Gospel

by Sydney Bauer

  ‘He’s not here,’ said Frank.

  ‘We’re early,’ said Mannix. ‘Give him time.’

  And so they waited.

  Half an hour later they were still waiting and about to give up all hope when Mannix’s cell phone rang.

  ‘Mannix,’ answered Joe.

  ‘I’m sitting at a bench on the northern side of the Reflecting Pool,’ said the distinctly southern voice before hanging up.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said McKay, following Mannix out of the Memorial. ‘They pay these guys extra for the cloak and dagger shit?’

  ‘He’s been watching us,’ said Joe. ‘He just wanted to make sure we were alone. My guess is he’s worried about Simba. The FBI are notoriously tight and Ryan is probably worried Leo is just another Feeb ready to rat out the Bureau’s enemies to his superiors. We’re gonna have to convince him Leo is straight up.’

  ‘That’s easy, we just tell him King told us about Ramirez,’ said Frank.

  ‘One step at a time,’ said Joe, approaching the bench where a tall, broad-shouldered man was standing to meet them. ‘Let’s just see what Director Ryan has to tell us first.’

  ‘Detective Mannix,’ said Ryan, rising to his feet with an outstretched hand. ‘Forgive me for not returning your calls but nine times outta ten, detectives like you are ringing to ask me for a job and quite frankly, I don’t have the time.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Joe. ‘You know Frank.’

  ‘I certainly do.’ And the two men shook hands. ‘Mind if we walk while you talk. I listen better when I’m on my feet.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Joe. ‘But with all due respect, Director, we didn’t ask you here to listen. We believe you have information relating to the death of Vice President Tom Bradshaw, information that may suggest the wrong man is now sitting in jail accused of his murder. We also think we may be able to supplement such information but, and this is the kicker, Director, we are not going to risk sticking our heads out waiting for the crap shooter to blow them off without some kind of quid pro quo up front. In other words, this is not a one-way street. It’s a freeway.’

  ‘How do I know I can trust you?’ asked Ryan.

  ‘How do we know we can trust you?’ countered McKay.

  ‘Tom Bradshaw was one of my best friends.’

  ‘And he’s dead,’ said Frank. ‘And if I were you, I’d be hell-bent on finding the people who killed him.’

  Ryan stopped then, turning to face them, his blue eyes squinting against the mid-morning sun.

  ‘Gentlemen, I am in the business of suspicion and not accustomed to taking uncertain leaps of faith, especially when I have no idea if you are on the level.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Mannix. ‘But to put things bluntly, Director, our time is up. Frank has told you enough to get you interested; otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. He gave you some of our information, but not all, and let’s just say we are unwilling to spill any more beans until we have a commitment that this thing is gonna flow both ways. So let’s get this straight – right here, right now. You either jump or you don’t. It’s up to you.’

  Ryan considered them, and started pacing slowly, in circles. He turned back to face them as if wanting to say something, but then seemingly thought better of it, and started walking again, this time east, away from them, towards the towering Washington Monument beyond the World War II memorial at the other end of the Pool.

  ‘Shit,’ said McKay to Mannix. ‘We shouldn’t have come on so strong. We’ve lost him.’

  And then they heard him call over his shoulder, his deep southern drawl thick through puffs of dissipating steam. ‘You gentlemen coming or not?’ he said. ‘It’s cold, I need to keep moving, and I guess if I’m gonna jump, I might as well have some company on the way down.’

  And then he began, starting with the girl.

  In early February, Ryan explained, he got a call from retired CIA agent and old friend by the name of Albert Mahoney. Mahoney had been somewhat of a mentor to Ryan, an old war horse who ran the CIA’s Crime and Narcotics Centre when Ryan was not much more than a rookie. He did things by the book and managed to hold his position as head of the CNC through two decades and four administrations until he retired to Uniontown, in his home state of Pennsylvania five years ago.

