by Jon Jackson
“That’s what I was thinking,” Tucker said. “That’s why I wanted to enlist Joe Service. If we could recruit him . . . He’s a clever fellow. He worked for organized crime for years, as a kind of in-house troubleshooter. He had some kind of falling out with the capos. He might be willing to help us make a connection between Echeverria and the Arabs. It’s known that Echeverria deals with heroin internationally. The A-Q are involved in that trade. They’ve probably had some contact.”
“Have they, by god! That’s great! But didn’t we do some kind of deal with Echeverria? The name’s familiar.”
“Oh, no, sir,” Tucker assured him. “That was the DEA . . . ‘War on Drugs’. . . they worked out an understanding, or something, but that’s their baby, nothing to do with us.”
“Well, what if we screw that up? Is that going to come back on us?” The DDO’s eyes narrowed, his brow creased. “I don’t want to get into a pissing match with Brown over at DEA.”
“Well, sir, that’s my point. Right now, this task force that I’m detached to, under Homeland, we can’t touch Echeverria, because he’s protected by DEA and the evidence we’ve got won’t expose him. But if we can show Echeverria is dabbling in terrorism, that’s going to take precedence, you bet. Nobody can say anything about that. Of course, the investigation is under the aegis of Homeland Security. But if the agency—you—can go to them and say, We’ve got a guy we think can help us break this, but we’re hampered, well, the agency looks pretty good when all this works out.”
The DDO’s face brightened. “That would be nice. But now . . . would this Service guy be ‘our’ man? I thought you said he wasn’t an agent.”
“He was never an agent,” Tucker said. “We want deniability on this, naturally. But he was an asset. He’s almost ideal for the purpose.”
The DDO appreciated that distinction. Deniability was important when things didn’t work out, but so was credit when things did.
Tucker explained: “When I said ‘recruit,’ I meant simply that Service would come under the rubric, so to speak, of a contract agent. The usual thing . . . you understand. He provides the link, without him being seen as our guy, not part of the personnel.”
“What can he do for us?” the DDO wanted to know.
“First of all,” Tucker said, “we think he had some kind of connection with that fellow Franko, who was involved in the drug trade in Kosovo. It’s a double cutout, because Franko wasn’t personnel, either, he was a contract agent. He was in touch with the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The A-Q had a demonstrable contact there.”
“Sounds ideal,” the DDO said. “Is there anything else?”
“Well, then there is M. P. Luck, the Michigan patriot movement guy. Service seems to have some kind of connection with Luck as well.”
“Wheels within wheels,” the DDO said. “What’s Luck’s position? Didn’t he give us something on Oklahoma City?”
“Ah. I wasn’t sure if you were aware of that,” Tucker said. “I didn’t want to say anything. No offense, sir, but that was the FBI’s baby and we’re not supposed to know about that. Of course, we do, but we can’t be seen to know, if you take my meaning.”
“Hey, I don’t know nothin’. But, entre nous, did we know?”
“It was ‘in the air,’ you might say. My impression was that Luck didn’t exactly cooperate with the FBI, but he was a source. But now we’re all in the same kennel. Right? My thinking is, we’ve got three or four players here, potentially: Service, Echeverria, Luck, and the A-Q.” He ticked them off on the fingers of his left hand. “The trick is to make a connection with all four. The key figure could be Joe Service, sort of the wild card, if you will.”
The DDO nodded, following closely.
Tucker went on, laying out the possibilities. “The DEA won’t want to give up Echeverria just on the basis of Service, but if we can make a connection between Echeverria and Luck, and between Luck and Service, and between any of them and the A-Q, these other agencies will have to relinquish their options and we’re well on our way to making a case.”
Tucker could see from the DDO’s expression that he’d lost him. “Here’s how it works, sir. Echeverria’s now an asset of the DEA. He’s providing them with an inside angle on various narcotics organizations in Colombia and the cocaine trade. He was injured in an explosion a couple of years ago. Very painful, lots of burns. The explosion was rigged by Joe Service—that’s a complicated history that we needn’t explore right now. But Echeverria is known to be seeking revenge against Service. If the DEA will surrender their purchase on Echeverria, I think we could lure him back to the U.S., to get Service.”
