The Deceivers

by Alex Berenson

  Hurry up and wait—the motto of soldiers and spies. Wells had arrived in Bogotá four days before, checked into the Hotel de la Opera, in La Candelaria, the city’s oldest quarter. For five hundred years, the neighborhood had survived earthquakes, fires, and civil wars. Seemed like a decent bet. It wasn’t where Wells had told Julie Tarnes he’d be staying. He still didn’t entirely trust her.

  First, always, local burner phones. Wells bought two, called Enrique Martinez.

  “Soon, my friend.”

  Wells realized what Martinez wasn’t saying.

  “This man, he’s not even in Colombia, is he?”

  Martinez’s silence gave Wells his answer.

  “Tell me where, I’ll go to him.”

  “Just wait, please.”

  Like I have a choice.

  The next morning, Wells called Tarnes.

  “Where are you?” She sounded irritated. “Our guy tried to deliver your stuff.”

  “Noon today. Outside El Campín, the west side.”

  “El Campín?”

  “El Campín.” El Campín, officially known as Estadio Nemesio Camacho, was the biggest fútbol stadium in Bogotá. “I’ll be the gringo in the Red Sox cap.”

  “Sounds like you’ll fit right in. Why so complicated, John?”

  “Noon.”

  Wells arrived a half hour early. Colombians loved soccer almost as much as Brazilians, but none of the teams that shared the stadium were playing today. The plaza was nearly empty. Wells bought a red Independiente Santa Fe jersey and hat, walked slowly around the stadium. If he had watchers, he couldn’t find them.

  Fifteen minutes later, a motorcycle weaved into the plaza, pulled up beside Wells, the engine still idling. The rider wore a Speed Racer–style white helmet covered with stickers for bands that Wells didn’t know. He was in his late twenties, skinny, light-skinned Hispanic. An olive green backpack sat between his legs.

  “Mr. Walton?” His accent was more Florida than Colombia. He handed over the pack. Wells peeked inside, found a pistol, extra magazines, a Ka-Bar knife, an auto pick, three-inch squares of duct tape with adhesive backing, and other goodies. Everything he’d asked for.

  “Gracias. What’s your name?”

  “Tony.”

  “I may need more help, Tony.”

  “Long as you have more money.”

  Kids these days . . . “No worries.”

  “In that case.” Tony scribbled his number and passed it to Wells.

  For the next three days, Wells called Martinez at noon. Each time, Martinez said only, Nothing yet.

  Wells wanted to like Bogotá. It was bigger than he’d expected, just over eight million people, and pretty, overlooked by a green mountain ridge to the east. Though it was only a few hundred miles north of the equator, it lay almost nine thousand feet above sea level, so it was rarely too hot. It had a new airport and a bustling downtown. On Sunday mornings, the city even made some streets bicycles-only, turning them into a rolling open-air party called the Ciclovia.

  But its extremes of wealth and poverty were inescapable. The rich lived in the north, in fortress houses and apartment complexes hidden behind razor wire. They shopped at heavily guarded malls that offered the usual overpriced brands and stayed out late dancing to DJs who’d flown in from Miami.

  Meanwhile, the poor clumped in barrios of mud-and-brick houses in the south of the city. Ironically, the poorest barrios, like the most expensive apartments, occupied the mountainsides. But where the wealthy paid for fantastic views of Bogotá’s sunsets, the poor were forced up. The hill slums lacked basic services like sewer systems. Every necessity had to be carried in. And though crime in Bogotá had fallen since the torment of Colombia’s civil war, the police were still overwhelmed. They protected the rich and left the barrios to their own justice. Once or twice a week, mob vigilantes beat suspected murderers or thieves to death.

  The Ciclovia was practically the only time that Bogotá’s rich and poor came together.

  Wells felt oddly exposed in Bogotá, too. In Muslim countries, he didn’t stand out. His fluent Arabic gave him the chance to pass as Lebanese or North African. But Arabic didn’t help here. Colombia had barely ten thousand Muslims. And Wells’s Spanish was limited to Taco Bell basics—uno, dos, tres. Wells knew that gangs watched the streets of La Candelaria. He would attract their attention soon, if he hadn’t already. He would give them more trouble than they expected. But he preferred to avoid that fight.