  Mahoney told Ryan his eighteen-year-old grand-daughter, Pippa, who lived with her parents in Philadelphia, had been hospitalised after passing out at a rave party in her home city. Despite Pippa’s insistence that she never took drugs, tests proved positive for MDMA or Methylenedioxyme thylamphetamine, better known as ecstasy, and the local cops were called in. Pippa’s father immediately rang his father, and thanks to Albert’s connections in Crime and Narcotics, the charges were dropped. Pippa went home with a sore head and a warning never to take the drug again, all the time maintaining her innocence.

  ‘The following weekend Albert drove across to Philly to basically give his grandkid the “dangers of drugs” talk,’ explained Ryan as they walked alongside the Pool and past the Vietnam Memorial to their left. ‘But the kid is adamant she didn’t take the drug, and even more adamant that she didn’t drink anything which ruled out the possibility of her being slipped a “mickey”. According to Pippa Mahoney, the only pill she did take that evening was one she “borrowed” from her place of employ, a vitamin/beauty company called G4, written ‘GIV’ in Roman numerals. She says she took the pill from a bottle of exclusive skin rejuvenation supplements the company sends to various clients via courier. She also said the company had a very strict policy on staff sampling product and begged her grandfather not to intervene for fear she would lose her job.’

  ‘Did Albert believe the kid?’ asked McKay.

  ‘Not at first. Turns out Pippa has told her fair share of “cover my ass” lies in the past. But he was curious enough to make a visit to GIV on one of Pippa’s days off.’

  Ryan told them how Albert Mahoney visited the small but classy off-street offices where GIV beauticians performed services like facials, pedicures, manicures and body waxing. They also advertised packaged vitamin supplements, which were part of a display on their front counter, and were billed as ‘a special combination of 100% natural ingredients guaranteed to rejuvenate the skin in less than four weeks’.

  ‘So Albert asks the manager – a Mrs Grace Van Horton – exactly what’s in these miracle concoctions, and Van Horton rolls out a list of legit vitamins, minerals and herbs. Albert buys a pack and immediately gets it analysed by some old buddies at CNC’s crime lab – and that’s exactly what it is – Vitamins A, C, E, Calcium and so on.’

  ‘So his grand-daughter was lying,’ said Frank.

  ‘No, no she wasn’t. When Albert calls her on it again, she says her pill came from the other vitamin packages, the ones with vacuum seals locked in personal canisters that are sent out to private clients, the ones delivered from Philly Airport every month and dispatched via courier to a list of no-name private security boxes once a week.’

  ‘If they are vacuum sealed and locked,’ asked Joe, ‘how’d the girl get her hands on one?’

  ‘She told Albert one of the canisters had been damaged in transit. She opened it, took what she thought was some super powerful anti-ageing concoction, re-sealed the canister and sent it on its way. Later that evening, right before hitting the rave with some friends, she downed the tablet, and voilà – instant high.’

  ‘An eighteen-year-old wanting to decelerate the ageing process,’ said Frank. ‘Now that’s a crime in itself.’

  ‘So where did Albert go from there?’ asked Joe.

  ‘To me,’ said Ryan. ‘He called and asked me to do some digging. And that’s when I first became aware of clandestine narcotics operations being carried out by a small elite group of drug importers and distributors known as G4, which Tom Bradshaw and I later found out was an abbreviation for Gospel Four.’

  ‘As in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,’ said McKay, looking at his boss.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ryan, obviously not yet
realising the significance of Frank’s recognition. ‘That’s them.’

  Ryan went on to explain how he then called in a few favours himself, asking some old and current CIA buddies to make a few discreet enquiries about the workings of GIV. The company itself was listed as being owned by a parent company known as Four Incorporated, which listed its trading address as an abandoned warehouse in Houston, Texas, and its company director as one M. Johns of Galveston, whose phone was disconnected and whose address corresponded with a reclaimed reservoir where the only living residents had feathers or six legs.

  ‘Two dead ends,’ said McKay, ‘So where to next?’

  ‘Back to Pippa,’ said Ryan. ‘I was hoping beyond all hell that Ms Mahoney was exactly what she said she wasn’t – a liar. And luckily I was right.’