The deputy director was puzzled. “Do we want him to do that? Service is our man, sort of.”
“Well, there’s more,” Tucker said. “Echeverria had connections with a Chicago mobster who was heavily involved in the drug traffic in Serbia and Kosovo. A guy named Zivkovic. Franko was our contract agent in Kosovo, dealing with Zivkovic. It turned out that Joe Service was involved with this Franko, back in Montana—he’s actually living on Franko’s old property. Franko’s defunct now. Franko, through Zivkovic, had dealings with some KLA types. That’s the connection with al-Qaeda, at least provisionally. It’s a little sketchy, but the potential is there.
“Now we’re seeing a growing connection between Service and Luck. At this point, we don’t know what the connection is, but Luck at least seems to know Service. Luck is a suspect in the Detroit bombing, but it’s not exactly Velcroed. We have no evidence he was there. Echeverria may have been connected, because there was a drug dealer at the scene, for a hearing, a fellow who had a demonstrable connection with Echeverria’s organization. But this connection is worthless to us, since the DEA is shielding Echeverria.”
The DDO’s eyes had gone glassy. Where was all this going?
Tucker hastened on. “Luck has had dealings with Echeverria, we think.”
“We think?”
“A few years back. He was flying stuff into Panama and Guatemala, maybe into Colombia. Perfectly legitimate, as it happens, industrial supplies. But get this, sir. It was things like money counters, trash compactors, computer equipment, stuff that could be used in the drug industry. Then he’d fly back, of course, presumably empty. Or it might be, he’d have some kind of legitimate produce. The DEA was never able to pin any of that on him, but they suspected he was also carrying drugs. Anyway, he must have had dealings with Echeverria.”
“Okay, now you’ve got them all connected, but I still don’t see the connection to the bombing. Cut to the chase, Tucker. Who was responsible?”
“Al-Qaeda,” Tucker said.
The DDO was baffled. “How’s that work?”
Tucker knew this was the delicate part. “The connection between Luck and Service is of my own making,” he confessed. “I fed some information to Luck, who has been putting it on the Internet, that Service is a federal agent.” He shrugged. “It was a pretty harmless ploy, just a little disinformation. But it was bound to interest Echeverria, as well as others, of course. It was also an incentive for Joe Service to come to us, for protection, of course. Anyway, the idea is that Luck could be an intermediary with Echeverria, get him to come to the States to attempt to revenge himself on Service. The A-Q will be interested, because Luck is a highly visible advocate for the so-called patriot cause. Depending on what happens, the A-Q will be seen to have made an attempt on Luck’s life, at Wards Cove.”
“But I thought you said Luck wasn’t at Wards Cove!”
“He should have been,” Tucker said. “He had a case pending there. There was supposed to be a hearing, about the same time as the bombing, and about the time of the hearing on Echeverria’s associate. None of that implicated the A-Q, of course, because then we didn’t know that Echeverria and Luck were associated, or that Luck was involved with Service, or that any of them were associated with the A-Q. But if Echeverria were to be assassinated, or if he were to assassinate someone, such as Service, then we’d hav
e the whole bunch and a case could be made to the public.”
The DDO shook his head. “I can’t see you selling that to the Homeland Security people. ‘Cause that’s who has to buy it, you know. They’ll be the ones who tell the DEA that their deal with Echeverria is off.”
“The plan isn’t ready to go to Homeland yet,” Tucker said. “It needs fine tuning. We need to know a little more about the connection between Zivkovic and the KLA, which we can connect to the A-Q. Joe Service can do that for us. Look, sir, I know it’s a little confusing, but that’s one of its virtues, if you ask me. The American public is happy to believe anything of al-Qaeda. Sure, it’s confusing, but that’s all to the good. Arab stuff is always confusing, and Balkan stuff, the KLA connection, is even more so. It can be explained in a lot of ways and we don’t have to do the explaining. The press and the rest of the media do that. They dig up connections, congratulating themselves, saying ‘Ah hah!’ We say ‘No comment’ and ‘That’s a security issue.’”
“I still don’t get it.”
