Two Days in Caracas

by Luana Ehrlich

  Unlike earlier, he sounded more amused than angry with me.

  “I’ll meet you at the embassy within the hour.”

  “Why don’t I just bring it by your hotel? It’s only a few blocks from here.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. I’ll come over to the embassy.”

  I heard him sigh. “I don’t suppose you’re staying at the Hotel Sabana where you’re booked, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Of course not.”

  I asked, “What’s the protocol once I get to the embassy?”

  “Go to the lobby reception area; give your name to the security officer in the last cubicle on your right, and he’ll escort you to my office.”

  He hung up without saying goodbye.

  * * * *

  The American Embassy in San José was located near the downtown plaza on a quiet side street. Compared with other American embassies, it wasn’t a very impressive building, but, when I arrived, the reception area was bustling with activity.

  I quickly scanned the crowd.

  Most of the faces were Hispanic, but there were a few Caucasians interspersed among the double lines. I made note of two men with Arabic features sitting side-by-side. They were filling out some paperwork, and one of them appeared to give me some extra attention.

  Following Mitchell’s instructions, I walked over to the last cubicle on my right. To my surprise, Mitchell himself appeared and buzzed me in the locked gate and through to an adjacent door.

  Once inside, he motioned for me to follow him down a short hallway toward an elevator.

  “Is the embassy shorthanded or is there some other reason why you’re moonlighting as a security guard?”

  He smiled. “I was asked to escort you.”

  Once we entered the elevator and it started its descent, I said, “Okay, I’m curious. Asked by whom?”

  “The COS wants to meet with you downstairs.”

  I could tell he was enjoying the fact I was on the receiving end of something unexpected. It never occurred to me I’d be meeting with Toby Bledsoe, the CIA’s chief of station in Costa Rica.

  Of course, Mitchell knew that.

  Although I’d spent a few years in the early part of my career assigned to the Latin American desk, I was—strictly speaking—a Middle Eastern operative. My mission inside Costa Rica was being run by Douglas Carlton, my operations officer and head of the Middle Eastern division at the Agency. The two of us had worked together for a long time, and I could think of no reason I needed to meet with Toby Bledsoe while I was in Costa Rica.

  I moved over to the elevator’s control panel and hit the emergency stop button.

  The elevator came to an abrupt halt.

  Mitchell immediately placed his hand on his firearm. “What’s going on?”

  “Take it easy,” I said, raising my hands to show him I wasn’t a threat. “That’s what I want you to tell me. What’s going on?”

  His shoulders relaxed, and then he laughed. “Oh, so that’s it. You don’t mind giving surprises, but you hate receiving them?”

  “That’s it.”

  “We can’t talk here.”

  He reached over and punched the button for the basement level once again. “If the elevator stalls, security will sound the alarm.”

  When the doors opened on the basement level, I followed Mitchell down a narrow hallway to an unmarked door. He used his keycard to get us in, and motion-sensor lights came on as soon as we entered the room.

  I immediately recognized the room as The Bubble. All embassies are required to have them. It’s a soundproof unit lined with acoustical tiles and used for meetings of a sensitive nature or sometimes for interrogating people with sensitive information.

  It’s a sensitive kind of place.

  I took a seat at one end of a long conference table.

  “So why does Bledsoe want to see me?”

  Mitchell held a finger to his lips and removed a small, gray device from his pocket. It was an electronic debugger, about the size of a cell phone, and he used it to sweep the room for any electronic listening devices.

  It never beeped.

  Once he’d determined the room was clean, Mitchell slipped the device back inside his pants pocket and sat down at the conference table across from me.

  He said, “Toby Bledsoe doesn’t believe you’re here tracking down a terrorist. He thinks you’re here doing an internal investigation on him.”

  I thought he might be joking, but I could read nothing in his facial expression indicating that.

  I doubted Mitchell’s disclosure, but I didn’t doubt he believed it.