  Ryan told them how he followed Pippa to a café in her lunch break and basically told her he was from the ‘government’ and that unless she handed over the other tablets she had taken, she could well be prosecuted for theft and possession of an illegal narcotic.

  ‘Basically, I was just going on a hunch that Pippa had taken more than that one tablet – maybe two or three or four. But when poor naïve Pippa reached into her handbag and pulled out a whole bottle of the stuff, I had to stop myself from smiling. She said she had intended to throw them out, but had just not got around to it.’

  ‘Thank God for the phenomenon of the lying teenager,’ said Frank.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ryan. ‘So, I thank her for her honesty, warn her against any further illegal activities and race the MDMA to the lab hoping I can source the origin of the drug from its composition – which is exactly what I did.’

  ‘You guys can trace a drug source from a single ecstasy tablet?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Not always. But this stuff was pure – top quality. It resembled similar batches of the drug that had been confiscated by the DEA in Washington last Christmas. In fact it was almost identical. The stuff was made in Colombia, packaged in Panama and moved across the border into Texas before being flown into Philly. The vacuum-sealed plastic containers used in the packaging were traced back to a covert pharmaceutical outfit in Panama City.’

  ‘But didn’t the Food and Drug Administration introduce some tough new laws on the registration of companies who manufacture drugs and dietary supplements a couple of years back?’ asked Frank. ‘I mean, how did this stuff get registered and then go undetected at an airport like Philly?’

  ‘You’re right, Frank,’ said Ryan. ‘As of December 2003 every manufacturer of food stuffs, including vitamin supplements, had to register with the FDA and then give prior notice on the movement of said merchandise by either using Custom and Border Protection’s automated commercial system or the FDA’s Prior Notice Interface System. But GIV had it covered because they had someone who could make sure the company was registered and all paperwork done.

  ‘One of the four,’ said Frank.

  ‘You got it,’ said Ryan. ‘In fact it was Mark – one Travis Toovey, Assistant Director of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Intelligence. His last job was as a Special Agent for the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations – so the guy had all bases covered.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Joe, turning to Frank. ‘The Bible code, 2V – Toovey.’

  Ryan stopped short, the look of shock clear on his weather-beaten face. ‘You saw our Bible? How the hell did you . . . ?’

  ‘Pieter Capon saw your coded list before he handed it to you in Bradshaw’s suite,’ said Mannix. ‘Lucky for us the guy has a good memory. But we’ll get to that in a minute – go on Director, this stuff is important and something tells me it only gets better.’

  Ryan hesitated before going on, but he had already taken the ‘leap’ and now there was no going back.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, starting to walk again. ‘It does get better . . . or worse, depending on how you look at it, because the next person we identified was a decorated agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration – Robert Doyle, alias Luke.’

  Ryan told them how, after identifying Toovey, he took the information to the Vice President. They both agreed the quality of the narcotics and the organised regular operation of GIV’s business meant that at least one of the operation’s leaders had good contacts in South America – and the negotiating power and expertise to set up and maintain the flow of the A1 produce.

  ‘Someone in the DEA,’ said Joe.

  ‘That was Tom’s guess. In fact, he suggested we check who the agent was who busted the DC raid. He rightly guessed this coup was set up by the DEA operative to maintain his high status at the DEA while he carried out his part of the illegal operation on the side.’

  ‘But wouldn’t that mean a crackdown on his suppliers?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Normally yes, but according to our guys the investigation into supply was called off immediately after the raid, the agent claiming it had been handed over to the FBI – or more specifically to Assistant Director in Charge Antonio Ramirez from the Washington Field Office.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Joe.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Ryan then explained how, once they had identified Robert Doyle as the DEA operative, he and Tom Bradshaw came up with the idea of trying to scuttle the ‘business’ by sending Doyle into witness protection.

  ‘Long story short, we didn’t want to arrest Toovey or Doyle, especially given our suspicions about Ramirez. We knew once we did this, the operation would most likely dissolve and we would risk losing Ramirez and the other, yet to be identified person, who we believed completed the key group of four.’

