W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (30 page)

“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.

 

 

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 Tomás 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 Juárez—”

“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 Juárez.”

“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.”

 

 

“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 attaché 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 José Rafael Monteverde,” Lammelle said. “He’s the financial attaché of the embassy of the República 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 Señor Monteverde across the border into Juárez”—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 José 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 Dirección General de Inteligencia.”

“Even if that were true . . .”

“It’s true, Mark.”

“. . . how could I go to the President with that? I think he’d want to know where I got my information.”

“Don’t go to the President with it. Just face the real problem.”

“Which is?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Are you going to close your eyes to it?”

Schmidt met his eyes but didn’t reply.

“And I’ve had this further discomfiting thought,” Lammelle said. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe Montvale does want to move into the Oval Office.”

“Have you heard anything?”

Lammelle shook his head. “But one way for him to get there would be to allow Clendennen to get a lot of egg on his face trying to swap Félix Abrego for Ferris.”

Schmidt didn’t reply directly. Instead, he said: “The President has ordered the attorney general to move Abrego from Florence to a minimum-security prison, La Tuna, which is twelve miles north of El Paso.”

“You’ve already heard from the, quote unquote, drug people?” Lammelle asked.

Schmidt went to his desk, worked a combination lock, opened a drawer, and took from it a folder. From that he pulled out a single sheet of paper and a photograph and handed both to Lammelle.

The photograph showed Colonel Ferris much as the first two photos of him had. He was sitting in a chair. Two men with Kalashnikov rifles stood next to him. Ferris’s beard showed that he had not shaved. He was holding a day-old copy of
El Diario de El Paso
in front of him.

Lammelle read the message, which, like the first two messages, had been printed on a cheap computer printer:

“Clendennen has his own channel to these people?” Lammelle asked.

“That came in
after
the President ordered Abrego moved,” Schmidt said.

“Where is Abrego now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s been time to move him to La Tuna.”

“Find out for me,” Lammelle said. “I want to know where he is minute by minute.”

“Why?”

“Because when the Merry Outlaws launch their plan to rescue Ferris, Abrego’s location is intelligence Castillo has to have.”

“The President doesn’t want Castillo anywhere near this.”

“I know. Which means you’re going to have to make up your mind whether you’re going along with Clendennen’s—how do I put this?—
logically challenged
notions of how to deal with this, which will probably result in Ferris’s being dead, the President really going over the edge, and Vice President Montvale convening the Cabinet to vote on Clendennen’s, quote unquote, temporary incapacity, requiring him to assume the presidency, or going along with Castillo.”