No Way Back: A Novel

by Andrew Gross

  “It’s good to see you again,” she said, coming around with a mug of coffee. She was dressed in a stylish short jacket and pants, a blue crepe blouse, a pretty pin on her lapel. She was from Arkansas and spoke with a slight drawl. “It goes without saying, how shocked and saddened I was to hear about your wife.”

  “Thank you.” Harold smiled appreciatively. “I received your note.”

  “I know she was an extremely determined woman. With a huge heart. I can promise you that everyone in this building is doing whatever they can to see the person behind what happened brought to justice. Please, take a seat over here.”

  She motioned to the couch in front of the large window that had an impressive view of the Capitol dome. “I’m sorry we didn’t have better luck with that court ruling down in Dallas. I’ve been through this situation a number of times. Once it gets in the hands of the courts, you can never tell what’s in the heads of those judges. The ability to protect confidential informants and their families is one of the lynchpins of the federal justice system. Take that away, we’re no better than special-ops guys without weapons. Anyway, I’m afraid I only have a handful of minutes to spend with you. I’m expected over at State . . .”

  “I appreciate you carving out some time on such short notice.” Harold opened his briefcase.

  “Alicia said this is about Ms. Velez? I expect you’re deciding whether to continue the case to a higher level? How is she doing?”

  “Recovering. She’s obviously been through a lot. And not just the physical trauma, of course. She was also very fond of my wife.”

  “Of course. Poor girl. I’m assuming you have her in a very safe place.”

  Though Stein certainly seemed like a person who could be trusted with the highest levels of confidence, Harold found himself hesitating. “We have her tucked away” was all he said.

  “Well, you’ve certainly gone above and beyond for her. She’s truly fortunate to have someone like you in her corner.” She took a sip of coffee and faced him, indicating that the small talk was over.

  “I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me,” Harold said, taking out a yellow legal pad from his briefcase. “Should we go forward, as you say, I think there are some things I’ll need to know, specifically about Mr. Cano and his dealings. I think I underplayed his direct connection to the deaths of Ms. Velez’s siblings. So to start, can I ask your view on why the case against Cano was dropped by the DOJ?”

  “I assume you’re speaking of his involvement in the murders of Agents Dean and Rita Bienvienes?” Sabrina Stein replied.

  Harold nodded.

  She inhaled before speaking. “I don’t truthfully know. The party line, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that problems sprang up with Oscar Velez’s testimony.”

  “Problems?”

  “Matters of memory.” Stein shrugged officiously. “It seems to happen in certain cases, when CIs come face-to-face in court with the persons they’re testifying against. They get second thoughts.”

  “Or when their children are ruthlessly butchered,” Harold felt compelled to add.

  “That too, of course.” Sabrina took a sip of coffee and offered a philosophical smile.

  “But if that were the case,” Harold said, flipping a page of his notes, “the question I would ask is why Mr. Velez wouldn’t have just simply been deported? If his use to the government was negated, that would seem to have been the perfect leverage against him. Threaten to send him back to what would clearly have been certain death. To the very person who had vowed revenge against him.”

  “A fair question.” Sabrina Stein exhaled. “And one I’m afraid I don’t have a very good answer for.”

  “Rumors were going around . . . I’m merely echoing what’s already been written,” Harold said, “that Dean and Rita Bienvienes were less than one hundred percent Ivory Snow clean. And that the Department of Justice grew to feel that a public trial would potentially air a series of allegations that might embarrass them.”

  Stein put down her coffee. “Dean and Rita Beinvienes were among the best agents I had, Mr. Bachman. What you’re alluding to is what we in the trade refer to as ‘back draft.’ One government agency sees a firestorm rising around them, so they spread the flames somewhere else. In this case, back at the DEA. The Bienvieneses were turned upside down by our own internal investigative teams. Not a thing was ever found that would give any credence to those rumors. Zero.”

  “It’s also possible that Eduardo Cano had some ability to influence the government’s decision, isn’t that right?”

  “Influence?” The Justice Department official’s eyes seemed to harden at the word.

  “Affect the outcome,” Harold said bluntly.

  “If I follow . . . you’re suggesting he was able to buy someone off?”

  “Or possibly have information that might discredit people higher up, that the government might have wanted to keep secret. Cano was trained here, and he is alleged to still have high-level friends in the government. The cartels have millions and millions to spread around, correct? This is still a world fraught with corruption, is it not?”

  Stein nodded stiffly, the pleasant veneer of a moment before replaced by something guarded and professional. “Mexico is an excellent place to commit murder, Mr. Bachman, because you will almost certainly get away with it. That said, I’d still like to think that no amount of money would derail the prosecution for the assassination of two people who so selflessly put their lives at risk for the country. Not to mention the three other completely innocent individuals who tragically were caught in the crossfire.”

  She uncrossed her legs. “No litigator likes to take on a case they can’t win, Mr. Bachman. I’m sure you’re familiar with that. Especially one that can make or break one’s career. For several reasons, Oscar Velez’s testimony was a matter of concern from the moment he chose to defect. I think the answer to your question lies much more with the witness, Mr. Bachman, than with the United States government.” She glanced at her watch, reflecting surprise at the time. “Now, if you have no more questions, I’m sorry but I have to cut this short.”

