Then she thought: So Mulligan’s part of whatever is going on here.
What the hell is going on here?
And then she noticed that McCarthy was looking at her carefully, as if he expected her to say, “I’m sorry, but in the letter I took to President Martinez-the one he said you wrote, Mr. McCarthy-there were specific references to taking Abrego to the Oaxaca State Prison.”
She said nothing.
“Get Schmidt and Crenshaw in here,” the President ordered.
“Right now. I want to know what the hell is going on.”
“You don’t want to talk to them on the telephone, Mr. President?” Special Agent Douglas asked.
“If I did, Douglas,” the President replied sarcastically, “I would have said, ‘Get Schmidt and then Crenshaw on the phone.’ ”
“Yes, sir,” Douglas said, and walked to a telephone on a sideboard to summon Schmidt and Crenshaw.
The President turned to the secretary of State.
“You don’t know anything about this Oaxaca Prison?”
Cohen was aware that McCarthy seemed very interested in what her reply would be.
“Just what I’ve heard and seen here, Mr. President,” she said.
“Then I don’t see any point in taking any more of your valuable time, Madam Secretary. If I need you later, I’ll call.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Cohen said, and stood up and walked out of the Oval Office.
When the door had closed, the President asked, “McCarthy, do you think she’s telling the truth?”
“I have no reason to believe she’s not, Mr. President,” McCarthy said. “But I just thought it might be wise to ask her to keep what she heard here to herself.”
“Yeah,” the President said.
“Should I bring her back in here, Mr. President?”
“No. You can tell her as well as I can that she goddamn well better keep what she just heard in here to herself.”
McCarthy caught up with the secretary of State as she was about to get in her limousine.
“Madam Secretary!” McCarthy called. “A moment, please.”
She turned to face him but didn’t speak.
“The President asked me to tell you he hopes you understand that what took place in the Oval Office just now has to be kept between us.”
Cohen nodded but didn’t reply.
“And let me say I appreciate your wisdom in not getting further into the business of what was and what was not in the letter you took to President Martinez,” McCarthy said.
Again she didn’t reply. But her eyebrows rose in question.
“None of us want him to go off the deep end just now, do we, Madam Secretary? Now would be a very bad time for something like that to happen.”
“Now?” she asked, and then before he had a chance to reply, said, “Good morning, Mr. McCarthy,” got into the limousine, and gestured to the State Department security officer who was holding the door open to close it.
THREE
The Oval Office The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1055 20 April 2007
“It took you two long enough to get here,” President Clendennen greeted Attorney General Stanley Crenshaw and FBI Director Mark Schmidt as they walked into the Oval Office.
“Mr. President,” Crenshaw said, “we quite literally dropped what we were doing when we got Douglas’s call saying you wanted to see us right away.”
“And what exactly was it that you quite literally dropped when Douglas called?”
“A discussion of the latest development in El Paso.”
“Let me get this straight,” Clendennen said. “Schmidt, there has been a development in El Paso that you were discussing with Crenshaw?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Weren’t you listening when I told you I wanted to hear immediately of anything that happened?”
“Mr. President, I work for Attorney General Crenshaw,” Schmidt said, uncomfortably.
“You work for me, goddamn it!” the President said, furiously.
“Mr. President, I’m responsible,” Crenshaw said. “I told Director Schmidt to make me-”
“Well,” the President interrupted, “what is this latest development that you were going to tell me about when you finally got around to it?”
“It’s this, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said, and handed him a sheet of paper.
The President took it and read it:
Transfer Instructions
At 0830 21 April put your guest and no more than two U.S. Marshals aboard an El Paso police helicopter at El Paso International.
File a local aircraft test flight plan and take off no later than 0845.
At 0900 contact Ciudad Juarez International with the message “Necessary to make a precautionary landing.”
Your aircraft will be met on landing, and the exchange of your guest for ours will be accomplished at that time.
Your aircraft will then be free to return to the United States.
“What the hell is this?” the President asked. “Where did it come from?”
“According to SAC Johnson, Mr. President, it was handed to one of the FBI agents on stakeout in the El Paso post office,” Schmidt said.
“Which suggests to me that the FBI agent didn’t succeed in being inconspicuous,” the President said. “Who handed it to him?”
“May I see that, Mr. President?” Clemens McCarthy asked.
The President handed him the letter.
“Try to keep it from going under the desk, McCarthy,” the President said, and then turned his attention to Schmidt. “I’m waiting.”
“A boy, Mr. President. A boy, twelve years old, Latino, handed it to one of the FBI agents. He said that a man gave him five dollars and told him to hand that-it was in an envelope addressed ‘To the FBI’-to him. I mean, he indicated to whom the boy was to hand the envelope.”
“And that man? Do we know who he is? Is it too much to hope that he was detained for questioning?”
“By the time they started looking for him, Mr. President,” Schmidt said, “the man had gone.”
“A regular James Bond, huh?” the President said with a snort, and then asked, “Do either of you have any idea what’s going on here?”
