by Joe Navarro
“Three, Rod will try to divide us. He did this with Lynn, and we can’t let it happen. If I jump down his throat, it’s because he’s getting out of hand.
“Four, don’t wear anything that would make you look like an agent. Jeans are fine, but no skirt, no business suits. On most occasions, I’ll be wearing a polo shirt with khaki pants, and for the record, my weapon will be concealed, as will yours.”
This got an eye roll—engagement was good.
“Five, no note-taking. We have to memorize everything Ramsay says, and it has to be accurate. I don’t know how long the interviews will last, but the shortest one so far has been two hours.”
A Moody question: “What do you guys talk about?”
A Navarro answer: “Everything. Rod’s going to talk about women, the army, his mother, history, the Peloponnesian War, physics.”
“What do I say to that?”
“Thank him. Have him educate you. Hang on his every word as if he’s a gifted professor, but don’t shut him down and don’t criticize him.”
“What if he’s full of shit?”
“He probably won’t be. The guy is incredibly smart. But even if bullshit is seeping out of his every pore, don’t say anything . . . that is, until we’re ready, and I’ll signal you when we get to that point.”
“Six?” I’d lost count, but she was obviously ticking this off.
“Six, use your smile.”
“Use my smile? I hope you and Jay don’t think I’m just going to sit there like a doll for this guy’s entertainment.”
“Moody, this is acting, and your role is important. You’ll play by the rules of comedy and improvisation: Never say no. You agree, you contribute something positive, you link to something useful, but you never say no or disagree. This rule cannot be broken—it’s about flow. Don’t go doing a Joe Friday on me. Whatever you learned at Quantico about how to handle interviewing, forget it—we need to get inside his head. Right now. Lastly . . . ”
“Seventhly,” Moody corrected. “My smile was item six.”
“Okay, seventhly, we’ll meet every day for breakfast and choreograph how we’ll sit, what we’ll talk about, what evidence we’ll present or leads we’ll pursue, and we’ll do everything in our power not to deviate from that. I want a confession within a week—one week. We need it.”
“You ask a lot.”
“Of myself and everyone else.”
“Anything else?” in a tone that suggests, hopefully, there couldn’t possibly be.
“Yes. Ramsay is never to sit higher than either of us even if we have to change the furniture or cut down the legs, I don’t care. We walk into the room first, then he comes in. We ask if he needs something to drink, and we regulate when he goes to the bathroom and what and when he eats. You and I are the parental figures, you understand? He’ll look to us for direction, and we’ll accommodate him, but he has to come to us first.
“Any chance Ramsay will have a gun?”
“Who knows? He hasn’t yet, but I’ll check him every time—an abrazo, a guy-hug. If you want to give him a little hug, fine, but always feel for the small of his back. That’s probably where the gun would be. And for God’s sake, if he does pull a gun and we’re struggling, don’t hesitate, don’t try to aim, just shoot him in the head. Are we clear?”
“Clear as day. Tell me, Navarro, are you like this at home?”
“No, at home I make them recite back what I just said.”
Moody looked at me not knowing if I was lying or telling the truth. In fact, I was doing a little bit of both. The reality of this new assignment was hitting her—I could see it on her face.
“Let’s take a ten-minute break,” I said.
“Good, I need to go powder my nose and ask myself why I agreed to work with you.”
* * *
NINE MINUTES AND FIFTY seconds later, She-Moody turned up at my office door looking not only relieved but amazingly refreshed. Her hair, which had started to come undone in the conference room, had been pulled back. Her face had a ruddy, scrubbed glow. She had a pad and pen in one hand and a water bottle in the other. I was impressed—at least she’d come back.
“So where do you want me to start?” she asked, clearly thinking I was going to hand her a file.
“You see the four-drawer cabinet over in the corner labeled ‘Navarro Eyes Only’?”
“Yup,” she said, following my eyes. “There it is.”
