W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07

by Covert Warriors

  File a local aircraft test flight plan and take off no later than 0845.

  At 0900 contact Ciudad Juárez International with the message “Necessary to make a precautionary landing.”

  Your aircraft will be met on landing, and the exchange of your guest for ours will be accomplished at that time.

  Your aircraft will then be free to return to the United States.

  “What the hell is this?” the President asked. “Where did it come from?”

  “According to SAC Johnson, Mr. President, it was handed to one of the FBI agents on stakeout in the El Paso post office,” Schmidt said.

  “Which suggests to me that the FBI agent didn’t succeed in being inconspicuous,” the President said. “Who handed it to him?”

  “May I see that, Mr. President?” Clemens McCarthy asked.

  The President handed him the letter.

  “Try to keep it from going under the desk, McCarthy,” the President said, and then turned his attention to Schmidt. “I’m waiting.”

  “A boy, Mr. President. A boy, twelve years old, Latino, handed it to one of the FBI agents. He said that a man gave him five dollars and told him to hand that—it was in an envelope addressed ‘To the FBI’—to him. I mean, he indicated to whom the boy was to hand the envelope.”

  “And that man? Do we know who he is? Is it too much to hope that he was detained for questioning?”

  “By the time they started looking for him, Mr. President,” Schmidt said, “the man had gone.”

  “A regular James Bond, huh?” the President said with a snort, and then asked, “Do either of you have any idea what’s going on here?”

  “I don’t understand the question, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said.

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” the President said.

  “Schmidt and I were discussing how to deal with the exchange when you called.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “We were thinking of sending FBI agents—instead of Marshals—on the helicopter for the exchange.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” the President exploded. “Let me tell you what would happen if you sent FBI agents on that helicopter. They would land at that airport and be greeted by, say, a dozen Mexicans, all armed to the teeth, who would relieve them of this fucking Mexican murderer and then wave bye-bye. They would not get Colonel Ferris, who is probably five hundred miles from Ciudad Juárez. I know what they think of your intelligence, but I’m surprised they think I’m also that stupid.”

  Neither Crenshaw nor Schmidt replied.

  “What we are going to do, gentlemen, is go along with President Martinez, that ungrateful sonofabitch. He wants Abrego turned over to this Mexican cop—what’s his name, McCarthy . . . ?”

  “Pena, Mr. President,” McCarthy furnished. “Juan Carlos Pena, chief of the Policía Federal for Oaxaca State.”

  “. . . for interrogation, which means to be turned loose,” the President picked up. “So we’re going to do just that. We’re going to take this goddamn murderer to the Oaxaca State Prison and exchange him for Ferris. He’ll be taken there, gentlemen, not by U.S. Marshals, not by the FBI, but by as many of those super Green Berets—what do they call them, McCarthy?”

  “The Delta Force, Mr. President?” McCarthy asked, his confusion evident in his voice.

  “No, goddammit! I said super Green Berets.”

  “Gray Fox, Mr. President?” Attorney General Crenshaw asked, and his confusion was equally evident in his voice.

  “Right,” the President said. “Gray Fox. As many of those Gray Fox people that’ll fit on three Black Hawks. They’ll either get Ferris back when they get there or they’ll bring the goddamn Mexican back and throw him in his Florence cell. I don’t think a goddamn Mexican cop is going to want to get in a fight with twenty, twenty-five Gray Fox guys. Get General McNab on the phone.”

  “General McNab is in Afghanistan, Mr. President,” McCarthy said.

  “Then get his deputy, that Irishman, what’s his name? McCool? Something like that.”

  “O’Toole, Mr. President. Major General Terrence O’Toole,” McCarthy said.

  “Well, get Major General Terrence O’Toole on the phone and tell him to get up here. And while you’re at it, get Naylor and Beiderman in here, too. I’ll teach that bastard Martinez he can’t fuck with Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen.”

  [FOUR]

  Office of the Director

  Central Intelligence Agency

  McLean, Virginia

  1110 20 April 2007

  “An unexpected pleasure, Madam Secretary,” DCI A. Franklin Lammelle said. “If I had known you were coming, there would have been a brass band.”

  “Can we dispense with the clever repartee, Frank?” Natalie Cohen replied. “I’m really in no mood for it.”

  “I tend to hide behind clever repartee when I have problems,” Lammelle said. “What’s yours?”

  “Recording devices turned off?”

  He nodded. “I usually turn them on only when the enemy is at the gates,” he replied, then realized that might qualify as clever repartee, and added, “Sorry.”

  She nodded, accepting the apology.

  “I just came from the Oval Office,” she said. “With the unnerving suspicion that there may be something to President Clendennen’s conspiracy theory.”

  He raised his eyebrows, made a “give it to me” gesture with his hands, and said, now quite serious, “Tell me all about it.”

  “Martinez didn’t buy that draft letter . . .” she began.

