by Fred Burton
I take it. I’m sitting only a few feet from the limo, an interesting place to have dinner. Glancing up the street, I see a van parked at the end of the next block. There’s no mistaking it: It’s an FBI vehicle. I’ve seen them in the Bureau’s motorpools in New York and in D.C.
I wonder how many FBI special surveillance groups (SSGs) are out there in the evening, watching every move we’re making. I’m probably being filmed right now by one, quite possibly from that van. The FBI’s just doing their job—keeping an eye on the Mafia. But I’m doing mine—guarding a Mob don. Feds spying on feds. What would the taxpayers say?
This would be a perfect setting for a hit. There are some very powerful people in the room tonight who have made their share of enemies over the years, just like Andreotti. The threats are out there. And with all these figures in one place, under one roof, it would be an assassin’s dream. They could scrub out some key members of New York’s underworld in one job and nail the foreign minister as extra credit.
If I have to die in the line of duty, so be it. But I’d just as soon not die protecting La Cosa Nostra.
From my vantage point up front, I keep tabs on everything out on the street. For whatever reason, hardly a soul appears on either sidewalk. The place is like a ghost town. Well, that just gives the FBI cameras an unobstructed view of us DSS agents. What a goat rope. Visiting dignitaries and diplomats require protection. That’s the DSS’s job. What I didn’t count on was this: What if we are hosting a criminal in a suit? We guard them anyway, just like tonight. Their diplomatic status gives them that right, just like if Fidel Castro came to town—or Mikhail Gorbachev. We guard our enemies as zealously as our friends to ensure they do not suffer harm while visiting our nation.
I feel slightly sick inside. When the moment of truth came, would I throw myself in front of the foreign minister to save him from an assassin’s bullet? That is my duty. I would have no other choice.
I wouldn’t do it for Andreotti. No, from what I’ve seen here tonight, the Mob ties are real. But I would do it for the service—for the DSS. Failing to do our duty would dishonor our badge and forever smear our hard-won stellar reputation. If it came to that, it would be black and white after all. I’d do whatever I had to in order to protect the integrity of my fellow agents. That would be worth the bullet.
Before long, the waiter brings us food—lots and lots of food.
The meal is an extended affair with plenty of courses. We dig in. Soon we’re all stuffed. The entire scene could have been lifted straight from a Mario Puzo novel.
I turn to one of the NYPD detectives, who is sitting next to me. “This could be an outtake from The Godfather.”
The detective grunts, “Let’s hope not. We’re in for a shit storm if that’s the case.”
True. These sorts of meetings never end well in Mob films. Somebody always ends up feeding the fishes.
Finally, the meeting breaks up. I really wish I spoke Italian. I’m sure I would have heard plenty of things that could be used to indict everyone in the room. Or maybe not. They’re probably not that careless; after all, feds are feds, even when they’re watching one another.
Atlantic City is next on the agenda. The foreign minister is scheduled to fly over to the Trump Castle Casino. Andreotti climbs back into his limo. We scramble for our faux-wood-sided Wagoneer and jet-black Crown Vic. As we speed out of the neighborhood, I glance in the rearview mirror. Only blocks behind us, the scene takes on an altogether different character. Cars fill the street again. People suddenly appear on the sidewalk. Lights go on and businesses are opened. Life in Little Italy returns to normal.
How does an entire community get word to lie low? That’s one dialed-in neighborhood.
We stop at a midtown helicopter port. Waiting for us is Donald Trump’s personal Sikorsky Sea King. One of the other agents on this detail leans into me and whispers, “It used to serve as Marine One. That helicopter flew presidents around.”
I climb aboard, along with Andreotti’s personal bodyguard. With a pilot and copilot, there will only be five of us on this flight. I move to the back of the helicopter and marvel at its luxuries. The seats are leather, and each one has a telephone. A wet bar dominates one corner. I’m suddenly in a toy right out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I feel underdressed. I should have brought a larger gun.
