Then a commercial came on, showing another boring old grown up, standing up and talking with the ocean behind him. He said, “Hi, I’m Bob Buller,” and for some reason, that made Mommy get very excited.
“Oh my God! Bri-Bri, that’s Gretchen’s new boss! I mean, her really big boss! Did you know that Gretchen met him yesterday? She did! Oh my God!”
Mommy grabbed her leather purse off the low table, and dug into it. This was a moment Brian had been waiting for and planning for since yesterday. He got up from the carpet, and snuggled next to her on the sofa, hugging up against her while she opened her silver phone. She pushed a button on top that said ON, and the little screen lit up, like a tiny television. She pushed another button that said “CONTACTS,” and the little screen showed a list of names.
The first name on the list, right on the top, said ALEX. Brian knew that ALEX stood for Alexandro Garabanda, his Daddy. But Mommy pushed another button with an arrow pointing down, and each time she pushed it, another name turned colors, down the list, until the name that was a different color said GRETCHEN. Then Mommy pushed a green button that said SEND, and held the phone up to her ear. In a few seconds, she was talking.
“Gretch! Hey girlfriend, guess who I just saw on TV? Bob Bullard! Yes! Uh-huh, only the ‘Southwest Regional Director of the Department of Homeland Security,’ that’s who! And you were in his office, for a one-onone! Oh…my…God! Oh yeah, that is so big time—you are so awesome!”
Mommy kept talking to Gretchen, but Brian didn’t pay attention to what she said. It didn’t matter. He had found out the grown up secret to using Mommy’s phone. The secret of the phone was ON—CONTACTS— ALEX—SEND.
Brian wouldn’t forget the secret!
***
At 9:30 AM, Basilio Ramos and Comrade Inez met for the second time by the duck pond, in the heart of the university campus. The pumps and fountains were still not working. Brown and green algae covered half of the pond, and no ducks were in the water or on the shore. Once again, they sat in the obscuring shade beneath the overhanging willows. It was almost exactly one week since their last meeting. Basilio Ramos had rushed back to Albuquerque, and he had not had a chance to shave. He had changed from his camouflage uniform in a university lavatory. His jeans were not pressed, and his green Polo shirt was wrinkled and unwashed.
Inez was wearing another pants suit today, her brown one this time. She wore an oversized khaki ball cap with her gray ponytail pulled through the back, and her dark sunglasses.
“Basilio, I’m so sorry to hear about yesterday…”
He felt as if he had not slept in days, and knew that he looked terrible. “It was a disaster. A complete disaster.”
“Have you been home yet?”
“No, we just drove down from Torcido County. I got your page on the way.”
“Don’t go home then, or to the Falcon Academy.”
He looked at her quizzically. “Why not?”
“Basilio, we had a meeting of the council this morning…”
“Without me? But I’m—”
She raised her hand, cutting him off. “Magón had instructions for us: there was no discussion. Basilio, you’re to be replaced as the leader of the Falcons. The Falcons will become the Reconnaissance Company of the 5th Battalion. Carlos Guzman…”
Ramos began to stand up. “¡Ese hijo de…!” he nearly shouted.
She patted him on the knee, urging him back down. “Basilio, calm yourself. The order came from the governor himself.”
“And me?” he asked bitterly. “What is to be my new position?” He dropped back onto the bench.
“That…hasn’t been determined yet. You’ll be notified, after the inquest. You’re officially on leave. There are many questions about the crash, and even about the rifle used to shoot the helicopter. Do you have the rifle?”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Basilio, there are many rumors; even I don’t understand them all. Many rumors, and many questions. Is it true that you drew your pistol on a Blackhawk, and aimed it at the pilot, and threatened to shoot him?”
“Yes, that coward was—”
“So it’s true?”
“It is, but I can explain it. When will this inquest be held?”
“Next week, maybe. It hasn’t been scheduled. But Basilio, I must tell you, perhaps there will not be any inquest at all.”
“I don’t understand. No inquest?”
