The Deceivers

by Alex Berenson

  “Whoever was in that house was Russian, and Hector Frietas definitely thought they were connected to Dallas.”

  “I’ll run the names, see if we or NSA have anything on a banker code-named Z in Mexico.”

  “He might be at Banamex. The banker.”

  “Right. What else?”

  “We’re going through Houston on our way to Mexico City. Can we hand the phone to someone there, give the basement a chance at it?” The hackers at the Directorate of Science and Technology worked out of the basement of the Original Headquarters Building.

  “Done. The badge and paperback, too.”

  “You want our flight number?”

  “Guessing there’s only one flight from Quito to Houston at midnight. What else?” For the first time, she sounded ready to be rid of him and back to whatever she did on Friday night. Wells thought about asking her to arrange pistols for them in Mexico, but if he couldn’t figure out a way to talk to a banker without being strapped, he ought to go home.

  “Anything new from Dallas?”

  “Not much. Your buddy Ellis is out of the hospital, and the cops wiped the arrest, but you already knew that.”

  “Arrest?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Haven’t talked to him since I came down here.” Wells didn’t mention that Tarnes was the reason.

  “He went down there, looking for something, I don’t know what, but he got hurt, and the police picked him up. I only heard about it because he asked Duto for help.”

  “Hurt how?”

  “Someone banged him up. He was out of commission a couple days.”

  “You know what he was looking for?”

  “Not a clue. I think he’s still down there, though.” Tarnes didn’t say anything else, but Wells heard the questions, anyway: How come this is news? Aren’t you two pals? “I’ll let you know if I hear anything about the banker. Fly safe. By the way, we finally got someone to break open that safe. Empty.

  Wells had figured as much. Then she was gone. Wells was glad Coyle was still at the counter buying the tickets. He felt like Shafer had betrayed him, though the reverse was more accurate. He called Shafer, got voice mail. He didn’t leave a message.

  The Quito–Houston flight landed at 5:50 a.m. It was not even 7 a.m. Saturday morning when they cleared immigration. Still, Wells was not surprised to see a beefy guy in jeans nodding at him as he walked into the arrivals hall.

  “Mr. Wells. Ms. Tarnes sent me.”

  Wells handed over the phone, badge, and book. The guy slipped everything into a black bag and walked off without a word.

  “Tarnes,” Coyle said.

  “Yeah, she doesn’t play.”

  Wells called Shafer again, got voice mail again. They were booked on a 9 a.m. to Mexico City, but as Wells looked for the departure gate, he realized United had canceled the flight. The next flight wasn’t until noon. An annoyance, though they wouldn’t have much to do in Mexico until they had found Z’s real name. Wells almost wanted to go north, to New Hampshire. But he didn’t know how long Tarnes might need, and going home for a few hours would only upset Emmie.

  He called instead.

  “John.” Anne’s voice was dry. Scratchy. “Still in Quito?”

  “Houston. Everything okay? You sound sick.”

  “I just puked breakfast over the Maine line.”

  “Babe. Emmie sick, too?”

  “I doubt it. Unless she’s also pregnant. In which case, we have bigger problems.”

  Wells told himself he hadn’t forgotten Anne was pregnant. Not really. He’d just set the fact aside.

  “Hold on a sec—” The unmistakable sound of retching. “Lucky me. I’m down to spit. You know what they say: If men had to have babies, the whole human race would end.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Blame your son. The only things he seems to like are bananas. And vanilla ice cream.” Anne half laughed. “I just need him to get interested in chocolate sauce. I got a prescription for Zofran this morning. I’ll live. The big question. How is it possible I’ve gained ten pounds if I can’t keep anything down? The other big question: So you’re done in Quito? Making progress?”

  “Maybe. We have to go to Mexico City. Talk to a member of the global banking conspiracy.” Hoping to make her smile.

  “You say so.” She sounded more exhausted than annoyed. Like she lacked the energy to care. Not that Wells could blame her. “Emmie’s right here—” Her way of hanging up on him without having to hang up.