“Begin with Volume One, Serial One. That will help you get started. Then keep going.”
“Everything in the cabinet?”
“Everything,” I confirmed as we relocated by the file cabinet.
“And that would include . . . ?”
“Serials,” I said, sliding open the top drawer. “They’re not going to mean a lot to you at first.” I began paging through one of the files, showing her a jumble of messages, communications, photos, other bits and scraps of paper. “CI is a different world than Criminal. You’ve got a whole new language to learn: ‘liaise,’ ‘false flag.’ ”
“Sounds doable.”
“What’s a letter rogatory?” I threw at her.
“A letter what?”
“Letters rogatory are formal letters or requests that a recognized nation state sends to a corresponding nation state and in particular its justice department, asking for help with something criminal, such as an opportunity to talk to someone, conduct a deposition, or ask questions.”
“Got it, letters rogatory,” she said, writing it down. She maybe wasn’t liking my tutorial, but at least she was willing to learn.
“Usually, the receiving nation states do the query, and that can vary from average to poor because they’re not vested in the case, and if you don’t ask the specific question, it won’t get asked. Plus, if the suspect says no, there’s no follow-up. It’s the most shitty way of conducting interviews . . . ”
“Shitty with two ‘t’s?”
That was funny! But I was in another mood.
“Letters rogatory—note the plural, like ‘attorneys general’—are what has been relegated to us by diplomats. You get a host interviewer, generally an attorney who doesn’t like us because it took too long for his family to get a visa to the US, and the attorney will either do a for-shit job or do it so far in the future that it will no longer matter. This is why the FBI maintains and always has had legal attachés in foreign embassies, even before the CIA existed, to conduct liaison and to make sure these things get handled, sometimes by other methods, such as persuasion or over a drink.”
“Got it.”
“Do you? How about PHOTINT? HUMINT? SIGNINT?”
“I’ve heard the terms.”
“What’s a ‘barium pill’?”
“Okay, you got me there,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
“You’ve got to know this stuff!” Boom, boom, boom—I could actually hear my blood pressure climbing into the ozone layer. I didn’t have time to be teaching, but I also didn’t have any choice.
“A barium pill is something that can be traced because of a particular micro-stain—indentations, scratches, markings, maybe a micro-tear, maybe a particular word within each document or a word intentionally misspelled deep inside the document. Why? Because we can then trace the document’s origin, vector, and/or provenance. Example: If you and He-Moody are equally but separately suspected of espionage, I would give each of you the same letter or document to pass on, but on yours I might use a comma on the eighth line and on his I might use a semicolon. Most people wouldn’t notice, but if the document shows up where it shouldn’t be, we can ask an asset to see if there’s a comma or a semicolon on the eighth line—a low-risk proposition, but we can trace back from there and identify the culprit. We use barium pills all the time.”
“Okay,” Moody said. “I get it. By when do you want me to have this file cabinet read?”
“Well,” I said, checking my watch. “It’s just a tick before noon. I’m headed out to lunch. Then I want to take a run down by the Ba
y. And this afternoon I need to spend some time with an asset I’m training to pass himself off as a disaffected spy. We’re going to run him against a hostile service in the Soviet Bloc to see if they’re still interested even though things are crumbling all around. I’m guessing I’ll be back here between five and six. What do you say you have the file cabinet memorized by then?”
“Navarro?” There was an edge to Moody’s voice.
“What?”
“Where does it say that in the FBI manual?”
“Say what?”
“That you have to be an asshole.”
10
THE EDUCATION OF NAVARRO
The trip from downtown Tampa to International Drive in Orlando takes eighty-five minutes on Interstate 4—not a lot of time, but time is precious right now. Moody and I have been partners for two weeks, but she had a lot of old cases to clean up. We’ve been working side by side only for the last two days, and this is my last chance to get her ready for her first meeting with Rod Ramsay. I’m not wasting a minute of our drive time.