  “I understand.” Harold closed his pad and began to pack his briefcase. Then he stopped. “Just one more. There’s an addendum to this case that I found a little curious.”

  “Which case are we speaking of, Mr. Bachman? Cano’s or Lauritzia Velez’s?”

  “I’m sorry, but to me, Ms. Stein, they are becoming pretty much the same.”

  “Well, as a representative of the United States government, I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

  “The Homeland Security agent,” Harold said, “who was shot and killed in that hotel room in New York City a week ago . . . I think his name was Hruseff?”

  Stein nodded. “That’s correct.”

  “I was surprised to discover that he once worked for the DEA. Out of the El Paso office, as it turns out; coincidentally at the same time as the Bienvieneses’ killings . . . I guess that also means he worked under you . . .”

  “And your guess would be correct, Mr. Bachman.” Stein stood up. “Ray was a good man. Very sad, what happened. And if I recall, there was a third person in that room. I’m pretty certain that when she’s found—and she will be, soon, I promise you—and all the facts come out, it will show that Ray was simply doing his job.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Harold said, and stood up too.

  “Only I don’t see what that particular incident has to do with Eduardo Cano.” Sabrina Stein cocked her head. “Ray was working for a completely different government agency at the time he was killed. On matters totally unconnected with his past role—”

  “The other person in the room . . . who Hruseff allegedly shot,” Harold said. “I think his name was Kitchner . . .”

  “Curtis Kitchner.” Sabrina Stein nodded.

  “He was a journalist. As it happens, he was looking into Eduardo Cano at the time of his death.”

  “Into Cano?” She began to walk him
to the door. “How would you possibly know that, Mr. Bachman? I never saw that come out anywhere.”

  “Because he visited Lauritzia Velez. In the hospital, just a few days before his death.” Harold picked up his briefcase. “I was merely pointing out how this Cano seems to have his imprint everywhere. And how the two cases might be related.”

  There was a moment of silence between them. Drawn out long enough to take on a shape, hard and stony, and even a pro like Sabrina Stein couldn’t hide how she was working to put it all together.

  That was the moment Harold first thought she might be lying.

  “Eduardo Cano continues to be a dangerous man, Mr. Bachman. A fact that I think you found out for yourself, firsthand. But to your point on Agent Hruseff, we all seem to cross paths in this business if we stay in long enough. Scratch any of us, and I suspect that’s what you’ll find. And now I’m afraid I have to move on . . .” She stopped at the door. “Once again, I feel like I haven’t been altogether helpful.”

  “No, you have. I want to thank you for your time. But if you don’t mind, just one more quick thing. Any chance you ever come across someone named Gillian who was connected with this case?”

  “Gillian?” Stein blinked at the name.

  “Maybe someone connected to Hruseff? Or possibly another agent?”

  “Gillian. No, I’m sorry. Where did that name happen to come up?”

  “No matter.” Harold shrugged. “Just something this Curtis Kitchner seemed to have on his mind.”

  “I see. Once again, I feel I haven’t been very helpful to you. Anyway, it’s been a pleasure meeting with you again, Mr. Bachman. Please keep me informed of what you find.”

  She opened the door and they shook hands.

  “I like your pin,” Harold said, noticing her lapel. “Looks Aztec.”

  “Yes, it is,” Sabrina Stein said. “I actually got it while down there.”

  Almost involuntarily she seemed to adjust it on her lapel—a turquoise and silver grasshopper.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The Amtrak express train rocked gently back and forth, speeding to New York City.

  Harold sat in the quiet car and took a sip of his vodka.

  Mexico is an excellent place to commit murder. He thought of what Sabrina Stein had said. Because you will surely get away with it.

  He had no proof, nothing he could share with anyone. Nothing that would make someone think he was doing more than just grasping at straws.

  Just that Hruseff was part of Stein’s DEA team back in El Paso. And that it was he who killed Curtis at the hotel. Curtis, who was looking into the deaths of Dean and Rita Bienvienes, who were in El Paso at the very same time, and who was sure he had found something. Something that led him to Lauritzia Velez.

  Which may well have been that the Bienvienes were murdered in Culiacán by Eduardo Cano—and with the complicity of the U.S. government.

  Why?

  Look them up, Wendy Gould had begged him. Harold recalled her pretty but desperate face disappearing behind the closing elevator door.

  They’re all connected. All of them.

  That phrase kept on coming back.

  All of them.

  As soon as the train pulled out of Union Station in DC, Harold had googled the other agent who was with Hruseff at the hotel.

  Alton Dokes. The agent Wendy claimed was framing her for her husband’s death.

  He couldn’t find much of a history on him, only a ton of recent articles that quoted him as lead investigator on the manhunt for Wendy Gould. But he did find one linking him to an article from the San Antonio Express-News, from back in 2008, a year before the Bienvienes were killed.

  As a DEA agent, Dokes had been implicated in the shooting of a seventeen-year-old Mexican crossing the border from Juárez. The boy ended up being a drug mule, and the shooting was ultimately ruled justifiable. Dokes was fully cleared.

