. “What President Clendennen is going to do is send a convicted criminal for interrogation in Mexico, which has the added benefit of permitting a terminally ill woman to see her son for the last time. If that also results in the release of Colonel Ferris, what’s wrong with that?”
“It’s bullshit, McCarthy, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Crenshaw said.
“There’s a lady present, Mr. Attorney General,” the President said. “Watch your mouth!”
“I beg your pardon, Madam Secretary,” Crenshaw said.
“Obviously, Mr. Attorney General,” the President said, “you have some objections to my plan to secure the release of Colonel Ferris.”
“Yes, sir, I have a number of-”
“I’m not interested in what they might be, Mr. Attorney General. This is the plan of action your Commander in Chief has decided upon. My question is whether your objections will keep you from carrying out my orders to see that what I want done is done.”
“That would depend, Mr. President, on what orders you give me.”
“Fair enough,” the President said. “If I ordered you to have this fellow Abrego moved from his present place of confinement to the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution, would your conscience permit you to carry out that order?”
“Mr. President, are you aware that Abrego has been adjudicated to be a very dangerous and violent prisoner requiring his incarceration in the Florence maximum-security facility?”
“So Clemens has told me.”
“And that La Tuna is a minimum-security facility? What they call a country club for the incarceration of nonviolent white-collar offenders?”
“Are you going to be able to obey my orders or not?”
The attorney general looked at the secretary of State and saw on her face and in her eyes that she was afraid he was going to say no.
“Mr. President, if you order me to move Abrego from Florence ADMAX to the La Tuna minimum-security facility, I’ll have him moved.”
“Good. I like what the military calls ‘cheerful and willing obedience’ to my orders to my loyal subordinates.”
President Clendennen turned to Secretary of State Cohen.
“I presume that you are also going to cheerfully and willingly obey my orders to you, Madam Secretary, vis-a-vis having Ambassador McCann deliver Clemens’s brilliant letter to President Martinez?”
“I will take the letter to Ambassador McCann, Mr. President, but I’m not sure he will be willing to take it to President Martinez, and I have no idea how President Martinez would react to it if he does.”
“McCann will do it because he works for you, Madam Secretary-although actually, since I appointed him, he’s my ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary and knows who butters his bread-and Martinez will go along with it. What my good friend Ramon wants to do is not antagonize the drug cartels any more than he has to. And to keep the tourists and retirees-and all those lovely U.S. dollars- going to Acapulco and those other places in sunny Mexico. My plan will allow him to do both.”
He turned to Defense Secretary Beiderman and General Naylor.
“Now, as far as you two are concerned, I presume that you two, as loyal subordinates of your Commander in Chief, will both cheerfully and willingly obey this direct order: I don’t want any involvement by the military in this. Period. None. Either of you have any problems with that?”
“No, sir,” Beiderman said.
“No, Mr. President,” Naylor said.
“Okay,” the President said. “That’s it. Thank you for coming in. Douglas, show them out.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Special Agent Douglas said.
Attorney General Crenshaw caught up with Secretary of State Cohen as she was about to get into her limousine in the driveway.
“Natalie, we’re going to have to talk.”
“Not now,” she replied as she slid onto the backseat. “I tend to make bad decisions when I am so upset that I feel sick to my stomach.”
“We can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” he insisted.
“Give me twenty-four hours to think it over,” she said, and then pulled the limousine door closed.
FOUR
United States Pos
t Office 8401 Boeing Drive El Paso, Texas 1005 18 April 2007
A very short, totally bald, barrel-chested man in a crisp tan suit leaned against the post office wall, puffing on a long, thin black cigar while reading El Diario de El Paso.
A man in filthy clothing-with an unshaven and unwashed face, and sunken eyes-sidled up to the nicely dressed man. If profiling was not politically incorrect, he might have caused many police officers and Border Patrol officers to think of him as possibly an undocumented immigrant or someone suffering from substance abuse or both.
The wetback junkie looked around as if to detect the presence of law enforcement officers, and then inquired, “Hey, gringo, you wanna fook my see-ster?”