“The situation…it may be resolved by other means. I’ll do what I can for you, but it’s out of my hands. You have very few friends left in Santa Fe, after what happened yesterday.”
“Am I in…personal danger?” Ramos understood all-too-well that he was part of the small circle of conspirators involved in the assassination of former governor Agustín Deleon. It had occurred to him that this fact represented an ongoing risk to the new governor, Félix Magón, who had personally given him the orders for Deleon’s permanent removal from power.
“Danger? I don’t know. Possibly. Possibly. You might even want to consider… relocating. As soon as possible.”
He kicked at the dirt with his black shoe, looking down. “I appreciate the warning.”
“Basilio, you know I’ve always had a soft spot for you. I know that’s not very professional of me. A revolutionary should not have such weaknesses, but I don’t want to see you come to harm. But that’s not the only reason I asked you to meet me here, just to warn you. I have something else.” There was a canvas bag like an oversized purse or book bag on the bench beside Comrade Inez. She withdrew a large manila envelope, and slid out a stack of color photographs. “Look at these, and tell me if you recognize anyone. They were taken Sunday morning, but I only learned of them yesterday.”
Ramos flipped through them; they were snapshot-sized copies of surveillance photos. Inez had a direct connection into the Special Surveillance Group. He knew that she was doing him a favor, and perhaps even putting herself at risk, by sharing classified SSG material with someone under such a darkening cloud of suspicion.
The photos showed a small playground in what appeared to be an ordinary Albuquerque neighborhood, identifiable by the Sandia Mountains visible in the background. There was a man on a cement bench, and then he was standing, and was joined by a blond woman. They appeared to be talking, but at a distance of a few meters apart. There was also a small child in a pink jumpsuit. Ramos said, “The man seems familiar. I’m not sure, am I supposed to know these people?”
“There are more, keep looking.”
In the following photos there was a muscular man with a crew cut, holding a video camera while standing by a black pickup truck. There was a line of parked cars in the foreground of a long shot, with the playground in the background. From the perspective and foreshortening, he could tell that the SSG photographer had been a long way off with a telephoto lens. The car in line closest to a stop sign, parked at right angles to the playground, was a very small boxy wagon, white on the sides and black on top. It was one of those two-seater electric cars, with the roof made of solar panels, and the entire back area given over to batteries beneath its cargo deck.
The hair on his neck began to tingle. There was someone sitting in the driver’s seat of the electric car, but it was hard to make out. He flipped through more photos. The driver was wearing a ball cap. In one photo, the person sitting in the car could be seen holding a small pair of binoculars. He turned to the next picture, and the driver’s face was partially visible in profile.
Ranya Bardiwell. He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.
“Basilio, this is the woman who was with you at the reception.”
Inez did not ask him, she stated this as a fact. He glumly nodded yes.
“She is the Arab girl, your rifle expert. Have you seen her since Saturday night?”
He slowly shook his head. “No.” He continued to flip through the photographs, not really looking, his mind spinning.
“Well,” Inez offered, “I’ve learned quite a bit more a
bout this young woman in the last 24 hours. You knew that she was in prison for five years, and that she escaped?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that she had a baby, while she was in prison? The child in these pictures is her son. His name is now Brian Garabanda. When he was born, he was given to an FBI agent for adoption.”
Ramos was stunned by these continuing revelations, one after another. “Her son? Given to an FBI agent?”
“Yes. The child was given to Supervisory Special Agent Alexandro Garabanda. Garabanda was Luis Carvahal’s agent handler, before last Saturday. That blond woman in these pictures is his ex-wife, Karin Bergen.”
Ramos absorbed this information, and then said quietly, “That’s what they did in Argentina, during the Dirty War. In the 1980s.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what they did with the babies of the desaparacidas, the disappeared ones, the women who became pregnant in the detention centers. The clandestine torture centers. They gave the babies to the secret police in Chile, to raise as their own. They gave them to the Chilean DINA, to any DINA agents who wanted a child.”
