The Deceivers

by Alex Berenson

  “Good for you.”

  Wells decided to press. “She said Hector had promised to take her to the United States with him.”

  “You’re lying.” But she said the words without heat, seeming to know he wasn’t.

  “Whatever information he had, he thought it was valuable. Enough that he could get a visa for himself. And Elena, too.”

  She led the shepherd inside, slammed the front door. Wells stood in the yard, replaying the conversation. It puzzled him, down to the most basic fact: Why had she let him in?

  A minute later, the door creaked open. Wells tensed, wondering if Graciela was about to set Rosa on him. But she walked out. Alone. Wearing a jacket big enough to hide secrets. Or a pistol. “This may sound strange, but I love Hector. Más vale estar solo que mal acompañado, my mother said. But he made me laugh, and it’s hard to make an ugly woman laugh. Are you telling me the truth? About the girl?”

  Wells saw: Graciela would betray her husband if Wells stayed out of her way. “Yes.”

  “I don’t know what he knew or where he is, that’s the truth. But the last few weeks, he’s been upset. Nervous. He was coming home late, asking me if anyone was watching the house.”

  Wells wondered why Frietas hadn’t touched his bank accounts if he was in trouble. Maybe he’d made a mistake so big that a million dollars wouldn’t begin to fix it. “Was anyone? Watching?”

  “Once I thought I saw someone, but I wasn’t sure. Then, maybe two weeks ago, his mood changed. He was happy. Wouldn’t tell me why. He never told me anything about where the money came from. He said it would be safer for me, and I believed him.”

  Wells didn’t believe her. Maybe she hadn’t known all the details, but she had to have known the money wasn’t clean. He didn’t argue, but she seemed to see his skepticism. She pushed past him.

  “Come on, let’s get your friend off the street.” She pulled open the gate, waved Coyle inside.

  “Gracias.”

  “Stick to English,” she said to Coyle. “So, no, he didn’t tell me anything. But he was in a better mood, I could tell. Then he disappeared. This was eight days ago. He told me he was going to Bogotá.”

  Another reason she’d believed Wells about Elena. “You weren’t surprised when he didn’t call?”

  “Not at first.”

  Wells thought now that Frietas’s disappearance was unrelated to whatever he’d been trying to sell to the United States. Or related only because it made him take a chance that had gotten him in trouble. Like someone had spotted his name on an airline manifest.

  “You have any idea where he might be?”

  She shook her head.

  “Was anyone helping him launder money? Inside the government, maybe?”

  “If there was, I don’t know who. Truly, he kept it away from me.”

  And you never asked. But the question of what Graciela had known was a distraction from the real issue: What had Frietas wanted to tell them? “Last year, did he bring any Russians over?”

  “No.”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Coyle said, grabbing her attention, “but did your husband have a safe house here?”

  “A what?”

  “I mean, is it possible he owned another house in Quito? Or rented one? The reason I ask is that we’ve been told he spent time with Russians about a year ago. Maybe they weren’t staying in a hotel.”

  Wells didn’t like the interruption, but Coyle was right. If the Russians had been in town for as long as the shopkeeper remembered, they would have been conspicuous in a hotel. Wells doubted they’d stayed at the Russian embassy either. The apartment in Bogotá proved Frietas liked his own properties. Why wouldn’t he have had one in Quito, too?

  “Another house?” Graciela weighed the idea. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  Wells thought she was protesting too much. From the way Coyle looked at Wells, he thought so, too.

  Maybe they’d touched a nerve, or maybe Graciela was tired of talking. She nudged Wells toward the gate. “Now, please. You need to leave.”

  “Just a few more questions. Your husband was no fool. He thought his information would be worth millions of dollars and a U.S. passport. Help us, they’re yours.”

  “Fine. Two minutes.”

  “Just to be clear, when did you last see Hector?”

  “The morning he said he was going to Bogotá. Eight days ago. Normally, he would go for three or four days.”

  “Did he give you any reason to think this trip would be different?”

  “No. But then he didn’t call. Three days ago, I started to worry. I called his secretary, friends at the bank. No one’s heard anything.”

  “He drove himself to the airport?”

  “Yes. He has a Mercedes like mine.”

  In the U.S. and Europe, luxury cars often came with automatic emergency roadside assistance programs that used the car’s own cellular link to broadcast their location in case of an accident. The link could also be used to find the cars if they were stolen. But Wells didn’t know if Mercedes offered the program in Ecuador or if it would work if the car had been turned off since the previous week. He’d ask Tarnes to find out.

  “Can you give us the plate number?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know. Now, listen, you really must leave.” She shook her head. “Whatever’s happened to Hector, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  She shoved them toward the gate. Wells didn’t want to upset her, not with the shepherd inside and neighbors all around, though she didn’t seem upset. He couldn’t read her at all.

  The gate slammed. Wells and Coyle looked at each other.

  “Weird,” Coyle said.

  “For lack of a better word. Let’s walk and talk.”

  They worked their way down José Tamayo while Wells filled Coyle in on the first part of the conversation.

  “Why let us in at all?” Coyle said when he finished. “She doesn’t know us, her husband’s missing, she knows he’s into something. We’re obviously not local. The sun’s down. Why?”

