The Council of Ten (7 page)

Drew finished opening the envelope in the backseat of the limousine as it wound its way back to the Hyatt Palm Beaches. The glass divider was in place and the window typically dark, making him feel as though he were inside a coffin himself. The letter was neatly typed. Drew absorbed each word, with his grandmother’s voice whispering softly into his ear.

Andy—

I’ve been working on this letter for days now. So many times I’ve crumpled it up and started over. Even now I’m not satisfied with what I’m writing. Maybe I should destroy this draft as well and spare you the truth.

But you
deserve
the truth. You must have the truth because I fear what I have become involved in might reach out somehow and destroy you as it has destroyed me. I am at this instant an extremely wealthy woman, which makes you an extremely wealthy young man. I lied to you about your grandfather’s trust fund; there never was any. Sam was never much of a businessman and never would have had the foresight even if he’d had the money. But none of this is important to you. What is important is that I sought whatever means were available to secure your future.

How I would love not to tell you this … Andy, for the last five years, I and the other grandmothers whom you know have served as cocaine smugglers. All those trips to Nassau were just fronts for us to pick up shipments and deliver them back to the States. I would never say I approved of what I did, but I believed in it because I wanted to have the money.

Then, recently, the guilt set in. I guess it happened over a long period of time, but I only truly felt it these past few months. All those children’s lives ruined by the substance I was helping to make rampant. I was just a small part, but a part all the same. I felt each tragic story related over the news personally. It started to eat me up. I
had
to make amends.

I went to the DEA, Andy, to an agent named Sam Masterson. My only condition for helping him was that the other grandmothers would be left out of it. The plan was for him to follow the cocaine from the time we brought it in all the way up the ladder. He assured me everything was routine, promised me protection.

If you are reading this, it means that protection was not enough and that the people I worked for have taken their revenge. But this letter is more than a confession; it is also a warning. I fear your life is in danger, too. Those behind my employ will have no choice but to believe you were in on everything and thus could hurt them as much as I could. Contact Masterson. His private number is on the back of this letter. Tell him who you are. There are ways he can help you. God knows he owes it to me… .

Ending letters has always been hard for me. I feel that so long as I sit here typing, you are with me. Remember, then, that I will always be with you.

My love always …

Drew read the letter for the fifth time while seated in his hotel room chair. His breathing stayed rapid, more tears choked off by the shock contained in what he could not allow himself to believe.
Doris Kaplan a drug smuggler?
Within that bizarre proposition lay a shred of credibility, enough truth for whatever self-denials Drew might have been able to mount to be futile. It was all there in black-and-white, a confession, a warning. Yes, it was something she would do. His grandmother, a woman without fear, strong in a way others could only dream of. Life could snap out at her, but she would snap back just as hard; no, harder.

…
protection was not enough and the people I worked for have taken their revenge
.

Drew’s eyes kept coming back to that sentence, reason unclear and thoughts jumbled. All that was clear was that he had to call this man Masterson. His eyes looked toward his hotel room door. Were people waiting outside to arrange an accident for him? Or would their approach in this instance be more direct, a bullet in the head or a blade thrust from beneath a newspaper in a crowded airport?

Drew’s hand trembled as he pressed out Masterson’s private number at DEA headquarters. He gripped the receiver in a sweat-drenched hand hot against his ear.

“Agent Masterson’s office,” came a receptionist’s polished response.

“Agent Masterson please.”

“Who may I say is calling, please?”

Drew started to give his name, then stopped. “I wouldn’t have his private number if he didn’t know me.”

She didn’t hesitate long. “One moment.”

A pause, then a man’s voice.

“This is Sam Masterson.”

“This is Drew Jordan. I assume you know me.”

Drew could feel the agent’s breath leave him from across the line. “Who gave you this num—”

“My grandmother. In a letter. We’ve got to talk.”

“No! Not now. Not … this way.”

“How? When?”

“It can’t be for a while. Too many—”

“Never mind that crap. Maybe I should read you the letter. We’ve got to talk, and quick.”

The agent paused. Drew could hear him breathing.