  “Hi, Dada! Hihihi—” No adult could ever be excited like a three-year-old. “Where are you, Daddy?”

  “Houston—”

  “I go to Houston all the time! With my sixty-five sisters!” Emmie insisted now that she had sixty-five sisters. Or sometimes eighty-five. Kayla, Kaylee, Kaydee, et al. . . . “I fly there!”

  “Yeah, it’s a long drive. You like Houston?”

  “It’s called Booston, actually. Not Houston.”

  “Booston.”

  “Yes, Booston. It’s okay. But boring. Okay, I have to go, Dada. My sixty-five sisters! Love you. Bye!” She hung up before Wells could ask her to give the phone back to Anne. He found himself grinning, his usual response to these chats.

  “She sounds sweet,” Coyle said.

  “The best. One day, Duto’s going to call. I’m going to look at her—”

  “And answer.”

  “Maybe. You’ll see when you have kids, Coyle.”

  “No kids for me.”

  “Because of your brother?” Coyle’s younger brother, Lincoln, had died years before, hit by a car as he bicycled through Inglewood to watch Coyle play baseball. Not coincidentally, Coyle joined the Marines shortly afterward. “He wouldn’t want you to give up your chance for a family.”

  “How do you know what he’d want, John? You never met him. And guess what? You never will.” Coyle shook his head. This portion of our conversation is over. “Now what? Team-building exercises while we wait for the flight?”

  “Go ahead. I’m taking a nap.”

  “Oldster.”

  “I think of myself as seasoned.”

  In Mexico City, they booked themselves into the NH, a shiny business-class hotel in the Zona Rosa. The area was a once-swanky but now slightly run-down neighborhood not far from Polanco.

  A Google search revealed that Banamex, the second-largest bank in Mexico, was owned by Citigroup and had recently changed its official name to Citibanamex to emphasize the relationship. Everyone still seemed to call it Banamex, though. In 2015, Citi had paid a one-hundred-forty-million-dollar fine for money laundering at the company’s American subsidiary and shut it down as part of the settlement.

  But the search for Z proved fruitless. The Internet revealed nothing about a banker named or nicknamed Z at Banamex or any other Mexican bank.

  “So much for the easy out,” Coyle said. “How else do we find this guy?”

  After years watching Shafer work, Wells had some ideas. WWSD: What would Shafer do? “Here’s one idea. I’ll bet these places have live phone operators in their high-net-worth divisions because rich people like to feel special, and touch-tone keypads don’t make anyone feel special.”

  “So we just start cold-calling these banks on Monday, ask for Z, see if anyone connects us?”

  “Not we, amigo. You’re the one who speaks Spanish.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “If it comes to that. Let’s get some sleep, see if Tarnes has something in the morning.”

  “I may go out. If that’s cool with you.”

  Wells wanted to ask where. But Coyle was a grown-up, and they weren’t in the Marines. What the man did with his nights was his own business. “Have fun.”

  “Oh, I will.”

  Whatever Coyle got up to, he was showered and shave
d and knocking on Wells’s door at 7 a.m. while Wells was still doing his morning push-ups. Youth. Coyle didn’t say where he’d been. Wells didn’t ask.

  Now they were in Polanco, Tarnes calling. “Sorry it took so long.”

  “Thirty-six hours. You’re losing it.”

  She didn’t laugh. “We didn’t have anything, NSA didn’t either. This morning, I tried DEA. Lots of Mexican cartel guys with names or nicknames that start with Z. Zorro, Zapata, of course the Zetas. No bankers. But three years ago, part of a big money laundering investigation, they opened a file on a banker named Alina Mendoz.”

  “A woman.”

  “Last I checked, women could launder money, too. She’s in what Banamex calls its mid-high-net-worth division. Three to thirty million.”

  “Alina Mendoz. That’s it? Her last name ends with z?”

  “That’s not it. She was on the accounts for three suspected traffickers. Guess what? Two were Ecuadorian.”

  “What’d she say to the DEA?”

