To Free a Spy (10 page)

Warfield nodded, but he didn’t remember every student that passed through Lone Elm. “Still in the Navy?”

“FBI now. He’ll want to know I met you.”

Warfield nodded. “Give him my regards.”

The orange jumpsuit didn’t hide Joplan’s muscular build but heavy lines in his forehead aged him beyond his years. A sharp, slightly bent nose gave him a severe appearance. He sat with his right arm draped over the chair back and cocked his head to the side as he sized up Warfield.

Both men were silent as Warfield took in Joplan for a moment. Here was a man whose sworn duty it had been to recruit foreign sources of intelligence to benefit the United States. Now he had turned. His motivation was contained somewhere in the acronym MICE: Money, ideology, compromise and ego. For Americans who crossed over, it was not often ideology; few believed there was a better system than America’s, even with all its flaws. Rick Ames did it for money. Robert Hanssen was an enigma: He was driven by childhood fantasy, ego, and money combined. Others put themselves in a position to be blackmailed: A well- placed U.S. government official with damning personal secrets or indiscretions to hide—even one who may have never had a disloyal thought—was easy prey for enemy intelligence. But the most common reason for betrayal was money.

“Well, well, it’s you they’ve sent now,” said Joplan.

“So we’ve met before.”

“Lone Elm. Few years back. I actually thought you were okay.”

“Should’ve paid attention in class.”

Joplan almost smiled.

“Treating you okay?” Warfield asked. He realized the hollowness of his question and regretted asking it. This wasn’t a social call and Joplan knew it.

“Don’t condescend to me, Warfield.”

Warfield looked straight at him. “Why’d you do it, Joplan?”

Joplan got up and walked to the back of the small room. “FBI had their little play-cops following me for months. The Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity boys! Got nothing my lawyer can’t explain away. Neither will you. So, do I look stupid enough to hand you a noose to hang me with?”

Warfield walked over to the narrow vertical slit in the concrete wall that served as a window to the outside. It was too narrow for even the smallest prisoner to use for escape. A hundred yards away, drivers zipped along the Capital Beltway with free will most took for granted. Standing on the inside looking out brought to mind the preciousness of freedom to come and go wherever one pleases.

“They’ll track you and track you and one day they’ll have enough. You’ll need a nursing home, Joplan, if you ever get out of prison.”

Joplan sneered. “But you’re gonna help now, right? You got some kind of special deal for me if I bare my soul to you. Well, hold your breath, Warfield. I’m out of here in a week.”

If there’d been any thoughts in Warfield’s mind that Joplan might not be the man the FBI thought he was, they were gone now. Joplan had not even tried to profess innocence.

* * *

Warfield thought about his days in the field as he drove away from the jail. Training people for this kind of work was fine but there was a layer of fluff between training others, and being out there in the world where theory became nerves and will, skills and some measure of smarts. It changed you forever. Carry out a clandestine operation that redirects the course of history and you never go back to any normal existence. The withdrawal symptoms don’t go away. Remission, maybe, but the only fix is to go back.

* * *

Warfield called Paula Newnan and said he needed a plane to pick him up at Lone Elm at nine o’clock sharp that night. Las Vegas, round trip.

When he got to Lone Elm, he walked over to Macc Macclenny’s desk where he was typing into a computer. “How busy are you?”

Macc was the operations manager at Lone Elm and a man who had Warfield’s respect and confidence. He pushed his Arizona Diamondbacks baseball cap to the back of his head. “Oh, not at all. Just doing the daily log on fifty trainees, filing an accident report, ordering two cars with armor plate, planning tomorrow’s activities, reading resumes for a mechanic I’m trying to hire, ordering fourteen kinds of ammo…meaningless odds and ends like that. Then I’m gonna eat my lunch. It’ll be about sundown by then. I sure hope you had a nice day at the White House.”

Warfield ignored the sarcasm. “Just came from ADC.”

“The jail? President lock you up, or what?”

“Offered me a job. Better get used to doing without me out here.”

Macc shook his head. “Yeah, like you’re leaving Lone Elm.”

“In and out. We’ll talk about that later. Right now, there’s something else.”

“Shoot.”

“Your pal in Las Vegas. Funny name.”

“Uh, LaRez Sanazaro? But I wouldn’t tell him it’s funny if I were you.”

“Need to see him. Tonight. You and me.”

Macc issued a stunned look. “Oh, that should be easy. ‘LaRez, cancel all plans for the evening. The great Cam Warfield wants to see you!’ He’s only got a casino to run, Cam. He hasn’t retired yet. Of course I’ve got nothing to do here, either.”

“Do it on the plane.”

“Cam, I—”

Warfield cut him off. “It’ll be here at nine. Check the runway.”

Warfield sifted through the Department of the Army correspondence on Macclenny’s desk.