“Yes, so I’ve read. And it happened in Venezuela, and Peru and many other places. I suppose it always does, in a dirty war.”
“Inez, you said, ‘his ex-wife’?”
“Karin Bergen-Garabanda. She dropped her husband’s name. She left Nuevo Mexico for San Diego with the child last Sunday, after this meeting on the playground. I didn’t put all of this together until yesterday, when I found out that Ranya Bardiwell was the child’s birth mother. I put in an intelligence request for all available information on Garabanda, and that’s when I learned of these SSG photos. Garabanda was the subject of the playground surveillance, not Bardiwell. The SSG doesn’t know who she is in these photos; she’s marked as an “unknown subject.” And I received some other reports on Garabanda: listen to this, this is interesting. He’s supposed to be in Santa Fe all this week, at a conference. The SSG went into his hotel room, and they found only a cell phone, set up as a relay. Garabanda wants people to think he’s somewhere he’s not. The question is, why? Where would he be going? I can only make one guess.”
“So can I,” said Ramos, slowly pounding his knees with his fists.
“San Diego.”
“Yes, San Diego,” he agreed. “And I have something for you, Inez. I know Bardiwell was at the Vedado Ranch yesterday. In fact, I’m positive.”
“How do you know this?”
He was silent, staring at Ranya’s best surveillance photograph, her face captured in profile, wearing a dark baseball cap.
“The rifle? The Dragunov?” she asked.
“You know about that?”
“Of course I know about the rifle. For one thing, I’ve read Guzman’s debrief. El Condor is not exactly your biggest fan.”
“I know,” he said bleakly.
“In his report he wrote about a pair of men’s neckties attached to the rifle, and cut in the middle. He didn’t know what it meant, but now I have a guess.”
“Enough—you know everything. She ran away from my house Saturday night after the reception, and she took the rifle with her.” Ramos hoped that she would not connect the electric car in the pictures to Professor Johnson, and Professor Johnson to himself. He hoped that disgusting aspect of this case could be kept from discovery. He hoped that they would eventually blame Bardiwell for the professor’s disappearance— anything but what had actually happened in his bedroom on that night.
“Yes, that’s what I guessed, that she took the rifle from your house. But nobody else knows of this, no one! Not the SSG, not Comandante Guzman—only you and I. At least for now.”
Ramos laid his forehead on the palms of his hands, his elbows propped on his knees. “Inez, what should I do? How much time do I have?”
“I don’t know, but Basilio, there’s something else we need to discuss. Things must look entirely black to you now, but there is one aspect of this affair that might present you with an opportunity—an opportunity to recover. The people on the small airplane you were chasing yesterday, the ones who shot down Puma 2, they were controlling a pilotless drone aircraft. What the Yanquis call a ‘U-A-V.’ They were watching the Vedado conference, from above.”
“I heard a drone mentioned on the Vedado Ranch radio net.”
“Then you know that the drone was used to attack President Whitman and Peter Kosimos? Did you know that?”
“I only heard that the drone crashed, and there was a fatality on the ground.”
“Did you know that it killed Peter Kosimos?”
“I saw the news this morning. I heard that Kosimos was killed in a car accident in Colorado. He was killed by the drone?”
“It took his head off. Dave Whitman didn’t receive a scratch, other than being soaked with Kosimos’s blood. Now, here’s your opportunity. The drone was sending down video imagery from the Vedado Ranch conference. Certain of the attendees don’t want to see that film on television, if it exists. I’m informed that the drone was a type that would be recording directly onto a computer, some kind of portable computer. We know that the drone was taken from a Border Patrol base near El Paso, by a retired Border Patrol pilot who also ‘borrowed’ a white Cessna 210 airplane.”
“It was a white Cessna we were chasing yesterday.”
“The pilot’s name is Logan Crawford. According to government flight logs we’ve been able to check, he’s flown with Garabanda before.”
“So where is this Crawford? Where is the Cessna?”