“I don’t understand the question, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said.
“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” the President said.
“Schmidt and I were discussing how to deal with the exchange when you called.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“We were thinking of sending FBI agents-instead of Marshals-on the helicopter for the exchange.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” the President exploded. “Let me tell you what would happen if you sent FBI agents on that helicopter. They would land at that airport and be greeted by, say, a dozen Mexicans, all armed to the teeth, who would relieve them of this fucking Mexican murderer and then wave bye-bye. They would not get Colonel Ferris, who is probably five hundred miles from Ciudad Juarez. I know what they think of your intelligence, but I’m surprised they think I’m also that stupid.”
Neither Crenshaw nor Schmidt replied.
“What we are going to do, gentlemen, is go along with President Martinez, that ungrateful sonofabitch. He wants Abrego turned over to this Mexican cop-what’s his name, McCarthy. .?”
“Pena, Mr. President,” McCarthy furnished. “Juan Carlos Pena, chief of the Policia Federal for Oaxaca State.”
“. . for interrogation, which means to be turned loose,” the President picked up. “So we’re going to do just that. We’re going to take this goddamn murderer to the Oaxaca State Prison and exchange him for Ferris. He’ll be taken there, gentlemen, not by U.S. Marshals, not by the FBI, but by as many of those super Green Berets-what do they call them, McCarthy?”
“The Delta Force, Mr. President?” McCarthy asked, his confusion evident in his voice.
“No, goddammit! I said super Green Berets.”
“Gray Fox,
Mr. President?” Attorney General Crenshaw asked, and his confusion was equally evident in his voice.
“Right,” the President said. “Gray Fox. As many of those Gray Fox people that’ll fit on three Black Hawks. They’ll either get Ferris back when they get there or they’ll bring the goddamn Mexican back and throw him in his Florence cell. I don’t think a goddamn Mexican cop is going to want to get in a fight with twenty, twenty-five Gray Fox guys. Get General McNab on the phone.”
“General McNab is in Afghanistan, Mr. President,” McCarthy said.
“Then get his deputy, that Irishman, what’s his name? McCool? Something like that.”
“O’Toole, Mr. President. Major General Terrence O’Toole,” McCarthy said.
“Well, get Major General Terrence O’Toole on the phone and tell him to get up here. And while you’re at it, get Naylor and Beiderman in here, too. I’ll teach that bastard Martinez he can’t fuck with Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen.”
FOUR
Office of the Director Central Intelligence Agency McLean, Virginia 1110 20 April 2007
“An unexpected pleasure, Madam Secretary,” DCI A. Franklin Lammelle said. “If I had known you were coming, there would have been a brass band.”
“Can we dispense with the clever repartee, Frank?” Natalie Cohen replied. “I’m really in no mood for it.”
“I tend to hide behind clever repartee when I have problems,” Lammelle said. “What’s yours?”
“Recording devices turned off?”
He nodded. “I usually turn them on only when the enemy is at the gates,” he replied, then realized that might qualify as clever repartee, and added, “Sorry.”
She nodded, accepting the apology.
“I just came from the Oval Office,” she said. “With the unnerving suspicion that there may be something to President Clendennen’s conspiracy theory.”
He raised his eyebrows, made a “give it to me” gesture with his hands, and said, now quite serious, “Tell me all about it.”
“Martinez didn’t buy that draft letter. .” she began.
“. . And after I had been dismissed,” she concluded, “McCarthy caught up with me as I was getting in my car in the portico, told me the President had sent him to tell me to keep my mouth shut, and then said, quote, ‘I appreciate your wisdom in not getting further into the business of what was and what was not in the letter you took to President Martinez,’ end quote. When I didn’t reply, he added, quote, None of us want him to go off the deep end just now, do we, Madam Secretary? Now would be a very bad time for something like that to happen, end quote.”
“So now you’re willing to buy in on the coup d’etat theory?” Lammelle asked.
“I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far, but something very unsavory is going on here, Frank.”
“Would you say the situation is desperate?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I’d go that far, either. But I-we-have to get to the bottom of it.”
“Time to get off the fence, Natalie.”
“What does that mean?”
“The situation is, or is not, desperate. This is not one of those times when you can put off making that decision.”
“Why am I getting the idea that you know something I don’t?”
“Maybe because I’m the DCI? We have a reputation for knowing things and doing things that other people don’t know about.”
“Or don’t want to know about,” Natalie said after a moment. “Where are you going with this, Frank?”
“You haven’t answered my question. Is this situation desperate? Desperate enough to require taking desperate action?”
She considered that for a long moment, and then said, “I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
“Not quite good enough, sorry.”
“What is it exactly you want from me, Frank?”
“Your word that after I offer my suggestion, and tell you what I know, that you won’t take any action of which I disapprove.”
“That’s too much to ask.”
“Then good luck with your problem, Natalie.”
“I don’t like this at all.”
“I didn’t think you would.”
“I’m the secretary of State. You are required by law to provide me with any intelligence you have that I might find useful in the discharge of my duties.”