“It isn’t ready to ‘get’ . . . yet,” Tucker said, a bit testily, trying to conceal his irritation with the DDO’s obtuseness. “But it will be ready, if we can loosen the ties between Echeverria and the DEA. That’s the key. That and getting Joe Service to do what he does best—find out things and, uh, clean up loose ends.”
“Why can’t you just find out who rigged that bomb?” the DDO said petulantly. “If it wasn’t al-Qaeda, that could come out and that would blow the whole thing sky-high . . . so to speak.”
“The consensus in the task force is that it was Echeverria,” Tucker said. “But we don’t have a shred of proof, and I don’t think we’ll get any, as it stands. There is no demonstrable connection with him, other than that one of his underlings was involved. The guys in the task force think it’s plausible that the drug dealer’s friends—let’s say Echeverria himself—wanted to cause a diversion so they could spring the guy. But blow up the place? That’s pretty extreme, or so the feeling goes. But these are extreme people, and maybe they just got carried away. That sort of smash and grab operation has been done in other countries—Serbia, for instance, by Zivkovic. Also in some Muslim countries, Turkey, Egypt, and so on. But we can’t make a case against Echeverria if he’s in Colombia.”
“What about Luck?” the DDO asked. “Maybe he did it, for his buddy Echeverria.”
“Service could help us with that, if I can get him close to Luck,” Tucker said. “But the real deal is to associate al-Qaeda. Service could help us with that, too.”
The DDO was thoughtful for a moment. “I just don’t see al-Qaeda blowing up a small-town courthouse. It ain’t a trade tower, or the Pentagon. It ain’t even Mount Rushmore.”
“It’s white picket fence America,” Tucker said. “And, oddly enough, there are a bunch of Middle Easterners living in the county. A surprising number, actually.”
“Arabs? With connections to al-Qaeda?”
“They aren’t Arabs, most of them,” Tucker admitted. “In fact, they’re mostly Christians. But the public doesn’t see that as much of a distinction. They’re Chaldeans, and some other groups. Who knows what a Chaldean is? It’s biblical-sounding. The point is: would al-Qaeda care? They publicly claimed credit. It seemed to demonstrate that they can hit in the heartland, in Ronald Reagan’s hometown, as it were. That’s the point.”
“Ronald Reagan was from Illinois,” the DDO said, “not Michigan.”
“It’s the same thing,” Tucker said, then added, “but you’re right of course, sir. I only meant that it is Hometown, USA. That strikes fear into the heart of the public. You’re not safe in the heartland. Anyway, we can’t really know what is going through the minds of these madmen. Why the trade towers? Fifteen minutes before that first plane hit, if you’d asked a thousand people in the streets to name the most important symbols of America, no one would have mentioned the World Trade Center. The Statue of Liberty, sure, even Fort Knox, but not something associated with global enterprise.”
“The White House, for sure,” the DDO said, obviously taking his point.
“Yes, or Mount Rushmore,” Tucker said, underlining the DDO’s earlier suggestion. “Anyway, sir, you see the problem: there are all these shadowy associations—Echeverria, Luck, Service, al-Qaeda. We see connections, but the public doesn’t. Sometimes, you know, when the evidence is obscure, you have to shovel the manure. You know the joke about the kid whose folks promised him a pony?”
“Yeah,” the DDO laughed, recalling the joke. “All he got was a room full of horse shit!”
Tucker smiled and nodded. Even when the DDO went on to relate the kid’s cry, “. . . there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere!” When he was through chuckling, the DDO said, “So, what do I do?”
“If you could talk to the Homeland guys,” Tucker said. “Tell them we’ve got this asset, you don’t even have to mention his name. In fact, why not just keep it between us? Who says Echeverria was involved. Get the DEA to cut Echeverria loose. And in the meantime I’ll get to work with Joe.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” the DDO said. “Nothing is really committed. We’re not out on a limb. We’re just saying this guy isn’t clean. And, Christ! He ain’t clean.”
“He’s very far from clean,” Tucker said. “Well, I’m glad we’re in agreement. I just didn’t want to initiate anything without your approval.”
“Quite right. Well, keep me informed.”
