Law of Honor

by Michael Newton

  TV had yielded another surprise in February, when America's Most Wanted premiered on seven Fox-owned stations. Host John Walsh had lost a child to brutal violence, slain in 1981 by a serial killer now on death row for a different murder, and his obvious hatred of criminals had struck a chord with the public. He'd also impressed Bureau headquarters when seventy-five separate Fox viewers steered agents to FBI "Top Ten" fugitive David James Rogers—a robber and rape-slayer with five known victims who'd escaped from prison in October 1986—living quietly as "Robert Lord," director of a homeless shelter on Long Island. Public applause for that capture echoed all the way to Fox headquarters, which renewed Walsh's show as a weekly series in March.

  Three months later, the Bureau had revealed "Operation ILLWIND," a ten-year multi-agency investigation that began with mafiosi selling stolen art, then picked up rumors of corruption at the Defense Department, ultimately spreading across twelve states and D.C. Indictments were finally coming down, mainly bribery charges filed against nine government officials, forty-two consultants, plus various top-rank executives at Boeing, General Electric and United Technologies. Three headline-grabbing Pentagon perps were Melvyn Paisley (Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of the Navy from1981 to '87), his successor James Gaines, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Victor Cohen. Many of those indicted worked for Unisys Corporation, a Pennsylvania-based information technology firm with global contacts, and most were pleading guilty to minimize their penalties.

  Each new day made Erin ask herself again: Are any leaders in the whole world honest?

  And as a third-generation special agent, she suspected that the answer was a loud, resounding "No."

  FBI Field Office, Manhattan: December 6, 1988

  The Soviet Union was crumbling, prompting double agent Stephen Barnes to wonder if his personal crusade against the FBI mattered today, if anyone in Moscow—although ignorant of his background and private motives for pursuing a one-man crusade—would even give a damn if he was finally successful. It was typical of Barnes to forge ahead regardless, satisfied that he was working toward achievement of his father's dream, which had become his own, the only reason that he still drew breath.

  The upheaval had begun in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic on January 15th, with foundation of the Democratic Movement of Moldova, pressing demands for freedom of speech, revival of Moldavian traditions, and a return to the Latin alphabet. Moscow acceded, calling the changes an "upgrade" in line with perestroika.

  On February 8th Moscow announced impending withdrawal from Afghanistan, although no agreements existed on paper and no timeline had yet been established. The West widely dismissed it as more stalling.

  Ten days later, mass demonstrations began in Yerevan, capital of the Armenian SSR. On May 21st Mikhail Gorbachev replaced Armenian Communist Party leader Karen Demirchian with Suren Harutyunyan, but one week later, Harutyunyan restored the First Armenian Republic flag, last flown in 1920. Troops clashed with nationalist marchers at Yerevan's Zvartnots International Airport on July 5th, killing one student, but mayhem continued. By autumn, nationalists had expelled nearly all of Armenia's ethnic Azerbaijanis, before Red Army troops seized control of Yerevan on November 25th. Twelve days later, a massive earthquake struck, killing an estimated 50,000 persons.

  Violence spread to the Azerbaijan SSR on February 20th, with demonstrations in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, occupied by Azerbaijan's ethnic Armenian minority. Two days later, false rumors of an Azerbaijani slain by Armenians brought thousands of Azerbaijanis into the district, slaughtering fifty Armenian farmers. Police mobilized, killing two Azerbaijanis and sparking a five-day pogrom in Sumgait, killing another thirty-two Armenians and putting 14,000 to flight before authorities regained tenuous control. Gorbachev sacked Armenian Communist Party chief Kamran Baghirov on May 21st, replacing him with Abdulrahman Vezirov, while intellectuals organized a Popular Front of Azerbaijan in September. On the 17th, ethnic guerilla warfare erupted in Stepanakert, killing two soldiers and wounding twenty-five more. Seesaw attacks drove most Azerbaijanis from the city, while Armenians in equal numbers were hounded from Shusha. On November 17th Azerbaijanis launched mass protests in Baku's Lenin Square, ending only when troops imposed martial law on December 5th.