  “Nobody ever talked to her. The cross-border stuff made it messy, and they had a hundred bigger fish.”

  “No direct evidence, then.”

  “Didn’t realize you needed me to find the diary entry that says I laundered Russian money today. I’ll email you her file. It’s not much. And I’ll text you her address. And I’ll keep looking, Your Highness.”

  She was gone. Wells wondered if she was annoyed, decided it didn’t matter. One thing he already knew about Tarnes, she would do her job either way.

  Mendoz’s address hit his phone. No surprise, it was in Polanco, a few blocks northeast. Calle Hegel. Many streets in the neighborhood were named after philosophers and scientists.

  The phone buzzed again, a CNN alert:

  Missouri megachurch pastor killed in sniper attack outside church.

  Police say “expert sniper” carried out attack, warn area churchgoers to be wary.

  Wells showed Coyle the screen.

  “Doesn’t have to be terrorism. Maybe the guy was having a two-person Bible study group with somebody’s wife.”

  “Maybe.”

  Five minutes later, they stood outside Mendoz’s property. The security here was as tight as in Bogotá. Behind narrow sidewalks, both sides of Calle Hegel were lined with ten-foot walls topped with barbed wire. Every house had security cameras. The big ones had their own guardhouses.

  Wells peeked through Mendoz’s steel gate at the 7 Series BMW in the driveway. The sedan rode low on its frame. A Rottweiler roamed the yard. It came to the gate, growled at Wells, a rumble more menacing than any bark.

  “Car looks armored,” Wells said. “Dog might be, too.”

  “Maybe we should just ring the bell.”

  Wells considered. Me and my buddy are thinking about buying in the nabe. But bankers for drug traffickers didn’t open their doors to men they didn’t know. Not if they wanted long healthy lives. And trying would cost Wells and Coyle any chance of surprise. Even standing here for more than a minute or two might hurt their chances.

  As if to prove the point, a police cruiser stopped beside them. The passenger window dropped, and the officer in the passenger seat waved Coyle over. Wells couldn’t understand the conversation that followed, but Coyle stayed cool. Finally, the cruiser pulled away.

  “We good?”

  “Long as we’re gone when they come back.”

  Wells mulled their options as they walked back to Avenida Masaryk. The house was out. The idea of trying to snatch Mendoz on the way to work was equally far-fetched. She’d have a driver. Probably a bodyguard, too. Rich Mexicans built their lives around the constant threat of kidnapping.

  “It’s going to have to be her office,” Wells said. Not ideal. They’d have a hard time making a threat stick. Mendoz would know she could get rid of them simply by yelling Call Security! to her secretary. Anyway, why meet them at all? Wells assumed most of her clients came through word of mouth.

  “I don’t see Banamex just letting us in. Unless you have five million bucks lying around to impress her.”

  Wells realized that Coyle had the answer. “My man. You think you’re joking, but you’re not.”

  Back at the NH, they watched CNN for news of the Missouri shooting:

  Preacher Luke Hurley shot to death in front of congregants . . . Worshippers describe terrifying scene, as preacher collapsed without warning . . . Governor Roy Steiner says police believe sniper shot from “hundreds of yards with pinpoint accuracy” . . . FBI, police to hold press conference at four p.m. . . .

  Then:

  No claim of responsibility as yet, but Muslim groups sharply criticized Hurley last year after he said the United States had “a duty to protect Christians from Muslim barbarians . . . Any Muslim who disagrees isn’t a real American and doesn’t belong here. As a pastor, I have a duty to stand up for Christian values.”

  “Still think it’s not terrorism?” Wells clicked open the dossier Tarnes had sent on Mendoz.

  As Tarnes had warned, it was thin, a basic biography, with a single passport photo. Mendoz was forty-eight, had two teenage kids. She’d married in her late twenties to a plastic surgeon, divorced him a decade later. The pic revealed a dark-haired woman, thin-lipped, self-possessed. Property records showed Mendoz had moved into the house in Polanco about seven years ago, long after the divorce, implying that she paid for it herself.