“We don’t know. He hasn’t been seen since he signed out the airplane on Tuesday. He has a wife in Albuquerque, but she’s gone too. The SSG went by their house this morning. There was breakfast on the table, and signs that someone packed in a hurry. Both of their cars are gone. It looks like she fled.”
“That figures,” mumbled Ramos.
“The Dragunov rifle was found where we think they were controlling the drone, so that puts Bardiwell and Garabanda together yesterday. Now, not even the Special Surveillance Group knows about the connection between Bardiwell and Garabanda, because they don’t know what the rifle means, at least not yet. And from what we can tell from our Federal sources, the FBI doesn’t even know that Bardiwell has been in New Mexico, or that Garabanda is only pretending to be in Santa Fe. So we have an edge Basilio, an advantage we can exploit! Only we know who was controlling the drone, and where they’re probably going next. Now, here’s your opportunity: if you found Bardiwell and the FBI agent, and if you recovered the computer with the video record of the conference, if you permanently removed the risk that this Vedado meeting would ever be seen on television…well, certain very influential parties would be extremely grateful. Grateful enough to cause Félix Magón to be in a forgiving mood. Maybe even more than forgiving.”
“I see.” Ramos looked up, a glimmer of hope lifting him from the pit of despair.
“Basilio, I would grasp this opportunity.”
“And you think they’re going to San Diego, after the child?”
“Probably. Where else?”
“So if I find the child first…”
“Yes! And I know where the child is—I’ve been busy, Basilio! The child is staying with his mother, in a condominium tower in downtown San Diego. It’s called the Pacific Majesty, it’s very new. This building is leased by the United States government; they use it to house federal employees. The child and his mother are staying in apartment 4124, with another federal agent. You see, they’re lesbianas, this agent and the child’s mother. Gretchen Bosch is her name—she works for the IRS. So that’s where you’ll find Bardiwell and the FBI agent: I think they’re together, trying to find the child. But you’ll have the advantage—they won’t know they’re being pursued. Now here is your mission: If it’s possible, if you can, bring Garabanda and Bardiwell back to New Mexico—preferably alive. Alive, to be thoroughly interrogated. We must know everything that they know, and if they’ve given copies of their fil
m to anyone.”
“What if it’s not possible, what if I can’t find them, or bring them back?”
“If you can’t bring them back, then eliminate them—but try to bring back the computers. If you have to kill them, kill them. Do what you must, but try to get the computers. Time is of the essence—every day that this mission is not accomplished means a greater chance of the film being released. We need to know what’s on the film, and who has been given copies.”
“For damage control.”
“Yes, quite right, for damage control. And to make sure that any film of the Vedado Ranch conference isn’t released.”
“It may already be too late! They may already have released it.”
“Perhaps, so I wouldn’t waste any time finding them. In any event, I don’t think it would be played on television. I think the federal government would use the Patriot Act to stop it, I don’t think the networks would run it. But even if it was shown, if Bardiwell, Garabanda and the Border Patrol pilot are eliminated, then the tape’s authenticity can be challenged and destroyed. You understand how this works: ‘experts’ will call the film a fake, a computer-made forgery, and nobody will be alive to dispute that claim.”
“All right Inez, I’ll do it,” said Ramos, his mood lifting. “I’ll take some of my best men. But I’ll need some logistical and communication support...”
“Of course. I’ll serve as your point of contact at this end. I’ll have a phone number and an email address monitored around the clock for your support requests. I’ll do everything I can for you from here. On a deniable basis, of course. But you must succeed at this mission Basilio—otherwise, I would not return to Nuevo Mexico.”
37
Ranya was surprised by how quiet the interior of the helicopter shuttle was. There were seats for seven passengers, but only five were on the flight this morning. Their destination was the seaside town of La Jolla, “the jewel,” located ten miles north of downtown San Diego. She had completed her transformation to a lady of means; she was glamorous from her blond wig to her gleaming new $1,500 white Nike running shoes. After a room service breakfast, she had gone shopping in the casino’s boutiques, putting everything that she needed onto her room tab.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 61