Three Minutes to Doomsday

by Joe Navarro

  Before we even get to I-4, Moody is fast asleep in the passenger seat. Beside her, behind the wheel, I’m basically on autopilot as my brain churns through its usual long algorithm of whats and what-ifs: What’s next? What needs to be done? Where are we going to be blindsided: HQ, WFO, Bamford, the Germans, the Swedes, Ramsay’s mother, a defense attorney, Rod himself, someone yet unidentified? And the biggest what-if of all: What if I’ve already screwed us to high heaven with that maybe, sorta, etc., prosecutorial waiver?

  Sure, this is wonderful, I tell myself. We have a confession. But you can’t convict on that alone, not in espionage, and you can’t even bring the case to trial without corroborating every single thing Rod says . . .

  Enough, I think, chiding myself. Eyes on the road. But I wonder if Moody, now in a deep sleep with a smile on her face—something I’ve never seen anyone do before—understands how much more complex this is going to get, how stressful, how time-consuming and draining.

  Enjoy your rest, Moody, I say to myself, as I puzzle over that smile. You done good.

  I wish I could sleep so bad it hurts.

  12

  THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING?

  Backstory: She-Moody and I leave Orlando a little after one-thirty in the morning, arrive at the Tampa FBI office (where I wake up Terry and walk her to her car) a shade after two-thirty, and then I head for home. My daughter is sleeping, of course, but as I cradle her face in my hands, she opens her eyes just for an instant. Will she think it a dream in the morning? I have no idea what time I fall asleep, but the alarm gets me up at 5:55 a.m. I leave a note propped up on the breakfast table for Luciana and Stephanie that reads, “I Love You,” but I’ve done this so many times, they have to take it on faith.

  Strangely enough, as I head toward the office, I find myself thinking about astronauts and moon rocks. Just about the first thing Neil Armstrong did when he set foot on the moon was to reach down in his Michelin Man spacesuit, pick up a rock, and stow it in his utility pocket. Why? Because that rock was his insurance. If everything else went to hell in a handbasket as soon as they started walking around the lunar surface and he and Buzz Aldrin had to hop back in their Eagle lander and blast off for Michael Collins and Apollo 11, they would still have that rock to show for the 239,000 miles they’d traveled and the infinite dangers of their journey.

  That’s what Rod’s confession was last night—our moon rock, enough to go to trial on, enough to satisfy the statute on at least one count of espionage, enough to put Rod Ramsay in the prison cell he so deserved to occupy. If, of course, I hadn’t “fucked the whole business to high heaven,” as Koerner had put it, with an implied prosecutorial waiver.

  When I call Jane Hein, my trusted friend and now case supervisor at FBI headquarters, on the secure phone at 8:00 sharp, I decide to concentrate on the good news only. She’ll have already had her morning run. I know how religious she is about it because years ago back in the Big Apple we used to run together when the city was just waking up. We stayed side by side for the first half mile or so, but after that all I saw was Jane’s butt and elbows—that woman can cover ground.

  “Jane, are you sitting?” I ask, in my best early-morning voice.

  “Why?”

  “Are . . . you . . . sitting?” I repeat, spacing my words out, making sure I have her full attention.

  “I am, Joe. Break it to me gently. What happened now? How bad is it?”

  “O ye of little faith,” I say.

  “Is this going to cost me my retirement?” she asks, sipping on her morning tea.

  “You sure you’re sitting?”

  “Yes, dammit, let’s hear it!”

  “Ramsay confessed last night.”

  “What?” Jane wants to make sure she heard right.

  “Ramsay confessed last night, in front of Moody and me.”

  “Holy shit, are you serious?”

  “Serious as a heart attack, Jane. He confessed.”

  “To what, exactly?”

  “To taking documents from the G-3 vault. To being Clyde Conrad’s ‘right-hand man’ in espionage. To knowingly transporting classified documents to Vienna for the purpose of selling them to agents of a foreign power. To knowingly transporting the proceeds of said transaction—twenty thousand dollars by his estimate—back to Germany. To helping steal the go-to-war plans for the Eighth ID.”