  Meanwhile, on April 13th, a so-called "Singing Revolution" established the Estonian Popular Front. Two months later, true to form, Gorbachev fired Communist Party leader Karl Vaino and installed Vaino Väljas, who'd legalized restoration of Estonia's flag from 1918 and replaced Russian with Estonian as the official language. On November 16th, encouraged by Väljas, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a declaration of national sovereignty, granting Estonian laws primacy over those of the USSR.

  On April 14th Gorbachev finally signed the Geneva Accords with Afghanistan, Pakistan and the U.S., establishing a timetable for withdrawal of troops between May 15, 1988 and February 15,, 1989. Washington instantly reneged on its empty promise of December 1985 to stop arming mujahideen guerillas, tacking on a subsequent "understanding" that the arms race would continue unabated. That included CIA support for Osama bin Laden, Langley's denials notwithstanding, while the KGB and Afghanistan's State Intelligence Agency continued retaliatory attacks inside Pakistan. April's bombing of an ammo dump outside Islamabad killed 100 persons and wounded over 1,000. Lesser incidents added another 200 corpses to the mounting death toll. Already one of Earth's poorest nations before the Soviet incursion, Afghanistan now ranked 170th out of 174 countries on the United Nations' Human Development Index. Pakistan sheltered 3.3 million refugees living in squalor, while another 2 million brooded in Iran.

  Next in line to crash and burn was Poland, ruled under martial law by the "Military Council of National Salvation" since December 1981. On April 21st, 5,000 workers went on strike at the Stalowa Wola Steelworks, demanding legalization of the Solidarity union and a salary increase of 20,000 zloty ($800 yearly). From there, strikes and marches spread like wildfire, but Moscow and Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski stood firm. Solidarity urged voters to boycott June's local elections, yet Jaruzelski's Security Service remained oblivious, reporting on August 14th that "according to our sources, opposition leaders are not planning anything." Heads should have rolled one day later, when coal miners struck in Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Upper Silesia, followed on the 17th by workers at the Port of Szczecin. Stoppages hit the Gdańsk Lenin Shipyard on August 22nd, prompting officials to grant amnesty for strikers on September 3rd. Workers returned to their jobs in belief they were safe, whereupon hundreds were instantly fired, with Solidarity's spokesmen arrested.

  Next came the Ukrainian SSR, still reeling from Chernobyl's meltdown in 1986. Five hundred marchers in Kiev commemorated the disaster's second anniversary on April 26th, with placards reading "Openness and Democracy to the End." None was forthcoming, and Ukrainian Catholics celebrated May's Millennium of Christianity at secret gatherings in the forests of Buniv, Hoshiv, Kalush, and Zarvanytsia. On June 16th, 8,000 residents of Lviv rallied to hear speakers voice "no confidence" in the forthcoming 19th Communist Party conference. Authorities scrambled to disperse a larger rally—50,000 protesters—outside Druzhba Stadium two days later. On "Bloody Thursday," August 4th, police battered members of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika and mauled them with dogs, afterward fining forty-one and jailing them for fifteen days. A sea change occurred in November, authorities permitting 10,000 nationalists to rally at Kiev University, before a five-day panel discussion on human rights.

  Ronald Reagan, coasting through his final year as president, turned up at Lomonosov Moscow State University, declaring that "it's time for a new world of peace, freedom and friendship"—presumably excluding his own semi-secret wars in Afghanistan and Central America. No one rose to challenge him, either in Moscow or America.

  Four days after Reagan's photo op, on June 3rd, Vytautas Landsbergis and fellow nationalists founded the Popular Front of Lithuania, locally known as Sąj�
�dis ("Movement"). Gorbachev reverted to type on October 19th, replacing Communist Party chief Ringaudas Songaila with Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas, who followed the example of counterparts in Armenia and Estonia, restoring the national flag last publicly flown in 1940. In November he named Lithuanian as the country's official language and dusted off its national anthem Tautiška giesmé (Lithuania Our Fatherland), penned in 1944.

  Back in Moscow, July 1st climaxed a chaotic 19th Communist Party Conference, weary delegates supporting Gorbachev's last-minute proposal for a new supreme Congress of People's Deputies—overshadowing the Supreme Soviet established in 1938—with 2,250 members to the older body's 564.