“Your wife, maybe,” the well-dressed man replied. “But the last time I saw your sister, she weighed three hundred pounds and needed a shave.”
The junkie then shook his head, smiled, and with no detectable accent said, “You sonofabitch!”
“There’s a Starbucks around the corner,” the well-dressed man said.
“Dressed like this? Where’s your car?”
“In the next parking lot,” the well-dressed man said, and nodded across the street. “Walk down the street. I’ll pick you up.”
The well-dressed man walked away to the left, and the junkie to the right.
Five minutes later, sitting with the junkie in a rented Lincoln parked five blocks from the post office on Boeing Drive, Vic D’Alessandro punched the appropriate buttons on his Brick, and fifteen seconds later was rewarded with the voice of A. Franklin Lammelle, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
“And how, Vic, are things in scenic El Paso?”
“Pics coming through all right?”
“I’m looking at them now,” Lammelle said. “Who am I looking at?”
“That’s the guy who dropped a letter addressed to Box 2333 into the slot in the post office.”
“The FBI told you that?” Lammelle asked.
“No,” the junkie offered. “But when, thirty seconds after this guy dropped his envelope into the slot, half a dozen FBI guys inside the lobby started baying and going on point like so many Llewellin setters, we took a chance.”
“Hey, Tommy, how are you?” Lammelle said.
“Very well, Mr. Director, sir,” CIA Agent Tomas L. Diaz replied. “How are things in the executive suite, Mr. Director, sir?”
“You don’t want to know,” Lammelle said. “So what happened next?”
“He walked back to his car, more or less discreetly trailed by the aforementioned Llewellins and a dozen unmarked vehicles, including, so help me God, Frank, a Model A hot rod.”
“Jesus,” Lammelle said. “So he cleverly deduced he was being followed?”
“I’m sure he expected it,” Diaz said. “He didn’t try to lose anybody until he was in Mexico, and then he became professional. He didn’t have to. The FBI stopped at the border.”
“But you didn’t lose him?”
“It’s been a long time since I did this, Frank, but it’s like riding a bicycle. Once you learn how. .”
“You didn’t lose him,” Lammelle pursued.
“He changed cars three times. I don’t know about the first two, but you’ll notice the dip plate on the Mercedes.”
“I noticed. You get a gold star to take home to Mommy, Tommy.”
“These aren’t drug guys, Frank. This is too professional.”
“SVR?”
“Who else? Mexican intelligence is an oxymoron. Maybe Cuban, maybe even some of Chavez’s people. But I’d go with SVR.”
“Castillo thinks this whole thing is an SVR operation,” Lammelle said, and then asked, “Tommy, did the FBI make you?”
“No. They were too busy falling all over each other to look for something like that.”
“I’d love to know what was in that envelope,” Lammelle said.
“So would I,” D’Alessandro said. “But once it went into the slot, it was firmly in the clutch of the FBI; we couldn’t get close, and I didn’t think I should ask for a look. Can you find out?”
“I’ll try. Where are things now?”
Diaz said: “Vic’s got half a dozen guys standing by in Juarez-”
“Who, Vic?” Lammelle interrupted.
“China Post. On Castillo’s dime. He-we-didn’t want to use anybody from the Stockade.”
Lammelle knew that American Legion China Post #1 in Exile enjoyed among its membership certain retired special operators. And he knew that Castillo often hired the highly skilled warriors.
“And what are they doing now?”
“Things that I could not do without getting my cover blown,” Diaz said. “And now we have both the dip license plate and the photos of the people-all of the people, not just the letter dropper. If we can get a positive ID on any of them-”
Lammelle put in: “The dip plate-I got this just now-goes on a Venezuelan-embassy Toyota Camry assigned to their consulate in Juarez.”
“That’s where it was,” Diaz said. “So we will-because we don’t have anything better-radio the code word ‘Hugo’ to the China Post guys, and they will start sitting on the Venezuelan consulate. Two questions.”
“Shoot.”
“How soon can you ID the letter dropper?”
“Those pics are being run through comparison now. No more than an hour; probably less.”