  “The go-to-war plans, for crissake?”

  “You heard it right. Go. To. War. And along with Conrad, using the Kercsik brothers to transport those plans to the Hungarians, knowing they could cause grievous harm to the United States of America.”

  “How much?”

  “How much what?”

  “How much did the Hungarians pay?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars, according to Ramsay.”

  “Cheap. They got a bargain.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  “So, do we roll Ramsay up now, or does he have more to say?”

  “More, I’m sure of it. Maybe lots more.”

  I can hear Jane scrawling notes. Finally, she takes a deep breath.

  “I want the paperwork, Joe, all of it.”

  “It’s on the way,” I say, only slightly lying. “I’ve also got a request in there for our legal attaché in Vienna. Ramsay described the interior of a restaurant where he watched Conrad hand stolen documents off to another man and get back an envelope stuffed with money. I need someone to vet the description and . . . ”

  “And you don’t want this request to go through the Washington Field Office. Would that be correct?”

  “You can read me like a book, Jane.”

  “Don’t worry,” she says. Then just before hanging up she adds, “Joe, this changes everything.”

  Does it? I hope to hell so.

  * * *

  AS I SIT AT my desk, I’m stewing about the ability of a good defense attorney to argue that, by engaging so freely in hypotheticals, I’d intentionally confused Rod into thinking he’d never do time for his actions.

  What bothers me even more, though, is that we’re no longer dealing with a semi-bullshit charge. Rod Ramsay was never going to do heavy time for a contemplated end run around the computer chip embargo. Now, though, he’s confessed to something far, far more serious, and that same good defense attorney might well argue that Rod believed the prosecutorial waiver he assumed applied to the computer chips extended to anything else he might subsequently tell Moody and me. If so, all that giddy exhilaration Moody and I felt early this morning driving back to Tampa is going to turn sour in a big hurry.

  A thought I can’t banish from my brain is that Rod intentionally led me into this legal maelstrom. I know it sounds a little paranoid, but as I mentally replay the interview from two nights ago, I keep seeing Rod baiting the conversation with hypothetical this, hypothetical that, teasing me along with nebulous words and elastic meanings until I fell right into the rabbit hole he wanted me to stumble into. Is he that smart? I keep asking myself. And the answer that keeps coming back is Yes. Which is this why he talked so freely to Moody and me last night—because he knew that even if he confessed to us that he’d kidnapped the Lindbergh baby and committed mass murder, he already had a “Get Out of Jail Free” card sitting in his pocket.

  Either that or we have outsmarted him. I can’t decide.

  * * *

  JAY, TO HIS EVERLASTING credit, celebrates the good news when Moody and I enter his office a little before nine (“Confession? That’s great!”), not bothering to point out what all of us full well realize: that this great confession might not count for diddly-squat. I’m not much of one for hiding my feelings—he can tell how this is gnawing at me. And he knows that in addition to the tour through legal hell that will take up most of my morning and afternoon, I’m subbing for one of our pilots and flying surveillance tonight.

  In fact, the only direct mention Jay makes of my quandary is to remind me to start with the division legal counsel and be sure to read him in on the case, wh
ich is exactly what I’m doing forty-five minutes later.

  A word of explanation: Each division of the FBI has a full-time attorney who provides the Tier-One legal advice necessary so agents can stay up-to-date with new cases and perform their work properly. But the fact that these counsels have a law degree doesn’t exempt them from normal security precautions. When cases are particularly sensitive and involve highly classified materials—as the Rod Ramsay case now does—the legal counsels have to be “read in,” or reminded that the issues involved are not to be further discussed.

  I’ve just finished sketching the issues for our division legal counsel, and reminding him that silence is not only golden but mandatory, when he reiterates exactly what has been eating at me for the last thirty-six hours: This case needs to stand up to both general judicial scrutiny and to a spirited attack from a competent defense attorney, and sad to say, it looks as if there’s adequate room here for the defense to argue that my little icebreaker got so out of control and convoluted that Ramsay could reasonably have been expected to confuse what was real and what hypothetical.