  While I knew the Agency’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) was responsible for internal investigations inside the CIA, I’d never heard of an intelligence officer being used to conduct such an investigation.

  “Why would Bledsoe think such a thing?”

  “He has sources inside the Agency who told him the Deputy Director put you on a year’s medical leave a few months ago. Now you’ve shown up here in Costa Rica in pursuit of a Hezbollah terrorist. Costa Rica is not a hotbed of terrorism. The facts just don’t add up, and believe me, if the facts don’t add up, Toby gets paranoid.”

  “Well, good for him. Paranoia should be mandatory for all station chiefs.”

  Mitchell grabbed a bottle of water from a credenza behind him.

  “Want one?”

  I nodded, and after he’d tossed it over, I asked, “Is Bledsoe involved in something that might initiate an internal investigation from the OIG?”

  Mitchell unscrewed the bottle cap and took a long drink.

  He shook his head. “Not that I know of. However, a few months ago, San José’s leading newspaper wrote an exposé on a special unit within Costa Rica’s own intelligence service. The article claimed the unit was funded by outside sources, and the agents involved had been conducting illegal wiretapping activities against drug traffickers. There were allegations the unit had been recruited, trained, and funded by the CIA. If that was our operation, Bledsoe never told me anything about it.”

  I smiled at his disclosure. “Getting caught in a foreign country doing nefarious deeds is always regrettable, but it’s not likely to trigger an internal investigation by the OIG.”

  Mitchell shrugged. “Well, all I know is, Toby got pretty upset when he heard you were coming here.”

  Moments later, the door to The Bubble swung open and Toby Bledsoe entered the room. He was carrying a bulging black briefcase at his side, and the moment he crossed the threshold, he stopped in his tracks and stared at me.

  I returned the favor.

  If Bledsoe’s lined face and sparse gray hair were any indication, he was close to the Agency’s mandatory retirement age. I immediately thought he looked more like a beneficent grandfather than an intelligence operative.

  As he continued looking me over, I had a hard time defining the expression on his face. Finally, I decided it was either mild amusement or great displeasure.

  Mitchell broke the silence. “Toby, this is—”

  Bledsoe stepped forward and grabbed my outstretched hand. “Titus Ray. I know. I know.”

  “You’re looking good, Toby.”

  Bledsoe turned and addressed Mitchell, who seemed surprised to discover Bledsoe and I knew each other.

  “I’ll take it from here, Ben. When I’m finished talking to Titus, I’ll send him up to your office.”

  Looking embarrassed, Mitchell mumbled something about checking in on the surveillance team and headed out the door.

  After he left, Bledsoe took a seat in the chair opposite me and hoisted his overstuffed briefcase up to the table after him.

  Neither of us spoke for a moment.

  Finally, I said, “It’s really great to see you again, Toby.”

  He peered at me over the tops of his glasses. “You mean you’ve finally forgiven me?”

  “Almost.”

  * * * *

  For the next twenty minutes, Bledsoe
and I talked about the time we’d spent working together in Nicaragua helping organize the oppositional forces against the socialist Sandinista government.

  I was fresh out of the CIA’s training school at Camp Peary then, whereas Bledsoe had already racked up years of field experience. We’d often butted heads because I was arrogant and self-centered. Like a young teenager relating to a parent, I thought I knew everything and Bledsoe knew nothing.

  “Ben Mitchell reminds me of a young Titus Ray,” I said.

  Bledsoe picked up a bottle cap from the table and flicked it across the room toward a wastebasket.

  He missed.

  “Yeah, except he doesn’t question everything I tell him.”

  I knew Bledsoe had to be referring to the time I’d almost gotten both of us killed because I’d refused to believe his intel about a Sandinista general.

  I ignored his pointed remark and asked, “You mean like the story you told him about the OIG investigating you?”

  Bledsoe’s craggy face morphed into an expression some might describe as a smile. Others might identify it as a grimace.