  He began to wonder if Duto had sent him to Colombia as a diversion. The idea didn’t make sense. Why bother? But the conspiratorial thoughts proved his frustration with this open-ended delay. Worse, the trail to the Dallas killers was fading by the hour.

  On his fifth morning, Wells realized he was done waiting.

  “Enrique. Time to talk. Face-to-face. Now.”

  A pause.

  “All right. We’re coming into our pied—” Wells didn’t get the word at first, though Martinez’s accent was perfect. “I’ll send someone for you.”

  Martinez’s pied turned out to be a four-bedroom penthouse apartment in the mountains above Calle 140, fifteen kilometers and a million miles from La Candelaria. Even with Martinez’s bodyguard vouching for him, Wells had to submit to a pat-down from the building’s doorman.

  To Wells’s surprise, Martinez opened the door himself. He was a squat man with a bullfrog’s jowls and short gray hair. A general gone to fat. He grinned when he saw Wells. The woman beside him was half his age, six inches taller, and blond. A boy of five stood behind her.

  “Simon, say hello.” The boy dashed off. “And this is Vanessa. Mi amor.”

  “I’m certainly his wife,” she said.

  “I’m John. Didn’t know I was meeting the family. Would have dressed better.”

  “Vanessa was Miss Colombia nine years ago,” Martinez said.

  “His first wife was only Miss Bogotá,” she said.

  “Next time, Miss Universe.”

  “I’ll leave you men to your important business.” She flashed a hundred-tooth smile to let Wells know she was in on the joke.

  Martinez led Wells through the apartment and up a staircase to an enormous sunroom that seemed to have been built on the roof. For the first time, Wells grasped Bogotá’s scope. The city sprawled across the plains until it disappeared into the smog at the horizon.

  “First time in Bogotá?”

  “Sí.”

  “You like it?”

  Wells found his manners had vanished along with his patience. “I think it proves that if rich folks have enough barbed wire and shotguns and no conscience, they can live great even if they’re surrounded by miserable poor people.”

  “You needed to come here to learn that?”

  “I look at this, it’s my nightmare for what the United States might be one day.”

  “I’m sorry you’re frustrated. I expected him by now, too.”

  “Now’s when you tell me his name.”

  “It’s complicated. I’ve known him a long time. A socialist. At least he used to be.”

  Socialist. Probably Venezuelan, then. The country shared a long border with Colombia, and the left had ruled it for two decades. “And an intelligence officer?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I’m not playing Twenty Questions, Enrique.”

  “He called me the day after the attack in Dallas. Asked me if I still knew Señor Duto. I told him yes.”

  “How could you be sure Vinny would remember you?”

  “I was first off the helicopters to rescue him.”

  A generation before, Colombian rebels had kidnapped Duto and held him for months in the jungle. Duto preferred not to talk about the experience. During the presidential campaign, he’d batted down interviewers who asked. Ancient history. You know how you get stuck in a bi
g line at airport security? It was like that. I didn’t want to be there, and I had to take off my shoes and belt, but it was fine. The patent absurdity of the analogy left no room to follow up.

  “My friend, he asks me, can El Presidente send someone to meet him? I said why not just arrange it himself? He said no, what he has, it’s complicated. And anyway, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone active in the CIA.”

  So the source was worried about being compromised. He feared someone at Langley, someone high enough to have access to compartmentalized information from stations all over the world. Again? The agency couldn’t have another mole in its top ranks.

  Unless it did.

  “He tell you what he had?” Wells said.

  “Only that it was about the attack. Something no one would expect. The details, face-to-face only.”

  “And here I am.”

  “I called him. Every day. He’s not answering.”

  Wells waited for more, but Martinez seemed to be done.

  “Come on, Enrique.”

  “I’ll tell you one more thing. He said whoever came should be prepared to grant him U.S. citizenship.”