With Andreotti aboard, the helicopter lifts off into the New York evening. The pilots take us on a skyscraper-hopping tour of downtown Manhattan. The skyline’s beauty leaves me breathless as we weave in and out of the city’s major landmarks. We make a complete 360 around the World Trade Center from about fiftieth-floor level. I have to strain to look up and see the top of those awesome silver monoliths. There is nothing more impressive than the Twin Towers on a clear night. They become bright beacons of power, symbols of American economic might. It is hard not to feel a swell of pride as the pilots give our Italian guest an aerial tour of the greatest city on the planet.
When we turn for the Jersey shore, I use that newest of modern conveniences—a cellular phone—to call our detail in Atlantic City. They’re ready and waiting for the foreign minister’s arrival.
We touch down at Trump Castle’s helipad. Our agents pick up Andreotti as soon as he descends from the Sikorsky. He leads them down to the casino floor, where he spends the rest of the night gambling.
I spend the rest of my night in the casino’s ultramodern security center. Trump’s chief of security is a knowledgeable and intelligent man, and he walks me through all the safeguards within the facility. It is the most sophisticated setup I’ve ever seen. There are an impressive number of cameras, and the display terminals make the security center look like a miniature version of NORAD’s headquarters in Cheyenne Mountain. Everyone and everything is under constant surveillance. If you are inside Trump’s casino, Big Brother is always watching.
“How much cash do you move out of here?” I ask the security chief.
“You mean a night? ’Bout a million.”
I do the math. No wonder Trump can afford to buy Marine One.
“Ever seen that old Sinatra film, what was it…?”
“Ocean’s Eleven?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Never happen here.”
“How can you be sure?”
The security chief waves a hand at all the techno-gadgets in the room. “They didn’t have all this in 1960.”
Point taken.
Long after midnight, Andreotti decides it is time to get some sleep. I’ve been too busy to see how he made out, but he seems in perky spirits when we meet him back at the Sikorsky on the rooftop helipad. We climb aboard and fly back to midtown Manhattan.
The next morning, we set up the motorcade out in front of his hotel and await his arrival. He comes down, looking fresh in a new suit and coiffed hair. We speed off out of the city, the NYPD intel car on point again. This time, we spend the day at Belmont Park, watching the races. The foreign minister meets a few friends, and they pass the day betting on the ponies and drinking Belmont Breezes.
On the way home, my cellular phone rings.
“Burton.”
“Fred, we need you back at Foggy Bottom,” says Steve Gleason.
“Okay, but at the moment I’m on my way back to Manhattan with the foreign minister,” I report.
“Get back to D.C. tonight. Ahmed’s coming in.”
Finally. A well-laid trap we’ve been preparing for months is about to be sprung. I hit the gas pedal and the Crown Vic surges forward. I’m anxious to get back to midtown so I can catch a bird out of the Big Apple. I’ve got a date with a terrorist.
sixteen
MICE
Back at Foggy Bottom I sign for a black Ford sedan and head for the parking garage where our department vehicles are kept. Today I have an interpreter named Ibrahim and a new CT agent in tow. Over the past few months, Gleason’s been good to his word, and we have received some help. We’ve got three new agents working for us, though it
looks like Mullen will be leaving soon.
The interpreter climbs into the back of an ’86 Crown Vic. I drive. The other CT agent, “David,” rides shotgun. We’re going to have to take some serious precautions on this drive. Hezbollah has a long reach, and we don’t want to lead anyone back to our catch. Today we’re going to pay a visit to Ahmed.
We burst out of the parking garage at a good clip. I make a hard turn and swing onto the streets of D.C. The sun is shining and the shadows are long, giving the capital a high-contrast sort of look. Lots of light and lots of shadows, very appropriate given today’s mission. Brownish-black snow lies in slushy piles along either side of the road. The asphalt itself is icy and wet. Not a good day to drive evasively, but you take what you’re given in this business.