  All in all, Wells didn’t think Mendoz would be in a hurry to give them the truth. He called Tarnes, who picked up on the first ring. As usual. Wells wondered if the phone was plugged into her brain.

  “We need a Colombian passport for Coyle and five million dollars. Tomorrow, if possible.”

  Silence from Tarnes. Wells was happy to have stumped her, if only for a minute.

  “May I ask why?”

  “We think the only way to get to Mendoz is officially through Banamex. There’s plenty of black Colombians, and Coyle’s Spanish should get us in the door.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll be his American lawyer. But we’re pretty sure she’ll want to see cash before she says yes.”

  “Can’t you just tell her you’re selling Girl Scout cookies?”

  “You can’t do it, let me know.”

  “Didn’t say that.”

  Her voice slightly acid, letting Wells know she didn’t like being told what she couldn’t do. As he’d hoped.

  He heard her typing. “Lucky you. There’s a one a.m. nonstop from Dulles to Mexico City. We’ll put the passport together tonight and courier it to you. It may not be live, but it’ll look real enough to convince the bank. The money—I don’t know. I assume this is a bank account, right? Not straight cash. Not even sure how you’d carry that much money around.”

  “Yes. But not a U.S. bank. The Caymans, someplace shady but not completely dark. Somewhere they know they can deal with. Shouldn’t be in whatever name you give Coyle either. Make it a trust. Nobody with five million dollars to hide has a personal account.”

  “I get it. I know someone at Treasury who can help, make it look right.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Wells said.

  “Is that a question?”

  “This is. You hear anything about Missouri?”

  “They found what they think is the hide. Five hundred yards away. Single shot, center chest. Hurley was dead before he hit the ground. Plus whoever did it made sure there were no cameras anywhere.”

  Details that added up to a pro job, a police- or military-trained sniper. You couldn’t learn to shoot that way from YouTube, no matter how many videos you watched.

  “How’d the shooter get away?”

  “Good question. Whoever did it was local or had a car. They’re pulling video. But the betting is the guy scouted his exit route in advance. Lot of local roads with no cameras. Before you ask, no chatter
. Now the idiots are tweeting about how it was Allah’s will. But nothing from the official Islamic State accounts.”

  Yet the fact Tarnes knew so many details proved terrorism was on the table. Fifty people were murdered in the United States every day. Nobody called the CIA.

  “You hear anything big—”

  “I’ll let you know. I’ll start on the bank account right away. I may need you to sign something saying you’re not going to touch the money.”

  “There goes my retirement.”

  Tarnes didn’t laugh. “I’ll call you tomorrow, John.”

  “Julie? Thanks.”

  Wells called Shafer again. Still nothing.

  “Ellis. It’s Sunday afternoon. I heard you ran into trouble in Dallas. Call me, let me know you’re okay.”

  Six hours later. “Ellis. I know you’re old and mad—and nobody does mad like you—but this isn’t about you. I’m in Mexico City with Coyle. Remember Coyle? Marine? Good with a shotgun? We may have something.”

  As they went to bed, Shafer still hadn’t called. By now, Wells figured Shafer didn’t have anything real. Nothing he’d locked down, anyway. If he did, he would have called. If only to gloat.

  Wells found out he was wrong the next morning as his phone buzzed him out of a confused dream about a minor-league baseball team. Related to Coyle, he assumed. The bedside clock said 5:48 a.m.

  “Hello, sunshine. I wake you? I’m calling to tell you I’ve decided to forgive you for your many sins.”

  The monotone grumble of a late-night radio host at the end of his shift. The words not so much layered with irony as built from them. Shafer. “Too bad you aren’t God.”

  “Can you really be sure?”

  Wells flipped on the lights. This call was turning into a little too much Shafer a little too soon.

  “Ask me why I’m up so early, John.”

  “Why are you up so early?”

  “A very bad man broke my head. It wouldn’t even make your top twenty, but I’m not sleeping much. So I heard your pathetic messages and decided I’d say hello.”