Three Minutes to Doomsday

by Joe Navarro

  No other crime brings together so many factors: tradecraft, nation-state participants, specific diplomats or intelligence officers, areas of operation, means of communication, modes of concealment and transportation, politics, allegiances, intra-ethnic empathy, time of day, day of week, even history. Beyond the crime itself, there’s also ancillary information that will lead us to how the enemy conducts espionage: where, how, and what they’re interested in or not; how they target spies; where they meet; where they operate or won’t; how much they pay, what value they attach to certain information; who their best operatives are; and on and on. Criminal agents like to accuse those of us in CI of writing War and Peace every time we fill out an FD-302, but while there’s no question our FD-302s are long by comparison—this morning’s report on last night’s meeting with Rod will probably run to twelve pages—we need to be thorough because we’re held to a higher evidentiary standard. Besides, not all paperwork is boring.

  Today’s FD-302, for example, is a sheer delight to pen. Suspect Ramsay acknowledged that he’d talked of his own free will and with no understanding that a prosecutorial waiver had been granted or even suggested. Suspect Ramsay further was made aware of his Miranda rights and specifically waived them. Agent (Mrs.) Terry Moody was present throughout this portion of the interview and will serve as witness to the above. I’ve got a bunch of detail to fill in, but the legal minefield of my last few days is—poof!—gone. I can almost see the long faces lined up at the Washington Field Office when this one comes over the teletype. What? Navarro’s not the knucklehead we thought he was? Damn!

  As I draft the FD-302, I’m also keeping Greg Kehoe in mind. He’s no doubt going to be very happy to see this. I’ve fully met his challenge to clean up the mess I created. We can both rest easy about that. I’ve also got Rod’s defense attorney in mind, whoever that ends up being. I want his lawyer to sense the completeness of these interviews—to feel the full weight of Rod’s words—leaving no doubt that this is a case based on so much inculpatory information that there is only one choice: a guilty plea.

  I’m just moving on to Rod’s and my few closing minutes on the elevator—his (frankly) touching apology, our abrazo—when the phone on my desk rings, and thinking it’s She-Moody checking in from home before heading downtown, I pick it up with almost a lilt in my voice.

  “Terry!”

  “No, Rod.” He sounds terrible—his voice is quivering.

  “Rod?”

  “Joe,” he says. “You gotta help me. I got the clap.”

  * * *

  THE FBI ACADEMY IN Quantico, Virginia, teaches a dazzling array of subjects and offers expert instruction in every one: how to take down a gunman, determine the time of death of a body, conduct surveillance—even the best ways to lift fingerprints from twenty different surfaces, including skin. But I can safely say that the Academy never has offered—and probably never will offer—training in what to do when your prime suspect in an espionage case calls early in the day to announce that he has VD.

  The first thing that jumps to my mind is, How in the hell am I going to write this up? How will I title the report? What will I put in and omit? That’s just the reality of life in a huge government bureaucracy. For now, I have to cope with what every CI agent learns in dealing with valuable sources of information: the human factor, the reality that humans are flawed. Even if you’re fundamentally repulsed by the person at the other end of the phone, you guide them or help them because that’s what good agents do. I’ve been recruiting sources for a decade, and half my time is spent playing therapist, no matter how squared away they seem, because everyone has issues. But this is a new one—a urinary tract infection that could temporarily or even permanently derail a vital investigation.

  Thus, off comes my FBI agent hat and in its place I don my father hat, or at least, something that vaguely resembles it.

  “Jesus, Rod, how long have you had this?”

  “Well, it started out as an itch a few days ago, and now every time I pee I’m in so much fucking pain.”

  “That sounds about right,” I say, thinking back on my EMT training. “So which door handle are you going to blame this on?”