  The same question that stumped Wells.

  “And, okay, she has the dog, but then she puts him away and lets me in, too. Two of us.”

  “By then, she figured we weren’t a threat.”

  “How, exactly, did she figure that?”

  Wells stopped mid-stride.

  He had all the pieces of the puzzle, he’d just needed Coyle to shake them loose. Why Frietas had insisted on having the meeting outside normal agency channels. Why he and Graciela openly lived so richly. Why he hadn’t touched his money.

  “Statistician, my ass,” Coyle said, beating Wells to it.

  Graciela was an Ecuadorian intelligence officer. One senior enough to have a cover identity. She had let her husband make the dirty money, keep it in his name, pay for the house and the cars. He took all the risk. Maybe she’d grown tired of his affairs. Or lost her temper when she learned he was running off with his mistress. He’d wanted to keep the meeting secret because he was afraid she’d find out. But she had anyway. Or maybe he’d blurted out the truth the morning he was headed for Bogotá. Either way—

  She’d played Wells and Coyle decently, though she’d professed her complete ignorance too many times. Even the most naïve wife had some idea how her husband was making money. She’d agreed to talk because she would want to know why a pair of Americans were looking for him.

  Wells wondered if Graciela would set the security forces on them now that she knew what they wanted. He didn’t think so. She wouldn’t want too many questions about what had happened to dear old Hector.

  “You think she killed him?” Coyle said. “Father of her children?”

  “Possible.” More than possible.

  “What did she do with the body?”

  “Stuffed it in the Mercedes, w
ent for a drive. Parked it in that flophouse of his. Notice how fast she sent us packing after you brought that up?”

  The theory made sense to Wells. If she’d killed him in the heat of the moment, she wouldn’t have an alibi or a plan to dispose of the corpse. She was a strong woman, and Frietas a small man. She was big enough and tough enough to have stowed his body in the trunk while she figured out her next move. Maybe she had already driven into the Ecuadorian jungle, set the Mercedes on fire, left her husband’s corpse as a feast for the jaguars and the wild pigs. But she couldn’t have taken the Mercedes very far off road. Someone would have spotted it already. Which meant the car and Frietas’s body were probably still close by.

  “Here’s the thing. I don’t care if she killed him. I only care if she can help us.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, if we find the body, or figure out where it is, we make a deal with her.”

  “No justice for Hector?”

  “Hector should have kept it in his pants. Next question. How do we find him?” Wells explained his idea about the Mercedes. “It’s a long shot, but it’s probably the best place to start.”

  “Can we try the guy at the bodega first?”

  “How so?”

  “It slipped past me at the time, but remember what he said about how they came in without Frietas and he paid later? Let’s say they bought a couple weeks’ worth of booze. Let’s say the house isn’t close. Maybe it’s way up one of these hills. They walk down. Are they going to want to drag a bunch of bottles all the way back up themselves? No, they’re going to have our friend bring it for them.”

  “Maybe they took a taxi.”

  “Maybe. Never hurts to ask, though.”

  Back at the bodega, the shopkeeper was closing. He didn’t look thrilled to see them, but he nodded them inside. Wells handed him another twenty, and Coyle started asking questions. Even before the shopkeeper finished his answer, Coyle’s smile told Wells they were onto something.

  “He says they told him to deliver it on his motorbike that time. They gave him the address—”

  “Coyle. I’m starting to like you.”

  “Hold on. He can’t remember where exactly, but it was on this side of the valley, high up, where the streets end.”

  “We need an address, not a sonnet.”

  “He thinks he can find it if we take him around. He wants two hundred dollars.”

  “Dos cien,” the guy said, flashing his yellow teeth at Wells. “Dos cien dólares.”

  “We can manage that,” Wells said. “Let’s go. Vamonos.”

  “Mañana.” The guy shook his head and spoke to Coyle.

  “He says he has twin girls, they turn ten tonight, he won’t miss it, doesn’t care how much we pay him—”

  “Fine.” They would lose a night to the daughters of an Ecuadorian bodega owner. Wells could live with the delay, considering how much progress they’d just made.

  Long as the guy didn’t change his mind overnight.

  12

  ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND

  Wings. Beer. Sports.

  The televisions in the Buffalo Wild Wings were tuned to English Premier League soccer this afternoon, thin gruel for sports addicts. The night’s first pro basketball and hockey games were still hours off. Eric Birman was happy to see the place was mostly empty. Eric didn’t like meeting the man he knew as Adam Petersen so soon after their last encounter in the casino garage, but at least he didn’t have to worry about running into a congressional staffer having a drink after work.

  Adam sat alone in a corner booth, a computer programming manual on the table. Beside it was an oversized menu, open to pictures of entrées. As if B-Dubs didn’t trust its customers to know what wings looked like. This place catered to the idiots who enthusiastically supported his cousin.

  It wasn’t until Eric left the Army that he realized what an elitist he’d become. Why not? He and his men spent years apart from their families. They risked torture and death to protect the sheep at home. They couldn’t tell anyone, not even their wives, what they’d done.