  “He thinks it’s that good, he’s either delusional or has the answer to Dallas. Either way, I need his name.”

  “He told me I wasn’t to tell you under any circumstances.”

  “You want a finder’s fee?”

  “You think I need money?” Martinez appeared genuinely offended.

  Wells tried to find a polite way to sweat Martinez. And failed. “You may think you’re Duto’s buddy, Ricky, but if you don’t tell, he’ll make sure you never see the United States again. Or your family. No Miami shopping trips for Vanessa. No UCLA for Simon. He doesn’t forget, our President. You’ll be on the naughty list forever.” And if he asks my opinion, I’ll tell him I agree.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Wells stood—

  “But. I’ll give you the address of his safe house in Bogotá.”

  Exactly what Wells hadn’t wanted. A fishing expedition. Still, the National Security Agency might have records for the address in a database. A deed, an electric bill, almost anything would do.

  “Fine.”

  “But I warn you, it’s in the slums. A neighborhood called El Amparo.”

  An odd location for a safe house. “Any idea why?”

  “I think it was his personal place.”

  In other words, more of a stash house than a safe house. A place for Martinez’s anonymous buddy to hide money or drugs or other contraband. The guy sounded less and less like an intelligence officer and more and more like a criminal.

  “Fine,” Wells said. “I’ll leave you to your happy home.”

  Back at the hotel, Wells called Tarnes.

  “I need to know if our databases have anything on the owner of an address in Colombia. Also, call data on phones down here.”

  “Address?”

  “Number 35 Carrera 81L, El Amparo.”

  She read it back. “81L?”

  “Yeah, it’s like a substreet.”

  “That doesn’t sound confusing at all. El Amparo?”

  “A little district in southwest Bogotá.” Wells had looked it up.

  “And the phone numbers.”

  “The first is the mobile belonging to the guy I came here to meet. Enrique Martinez.” Wells passed it to her. “The others, I don’t have, but they belong to his wife, kids. I’m looking for an incoming call the day after the Dallas attacks followed by short outgoing calls back to the same number for the last several days.”

  “Would the caller also be on a Colombian phone?”

  “Probably not. Guessing Venezuelan but not sure. The pattern is the most important part. Find the pattern, find the phone.”

  She typed for a few seconds, then: “All right. If Martinez used his own phone for the calls, I’ll have an answer within the hour. Otherwise, it’s trickier. We’ll have to find the family’s numbers first, go from there. But I’ll call you tonight either way.”

  If Wells had asked Shafer for help, he would have waited at least a night for answers. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Wells tucked his concealed carry holster into the waistband of his jeans, broke the brim of his Independiente Santa Fe hat so it wouldn’t look so new, pulled it down to hide his eyes. He pulled on a cheap black sweatshirt that hung low enough to keep the holster invisible. He stuffed duct tape squares and flex-cuffs and auto picker in his back pockets. He left everything else in the closet. And pulled the door shut behind him.

  His adrenaline rose as he walked north, to Calle 19, the city’s original commercial artery. One of the city’s ubiquitous yellow cabs pulled over as soon as he raised his hand. Wells glanced inside to be certain it didn’t have a security camera before slipping into the front passenger seat.

  The driver was heavy, with wavy jet-black hair. He frowned at the address. “American?”

  Wells didn’t answer.

  “You know what we rolos say? No dar papaya. Know what this means?” His English was heavily accented but understandable.

  “Don’t dar the papaya?”

  “Don’t walk with money in your hand. Someone buys you a drink, open the bottle yourself.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Sí. El Amparo, it’s peligro. Muy.” He stared at Wells. “Especially if you aren’t from here.” The cabbie squeezed his nostrils with thumb and forefinger, offered an exaggerated inhale. “That what you want, cabrón? I get it for you. No need to go there.”

  “No thank you.” Wells sounded almost prim to himself. He had overheard enough conversations in La Candelaria to realize that many visitors believed no trip to Colombia would be complete unless they sampled the country’s most famous export.

  “What then?”