  “Very funny,” he says. “What can I tell you, I was lonely. I was on South Orange Blossom Trail, and, you know, there are some motels there . . . ”

  Yeah, I’m thinking, our surveillance was right behind you when you turned in to one, you dumb shit—and this was what? No more than forty minutes after you assured us you were going to eat better and call your mom more often. But I don’t say any of that because (a) it wouldn’t do any good and (b) I’d be tipping Rod to the fact that we had a tail on him. Instead, I continue with my best imitation of a mildly reproving but concerned father.

  “Rod,” I say, “you have heard of AIDS, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you do know that the number of AIDS cases has reached epidemic proportions, in this country and all around the world?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I realize I’m speaking to him as if he were my son.

  “Joe, I do follow the news. Rather carefully.”

  “Well, that’s good, meathead,” I say. “Then you also know that, contrary to early reports, AIDS is not spread solely by sexual acts involving homosexual males?”

  “Don’t get into epidemiology with me!” Rod warns, suddenly as confident as a PhD section head at the Centers for Disease Control. “I know the goddamn vectors.”

  “Well, brainiac, then obviously you weren’t thinking, were you?” I respond in a tone considerably less fatherly.

  “No,” he concedes.

  “Let me amend that. You were thinking, but not with your higher brain—this is what happens when the blood flow is dominated by the little general in your pants.” This gets a rueful laugh, at any rate, but I can tell Rod is struggling and worried.

  “Okay, okay, all kidding aside, how bad is it?” I ask, noticing that I’m now whispering into the phone as if talking to my wife about a problem at home. I can almost hear the people passing by my office saying to themselves, What in the hell have you done now, Agent Navarro?

  “Oh man, Joe,” he answers with such quivering intensity that I’m now aching in my own lower parts. “It’s really bad. It’s burning when I piss. I can’t sleep.” I’ve never heard him sound this bad.

  “What else?”

  And suddenly instead of filling out the joyous final paragraphs of my triumphant FD-302, I’m taking copious notes on Rod’s sore penis, his swollen testicles, the yellow/green discharge that just this morning showed up in his underwear and crusts together when it dries.

  “Yep. Sounds like gonorrhea,” I summarize when he’s through. “Way to go.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who can’t keep his dick in his pants, and obviously wearing a little raincoat is too much of a hassle,” I say, still trying to knock some sense into him.

  “I’d laugh but it hurts.”

  “Hurts where?”

  “I don’t know. My stomach, my gut, all around there.”

  “Okay, this is not good,” I say. “This means the infection has worked its way into your bladder, and it may have spread to your kidneys.” Rod is silent when I finish, but I can hear his breathing—those long, cathartic exhales that acknowledge he’s in way over his head.

  “What should I do?”

  “You’re going to wait by this phone while I make some calls. You’re going to drink water like there’s no tomorrow, and you’re going to take aspirin every four hours.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I fucking say so, that’s why.” I spit out that last line as I’m all but slamming down the phone. I don’t have time to explain that his urinary tract will benefit from the extra flushing and that we want renal flow going out. The FBI, the National Security Council, the NSA, our friends at Langley, the Germans, and NATO all need to know what Rod can reveal to them, but for now I have to play nursemaid to Mr. Happy Dick, who
at best has gonorrhea and at worst may have contracted AIDS. As I start flipping through my Rolodex, I’m reminded of why we agents always say “semper Gumby.” Like the clay-animation figure, we have to be always flexible.

  * * *

  I START WITH THE doc who has the biggest ad in the yellow pages, on the assumption that any physician trolling so openly for patients is likely to have a low ethical threshold, but since the doc won’t even talk with me until I’ve signed up and prepaid for a three-part “whole body” exam, including blood test, I never get past the front-desk receptionist.

  That leads me to one of the doctors I train with every few months to maintain my EMT status, but he isn’t exactly buying my storyline.

  Me: “Listen, Fred, I’ve got this friend . . . ”

  Him: “Friend?”

  Me: “Yeah, this friend who thinks he has the clap.”