  Solid advice, I’m sure, but not really what I want to hear, so I move on to Tier Two, the US Justice Department’s Internal Security Section. Normally, these are peer-to-peer calls. I relay a request to the special agent in charge of our field office, and he does the calling on my behalf. This way the ears of the Internal Security lawyers aren’t sullied by having to listen to a peon field agent, especially one like me who’s butted heads with them plenty of times already. But our special agent in charge cares about his career, and relaying any kind of question or request from me is bound to at least ding it. Besides, time is short, and even on a red alert, Internal Security attorneys work at the rough speed of honey dripping out of a bottle.

  So I find a secure line, call, and get just about what I expect—a wavering, on-the-one-hand/on-the-other response that muddles more than clarifies. The good news, I guess, is that, except for some concern over Moody and me not having yet read Rod his Miranda rights, the ISS attorneys don’t seem to think my little hypotheticals game with Ramsay is all that big a deal, but I chalk that up to their not having any great stake in the matter. They’re not going to be prosecuting this—they’re advisors, and in DC advice is cheap.

  Happily, the Third Tier of legal advice I seek that day is Greg Kehoe, and Greg, believe me, is the real thing. Greg was already famous among people like me for taking down Miami drug dealers before he became the first assistant at the United States Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Florida. More recently, he’s been putting together a drug-trafficking case against Manuel Noriega. The feds will still need to find a way to get the Panamanian dictator to the States for trial, but if I were Noriega, I sure as hell wouldn’t sleep comfortably with Greg on my tail.

  I’ve worked with Greg on several cases by now, and I like his style. I admire his legal acumen almost to the point of envy, and I especially admire his philosophy, which boils down to “Let’s put bad people away right now.” No wonder people in Washington know him. The sit-on-their-asses-and-don’t-rock-the-boat crowd at the Justice Department probably see Greg as a grave threat, but I’ve heard he’s a favorite of Bob Mueller, the new assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, and for good cause. Greg puts points on the board. He kicks ass and takes names later—he’s the one litigator you don’t want to go against. Since I know Greg is going to get the Ramsay case if we can get past the legal hurdles I’ve created, I suck up my pride, walk downstairs to the US Attorney’s Office, and throw myself on his mercy.

  “Do you have a SCIF where we can talk?” I ask, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility—i.e., a secure room for discussing top-secret matters.

  “Sure,” he answers, and leads me into the biggest SCIF I’ve ever seen.

  I don’t even have to ask what a secure room this size is doing in little old Tampa. Greg can read the question in my face.

  “Just finished it,” he says in his heavy Rockaway-Queens New York accent. “We’re going to debrief Noriega here once we lay hands on that piña-faced dictator.” And from the expectant tone of his voice, I’m guessing that’s going to be before year’s end. (Piña, by the way, is Spanish for “pineapple”—a reference to Noriega’s pockmarked face.)

  “What’s up?”

  And so for the next twenty-five minutes I sketch out the case against Rod Ramsay while white noise hums gently around us and the lead walls protect us from signal penetrations of any sort—incoming or outgoing. (I’ve been in SCIFs where the floors basically float in air, true rooms-within-rooms. This one doesn’t possess that particular feature, but Noriega’s spies aren’t likely to be as sophisticated as the KGB.) As I knew he would, Greg glowers menacingly when I get to the enforced-from-above year-long hiatus in interviewing Ramsay. “What the fuck . . . ” is all he says—street-loud, like he’s shouting to be heard above the traffic—but we’ve both done enough battle with the ass-coverers and raging egos on the Potomac that nothing more needs saying.

  The good part of all this is that I can see Greg’s interest growing with every new revelation. By the time I get to the documents “clipped” out of the G-3 vault, he’s on the edge of his seat. When I tell him about selling the go-to-war plans to the Soviets via the Hungarians, he starts pacing the SCIF in anticipation of the trial that lies ahead.

  “More?” he asks, hungry for it.

  “More,” I say, with near certainty. “But there’s a problem.”

  “Well, finally,” he replies, settling back into his chair.

  “Finally?”

  “Finally, Joe, we get to why you’ve come down two flights of stairs to meet with me on this lovely Tuesday midday when you could be out kayaking in Tampa Bay.”