“My work would be a lot easier if I had some better radios.”
“We’re trying to keep McNab out of this, so that means no equipment from the Stockade, and you’ll understand, Tommy, that it would be just a little awkward for me to walk into domestic operations here and check out something you could use.”
“I can hear the chorus of whistles blowing,” Diaz said. “Well, then, how about a couple of Bricks like Vic’s?”
“Castillo’s working on getting you something-it won’t be Bricks, but maybe CaseyBerrys. As soon as we can get them to you, we will.”
“I’d really like to have a Brick, Mr. Director, sir.”
“Talk to Castillo. I’ll call you as soon as I have a positive ID on the letter dropper.”
FIVE
Office of the Director Federal Bureau of Investigation The J. Edgar Hoover Building 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1205 18 April 2007
“An unexpected pleasure, Frank,” FBI Director Schmidt said as he offered his hand to DCI Lammelle. “What can I do for you?”
“How do you turn off the recorder, Mark?”
“Excuse me?”
“Turn it off, Mark. I don’t want this recorded for posterity.” After a just perceptible hesitation, Schmidt pointed to a door. “I’ve got sort of a bubble in there,” he said.
“Fine, providing you swear on your honor as an Eagle Scout that the recorder in there is shut off.”
Lammelle then held up his right hand, palm outward, center fingers extended, thumb and pinky crossed over the palm, in a gesture signifying Scout’s honor.
“Frank, I don’t thinking mocking Scouts is funny. I was an Eagle Scout.”
“I know. I know a lot about you, Mark. And so that you know a little more about me than you apparently do, I was also an Eagle Scout. Is that recorder going to be turned off, Scout’s honor?”
“The recorder will not be turned on,” Schmidt said.
Lammelle wagged the hand that made the Scout’s honor and raised his eyebrows.
Schmidt sighed, then made the sign with his right hand, and said, “Scout’s honor.”
As they both put down their hands, Schmidt asked, “What’s this all about?”
“Why don’t we wait until we get in your bubble?”
Schmidt waved him through the door into a small, windowless room equipped with a library table, four chairs, a wall-mounted flat-screen television, and an American flag. There were two telephones on the table, one of them the red instrument of the White House telephone network.
When Schmidt had closed the door behind him, Lammelle laid his attache case on
the table, opened it, then sat down and took from it a manila envelope.
“Beware of spooks bearing gifts, Mark.”
Schmidt took the envelope, removed a stack of photographs, and examined them.
“This is the guy who dropped the letter in the post office in El Paso,” Schmidt said. “Two hours ago. How the hell did you get this?”
“A friend gave it to me. Do you know this guy’s name?”
“No. Not yet. I’m working on it. Is that why you’re here? You want to know his name?”
“His name is Jose Rafael Monteverde,” Lammelle said. “He’s the financial attache of the embassy of the Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela in Mexico City.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I am sure. And how about a little tit for tat? Show me what was in the envelope.”
“I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this. And you shouldn’t have been nosing around El Paso. Christ, you could have blown the FBI surveillance!”
“I hate to tell you this, Mark, but my friends said your surveillance guys were about as inconspicuous as two elephants fornicating on the White House lawn. Not that it mattered, because they didn’t follow Senor Monteverde across the border into Juarez”-Lammelle pointed at the photographs-“where most of those were taken.”
Schmidt’s face had tightened at the fornicating-elephants metaphor, and now he appeared to be on the verge of an angry reply. But then he shrugged and instead said, “The ‘don’t follow anybody across the border’ order came from the President.”
“He does have a tendency to micromanage, doesn’t he?”
“He’s determined to get Colonel Ferris back from the drug cartels. I can’t fault that.”
“The drug cartels don’t have him, Mark.” Lammelle pointed at the photograph of Jose Rafael Monteverde. “There’s the proof.”
“This guy could be tied to the cartels.”
“Before he joined the Venezuelan foreign service, he did three years with the Cuban Direccion General de Inteligencia.”
“Even if that were true. .”
“It’s true, Mark.”