“Give me two hours. Brown Ford sedan. Be waiting outside—Where are you by the way?”

“Hyatt Palm Beaches.”

“Okay. I know it. Just be waiting in two hours at the front.”

“What if they’re watching? They’ll see us together.”

“They don’t have to watch. They already know where you are.”

The brown Ford sedan pulled up before the Hyatt five minutes past the stated two hours.

“Get in,” Masterson said, throwing the door open for Drew before the doorman had a chance to move. “Quick.”

He pulled away before Drew had the door fully closed. Masterson looked to be near forty with close-cropped dark hair showing the marks of recession and blue eyes that never stopped shifting about. He spoke rapidly.

“I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Meeting with you. It’s wrong, all wrong.”

“What happened to my grandmother is what’s all wrong.”

The nervous eyes locked briefly on Drew. “It wasn’t my fault. She knew the risks.”

“All she knew was that she wanted to do something to make up for her mistakes and it ended up costing her her life.”

Masterson swung right onto the freeway in the direction of Palm Beach International Airport. “So what am I doing here?”

“I’m not really sure. First off, I figure you owe me some answers. Like what exactly was my grandmother involved in?”

“You must know that, if you know everything else.”

“But I don’t know why. Why would someone use old ladies to smuggle drugs?”

“Lots of reasons,” Masterson answered, screeching into a left-hand lane-change with nervous eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. “To begin with, we’re starting to make a dent in the drug lords’ business by disrupting or destroying major cocaine distribution chains. The supplies we’ve seized amount to barely twenty percent of what eventually reaches the street, but for
their
tastes that’s too much. Add to this the pressure Washington has been placing on South American governments to cut down their export of the stuff and you’re left with a scenario in which the drug lords have been forced to find alternative means to get their product into the country.” Eyes back on Drew. “Like the grandmothers. Think about it.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“Their vacations in the Bahamas were just a front. The women would always take an extra suitcase along. Somewhere in Nassau they would leave the suitcases and before they left for home the same suitcases would be returned to them. Full of cocaine. You can see we’re not talking about minor amounts here. Each vacation saw the grandmothers return with upwards of two hundred pounds of pure, uncut cocaine, street valued at up to thirty million dollars. Multiply that by the number of trips they made and the dollar amount exceeds three hundred million. Who would have ever suspected?”

“Not you apparently; that is, until my grandmother made the mistake of putting in a call to the ever brilliant DEA.”

“What happened wasn’t our fault.”

“Then tell me whose it was.”

“What’s it matter?”

“It does, that’s all.”

Masterson sighed heavily. “A drug lord named Arthur Trelana. We’ve got a file on him an inch thick, but all it adds up to are insinuations we can’t prove. He’s a goddamn model citizen who gives to all the right charities and joins all the right civic organizations.”

“Must have added up enough for you to use my grandmother.”

“I told you I had nothing to—”

“I’m not finished with my questions yet, Agent Masterson. I think I’m square on why Trelana used my grandmother. Now I want to know why you did.”

Masterson’s tired face showed pain, drooping slowly. “It was her idea. She insisted on it. I thought I could keep her alive, I really did. I don’t know what went wrong, how it went wrong. You want me to say I’m sorry I used her the way I did, but I won’t. I can’t.” The agent’s hands squeezed the wheel until the blood fled from his knuckles. His eyes twitched as the car came to a halt at a red light. “These people own everything. Me, you, the DEA. No one realizes the true scope of their power. How much do you really know about this drug agency? Do you know we’re hopelessly outmanned by the kind of power we’re up against? Do you know we lost twenty-four agents to contracts and shoot-outs last year alone? One worked with me in Miami. He had a wife and three kids.” Masterson paused and held his eyes closed. “When we found him his guts were cut out and his balls were stuck in his mouth.”

Drew cringed. The light turned green. A horn behind them got Masterson moving again.

“We can’t win, Drew,” resumed the agent softly. “Sure, we can take a few battles, but you can forget about the war. Trelana was a real break for us—for me—a legitimate head honcho we had a genuine crack at.”