“Spoken like a true dip,” Lammelle said. “Big words meaning nothing in real life. You want to walk that scenario through? You go to Truman Ellsworth-do you really want to go to Ellsworth? — and you tell him I’m not giving you information you’re entitled to by law. He tells me to give you what you want, and I tell him I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. So he goes to President Clendennen-do you really want Ellsworth going to President Clendennen about this? — and he says Lammelle. .”
She held up her hand to shut him off.
“Tell me again what it is you want me to give my word about,” she said.
“That after I tell you what I know, you won’t go any further with it-that’s sort of moot, because if you did that, I’d deny it-and also that you take no action of any kind without my approval.”
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” she said. “You didn’t get to be DCI by being a nice guy, did you, Frank?”
“I got here by doing what I had to, in what I thought were the best interests of the United States.”
“What was it that Samuel Johnson said, Frank, on that April night in 1775? Something about patriotism?”
“Now I get the history lecture,” Lammelle said, chuckling. “He was talking about false patriotism, Natalie, when he said it was the last refuge of the scoundrel, not the real thing. False is when it doesn’t cost you anything. My kind is expensive. You can be disgraced. You can go to prison. You can even lose your life.”
“Are you feeling just a little self-righteous, Frank, after doing something you know you shouldn’t have done?”
“Okay. Conversation over. Is there anything else I can do for you before you go?”
The secretary of State was in deep thought a moment, then said, “Okay, you have my word.”
When he didn’t reply, she said, “Maybe you should have gone in the Foreign Service, Frank. You’re really a tough negotiator.”
“I have your word?” he asked.
“I said that you did.”
“All right. What Charley Castillo plans to do is grab Abrego-and, he hopes, Ferris-when either of them shows up at the Oaxaca State Prison, and see who that brings out of the woodwork.”
“How could he possibly manage that? The President has personally ordered General Naylor to see there is absolutely no U.S. military involvement. .”
“At last count, he’s got about forty ex-Spetsnaz.”
“Where did he get ex-Spetsnaz?”
“From Aleksandr Pevsner, who believes that this whole kidnapping business is connected with Vladimir Putin’s plan to take out him and his family. Pevsner’s original reaction to hearing that the new Russian cultural affairs officer for Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala is Valentin Komarovski-who of course is really our old pal Sergei Murov, the SVR rezident here-was to whack anybody Pevsner even suspected was SVR until Putin got the message.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Castillo has managed to talk Pevsner out of this for the time being-which means until Castillo’s able to snatch Abrego and/or Ferris at the prison, and then see what the interrogation of whoever comes out of the woodwork turns up.
“We know the Venezuelans are involved. The guy who dropped the kidnapper’s letter in the post office slot in El Paso is Jose Rafael Monteverde, the financial attache of the embassy of the Republica Bolivariana de Venezuela in Mexico City.”
“How do you know that?” Secretary Cohen asked.
“A friend of mine happened to be in the El Paso post office when he did it.”
“I will refrain myself from commenting that the CIA is expressly forbidden by la
w from operating within the United States,” she said.
“Anyway, Charley’s got people from China Post sitting on this guy. I think they’re going to want to talk to him.”
“China Post? The mercenary employment agency?”
“Charley prefers to think of them as former comrades in arms,” Lammelle said.
“Where’s he getting the money to pay for all this?” she asked, and then quickly added, “Don’t tell me. I think I know. ‘Those People’?”
“So far, I think he’s picking up the tab himself. Or Aleksandr Pevsner is. But that Las Vegas money is going to be available if he asks for it.”
“If Castillo kidnaps this Venezuelan diplomat, President Martinez-”
“What? Won’t like it? Won’t let him get away with it?”
“Both, and you know it.”
“So what if he doesn’t like it?” Lammelle said. “He’s done nothing, and you know it, to get Colonel Ferris back, or get the people who murdered Salazar and the DEA agents. And as far as not letting Castillo get away with what he’s doing, how is he going to do that? With the Policia Federal? Come on, Natalie.”
“Frank, you don’t really expect me to look the other way at any of this?”
“I expect you to do what you can to prevent a coup d’etat. We don’t know who’s behind that. The only ones I’m sure are not are Generals Naylor and McNab. And we can count on their help once we find out who’s behind it. But we have to find out who’s behind it, whether the Russians, or Montvale, or Truman Ellsworth. .”
“You think that Ellsworth might be involved?”
“I think it’s possible. The only thing I know for sure is that the only one who can find out is Castillo, and if he breaks a few laws finding out, I have no problem with that.”
She considered that a moment, and then said, “Don’t interpret this as a sign that I’m considering going along with any of this, but as a practical matter, how is he going to. . I guess ‘kidnap’ is the word. . Ferris and/or Abrego from the Mexican authorities, or the kidnappers, or for that matter, the U.S. Marshal Service?”
“I told you, he has the ex-Spetsnaz he got from Pevsner and the people from China Post-plus, of course, the Merry Outlaws.”
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