  “Sabrina Stein, Senior Agent in Charge of Operations out of the DEA’s El Paso office, commented, ‘We are glad this episode is behind us and a dedicated agent is able to resume his duties . . . ’ ”

  Harold took a sip of his vodka. So Dokes was there too.

  All of them.

  He was sure Sabrina was hiding something. But what could he possibly prove? This wasn’t enough to cast even the slightest suspicion off of Wendy. Even if he handed what he had over to the authorities, he knew it wouldn’t go further than the person he told. That two government agents had been in the same place years ago at the same time two fellow agents were murdered in Mexico? That, years later, they’d both had some connection to a journalist who had been killed? A journalist who was looking into that very story.

  Scratch any of us, Sabrina Stein had told him, you never know what you will find . . .

  The train’s rattling brought him back from his thoughts.

  You’re crazy to get involved, Harold told himself. Look what it’s already cost you. You made a vow. To protect your kids. You’re all they have now. This was over. He’d already seen what could happen. His wife’s desire to protect Lauritzia had cost them everything. They had nothing now, except themselves . . .

  Harold finished his drink and gave the woman sitting across from him a pleasant smile. As he went to shut the lid on his laptop, he fixed on his screen saver, a photo of Roxanne. Her arms around Jamie and Taylor in their backyard, their sunny faces promising everything beautiful in life.

  He could shut the computer a thousand times, but it wouldn’t shut it out.

  Not completely.

  There was one person who would know all this, Harold realized. Who might hold all the secrets.

  Curtis had gone to see Lauritzia in the days before he died. It was time to know what he had told her.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I was down to my last few dollars. Hiding out in parking lots and business parks after dark, catching bites to eat at drive-thru windows. I realized that the first time I hit up an ATM, my location would be given away. Not to mention a photograph taken of how I looked.

  But I was getting to the point where I really didn’t care.

  I’d been in the same clothes for five days now. I also knew Jim and Cindy were probably up in Vermont by now, and there might well be a national APB out on the Explorer at this very moment. Every time I saw a flashing light, or a police car randomly drove by, my blood froze and I came to a standstill, sure that it was the one car that had closed in on me.

  So far one hadn’t. But I knew I was on borrowed time.

  Driving out of Stamford, I passed a tiny lodging on Route 172 in Pound Ridge, just across the New York border, called the Three Pony Inn. It looked quiet and empty. Just what I needed. I just said the hell with it and pulled in. I desperately needed a shower and to wash my clothes. And to sleep in a bed. The place was a family-run B and B, and the proprietors’ teenage son was manning the front desk when I came in, doing his math homework. I paid for a night at $109 with a Bon Voyage gift card I found in my wallet—one of Dave’s advertising accounts, which I knew to be completely untraceable. But my funds were running out.

  The first thing I did in the small but cozy room was run the shower. It was amazing how just letting the warm spray stream down my body revived me with the feeling that I could get through this and that everything would somehow be okay.

  I washed out my T-shirt and underwear and spread them on the towel bar to dry. I laughed to myself that if the police barged in right then, they’d have to arrest me in my towel—I didn’t have anything dry to wear. I looked at my face in the mirror. I hardly recognized what I saw. I put on the TV and curled up to the news, ecstatic to be in a bed for the first time in days and stretch my legs on the cool linens. There had been another massacre in a village in Syria. A New York City assemblyman was being sentenced on corruption charges. There was nothing on me. I was exhausted. I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the news.

  I woke around three in the afternoon and called to the front desk to ask if there was a
computer I could use. I was told there was an Internet setup for guests in the sunroom off the main lobby. When my clothes dried I cautiously made my way down. A woman was at the desk now, and she asked genially if I wanted a cup of coffee and I gratefully said that I would. I sat at the desk in the sunroom, decorated with a patterned couch, English roll-leg chairs, and equestrian prints.

  There was an old HP computer there, and the first thing I did after logging on with the hotel code was to check Google News to see if there was anything new on me. There wasn’t, but I did spot a headline on Curtis: HOTEL SHOOT-OUT VICTIM HAD TIES TO KNOWN DRUG TRAFFICKERS.

  I clicked on the link.

  FBI sources say that Curtis Kitchner, the journalist who was shot dead in his New York hotel room after a confrontation with a federal law enforcement agent, had maintained contacts and carried on conversations with drug traffickers familiar to law enforcement agencies, some high on the DEA’s most wanted list, leading investigators to speculate that was the reason he was under surveillance by federal authorities.

  Investigators now seem certain it was not Mr. Kitchner who fired the shots that killed Agent Raymond Hruseff of the Department of Homeland Security, and are still searching for Wendy Stansi Gould of Pelham, New York, who was believed to be in the hotel room at the time. Ms. Stansi is also being sought in connection to the shooting death of her husband at their home in Pelham later that night, but her whereabouts remain unknown.

  So here it is, I said to myself, the stream of misinformation that would make it seem as if Curtis was the bad guy and had instigated things and that Hruseff was merely doing his job. The article was from Reuters, without a byline. Otherwise I might have contacted the author to tell my side of the story.