Joe Service walked the deck of the S. S. Badger, looking out on the chill gray waves of Lake Michigan. Most of the passengers were inside. The ship was basically two decks over a vast hull space filled with trucks, buses, and cars. The other passengers were watching television and eating or playing the arcade games. It was only a four-hour passage and the ship barely reacted to the slight sea, but there was a brisk, cold wind following them.
Joe was glad he had thought to bring his jacket from the pickup—passengers weren’t allowed on the car deck once they were under way. Being cooped up inside with all those people, the mugginess, the kids, that didn’t appeal. It wasn’t that he was asocial—normally, he was more than happy to chat—he just wanted to think. A sea voyage, especially a relatively brief one on a lake boat, was a good transitional phase. He was trying to figure out what to do next.
It was interesting, he thought, how easily he had abandoned what seemed like a pleasant and desirable life for one that was quite unsettled and even, apparently, aimless. It was a matter of turning right or left, it seemed. But he didn’t feel at all anxious or unhappy. Quite the contrary. He felt alive.
At present, he was content to watch a gull cruising alongside the ship, seemingly within arm’s reach, scarcely moving its wings. Joe leaned on the railing and watched the gull, which from time to time turned its yellow eye to look directly at him.
One gull, Joe thought, was a beautiful thing. But as soon as another showed up, and then another, and then a bunch, they began to squabble and veer at one another. But for now, this one gull just looked at Joe.
What do you think, Joe spoke silently, turn right? Turn left? The gull looked straight ahead, then turned its head away, toward the south. Joe looked down that way. In the distance he could see a dark helicopter, barely off the waves. It couldn’t be the Colonel, he thought. Nah. The chopper sped on and was soon lost to sight. There was only one other boat on the lake, a very large container ship several miles away, headed toward Milwaukee or Chicago. Joe looked back to the gull. It bobbed its head once, then abruptly peeled away. A moment later it was gone. Joe strolled on along the deck.
Six hours later he was outside Mulheisen’s house in St. Clair Flats. A car was parked in the drive. Out in the field there was a new, small house under construction. A carpenter was loading tools into a pickup. Joe drove on down the rural lane until he came to a marina. A handful of men were busy there, hoisting pleasure boats out of the water with a crane. They were being stowed for the winter. There were few cars in the large parking
lot. Joe parked his pickup out of the way and set off along the canal. It soon brought him out to the channel and a well-trodden path led along that. A large ship was looming up out of Lake St. Clair and preparing to enter the channel. Joe walked along, enjoying the end of the day. Far down the lake he could see a couple of other cargo ships, downward bound, headed toward Detroit. The city was not visible, presumably hidden in a mist. The light was still strong but on the wane.
Ahead, he saw an old woman, a slight figure, moving slowly along the path. She was dressed in wool slacks and a jacket and she carried binoculars, through which she peered from time to time when she stopped. Joe quickly overtook her.
The old woman turned to look at him as he approached. She seemed unconcerned at his presence. She smiled.
“What do you see?” Joe asked.
“Not much,” she confessed. “Mostly ducks—mallards. But I saw an eider not long ago. Kind of early for an eider, I’d say.”
Joe had no idea what an eider was, but he nodded. “What’s that bird on the post over there?” He pointed at a large bird, bigger than a crow. No duck, he was sure.
“Ah,” the old woman said. She lifted the small binoculars and trained them on the bird. “It’s a harrier,” she reported. “A marsh hawk. You don’t often see them at rest. They usually work the marsh, tirelessly looking for mice. But it’s the end of the day, probably getting ready to quit.” She offered the binoculars. “Care to look?”
“Sure.” Joe took the glasses and fiddled with them until he could see the bird. It was really quite elegant, gray and white, with a small but wickedly hooked beak. “Very handsome,” he said, handing the glasses back.
“That’s the male,” the woman said. “Well, that’s nice. He’s out late, but the days are so short. He’ll soon be gone. Migrating. I guess I’d better be getting in myself. The nurse will be chasing out here to see if I’m all right.”
She nodded toward a house and barn, visible a few hundred yards away. When Joe looked that way he saw, in fact, a woman in a jacket, arms folded, smoking a cigarette. She seemed unconcerned by Joe’s presence.