I goose the accelerator and the Ford speeds to fifty. Like all our sedans, this one is totally clean and comes equipped with buried plates. Officially, the car does not exist.
Inside our stealth Ford, we’re all in street clothes, but we’ve got blue raid jackets that say FEDERAL AGENT in big yellow letters on their backs tucked away in the trunk should we need them. They’re stashed right next to the Remington shotgun and the extra shells loaded with number 4 buck.
We come to a four-way intersection whose light is already green. At the last possible second, I brake hard and spin the steering wheel. The sedan skids into a tight right turn and we flare around the corner. As soon as we’re at the apex of the turn, I’m on the gas again. We shoot out of the intersection doing sixty. Meanwhile, David and I are scanning the side and rearview mirrors, checking every vehicle behind us in case we’ve got a tail.
I hit another intersection. A quick right turn at the last second and then I’m powering out of it, running up the street for the next intersection. We reach it, and I cut across incoming traffic in a surprise left turn.
This is called a surveillance detection route, or SDR. Basically, the driver stair-steps through a city grid, making frequent turns while still trending toward his eventual destination. The chance that any random civilian car would follow the driver through these gyrations is astronomically low. Thus, if you come out of a stair-step maneuver and see the same green van behind you that was there when you started, well, you’ve got a tail. And a problem.
I make another sudden right turn and stair-step up a few blocks before careening across the oncoming traffic lane again to dodge into a side street. I check the rearview mirror. No familiar vehicles. In fact, nobody followed us in that turn at all.
In the mirror, I catch sight of our interpreter in the backseat. Under his saucer-sized eyes, the rest of his face has turned a nice shade of green.
We come to a 7-Eleven convenience store, and it is time to use another SDR tactic we call a timing stop. Without warning, I wrench the steering wheel and the sedan’s back end skids sideways for a second before the back wheels find purchase and propel us forward into the 7-Eleven’s parking lot. We find an empty space and park, motor running, eyes on the street. We watch the traffic trickle by, David and I carefully noting every vehicle’s color and make. We’re trained observers, and we soon have a mental list of sedans, vans, and trucks that have cruised past us. We’ll watch for any of them to appear again once we continue our journey.
Ten minutes later, we back out of the parking space and drift to the driveway. A quick look left. A quick look right. All clear. I stomp the gas pedal and the sedan lunges onto the street, bouncing on its shocks as we hit the asphalt again. Behind me, the wild maneuver throws our terp into one of the back doors. I hear him grunt.
He hasn’t seen anything yet.
Two blocks from the 7-Eleven, the oncoming traffic lane is empty. I spin the steering wheel left, the car heels around, slipping on the ice. We start to spin, and I fight to keep the back end from fishtailing. And then, we’re 180 degrees from where we started and it is time to drop the hammer again. The engine roars and we tear back up the street past the 7-Eleven again. Any civilian watching us would think we’re idiots. In the Dark World, such tactics keep people alive, and we’re exceptionally well trained at this game.
“Helluva U-turn, Fred,” David says to me through a big grin.
I don’t respond. I’m too focused. I take this seriously; if we don’t do it right, we could get our asset killed.
We roll through one intersection and go up a few more blocks. Just as we reach another one, I swing the sedan into a violent right turn. Behind me, the interpreter blurts, “Oh, God!”
I hear him thump into the door again.
“Tighten your seat belt,” David tells him.
He frantically does as he’s told.
Twenty minutes later, we’ve stair-stepped all over Rosslyn. Both David and I are confident that we don’t have a tail. If we had one, we lost him. If they had multiple vehicles set up to follow us, we would have noticed that, too. Plus, our random movements would have made intercepting us almost impossible. We break out of the SDR and roll south for Arlington. Before we reach our destination, we execute another series of stair-steps, just to be sure nobody’s picked us up. When we’re convinced we’re clean, we make the final turn to the safe house. Actually, it is a safe apartment.
I guide the sedan into a parking lot not far from the safe house. The terp bails out of the back and mutters something about feeling like a human pinball. These types don’t like to hang with us on these sorts of missions. I wonder why.