  “He told you that, huh?”

  I nodded. “He also thinks you’re too paranoid.”

  Bledsoe slapped his hand down on the wooden table. “That kid. I was just messing with him about the OIG. He takes things way too seriously.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, though. He’s got excellent tradecraft and great surveillance skills. I’m sure he’s going to be a superb operative. He could probably teach you a thing or two.”

  “Toby, why am I here? I’m sure you didn’t drag me in The Bubble to talk about Ben Mitchell.”

  He unsnapped his briefcase. “No, I didn’t.”

  After removing several file folders and a laptop computer from the briefcase, Bledsoe pulled the only red-tagged folder from among the stack and laid it down in the space between us.

  “Before I show you this, Titus,” he said, tapping his forefinger on the red folder, “tell me why the DDO is allowing Carlton’s office to run a Middle Eastern operative down here in Costa Rica.”

  I tried to deflect Bledsoe’s question. “Haven’t you read the DDO’s brief on—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that,” he said, brushing aside my remark with a wave of his hand. “I want the real story. Why did they pull you off a medical to go after this Ahmed Al-Amin?”

  I smiled at him. “Okay, Toby, I’ll give you the real story, but you realize I’m breaking the DDO’s rules about sharing operational intel across divisional lines?”

  Bledsoe leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “And since when has breaking the rules ever bothered you?”

  Chapter 3

  I decided to give Bledsoe the full background on Ahmed Al-Amin. For one thing, I’d learned early in my career that withholding information from a station chief wasn’t a very smart idea.

  Another reason I went ahead and gave him a complete rundown on Ahmed was that I suspected he already knew the story anyway. If that were the case, and I didn’t tell him everything, he might decide not to give me his full cooperation.

  Less than full cooperation from Toby Bledsoe was like having no cooperation at all.

  I began by telling him what had happened to me six months ago in Tehran.

  “After spending two years running an operation inside Iran, I lost my entire network. Five of my six assets were either murdered or tortured to death.”

  Bledsoe asked, “Did VEVAK kill them?”

  He was referring to Iran’s secret police, and I suddenly remembered Bledsoe’s intense hatred for Nicaragua’s elite security force, the DGSE, and his obsession with any country using a secret police force to terrorize its people. When I’d worked with Bledsoe before, he had the names of all the organizations engaging in such atrocities memorized, and he would tell anyone who would listen to him about the number of people they’d killed each year.

  “Yes, it was VEVAK.”

  “Thought so.”

  “You’ll be happy to know when they came after me, I managed to kill two of their agents.”

  “How did you escape arrest after killing them?”

  “The only way I could. I jumped off a three-story roof. I survived—I guess that’s pretty obvious—but when I jumped, I shattered my left leg. I wouldn’t be here today without the help of our Israeli friends.”

  “Mossad showed up?”

  “Just when I needed them.”

  “You were very lucky, Titus.”

  “I believe God was looking out for me, Toby.”

  Bledsoe raised his bushy eyebrows and chuckled. “Really?”

  I ignored his skepticism and continued. “Mossad put me in a safe house while my leg healed, but the whole time I was there I had both VEVAK and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard scouring the countryside looking for me. I finally made it across the border into Turkey and back home to the States, but, like I said, I wouldn’t have done so without the help of Mossad.”

  “So what happened? Did VEVAK want revenge for the agents you’d killed?”

  “You guessed it. A few weeks after I got back to Langley, Carlton showed me the NSA intercepts indicating VEVAK had hired an assassin from Hezbollah to track me down in the States.”

  “That would be Ahmed Al-Amin?”

  I nodded. “While I was on medical leave in Oklahoma, I got a flash priority email from Simon Wassermann asking me to meet him in Dallas. He was just coming—”

  “Why would he contact you directly? Why wouldn’t he go through Carlton?”

  “He had his reasons, and no, I’m not going to tell you what they were.”