“Thanks to my grandmother.”

“She was a lead. It’s what she wanted to be.”

“But now she’s dead while Trelana’s still out there and there’s not a damn thing you or I or anyone else can do about it?”

“We could arrest him, but it wouldn’t stick.”

Drew hesitated. “He’ll try and kill me now, too, won’t he?” And when the agent stayed silent, Drew repeated louder, “
Won’t
he?”

“Yes,” Masterson said softly, but then his tone heightened. “You had a chance until you insisted on this meeting. They’ll find out about it. Maybe they know already. Now that you’ve seen me, they’ve got to figure you can hurt them, and
nobody
hurts them. Take off. Run. Go as far as you can and then keep running. If you want to stay alive, it’s your only chance.”

“Not necessarily.” Drew’s face twisted into a snarl. “I’m not really sure which of you I loathe more. It’s pretty much of a toss-up. Trelana killed my grandmother and you got her killed. Only thing you got going for you, Agent Masterson, is that I’m starting to figure you can help me.”

“Help you what?”

“Kill Trelana.”

Chapter 6

ON THE SURFACE IT
was just a house on an ordinary side street of Tel Aviv. Its macadam steps were chipped and sagged with wear, its exterior much in need of a paint job thanks to the hot dusty winds that blew in over the summer months. A vendor stood lazily beneath a canopy in front of a cart full of oranges and vegetables. An Arab beggar knelt in the shade of an alleyway, shaking his cup at all those passing by.

Of course, none of the passers-by, not even the ones who stopped to slip a coin into his cup, noticed that his baggy, soiled rags concealed the black steel frame of a baby Uzi machine gun. Nor did anyone notice the Eagle pistol beneath the vendor’s black jacket or the full-sized Uzi stored in a compartment beneath his oranges. The job of the two men was to protect the run-down building they fronted from any possible intruders.

Unlike other international intelligence services, the Israeli Mossad did not maintain regular headquarters. A headquarters was kept up in Jerusalem as a front for the press and foreign inspection, but a front was all it was. Instead, the Mossad chose a number of substations scattered strategically all over the country. Many of these changed locations regularly for reasons of security and to flush out possible infiltrators. Even after a move was made, the old locations continued to be watched for a time. Agents who nonetheless showed up could thus be viewed and treated as spies. True Mossad agents were disciplined to the point of being fanatical. Codes were never missed, signals never failing to be relayed. In Israel’s world of the one against the many, such practice was mandated for survival.

The woman who walked out of the shadows onto the side street was not dressed for the unusually long summer that was presently intruding on the start of fall. Her slacks and sweater were too dark, too heavy. Her waist-length jacket seemed unnecessary. The heels of her boots clicked against the sidewalk in rhythm with her step. In response, the beggar eased himself a little forward and showed his cup. The vendor straightened for a possible sale.

The woman passed the beggar and dropped two coins into his cup, one at a time. The beggar glanced at them and nodded to the vendor as he pressed a button concealed within the nearby wall. The woman would now be permitted access to the building. Those inside would be ready for her.

She strode up the macadam steps without hesitating, as if the house was hers. She knocked the way a home-at-last relative might, and the door opened swiftly to her Mossad control station.

“We’ve been expecting you, Elliana,” a small, mustachioed man greeted her inside. Although short, his chest was framed like a barrel and his hairy forearms were knotted with muscle.

Elliana Hirsch let Moshe close the door behind her and allowed herself a sigh. It felt good to be home after all these months. Yet, the circumstances of her recall disturbed her. It was too sudden, too unexplained. Such did not bode well.

“We?” Elliana questioned, recalling her control Moshe’s use of the plural.

Moshe hesitated before responding. His mustache seemed to twitch. At last he nodded. “Isser is upstairs,” he said.

Elliana felt her stomach flutter. Isser was the name of the very first Mossad director, and since then the name had been taken by all who succeeded him as a sort of code. To think that the head of the entire organization had come to see her. Elliana could not even guess why. Such things were not done every day. She was an ordinary field agent. Suddenly the prospects of her recall seemed even more foreboding.