  Him: “So your friend [huge air quotes, or so I imagine] is suffering from painful urination?”

  Me: “Really painful . . . he says.”

  Him: “Painful micturition,” reminding me of the proper term in describing this medical condition.

  Me, rolling my eyes: “Yes, thank you, Fred, but today is not a good day for pedantry.”

  Him: “Swollen testes?”

  Me: “Exactly.”

  Him: “Discharge?”

  Me: “Yellow/green.”

  “Joe,” Fred says, “can we just cut to the chase? How long have you had this? And why are we doing this on the phone?”

  More back-and-forth ensues, none of which I sense is totally convincing Fred, but he knows I’m FBI, and in the end he’s willing to grant the possibility that I’m not lying through my teeth.

  “Tell you what,” he says, “I’ll call in the prescription, twenty-one days of tetracycline. It’ll kill everything, but your friend will need to take the full cycle. Gonorrhea can lie low for a week, then come storming back if you don’t kill it dead. Got it?”

  I assure Fred I do and thank him from the bottom of my heart, but no sooner have I hung up than I start to have second thoughts about all this. For starters, if the tetracycline is dispensed in my name and I then pass it to Rod, I’ll in effect be acting as a medical provider, and in Florida, practicing medicine without a license is a third-degree felony even if you carry a badge.

  That gets me to a second and larger concern: whether Luciana and I are going to spend our declining years in relative comfort or in grinding poverty. No one gets rich working for the FBI, but if you put in twenty-five years, you’re rewarded with three-quarters of your final salary annually for the rest of your life, no matter whether you subsequently win the lottery, launch a billion-dollar computer company, or just settle down to eighteen holes a day in the Florida sun.

  Personally, I’m hoping for a good thirty or more years on the public dole after I step down—I owe my wife at least that much after all the missed dinners, school plays, holidays, and Stephanie birthday parties—but I won’t be getting there if I take a bullet between the eyes, and even being charged with a third-degree felony almost certainly would be enough to murder my career, especially given the many well-placed enemies I’ve been making at HQ and beyond.

  I’m envisioning myself being led away in handcuffs, indicted for dispensing medicines, and flipping burgers (once I’m out on parole) at some off-brand fast-food joint near Busch Gardens because no one else will hire me. Not fun for me or my family. I also recall from my pilot training the sometimes extreme dangers of decision-making when you’re dead tired and the unreasonable suddenly seems perfectly rational. This is how pilots land on interstates instead of runways or climb when they should descend.

  When I pick up the phone once more, the better me is making the call. I find a public-health clinic in Orlando, emphasize my Bureau special agent status, which in some circles still carries weight, and basically beg the director of the facility to begin treating Rod today while assuring him the federal government will be picking up the tab for any related expenses. Turns out, the fed is off the dime. Orange County will pick up the tab, and the director, a former navy medical officer, finds an opening at three in the afternoon.

  Immediately, I call Rod, who has been waiting as ordered by the pay phone at the convenience store next to his campground, tell him to get his ass over to the clinic, and remind him that Moody and I will be meeting him at six-thirty at the Embassy Suites and heading from there to dinner.

  “Try to clean up, Rod,” I tell him, “and let’s not mention this leaky faucet situation to anyone.”

  “You’re not going to tell Moody, are you?”

  “No, this is our secret.”

  “Good, but I don’t think I can make it tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t break even driving yesterday. In fact, I lost money. Right now, I’m in the hole about twenty-three dollars, with all of eighty-six cents on me. That’s not enough money for gas to do both trips.”

  “Okay, Rod,” I say after a few deep breaths, “here’s the plan. You go to the clinic, you do exactly what the people there tell you to do, and I’ll meet you back at your camper at six-thirty with dinner. We can eat and talk. I’ll give Agent Moody the night off.”

  There’s a long pause on the other end. When Rod finally speaks again, his voice sounds strained, as if he’s been crying.