  Bledsoe shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “He was just coming in from an assignment in Syria where he’d been running assets inside one of Hezbollah’s affiliate groups. When we met in Dallas, he told me his agent knew Ahmed was already in the States and had crossed the border with the help of one of the Mexican drug cartels.”

  “Simon was always one of the best at working an asset.”

  Since he’d used the past tense when speaking about Wassermann, I suspected Bledsoe already knew what I was about to tell him.

  “After we talked, Simon left the room to get something out of his car, and that’s when he was shot by a high-powered rifle. He never even had a chance to defend himself.”

  I paused when I remembered standing over Wassermann’s dead body in the parking lot.

  A wave of sadness washed over me, but I shook it off and continued. “The rain had been coming down pretty hard, and since Simon was wearing my baseball cap, I’m pretty sure Ahmed thought he was taking me out when he shot him.”

  “And you’re positive the shooter was Ahmed?”

  “Yes. He shot Simon from a van on the far side of the hotel’s parking lot. The hotel’s security cameras showed the van leaving the area immediately after the shooting.”

  “I’m assuming he ditched it immediately.”

  I nodded. “The FBI found the van abandoned in Waco. It was registered to a student at the University of Texas in Austin, a Venezuelan. There was no sign of the Venezuelan in Austin, though, and his friends told the feds he had left school and gone back to Caracas. This was later verified by his girlfriend.”

  “So is this Venezuelan student the kid who’s traveling with Ahmed?”

  I nodded. “Carlton got a positive ID on him from a car dealer in San Marcos, Texas, about two weeks ago when he paid cash for a brand-new Dodge Durango. His name is Ernesto Montilla.”

  “So Ahmed and this Ernesto kid have been traveling through Central America for the past two weeks?”

  “That’s right.”

  Bledsoe removed his glasses and started massaging the bridge of his nose. “What does Carlton think they’re doing here in San José?”

  Although Bledsoe’s question sounded innocent enough, answering it could get me in some hot water back at the Agency.

  After 9/1
1, many of the restrictions governing intra-Agency communications had been lifted. However, one rule affecting station chiefs had been left in place. Specifically, all product produced by one division had to undergo clearance by the Deputy Director of Operations before being passed along to another division.

  This was as crazy as it sounded.

  Since I was operating under the Middle Eastern division and Bledsoe was a Latin American station chief, we weren’t supposed to share information with each other—at least not without contacting our division heads first. If I decided to answer his question, I’d be violating an Agency rule about sharing intel with field officers who hadn’t been briefed into the mission.

  However, if the files Bledsoe had taken out of his briefcase were any indication, he seemed poised to bypass certain procedural rules and share some of his intel with me.

  For that to happen, though, I knew I would have to do the same.

  It took me all of five seconds to decide to tell him everything.

  “After Simon Wassermann’s death, our analysts believed Ahmed would immediately return to Syria. However, when he started his cross-country trek through Central America, the analysts revised their opinion. Now, they believe he’s been given another assignment, probably another contract kill, and since he’s got the Venezuelan kid with him, it could mean he’s headed there.”

  “Have they identified his target yet?”

  “No, not yet, but I believe it’s someone Iran considers either a threat or a detriment to their plans in Latin America.” I shook my head. “But it doesn’t really matter, because I’m authorized to take Ahmed into custody and dispatch him off to Gitmo immediately. Maybe his interrogators at Gitmo will get that information from him.”

  Bledsoe looked at me as if he didn’t quite believe I was being forthcoming with him.

  “Does the Agency know how Ahmed arrived in the States in the first place?”

  “Carlton said he flew to Mexico City from Damascus on a Lebanese passport. Once he got to Mexico, he disappeared. But since Hezbollah has ties with the Zeta drug cartel, our analysts believe the cartel helped him make his way up to Nuevo Laredo, over the U.S. border, and then on to Dallas. They’re still pulling the data threads on that connection though.”