  “Take me or not, up to you.” Wells could have found another cab, but he’d have a version of this conversation with almost any driver. He lifted his loose black sweatshirt and leaned forward in his seat far enough to expose the butt of the 9-millimeter. Without another word, the driver turned up the radio and eased into traffic.

  El Amparo wasn’t one of the mountain slums. It was west-southwest of downtown, part of a larger neighborhood called Kennedy. A million people lived there on swampy plains that had been covered with cheap apartment buildings.

  El Amparo—the shelter—lay in Kennedy’s smogged heart. It was only a few miles from La Candelaria, but Bogotá had some of the world’s worst gridlock. By the time the cab pulled over, it was past 4 p.m., and the sun cast long shadows. Wells would have to move fast if he wanted to be out before dark.

  The neighborhood’s street grid had looked simple enough on Google Maps. Carrera 81L was a couple blocks down from this boulevard. Wells couldn’t be sure about the building numbers. But he guessed number 35 would be at least a block in.

  “Fifty thousand pesos,” the cabbie said. About sixteen dollars.

  Wells passed him a fifty-thousand-peso note. “Will you wait for me?”

  “Una hora, no more, another fifty thousand.”

  “Give me two hours, I’ll pay you two hundred.” Wells had no idea how long he’d need, but the extra time couldn’t hurt.

  “All right. But I’m not driving in. You come back to me.”

  “That bad?” The neighborhood looked run-down but not fierce. Across the street, a dozen kids played soccer in a trash-clogged lot alongside an appliance store.

  “Bad enough.”

  The cabbie was right. The vibe changed when Wells turned left onto Carrera 81L. The street was unpaved and eroded, barely wide enough for a car. Two- and three-story brick buildings with tin slats for roofs hemmed it in. Electric wires dangled low, and the stink of urine hung in the air. Tiny glassine envelopes littered the dirt.

  For a moment, Well
s wondered if Martinez had lied, sent Wells here to be robbed or worse. But trouble for Wells wouldn’t benefit Martinez or his family. Anyway, Wells thought he was basically honest.

  Ahead, a pair of hard-faced men in their early twenties stood in the middle of the street, making sure anyone who passed knew the block was theirs. They tilted their heads as Wells stepped around them, hawks checking out a squirrel.

  “Cocaine?” the man nearer Wells said. He wore a bright yellow Colombian national soccer jersey that was a size too small, the better to show his ripped torso. “Cheap, amigo.”

  Ignoring the guy would only make him bolder. Wells stopped, squared up, locked eyes with him, let him see the truth: Don’t mis-underestimate me, friend.

  The guy looked away first. Wells decided to push the point. He stepped close. “Thirty-five? Treinta y cinco?”

  The guy pointed to a four-story concrete building. Then dropped his hand like he couldn’t believe he’d let Wells order him around.

  “Gracias, amigo.”

  The front door of number 35 was steel, with a narrow, grate-screened window. It had two locks. The auto picker popped both in seconds. A few years before, the pickers had been balky and difficult. Now they were no larger than Swiss Army knives and easily opened all but the most sophisticated locks. One of Wells’s favorite tricks from the Directorate of Science and Technology.

  Wells peeked back as he opened the door. A third man had now joined the others at the corner. The new guy caught Wells looking and lifted his sweatshirt so Wells could see the pistol tucked into his belt.

  Oh, goody. You have one, too.

  The first-floor hallway was bare concrete, with two doors on each side. Typical tenement layout. Televisions played in apartments, the voices low and fast. Wells jogged up the stairs.

  Apartment 8 occupied the back left corner of the building. Its door wasn’t flush with the hallway. As Wells approached, he saw a ribbon of light from inside. Curiouser and curiouser. Could Martinez’s source be hiding here as he waited for some final piece of information to shop to the agency?

  Wells put his ear to the door. He heard nothing, no voices or running water. Maybe the lights had just been left on accidentally. Wells put picker to the lock, and the bolt slid back with a thunk that echoed in the hallway. He stuffed the pick in his jeans and hustled inside.