THE ALCATRAZ OPTION

by Jay Begler

  “Your ex-wife? But Dorothy was the most devoted woman I’ve ever met.”

  “She was until she saw me. Two hours after I got home, I fell asleep in our living room and when I woke up, she was gone. She left a note for me. All it said, ‘I’m so sorry. I just can’t.’ I can’t blame her. The girls are great, but are having difficulty coping with my transformation. I was the one who always told them what to do, and now they sometimes treat me as a child. I once lost it and said., ‘Shit, I’m only 42,’ but they ignored my remark, treating it as something from an addled old man. It’s fucking demeaning.”

  Moskowitz continued. “In the scheme of things, you age day by day, so the changes from young to old are not immediately apparent. With the Optionaires, the changes take place in an hour and are profound. Most of my muscle tone has disappeared. My washboard abs, thanks to years of core exercises, have turned into a pot-belly. I have man breasts. I no longer stand erect but hunch over slightly. I have aches and pains, nothing serious, though I worry, “Is it cancer?” And the energy that I once had no longer exists. I try to exercise daily at the local health club, but find that sometimes walking, no longer running because my knees are shot, often hurts even at a slow pace. My best friend is Advil.

  “Like most Optionaires, most of my time is spent trying to recapture my youth, though deep down I know it’s fruitless. So, besides doing as much exercise as I can, I take heavy doses of steroids. I’m told the steroids are dangerous, but who gives a shit. I found a place on Lake Geneva called the Le Centre Suisse Pour le Rajeunissement, the Swiss Center for Rejuvenation. Apparently, they inject you with a liquefied placenta of women who has just given birth. The women get about $25,000 for their placentas. One of the wealthier Optionaires tried it and looked terrific, but terrific for an 80-year-old. Still, I might try it. I’ll try anything to get younger.

  “There is a support group here and elsewhere for Optionaires. We call it ‘AA, Aging Anonymous.’ Seriously. Once a week we get together to exchange stories, gossip and suggestions on how to cope. One of our Optionaires, a really funny guy, convicted of arson, said to the group at our last meeting: ‘You know why seniors get many discounts? It’s God’s rebate on our suffering.’ Do you remember that great comedian Gilda Radner who played Roseanne Roseannadanna on Saturday Night Live? She had a great line for what goes on with our bodies on a daily basis: ‘it’s always something — if it’s not one thing, it’s another’ Humorous, but the joke is on us.”

  “The psychological and social changes are profound. At my new age, I realize that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, there’s only the end of the tunnel and it’s fast approaching. Someone asked me what I feel like and I replied, ‘Like Damocles.’ When I say this, many don’t understand the reference, so I explain it’s the story where Dionysus the tyrant hangs a sword from the ceiling over Damocles’ head by a single horsehair and Damocles must sit under it, hoping that it will not break. But, as you hear about people your age dying or facing illness that will certainly kill them, you being wondering when that hair will snap for you. The aspect of imminent disease is very real; two of our members have already died, one of a stroke and one from a heart attack. We’re all passengers on the Titanic, but there will be no lifeboats for us when we hit the iceberg. It’s not fun.”

  “I’ve also noticed that younger people, and not just kids, regard you differently when you are much older. I get the impression that when you are old, people view you as largely irrelevant and you are sometimes thought of as inferior or perhaps worse, slightly demented.” Daniel reflected on this statement, because he felt himself viewing Moskowitz with an air of condescension.

  Moskowitz, once called “Macho Man,” before he exercised the Option, began to weep. Embarrassed, he rose and said, “I got to go.”

  “Hope to see you, Aaron.”

  “Unless I kill myself”

  Daniel didn’t know if he was serious or joking, but thought the latter.

  Despite all the sad stories about Optionaires and the consequences of exercising the Option, the program was a great success. Within eighteen months the inmate population throughout the country was down by sixty percent and shrinking, though the Clarity epidemic continued unabated. As the number of inmates diminished, conditions within the prisons went from unimaginable to tolerable. Daniel felt that in the scheme of things, his decision not to exercise the option was the right choice

  Thirty-Two

  •

  Betrayal

  Armando Diaz was the former head of the Knights Templar Cartel and once a candidate to be the head of the Aztec Cartel. An avid sport fisherman, Armando chartered a boat for himself and three of his friends, none of whom worked for the Cartel or even knew of his Cartel affiliation. As in previous trips, he took all the necessary precautions. The boat he charted was not ostentatious and no arms or drugs were on board. A second boat, a souped-up Tanga 2, substantially larger and ultra-fast, with a crew of ten heavily armed men, stood 400 yards away with its motor humming. While it could reach Armando’s boat in under twenty seconds, that capability was irrelevant in this case because it was blown to smithereens by a torpedo fired by the USS Virginia, a Navy attack submarine. As Armando and his troupe were attempting to understand what had just happened, an enormous black wall seemed to rise in front of them. What they were seeing was the hull of the submarine.