  “. . . And after I had been dismissed,” she concluded, “McCarthy caught up with me as I was getting in my car in the portico, told me the President had sent him to tell me to keep my mouth shut, and then said, quote, ‘I appreciate your wisdom in not getting further into the business of what was and what was not in the letter you took to President Martinez,’ end quote. When I didn’t reply, he added, quote, None of us want him to go off the deep end just now, do we, Madam Secretary? Now would be a very bad time for something like that to happen, end quote.”

  “So now you’re willing to buy in on the coup d’état theory?” Lammelle asked.

  “I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far, but something very unsavory is going on here, Frank.”

  “Would you say the situation is desperate?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far, either. But I—we—have to get to the bottom of it.”

  “Time to get off the fence, Natalie.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The situation is, or is not, desperate. This is not one of those times when you can put off making that decision.”

  “Why am I getting the idea that you know something I don’t?”

  “Maybe because I’m the DCI? We have a reputation for knowing things and doing things that other people don’t know about.”

  “Or don’t want to know about,” Natalie said after a moment. “Where are you going with this, Frank?”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Is this situation desperate? Desperate enough to require taking desperate action?”

  She considered that for a long moment, and then said, “I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

  “Not quite good enough, sorry.”

  “What is it exactly you want from me, Frank?”

  “Your word that after I offer my suggestion, and tell you what I know, that you won’t take any action of which I disapprove.”

  “That’s too much to ask.”

  “Then good luck with your problem, Natalie.”

  “I don’t like this at all.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  “I’m the secretary of State. You are required by law to provide me with any intelligence you have that I might find useful in the discharge of my duties.”

  “Spoken like a true dip,” Lammelle said. “Big words meaning nothing in real life. You want to walk that scenario through? You go to Truman Ellsworth—do you really want to go to E
llsworth?—and you tell him I’m not giving you information you’re entitled to by law. He tells me to give you what you want, and I tell him I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. So he goes to President Clendennen—do you really want Ellsworth going to President Clendennen about this?—and he says Lammelle . . .”

  She held up her hand to shut him off.

  “Tell me again what it is you want me to give my word about,” she said.

  “That after I tell you what I know, you won’t go any further with it—that’s sort of moot, because if you did that, I’d deny it—and also that you take no action of any kind without my approval.”

  “I don’t know why I’m surprised,” she said. “You didn’t get to be DCI by being a nice guy, did you, Frank?”

  “I got here by doing what I had to, in what I thought were the best interests of the United States.”

  “What was it that Samuel Johnson said, Frank, on that April night in 1775? Something about patriotism?”

  “Now I get the history lecture,” Lammelle said, chuckling. “He was talking about false patriotism, Natalie, when he said it was the last refuge of the scoundrel, not the real thing. False is when it doesn’t cost you anything. My kind is expensive. You can be disgraced. You can go to prison. You can even lose your life.”

  “Are you feeling just a little self-righteous, Frank, after doing something you know you shouldn’t have done?”

  “Okay. Conversation over. Is there anything else I can do for you before you go?”

  The secretary of State was in deep thought a moment, then said, “Okay, you have my word.”

  When he didn’t reply, she said, “Maybe you should have gone in the Foreign Service, Frank. You’re really a tough negotiator.”

  “I have your word?” he asked.

  “I said that you did.”

  “All right. What Charley Castillo plans to do is grab Abrego—and, he hopes, Ferris—when either of them shows up at the Oaxaca State Prison, and see who that brings out of the woodwork.”

  “How could he possibly manage that? The President has personally ordered General Naylor to see there is absolutely no U.S. military involvement . . .”

  “At last count, he’s got about forty ex-Spetsnaz.”

  “Where did he get ex-Spetsnaz?”

  “From Aleksandr Pevsner, who believes that this whole kidnapping business is connected with Vladimir Putin’s plan to take out him and his family. Pevsner’s original reaction to hearing that the new Russian cultural affairs officer for Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala is Valentin Komarovski—who of course is really our old pal Sergei Murov, the SVR rezident here—was to whack anybody Pevsner even suspected was SVR until Putin got the message.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Castillo has managed to talk Pevsner out of this for the time being—which means until Castillo’s able to snatch Abrego and/or Ferris at the prison, and then see what the interrogation of whoever comes out of the woodwork turns up.

  “We know the Venezuelans are involved. The guy who dropped the kidnapper’s letter in the post office slot in El Paso is José Rafael Monteverde, the financial attaché of the embassy of the República Bolivariana de Venezuela in Mexico City.”

  “How do you know that?” Secretary Cohen asked.

  “A friend of mine happened to be in the El Paso post office when he did it.”

  “I will refrain myself from commenting that the CIA is expressly forbidden by law from operating within the United States,” she said.

  “Anyway, Charley’s got people from China Post sitting on this guy. I think they’re going to want to talk to him.”

  “China Post? The mercenary employment agency?”

  “Charley prefers to think of them as former comrades in arms,” Lammelle said.

  “Where’s he getting the money to pay for all this?” she asked, and then quickly added, “Don’t tell me. I think I know. ‘Those People’?”

  “So far, I think he’s picking up the tab himself. Or Aleksandr Pevsner is. But that Las Vegas money is going to be available if he asks for it.”