  Many details of that reform were still dangling on August 23rd, when mass demonstrations began in Latvia, protesting the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact that handed the country to Muscovite rule. Gorbachev predictably replaced "old guard" Communist Party head Boris Pugo with liberal Jānis Vagris. In October—you guessed it—Vagris restored the flag hauled down in 1940 and declared Latvian the national language. On October 8th nationalists founded Latvijas Tautas fronte (the Popular Front of Latvia), swiftly ballooning to an estimated 250,000 members.

  Jānis Vagris had barely settled into office on October 1st, when Vladimir Kryuchkov succeeded Viktor Chebrikov as KGB Chairman. A lawyer who'd joined the Party in 1944, serving as a Russian diplomat from 1945 to '59, he joined the KGB in 1967 under patron Yuri Andropov, earning a reputation as a political hard-liner. Five years ago he'd been among the Kremlin fools who misinterpreted NATO "Operation Able Archer 83" as the opening salvo of World War Three, but he'd somehow emerged from that debacle smelling like a chamomile. If recent CIA reports were accurate, Kryuchkov was busily smuggling 148 trillion rubles from Communist Party funds—$50 billion—to some unknown location, as a hedge against Soviet collapse.

  On November 12th a new rash of protests and hunger strikes broke out in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian SSR, calling for independence and supporting Estonia's claim of sovereignty. Communist Party leader Jumber Patiashvili was floundering, alternately rattling sabers and hiding in his office, unable to grasp perestroika.

  Twelve days later, Moscow stopped jamming all foreign radio stations at Russia's borders for the first time since VJ Day in 1945. On November 24th the Supreme Soviet launched a three-day session amending the USSR's Constitution, enacting laws on electoral reform, and scheduling the next election for March. At the session's close, Gorbachev formally renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, declaring that the USSR would "no longer interfere militarily in Eastern Europe."

  When the smoke eventually cleared, Barnes guessed he wouldn't recognize whatever might remain of his homeland. And it surprised him to discover that he hardly cared.

  His life and his remaining work were here, in the United States.

  Miami: December 16, 1988

  Dom Giordano didn't normally appreciate the court system, but this time it had helped him out. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit had denied Griselda Blanco's "speedy trial" appeal in November, ruling logically that she couldn't complain of government stalling when she'd done everything within her power to avoid getting busted. Now, with any luck, she'd be locked up until the next millennium, and rumors from inside told Dom her health was failing from long years of drug abuse and self-debauchery.

  In Giordano's view, it couldn't happen to a nicer Black Widow.

  Back home in Gotham—Jesus, did he even think of it as home these days?—various made men he'd grown up with fared no better than La Madrina in the Sunshine State. In February, Gambino Family underboss "Piney" Armone got fifteen years and an $820,000 fine on racketeering charges. Two months later, Neil Dellacroce's son Armond died from a coke overdose and cirrhosis at some shitty hideout in the Poconos. Days later, still in April, a heart attack killed Gambino capo Tony Gaggi, already imprisoned, on the eve of his trial for twenty-five murders. A couple weeks later, jurors convicted Genovese Family "front boss" Tony Salerno and three capos, one from the Lucchese Family, of bid rigging in construction. Out in L.A., RICO charges imprisoned boss Peter Milano, his underboss-brother Carmen, and four underlings. June found Gambino consigliere Lou Manna charged with plotting to kill boss John Gotti and his brother Gene.

  And the hits kept coming. In August, jurors wrapped up what TV was calling the longest federal trial in U.S. history, convicting twenty members of the Lucchese Family's New Jersey arm across the board on multiple RICO charges. Three months later, a Philly court convicted Little Nicky Scarfo and sixteen cronies on murder and conspiracy charges. December brought news that Tony Provenzano had died in stir, another heart attack, taking to his grave the truth of Jimmy Hoffa's murder. Three days later—only yesterday—three Lucchese Family soldiers had been charged with racketeering in Long Island's concrete industry.