  ‘You put Doyle into witness protection?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Yeah. In fact, that part was easy. You have to remember the CIA’s jurisdiction is outside of the US. We have plenty of stand-up – and I suppose you could say not so stand-up – contacts in South America. We simply researched Doyle’s Operations profile and concocted a believable story about a Colombian drug lord putting out a contract on his life and that of his family. Tom called upon some friends at the US Marshal’s Office and before long Doyle was convinced an old enemy was out to kill him. Three days later he and his family were on their way to California. Once he was in LA we bugged his phone, waiting . . . hoping he would contact one of the others. We knew he had to be panicking about where this left him in the group, and as it turned out we were right.’

  Ryan explained how, early in April, Doyle placed a call to Travis Toovey at his home in DC. The conversation was short but telling, with a nervous Doyle asking Toovey, alias Mark, for his support at the next Gospel meeting.

  Doyle – or Luke as he called himself at all times during the conversation – was worried John and Matthew would try to join forces to eliminate him from the four and asked for Mark’s support in any vote of that nature. An equally nervous Mark said nothing, bar demanding Doyle never call him at home again – and that it wasn’t his problem if Doyle had basically forfeited his value to the group by going into witness protection.

  ‘And that’s how you found out about their code names – the Gospel connection – and the synergy with GIV?’ asked Joe.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What about this Gospel meeting?’ asked Frank. ‘Did it ever take place?’

  ‘We weren’t sure,’ said Ryan. ‘But at this point we were really just a band of two undertaking an ad hoc, unofficial investigation. We were wary that Ramirez’s men were also monitoring Doyle, so we had to be careful not to be exposed in the double up. Doyle could have slipped out for a meeting without us knowing it. In fact, considering his intelligence background, it would have been a piece of cake.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ said Joe. ‘I can understand your focus on the three identified Gospel members, but wasn’t there an easier way to bring them down? I mean, why didn’t you just get the client list from Pippa Mahoney and hassle the users receiving the drugs. Maybe they knew something about their suppliers and had proof of . . .’

  ‘I was waiting fo
r you to ask me that,’ said Ryan with a half smile. ‘But I wanted to leave it to the end, because that’s the craziest thing about this whole deal – the client list, who they are and/or who they are related to.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Frank.

  ‘We considered asking Pippa to lift the list but given her current state of distress and unreliability we figured it was easier and cleaner to park outside GIV’s Philly offices and hack into their computers, which we did. We got the clients list all right – just over 210 private security box addresses.’

  ‘And . . .’

  ‘And,’ said Ryan savouring the clincher, ‘the list blew us away. Everyone on it – every last one — was either a working member of Congress or a relative of said influential individuals. We couldn’t go through the clients. We had to keep them intact because they were the key to this whole thing. This, my friends, was a drug operation for the political elite, run by some of the most significant members of three of the most important security and law enforcement institutions in the country. In other words, it was a perfectly camouflaged, multi-million dollar making, extortionist’s dream.’

  ‘Extortion,’ said Mannix, stopping short. ‘You think the Four were setting up their rich and influential clients so that they could threaten exposure if they didn’t . . .’

  ‘Pay up big time,’ finished Ryan. ‘That’s right. Most of the men and women on this list are paid very healthy salaries – and a lot of them were wealthy in their own right prior to entering politics. These people spend their lives burying the skeletons in their closets. You have to remember that, thanks to Tom Bradshaw, the drug issue was the issue of the moment. One of these guys gets caught abusing narcotics, or has a close relative doing the same, their career is over. Kaput. Dead in the water,’ said Ryan, lifting his hand to shade his pale eyes from the now harsh morning sun.

  ‘Of course at that point we started pulling each and every one of the clients’ financial records to see if they had in fact been the victims of extortion. The minute we saw a big withdrawal or any indication they were under sudden financial pressure, we were going to confront said client and see if they could help us nail the criminals threatening to expose their, or their loved one’s, illegal little habit.’