“How are you going to shake hands with him?” I ask as the tread flies off a truck tire in front us.
“Navarro!”
“I mean it. How are you going to do it?”
“Well,” she says, “since you haven’t yet mentioned that he lacks a right arm, I’ll probably reach over with my own right hand, give him a firm grip, and look him square in the eye. And then maybe I’ll briefly cover his hand with my left hand to reinforce how glad I am to meet him.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No!” I say, more emphatically than necessary. “You never do that. You’re not entitled to cover somebody else’s hand with yours. Politicians do that because they’re idiots, but everybody else hates it. You are, however, entitled to shake Rod’s hand and touch him on the elbow, but don’t do it today.”
“Why not?”
“Because Rod is not entitled to it. He hasn’t earned that extra touch from you yet.”
“Oh, for crissake . . . ”
“I want this first handshake sterile, you understand? Eye contact, sure. A firm grip. The FBI way. But nothing more than that. If he’s good and gives us information, then you can touch him some more.”
“Where?”
The pause that follows this question is frankly a little unnerving. The look on Moody’s face makes me wonder if she’s reconsidering her career choice—maybe even considering rolling out of the car if we hit a traffic jam. Finally, she sighs, takes a deep breath, and looks at her watch.
“We’re meeting Ramsay at six o’clock, right?”
“Correct. The Embassy Suites on International Drive.”
“But we’re going to get there in, what, maybe fifteen minutes?”
“Yep,” I confirm, checking my watch. “We should pull in at just about four-forty-five.”
“So, what are we going to do for the hour and a quarter before he arrives?”—this in a tone that suggests she might not want to know the answer.
“Rearrange furniture and, if we’re lucky, one more rehearsal.”
This time Moody just sighs and waits for me to go on. I’m thinking, however, that a little quiet time might be best considering the circumstances.
* * *
ROOM 316 TURNS OUT to be pretty much what I anticipated—a midsized suite with adequate sitting space in the front, and with the rolling swivel chair I requested waiting in the center of the room. We slide the sofa over, so Rod will be sitting within a few steps of the door, and relocate an end table and lamp so the light won’t be shining directly on him. We could be here for three, four hours or more. That light would be way too distracting for him. Then I reposition the one easy chair in the room so Moody will be sitting at a slightly oblique angle to Ramsay.
“Sit down,” I say as I plop into what will be Ramsay’s position.
“Why?”
“Because I want to be certain your eyes will be higher than his, and they will be,” I say, popping up again, “so long as you don’t slouch.”
I’m adjusting the height on my swivel chair when Moody drags the coffee table over and positions it just in front of the sofa.
“Move it farther away,” I tell her.
“It’s a coffee table. Coffee tables are for putting things on.”
“Not this coffee table. At some point during the interview, I’m going to say to Rod, ‘Do you want something to drink?’ And he’s going to say, ‘Yes,’ because by then he’ll be thirsty. And I’ll say, ‘Why don’t you get up and get it from the table.’ ”
“But if we move the coffee table out here,” Moody says, “you’ll be closer to it than he is. Why not just be a nice guy and hand him the drink?”
“Because I’m establishing the father-child relationship. When he wants to go to the bathroom, he has to ask me for permission. If he wants a drink, he has to wait for me to offer it, and he has to get it himself. And it’s got to be the same with you. Nothing free. Nothing easy. That’s why he’ll be sitting in the lowest seat in the room—so he has to physically look up to both of us. I’m the father. You’re the mother. Don’t forget it.”
“From everything you’ve told me about Ramsay, I don’t want to be this guy’s mother, okay?”
“Moody,” I say, “CI is theater on a world stage. We have to get this right, not for you, not for me, not for the Bureau, or the Germans, and certainly not for the Washington Field Office. We do this because this is what we get paid to do—a job that’s not for everyone. If this were a destruction-of-government-property case, no one would care. But this is espionage. We have everyone from the SAC to the Director to the CIA looking at this case. Oh, and did I tell you that David Major on the National Security Council staff at the White House is aware of this case and has been briefing those above him, and so is State Department?”