  And still, no matter how many of its leaders Uncle Sam sent away, the Gotham Mafia still had a long reach and a longer memory. Gambino associate George Yudzevich thought he was safe out west in Witness Protection, after testifying against Piney Armone, but an assassin found him in May, shooting him in the head and dumping his stiff in an Irvine parking lot. Another Gambino wannabe, Wilfred Johnson, had a longer run, squealing for twenty-odd years before shooters finally took him out in August.

  If they could find Yudzevich, Dom thought, they can find me.

  The good news: no one seemed to be looking for him, even while he kept on making money on cocaine he smuggled from the Medellín Cartel. They were a crazy bunch, granted, but easy to work with just as long as everyone kept making money.

  And if that fell through, Dom thought he had enough salted away to disappear.

  Bogotá: December 22, 1988

  Everyone was going batshit crazy these days, over "allegations" that the CIA had been involved in smuggling drugs from South America to fund President Reagan's outlawed war in Nicaragua—and because they'd grown addicted to the money that came with it. Journalists and politicians were pretending that they'd never heard of such a thing before, not after World War Two in Europe, or in Southeast Asia later on, pretending they were shocked that U.S. intelligence agents would think of such things, much less carry them off.

  Agent Hardy Gantt wondered if any of them could spell "hypocrite."

  Throughout Colombia, the Medellín Cartel continued its campaign of narcoterrorism against anyone who wouldn't play along with Pablo Escobar's motto of doblar o romper—"bend or break," a variation on the usual "silver or lead." On January 19th gunmen had kidnapped Bogotá mayoral candidate Andrés Pastrana. Six days later, cartel soldiers snatched General Inspector Carlos Hoyos en route to Rionegro's Airport José María Córdoba, wounding him and killing his two bodyguards. Police rescued Pastrana but Escobar's men killed Hoyos in retaliation.

  Eleven days later, cocaine smuggling had backfired on Manuel Noriega, dictator of Panama, who'd ruled over a string of seven puppet presidents since 1983. The way things worked in Washington, the Reagan White House viewed him as an ally in the "War on Drugs" and a conduit for dope money flowing to the Nicaraguan Contras, but the GOP had finally decided Noriega was a greater liability than asset on both fronts. In February two separate federal grand juries in Florida had indicted Manuel on drug smuggling and money laundering charges, but no one yet knew how to bust him.

  In Chile, General Pinochet deigned to stand for election in an October plebiscite, surprised when 56 percent of all voters opposed his bid for a second eight-year presidential term. Harder to shake than a long winter's cold, he then vowed to resign as president in March, while remaining commander-in-chief of the army for two years after that and serving as a senator-for-life.

  In El Salvador's ongoing civil war, October's report from Amnesty International noted hyperactivity by pro-government death squads whose "chillingly effective" tactics left victims "customarily found mutilated, decapitated, dismembered, strangled or showing marks of torture or rape." The hit teams' style was "to operate in secret but to leave mutilated bodies of victims as a means of terrif
ying the population."

  Mission accomplished. Stateside, while the Senate's Kerry Committee took its sweet time examining Agency links to Contra drug smuggling, DEA agent Ernst Jacobson told the House Judiciary Committee that that shady jack-of-all-trades Barry Seal had snapped secret photos during a Nicaraguan sting operation, showing Pablo Escobar and partner Jorge Ochoa personally supervising while coke was packed aboard a C-123 transport headed north. Most of the grunt work was performed by alleged Sandinista soldiers, under the command of some guy Seal described as a "top aide" to Minister of the Interior Thomas Borge. That smelled fishy to Gantt, and Kerry's committee had already accused Ollie North of "playing politics" on drugs, leaking the phony scoop to blame Reagan's detested enemies for what his friends were doing.

  On another front, in April, Langley had created a Counterintelligence Center—more smoke and mirrors, since they'd done little else for the past thirty years, albeit under ever-changing names. Whatever, the "new" center hadn't offered any warning prior to yesterday's terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 bound from Frankfurt to Detroit via London. The plane had exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 persons aboard plus eleven on the ground, crushed by falling debris.

  Three separate terrorist groups took credit for the bombing—two Arab, one Irish—but twenty-twenty hindsight put the blame on Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli and chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines. Muammar Mohammed Gaddafi, "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Libyan Revolution" since 1969, denied any complicity in the atrocity and the investigation was ongoing.