  “Thanks, Joe,” he says. “Thanks a lot. This clap is killing me,” he adds as he hangs up.

  “Killing you?” I say to the dial tone and my file cabinets. “Your clap is killing me.”

  That’s when Shirley walks into my office, clipboard in hand.

  * * *

  “MR. NAVARRO!” SHIRLEY SAYS, as if she’s been waiting all day to say that.

  “What now?”

  “Mr. Navarro!” she says again, maybe even more emphatically and tapping the clipboard with her right index finger—which, naturally, gets me thinking of exactly where that clipboard might be shoved.

  “Yes, Shirley?”

  “Do you realize that you haven’t been to the firing range in over six weeks?”

  “I’ve been a little busy . . . ,” I start to say, thinking that I also haven’t had a day off or played with my daughter or . . .

  “Bureau regs say every four weeks. You’re [studying her clipboard] two weeks past due. That’s, like [a long pause for mental calculation], that’s, like, 50 percent over regulation!”

  “Shirley . . . ”

  “Also . . . ”

  “Also what?”

  “Also,” Shirley says, casting a wary glance at the perfectly arranged but slightly towering file stacks on my desk, the tops of cabinets, and every other available flat space, “don’t you think you should tidy up your office before?”

  “Before what, for God’s sake?”

  “Before the Director visits on the thirteenth.”

  “Judge Sessions?”

  Condescendingly: “He’s been Director for over two years, Joe.”

  “I know that! He’s coming here? To Tampa?”

  Maybe even more condescendingly, if possible: “Well, there wouldn’t be much point in tidying up your office if the Director were visiting in, say, Miami, would there?”

  Aargh! This is the last thing we need, the Director with his entourage.

  “We just found out this morning,” Shirley says with a broad smile as she turns on her heels and plump ankles and heads off to brighten the afternoon at another office.

  That, at least, explains part of the mystery. Koerner is gone today, off to the Academy at Quantico for some kind of executive training session. Who else would have cued me in to what might be a routine tour through the farm system? But I’m betting something bigger is going on here. From what I’ve heard, the Old Guard at HQ is not wild about Bill Sessions, his management style, or his wife, who seems to get in the way. Plus, there’s been talk among Bureau pilots—a tight-knit sewing bee—that Mr. and Mrs. Sessions have been using Bureau aircraft with far too much frequency and bey
ond the scope of work. That’s not my fight, but the more Judge Sessions (as he insists on being called) travels hither and yon, the more work for SWAT team members, who in addition to all their other duties have the added burden of being the Director’s (and his wife’s) bodyguards.

  As for the ultimate purpose of the visit, I’m guessing that the news Conrad and Ramsay sold the NATO go-to-war plans to our enemies has blindsided Sessions completely—his Washington Field Office, after all, had already declared the case dead and the bodies buried. My hope, of course, is that the Director fully grasps the gravity of the case, but I’ve also heard via the same pilot grapevine that Sessions is more political than his predecessor, William Webster, and nothing scores points with the Hill and the media like a good spy case.

  * * *

  ROD IS SITTING IN the open door of his camper when I pull in a little before 6:30 p.m. That’s good, I’m thinking—lover-girl and her lover-boy aren’t here to further pollute the atmosphere. But when I get a look at Rod, I can see that he’s about as low as a person can get. Temporarily, Perrera’s helps pull him out of that. I’ve brought two large sacks of carry-out: frijoles negros, arroz con pollo, carne con papas, even two big cups of Cuban garbanzo soup—if this doesn’t fatten him up nothing will. We’re barely into the second bag, though, when his misery starts seeping through again. And before I know it, Rod isn’t just crying, he’s sobbing, almost choking on his own tears, and the camper, at least initially, seems to be at the heart of his distress.

  “Let’s go for a walk, Rod,” I say, folding up the last food bag and placing it inside my car, where the rodents and/or returning lovers won’t find and devour the contents before Rod gets a second crack at them.