  “If Castillo kidnaps this Venezuelan diplomat, President Martinez—”

  “What? Won’t like it? Won’t let him get away with it?”

  “Both, and you know it.”

  “So what if he doesn’t like it?” Lammelle said. “He’s done nothing, and you know it, to get Colonel Ferris back, or get the people who murdered Salazar and the DEA agents. And as far as not letting Castillo get away with what he’s doing, how is he going to do that? With the Policía Federal? Come on, Natalie.”

  “Frank, you don’t really expect me to look the other way at any of this?”

  “I expect you to do what you can to prevent a coup d’état. We don’t know who’s behind that. The only ones I’m sure are not are Generals Naylor and McNab. And we can count on their help once we find out who’s behind it. But we have to find out who’s behind it, whether the Russians, or Montvale, or Truman Ellsworth . . .”

  “You think that Ellsworth might be involved?”

  “I think it’s possible. The only thing I know for sure is that the only one who can find out is Castillo, and if he breaks a few laws finding out, I have no problem with that.”

  She considered that a moment, and then said, “Don’t interpret this as a sign that I’m considering going along with any of this, but as a practical matter, how is he going to . . . I guess ‘kidnap’ is the word . . . Ferris and/or Abrego from the Mexican authorities, or the kidnappers, or for that matter, the U.S. Marshal Service?”

  “I told you, he has the ex-Spetsnaz he got from Pevsner and the people from China Post—plus, of course, the Merry Outlaws.”

  “And how, as a practical matter, Frank, is he going to move them around Mexico with the entire Policía Federal—plus the kidnappers, the drug cartels, and possibly even the SVR—looking for them?”

  “Well, he has the helicopter. That’ll help.”

  “You’re not talking about that Black Hawk?”

  He nodded.

  “You actually turned that helicopter over to him?”

  “Persons representing themselves as officers of the CIA went to Fort Sam and flew it away,” Lammelle said. “They told Fort Sam officials they were returning it to Mexico.”

  “You actually sent your people to Fort Sam to steal that helicopter for Castillo?”

  “What I said was ‘people representing themselves as officers of the CIA.’ And it was never stolen. Though there wasn’t exactly a bill of sale, Charley did buy it for a million plus, so it could be argued it’s actually his chopper.”

  “My God! You’re insane!”

  “Natalie, you’re the one who told me that the Mexicans reported that Black Hawk was destroyed in President Martinez’s war on the drug cartels. How can you steal something that doesn’t exist?”

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  “Anyway, apparently these persons have gotten away with their deception. There have been no reports to anyone about anything unusual happening at Fort Sam.”

  “And how does he plan to get the Black Hawk into Mexico?”

  “It’s already there. As we speak, he’s showing it to a man he describes as one of the four honest cops in Mexico. I was just talking to him. I hung up”—he pointed to the Brick on his desk—“as you were coming through the door.”

  “Does this honest cop have a name?” she asked.

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “But you’re not going to tell me?”

  “Castillo’s going to do what he’s going to do, Natalie. What you have to decide is whether you’re going to help him or not. Whether, in other words—this is the choice Naylor had to make when he knew there was nothing he could do to stop Charley from going to La Orchila Island—Charley’s failure would do more harm to the country than his success.”

  “Get him back on the Brick,” she said.

  “He may not want to talk to you.”<
br />
  “Why not?”

  “I think he’s as much afraid that your high moral standards will demand that you do ‘the right thing,’ as you’re afraid he’s about to start a war with Mexico.”

  “You’re saying he doesn’t trust me? I don’t believe that.”

  “I’m saying he thinks you have a different agenda, one probably in conflict with his.” He paused, then went on: “Natalie, I’m betraying a confidence when I tell you this, but I think you should know there are now two nets on the Brick. The old one, which you have on your Brick, and the new one. You’re not on the new one. Neither are Those People. Charley doesn’t entirely trust them, either.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “I just realized it puts me in a somewhat uncomfortable position,” Lammelle said. “What the hell!”

  He reached for his Brick, took out the handset, put his index finger in front of his lips as a signal to Cohen, and then pushed one of the direct connect buttons and the SPEAKERPHONE key.

  “Yeah, Frank?” Castillo’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

  “What would you say if I told you that Natalie Cohen knows what you’re up to and wants to talk to you about helping?”

  “I’d say you have a dangerously loose mouth and have been smoking an illegal substance. What the hell is this all about?”

  “I thought you liked Natalie and trusted her.”

  “I like her very much. Do I think she wants to help? No. If she knows what I’m doing and wants to talk to me, it’s to talk me out of what I’m doing. And goddamn you, Frank, if you did tell her.”

  There was a buzzing sound.

  Cohen and Lammelle looked at each other until they realized the buzzing was coming from the secretary of State’s Brick.

  “Hold one, Charley,” Lammelle said.

  Cohen opened the leather attaché case and took out the handset. She saw which number was illuminated, and mouthed, “Crenshaw.”

  “See what he wants,” Lammelle said.