The safe house is located inside a swanky high-rise apartment building right here in D.C. Forget how the spy novelists portray safe houses as creepy places way out in the woods. That’s the worst place to hide an asset. If you want to hide a needle, where’s the best place? In a stack of identical needles. That’s the philosophy we use with our safe houses. We hide in plain sight. It works, thanks in part to the many adulterers in the D.C. area.
All over the capital, it is easy to find high-rise apartments or condos that are leased to innocuous-sounding corporations like “Global Research, LLC.” In reality, these are love nests for the rich and powerful. Call them their crash pads, the place where they can bring their trophy girlfriends without fear of spousal intrusions. People like that tend to keep to themselves. They don’t ask questions. They aren’t nosy neighbors. In that sort of environment, we can come and go as we please, with whomever we want, and not raise any neighborly eyebrows, even when we bring handcuffed men into the building. That just looks kinky to them.
And what if we do run into a Betty Busybody who spends her retirement keeping tabs on which blonde emerges from which apartment night after night? Well, we put her on the payroll and she goes from gossip magnet to quiet lookout. Problem solved, and we’ve got another asset covering our safe house.
This apartment complex looks like any other one in this area of Arlington. Only a studious observer would notice the extra security cameras secreted around the exterior. We walk to the front entryway, where there is no doorman waiting for us. We never pick a building with a doorman. They’re too indiscreet.
We ride the elevator to the fifth floor. When the doors open, David asks, “How do you want this to go down?”
“Let me do the talking. We’ll see if he’s fluent in English.”
I turn to the terp. “Don’t let on you speak Arabic until I give you the signal, okay?”
After the ride down here, Ibrahim is not in the mood to question any orders. He nods weakly and tries to smile. It comes across more like a scowl. He still looks carsick.
Room 511 awaits. Watercolers and landscape oil paintings hang on the walls. Oak and cherry furniture give the place a down-home sort of look, but the prisoner in a chair in one corner adds sort of a Mansonesque twist to the Martha Stewart décor.
I step into the living room. It is bright and sunny, and the apartment is extremely warm. I notice there’s a sliding door leading to a balcony. The drapes are open, and the view to the north is spectacular. The Washington Monument stands out above the rest of the D.C. skyline. No wonder CEOs bring their bi
mbos to places like this one. High rent. Good view. All-around cozy love nest.
The man does not look very chipper. I ignore him for a minute and check out the kitchen. There’s a flock of Chinese takeout containers sitting on the counter, along with a stack of empty Stouffer’s TV-dinner trays. Bottled water sits next to the sink.
I walk to the back bedrooms. The door to one is open. The bed is unmade, but aside from a couple of lamps, there’s nothing on the nightstands or the chest of drawers. The next door is closed. I knock, and it swings open. This is normally the spare bedroom, but for our purposes it is Big Brother Central. Sequestered within are a couple of beefy agents looking tired and unkempt. They are the watchers. They’ve been here since we bagged Ahmed at the airport last night.
The room is full of electronics gear. Several TV monitors occupy one wall. There are cameras hidden everywhere in the living room, bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. The monitors show various angles of the apartment, plus the hallway outside the door, the entry lobby, the parking lot, and the building’s perimeter. We have more cameras than a television studio.
Audio and video recorders, radios, and other stuff sit on folding tables. The entire place is bugged; microphones have been placed in every lamp, in the walls and vents and other nooks and crannies throughout the apartment. Not a word will be spoken that doesn’t get recorded.
More cartons of Chinese takeout litter the scene. One of the agents is busily pecking away at some crispy beef with a set of chopsticks.
“Damn, I hate these things,” he complains as he fumbles a slice of beef. It falls back into the carton, and he digs after it.
A TV in the back of the room is tuned to CNN, the ubiquitous station of our Dark World lives. Next to the TV sit a couple of Uzi submachine guns and a quartet of gas masks.