  Armando, at first momentarily hypnotized by what he saw, commanded the owner of the boat to escape, but it was too late. A gun from the submarine fired an incendiary device into the boat, causing it to burst into flames. Armando and his companions had no choice but to jump into the water. Fifty well-armed frogmen circled Armando and his cronies and forced them onto the deck of the submarine where they were handcuffed, blindfolded and led below to separate rooms that functioned as jail cells. The whole incident took less than ten minutes. Two weeks later, the authorities, satisfied that Armando’s bewildered companions were not part of the Cartel, released them.

  The captain of the submarine sent identical messages to the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, a former prosecutor and United States attorney general whose sixteen-year-old son died as a result of a drug overdose. The message read, “Mission Accomplished.”

  News of the capture of Armando aired twenty-four hours later, but by that time the Cartel already knew what happened. Its large intelligence operation picked up chatter about Armando’s capture almost immediately. Within three hours of Armando’s capture Morales, Isabella and several of the Cartel’s directors met in the conference room of the hacienda with Jay Harrison. Because of her inside knowledge of how those in the torture business extracted information from captives, Louisa was also a participant in the meeting.

  “Let me cut to the chase,” a grim-faced Harrison said. “The capture of Armando creates two immediate and highly significant problems for us. For now, we assume that the person who gave up Armando is a member of the core group of the Cartel. Because of all the security layers in place, anyone below the core group would probably not know his or your identities or the identities of the other directors. For that reason, we’re confident, for now at least, that anyone below the core group is not a suspect. If we are wrong, we’ll drill down into everyone else, but I believe our assumption is correct. Obviously, we need to find the informant immediately so we can determine just how much information he has divulged. He could have just given up Armando or it could be much worse. He could have given up all of us. The consensus here is that it is the former. So far, we’ve picked up no chatter indicating plans to move against any of you by law enforcement. We’ve already started sifting through all the emails, phone records, travel patterns and finances of members of the core group. Simultaneously, we need to find Armando before they make him divulge everything there is to know about us.”

  “One of our people at the DEA reports that they used an American attack submarine in the operation, so it is likely that the United States controls the operation and it is a certa
inty that Armando will remain in its custody. The last thing Mexico wants is a repeat of the Guzman escape back in 2015. This makes the specter of torture very real. You may remember that famous pre-election debate when the American President’s opponent complained that the various torture methods were unethical, and he replied, ‘Fuck political correctness.’” The remark caused a firestorm of protest and public outrage, though a Gallup Poll revealed that sixty-five of the respondents agreed with him.”

  He stopped and asked, “Louisa, do you have anything to add?”

  “Yes. I’ve kept in contact with a few of my former colleagues who are still handling information extraction, a euphemism for torture. I understand that since I’ve left the Agency, the techniques to extract information have improved significantly. First, they will try a soft approach for a week or so. All that means is no torture, just tough questions, perhaps some sleep deprivation. It’s likely that Armando can withstand that kind of pressure. If that doesn’t work, they’ll begin torturing him. Very few, even the most religious zealots, last over five days. So, the reality is you have about ten days at best.”

  “Do you think you can sniff around with some of your colleagues and see if you can pick anything up?”

  “Will do.”

  When Harrison finished, Morales said, “Any other resources you need, manpower or money to pay for information, just use them. You do not have to come to me or any of the other directors for permission. Just do it and spend whatever it takes to fix this problem.” The other directors nodded their agreement.

  Finding the person behind Armando’s capture was relatively easy and fast. Everyone in the Cartel knew that the intelligence group spied on each member of the core group much in the way that the NSA keeps tabs on citizens or persons of interest. Core group members were aware of this practice and it was assumed, correctly so, that this knowledge coupled with a stern warning about the certain death of someone who betrayed the Cartel, as well as the death of that person’s entire family, children and infants included, would act as a strong deterrent. Anything that a core member did that didn’t seem to fit normal behavior patterns would be uncovered by a software program that tracked each member’s movements, relationships and spending.

  Twenty-four hours after Harrison began his investigation, he phoned Morales and said, “Hector, I need to speak with you, but I’d prefer if we can talk in total privacy, just you and me.”

  “Why just you and me?”

  “Please Hector, bear with me on this.”

  “OK. I’ll see you at your office at the intelligence center.”

  When Morales arrived, he was shown into a conference room. A grim-looking Harrison was waiting for him.

  “I assume you found the man who gave up Armando. Who was it?”

  “Louisa”

  Morales first response was physical. He pushed himself back on the chair, flushed beet red and said, “What? What are you talking about? How is that possible? Are you sure? That’s awful. You’ve got to be totally positive about this.”

  “She confessed. Apparently at some meeting she overheard about Armando’s plans for chartering a fishing boat.”

  The flushed look shifted to paleness. “This is going to kill Isabella. I don’t know how I’m going to even break the news to her.” Regaining his composure, Morales said, “Ok, run me through your investigation.”

  “Frankly, she was the first person on our list. She had relationships with all levels of law enforcement in the states, so it would have been easy for her to make a connection and sell out Armando for a fortune. You remember that I asked her to make some calls to find what she could about Armando. About two months ago, Louisa was on a project in Guadalajara, something to do with orchestrating a scandal involving a police official who was holding us up for more money.”