  In truth, most civilians knew nothing about military service and cared even less. The okay ones thanked him, bought him a beer, left him in peace. The armchair warriors were the ones he couldn’t stand. The ones who wanted to hear about Black Hawk rides in the Empty Quarter, pretend they were soldiers, too.

  His cousin had that streak. Paul liked to hunt. Once a year, he made Eric go with him. As if killing animals made him Eric’s blood brother. They can’t shoot back, idiot.

  A decade ago, on one of those hunts, Paul had told Eric that he’d decided to run for the Senate. Take his dad’s seat. At the time, Eric was still in the Army. He hadn’t known what to say. He had always thought he would be the next Senator Birman. Henry was smart, but neither of his sons had inherited his brains. Paul barely scraped through the University of Tennessee, and spent twenty-five years cashing checks from the Birman family malls. He called himself a real estate developer. Like he’d ever developed anything other than tendinitis from playing too much tennis. His younger brother, Bobby, made him look good. Bobby spent most of his time dodging statutory rape charges.

  Naturally, Paul was Henry’s favorite. Paul was living proof that it was better to be lucky than good. And of course he had grown bored with the mall business at exactly the right time.

  “What do you think, cousin?”

  That you’re the most fortunate sumbitch who ever walked the earth. That I’d like to have an accident with this Mossberg 500. Though even the dumbest sheriff’s deputy in McNairy County might wonder how a decorated Joint Special Operations Command officer had so much trouble with a shotgun.

  “Sure people aren’t tired of having a senator named Birman?”

  “You’re kidding me, right? They gonna love me even more than Henry.”

  Paul was right. His aw-shucks conservatism played perfectly. Despite his wealth, he connected to average voters. I’m just like you, my fellow Tennesseans, only richer. Way richer. He rooted for the Volunteers, had a pretty wife, nice kids. He didn’t use big words or talk down. He listened to both kinds of music—country and western.

  Ultimately, folks liked him. The unteachable gift.

  Eric should never have gone to work for Paul. His fatal mistake. After Eric left the service, he figured he’d hang out for a while. Then hook up with a defense contractor or maybe go into politics. But he found spending time with his family next to impossible. He no longer understood his wife or kids. If he ever had. Their back talk made him grind his teeth. He was used to giving orders, not negotiating with a seventeen-year-old about her curfew while his wife yapped he was being too strict.

  The contractors were the next disappointment. He met with executives at Boeing, Northrop, Lockheed, all the biggies. The guys who’d served were okay. Most hadn’t, though. They spent their lunches bragging about their golf handicaps, the money they made playing the stock market. When Eric talked about problems with weapons and systems, they steered him away. The engineers can handle the details, they said. From you, we’re looking for the bigger picture. The right people to talk to down in Tampa—at MacDill Air Force Base, where Central Command was headquartered. In other words, they wanted him for his connections, nothing else. He walked out of their fancy clubs feeling like a high-class whore. He didn’t return their follow-up calls.

  That left politics. But Tennessee’s governor was popular. Eric had no shot to unseat him. And the thought of shaking hands for years to worm his way into Congress made his stomach ache. Even if he won, he’d be one of four hundred thirty-five representatives competing for attention. Decades from having any real power. He couldn’t wait decades.

  The Senate. That’s where he belonged. Senators had national platforms. Senators became presidents.

  But Paul was in his way. Lucky Cousin Paul. Tennessee was happy to
have one Senator Birman. Not two.

  Eric figured the only saving grace was that Paul would tire of the Senate after a few years. Paul liked hanging out at home. Home. A nice way to describe a twenty-acre estate with a garage full of hundred-thousand-dollar cars. So when Paul asked Eric to be his chief of staff, Eric agreed. In a term, two at most, Paul would quit. Meantime, Eric would make the important decisions.

  But Paul had a nasty habit of making up his own mind. Eric would never forget the day he’d told Paul the United States didn’t need new visa rules because of the Ebola epidemic.

  “We shouldn’t stop aid workers from going. It’ll be counterproductive.” They were in Paul’s palatial office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington.

  “Counterproductive.” Paul made the word sound like a curse. “Folks back home don’t want Africans bleeding Ebola all over them. That simple.”

  “The public health—”

  “Public health where? The Congo?”

  “The Congo is two thousand miles from West Africa.” As soon as he spoke, Eric knew he’d made a mistake.

  “I don’t need geography from you, cousin. Let me explain exactly what’s going to happen with this stupid Ebola. It’s about as big a public health emergency as hemorrhoids. Something for CNN to talk about while they’re waiting for something else to talk about. In a few weeks, we’ll forget all about it. Until then, the people who voted for me don’t want any brown people getting them sick with the E-bola or the AIDS or anything else. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now out. And the next time you have something you think I need to know, a teachable moment, you don’t call me Paul. You call me Senator. Better yet, keep your mouth shut.” He was shouting. Eric knew the staffers in the big office outside could hear.

  Worst of all, Paul was right. A few weeks later, everyone had forgotten Ebola.

  Eric could have quit, of course. Maybe he should have. But now that he was a few years out of the Army, his connection with Paul was his best selling point. He needed Paul more than ever.