I can’t tell if David Major, our FBI representative to the National Security Council, rings Moody’s chime or not, but I do know that I’ve got her attention.
“So while you may not want to play mother, and I don’t particularly care to play father to someone who doesn’t share my values, those are precisely the roles we’re going to play. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what you were taught at Quantico about interviewing. We have to get into this guy’s head, and we have to dominate it. And to do that I need for you to kindly do as I request and not question my methods when we’re twenty-one minutes away from touchdown.”
Moody’s silence might indicate that she’s processing what I am saying or just loathing me further. I send up a small prayer for the former.
“One last thing: You and I were handed a turd. Conrad will never talk, the Kercsik brothers can’t be trusted, nor can we use their testimony, and HQ is doing everything possible to get in our way and derail this investigation. So in the end, we—you and me, She-Moody and Navarro—are the only game in town.”
* * *
THE NEXT TEN MINUTES pass in silence—if you discount the veins pulsating loudly along both our temples. I’m thinking of Trappist monks when Moody finally breaks the quiet.
“So what’s next—if I dare ask?”
“We have to rehearse how we’re going into walk in the room.”
“Walk into the room? It’s an interview, Navarro. Not a wedding.” She’s still resisting but not as much.
“They’re both processions; they’re both rituals. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything. We have to establish psychological dominance and hierarchy, and that starts before we enter this room.”
Moody is rolling her eyes in a way that must have driven high-school boys nuts back on the midwestern plains of her well-spent youth but to me is sending up yellow warning flags.
“You don’t own a dog, do you?” I ask.
“No, I don’t.”
“Here’s why I ask. You never let a dog go in the door first or exit the door first. You make him sit until you decide what is permissible—otherwise the dog thinks he is in charge.
With humans it’s more nuanced, but essentially no different.”
“They told me you liked to play mind games, Navarro, but I swear to God, I had no idea how true that is.”
“I wish it were a game. You don’t lose sleep over a game.”
I spend the next seven minutes indoctrinating Moody in the Navarro Way of entering a room—she first, me second, Ramsay last—and of sitting down once inside: Ramsay first, but not until we invite him to do so and exactly where we tell him to sit; then Moody in the easy chair; then me on my rolling swivel seat. I went through all this fourteen months earlier with Lynn Tremaine, but Lynn wasn’t an utter stranger to counterintelligence. Moody is a CI babe in the woods, I’m thinking, and the woods could catch fire at any moment.
* * *
TWELVE MINUTES LATER, AT 6:09 p.m., Terry Moody and I are standing in the lobby of the Embassy Suites, off to the left side of the main entrance, studying surveillance angles. Just as I remind her that we’ll be taking Rod directly upstairs and that she’s to follow my lead in all matters, Ramsay walks in and cranes his head up toward the landing where I was standing two days before to watch him enter.
“That him?” Moody says to me.
“It is, but let him find us.”
Moody, though, is already walking toward him.
“You must be Rod Ramsay,” I hear her saying as I close the space between us. Moody has her hand out, a firm grip, good eye contact. “I’m Agent Moody, Agent Navarro’s new partner.”
Rod looks a little stunned, in all honesty, but not unhappily so.
“But why don’t you call me Terry. ‘Agent’ sounds so—”
“Formal?”
“That’s it, formal.”
Rod’s stunned look, I notice, is softening into a major smile.
“Rod,” I say, slipping between the two of them, “thanks for—”
“Agent Navarro,” it’s Moody again, edging me off to the side with a surprisingly strong hip check, “if I could just have one more moment.”
“Rod,” she says, staring him straight in the face, “you’ll pardon a mother’s instincts, I hope, but what have you had to eat today?”
Now that she says it, I can see that his face is even more gaunt than it was two days ago.