  “We checked the cell phone towers in the city and there were no calls made from her cell phone. But we found that when she was there, she made phone calls on several burner phones to two of the same numbers she called from here after I asked her to make calls about Armando. Obviously, she went through the motions of the call and assumed that her contact would understand that the call was a charade and we might tap her phone. She was there for four days. During that period, she made 12 phone calls, each lasting about twenty minutes. Her final call lasted two hours.”

  We assumed that she did it for the money, and her contacts wired a sizable amount to an off-shore account. Obviously, they would not deposit any large sums in her own bank account. Her mother’s bank account, however, received a wire transfer of $25,000 out of the blue, from a bank in the Bahamas. We hacked into the bank’s databank and found that it was set up under the name “Annette Torres, Palm Beach, with an account number of xx2948 –aba and a password of Baltic6987. The wire transfer was too much of a coincidence to be a mistake on the bank’s part. We hacked into Louisa’s computer and found no incriminating emails. She was too smart for that. But spread across many word documents were fragments of her password. In one memo, in the middle of the page, she injected XX2948; in another Baltic and so forth. We picked her up early this morning.

  The interview was not particularly dramatic. Harrison and his team confronted Louisa with what they found. She denied culpability. They said she would have to take a lie detector test. Midway through the test, when the needle was gyrating wildly, she took off the attachments and confessed. We reattached them and I questioned her about how much information she had given up and for how much. When she responded that the only person, she had given up was Armando, that she received twenty-six million dollars, and was going to receive another fifty million once she gave up the rest of the directors, the needle didn’t move at all. At that point I asked why she did it. She replied flatly, ‘I was tired of Isabella; she had become too needy. Life here had become tedious and I wanted out. So, I thought, why not walk out, get a new identity, one that the government could give me and why not exit rich? My only regret is that I was careless.’”

  Harrison sent a video of Louisa’s interview to Morales’ cell phone and saw the disappointment on Morales’ face. “Sorry Hector.”

  Quietly, Morales said, “Edit that last part out about her being tired of Isabella and send that version to me. I’m going to have to tell Isabella, and that’s going to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

  Morales was preparing to speak with Isabella when she entered his study. She had a worried expression on her face, like a mother whose child has been gone too long. “Hector, have you seen Louisa? She planned to meet me two hours ago, and no one has seen her. I called Rebecca, and she said that they finished their run and Louisa started back towards the hacienda. I’m a bit worried.”

  “Sit down Isabella; I want to show you something. Then, I’ll take you to her.”

  Louisa was in the same building that held the two thugs and others waiting for their lives to end. The room had no direct lighting, though some light filtered in from the outside through some cracks in the walls. When Isabella entered the room, she had to wait for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. “Louisa,” she called.

  “Here. Over here.”

  She walked to Louisa, wrapped her arms around her and both began to cry. “I suppose you can’t save me, can you?”

  “If it were in my power, I’d give my life for yours, but it’s not. You know the rules and there are no exceptions.”

  “It’s cold in here.”

  “I know. I brought you a shawl, wrap it around yourself. And, I brought a thermos of the tea that you love. It will warm you up.”

  “Do you know when they are going to kill me?”

  “No, but sometime later today. Here, you’re shivering. Take the tea. It will warm you up.”

  “You know what’s ironic. At the CIA when we tortured people, I could see terror in their eyes, but I never experienced terror. Now I know what it feels like.”

  She sipped the tea as Isabella stroked her hair and then leaned her head back against Isabella a
s if dozing. Isabella kissed her head, but Louisa did not respond. She seemed to take a deep breath and let out a sound reminiscent of a sigh. It was the last act of her life. En route to the cell, Isabella had stopped off at the two roly-poly poisoners who had given her a special potion, one that was painless and would give the victim no sense that anything was wrong. Despite their appearance, they were very good at their job. Two days later, as protocol dictated, Louisa’s entire family was murdered. Louisa’s primary contact, who Harrison identified through the simple mechanism of a reverse phone number lookup, received a large carton containing Louisa’s head.

  According to Harrison, finding Armando and extricating him fell somewhere between wishful thinking and absolutely impossible. Despite their best efforts, Harrison’s group could not uncover any information on Armando. On the third day of fruitless research, Harrison called Morales and said, “This investigation is too big for us. We need the help of our Chinese and Mid-East counterparts. I suggest we offer them two billion dollars each to launch a major intelligence push for information on Armando. I know it’s a lot.”

  Morales replied, “Money is no object at this point.” Four days later, thanks to hacking by the Chinese of the President’s secure emails, Armando’s exact location was discovered. He was in a small dark cell in a secret prison on the outskirts of Muscat, Oman, rented, so to speak, by American intelligence. Within twenty-four hours, the Cartel’s intelligence group had identified everyone who had to be bribed, mostly Omani nationals, to make Armando’s extraction possible. Once the bribes were paid, the extraction of Armando was remarkably easy. The four American operatives working to extract information from Armando were on a brief lunch break at a building about one-hundred yards away from the building housing him, leaving only the fully bribed Omanis in charge. By the time the Americans returned, the Omanis were nowhere to be found. Armando was gone and on a private jet heading for Mexico.