  The kayaking part reminds me of how much I like Greg—and of the fact that we’ve kayaked together for hours at a time. That, in turn, makes what I’m about to say even harder.

  “Very astute, Counselor,” I say nervously, even though we’re good friends.

  “Talk to me, Joey,” in a voice that beneath Greg’s gruff bark says, “I got your back; you know I’m a stand-up guy.” And I do.

  “The deal is that I might have left Ramsay with the impression that I’d granted him prosecutorial immunity.”

  “Which, of course, you have no standing to do.”

  “Correct,” I say, squeezing the knot on my tie, tipping my own distress.

  “And how did this fairy tale get uncorked, Navarro? I’m guessing this is a doozy.”

  “The short answer: I opened my mouth.”

  “Joey, Joey, Joey, how many times have I told you—you never have to explain what you don’t say?”

  “Thanks, Greg, that’s good. In fact, this is just what I need, a fucking lecture on the obvious.”

  I choose to ignore Greg’s menacing De Niro “just saying” look.

  “Another thing. Agent Moody and I have yet to read Ramsay his Miranda rights. Internal Security thinks that could be a problem, too.”

  “Is Ramsay under arrest?”

  “No.”

  “You intend to arrest him?”

  “Maybe one day, but that decision as you know is not mine.”

  “I can live with that. There’s no requirement to give Miranda warnings unless he is under arrest or about to be arrested.”

  “Neither has transpired.”

  “So what, then, is the fucking issue?”

  I go through the whole sequence of events: Rod asking questions in hypotheticals and me answering back the same way. Greg, meanwhile, listens with piercing blue eyes that, I’m betting, could melt steel.

  “Joey, Joey,” he says when I finish. “I gotta tell ya, I love you, but you fucked up. Is there another word for it? Maybe, but I can’t think of it right now. It’s a fuckup. Why? Because defense counsel is going to bring this up at a suppression hearing, or he is going to stick it up your ass at trial. Capisce?”

  “I know, Greg, I know,” I say, feeling very
cold. In fact, my hands are freezing as if I’ve been exiled to Superman’s icy Fortress of Solitude. Part of me wants to flee and run, but where? There’s no getting away, and Greg has more to say.

  “I don’t want some schoolteacher on the jury feeling sorry for this guy, thinking we led him astray. If you don’t clear this up, you’re going to dig a deeper and deeper hole, and then you’re going to really get jammed up. And from what you’re telling me, this is the only prosecution we’re going to have in the United States, so you’ve got to make this right.”

  Easier said than done, I think, sinking ever lower in my chair.

  “Eventually this case is going to come to me, and I want it to be pristine. I want to nail this guy to the fucking cross, you understand, but I don’t want to deal with issues having to do with admissibility. And . . . ”

  “And?” There’s an ominous ring to it.

  “And I don’t want to hear the defense even utter the word ‘Miranda’ the entire fuckin’ trial!”

  Nothing like getting kicked in the gut, especially by a guy you think so highly of. Nothing like deserving it, either.

  “Look, Joe,” Greg says as we’re heading for the door and back into nonsecure land. “How many agents in this division?”

  “A little over a hundred,” I say, wondering what this is about.

  “And how come I see only you and about twelve other agents in our office every month?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer, still not sure where he’s headed.

  “Out of one hundred–plus agents, I only see the same ones over and over because you guys are the racehorses—the guys the Bureau runs into the ground. You’re the guys who bring me the cases to prosecute. The others don’t do squat. Why they get paid, I don’t know.”

  I’m still wondering where Greg is ultimately going when he delivers the punch line.

  “The others—they’re the turds of this world, Joey, the floaters. They don’t do anything. I have them here in the US Attorney’s Office, too. They get a paycheck but they don’t do shit, and when you don’t do shit, you don’t make mistakes. I don’t give a fuck about the mistake. Big cases come with big problems. I know you—you will fix it because you’re one of those thoroughbreds. All you know is what is in front, not behind. Fix it before you do anything else, and we’ll be fine. I got your back.”