“What the hell do I tell LaRez?” Macc asked.

“Tell him it’s been awhile. You want to drop by tonight and say hello. That I’m tagging along. Around ten at Nellis.”

Macc reached LaRez and after the two caught up on the course of their lives Macclenny explained what he wanted and said it was important. “Tell them at the guard post that you’re there to meet Cameron Warfield’s plane. They’ll escort you.”

* * *

The plane arrived at Lone Elm at eight-forty-five. The Gulfstream G650 was a sixty-five-million-dollar civilian plane the military frequently used for flying government officials around. Warfield thought of the power the president had at his fingertips. Make a phone call, a plane appears just like that, complete with crew. Macc gave last minute instructions to the Lone Elm cadre and boarded with Warfield. Warfield razzed the Air Force officers in the cockpit for a few minutes about working the graveyard shift and sat down across the aisle from Macc. When they were airborne Warfield told Macc what had transpired earlier at the White House and with Joplan at ADC. “Joplan’s lawyer gets him out of jail, we don’t know who’s got the nukes taken from Kremlyov, what’s coming down.”

“Where’s LaRez come in?”

“Fill me in. Didn’t you save his kid’s life, something like that?”

Macc chuckled. “LaRez thinks I did. Probably would’ve worked out okay without me. The boy panicked a little. I was swamping on my old man’s boat. Happened to be there on leave one summer when LaRez chartered the boat for his family for a six-day ride down the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. We stopped all along the way to let them explore some of the beauty. You know, fossils, Indian ruins, waterfalls in the side canyons.

“One day LaRez and his wife and two brats and me, we took a hike up into one of the canyons, a mile or so along trails that climb gradually. The older kid, he’s about ten or eleven then, he runs ahead and gets to this narrow ledge that serves as a pass to where we were heading. People navigate it every day but it can be a little unnerving. Anyway, LaRez is hollering at the kid to stay with us, and I shout something to rein him in a little because I know the trail narrows just ahead. So the kid gets to this sheer vertical stone wall that borders the trail—it goes straight up to the sky on his left, and on the right it’s a couple hundred foot drop to car-size boulders in the canyon. So he’s on this little ledge between the wall on one side and nothing but air on the other. Where he stands is about this wide.” Macc held his two hands about twelve inches apart. “And he’s clinging to roots and twigs sticking out of the rock wall to keep his balance. That’s when he makes his mistake. He looks down at the rocks in the canyon below and freezes. We couldn’t coax the boy back to our side or get him to go on to the other side. Crying his ass off. And the mother, she’s screaming like a banshee. LaRez talked to the boy while I went back down to the boat as fast as I could for some equipment, and then maneuvered back up above the kid on the canyon wall. I was able to rappel down and grab him.”

“Surprised LaRez didn’t put out a contract on you.”

Macc laughed and removed some paperwork from his briefcase. “Ever been in the Canyon?”

Warfield reclined his seat. “One of those sightseeing planes.”

“You ain’t seen nothin’. Gotta take you sometime.”

“How long’s your dad been doing it?”

“River guide? Since I was three. Forty years. Hung it up last year. I swamped for him summers until the army. It was hard leaving. Could’ve had a boat of my own, will someday. What a life, there on the river, most beautiful sights in the world, Cam. You’re down there, two-hundred miles of river between walls that go high as you can see. You know there’s a God.”

“Tell me about LaRez.”

“Helluva guy. Nice family. Had me down to Vegas after all that, treated me like a son. I went to his kid’s high-school graduation last year. Now LaRez, you know he’s the underworld. No saint, him. I met some of his people. They wear coats and ties but you don’t have to wonder what business they’re in. I get the impression LaRez is pretty straight now. It’s the good life, doesn’t want to screw it up. He ragged me some on the phone tonight, but he didn’t have any problem with meeting us. He’s heard of you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’ve told him a few stories—some of the things we’ve done—without giving away the farm. He’s a fierce American patriot. Likes spy stories. Doesn’t care much for disloyalty.”

Warfield had the pilot radio ahead to Nellis Air Force Base and arrange for them to escort Sanazaro to their plane when it landed.

* * *

The Gulfstream was being refueled when a midnight blue Mercedes SL600 rolled up and LaRez stepped out, his red silk shirt filling out in the breeze, a bank of white hair on the temples, the perfect tan. Except for the bushy eyebrows, he was immaculately groomed. Warfield followed Macc to the bottom of the steps where LaRez and Macc bear-hugged each other before Macc introduced his two friends. Warfield asked the flight crew for privacy and they exited the plane.

Warfield, Macc and LaRez Sanazaro sat at a table in the plane and briefly made polite conversation, allowing Warfield and LaRez a little time to become comfortable with each other. Warfield asked LaRez to respect the sensitive and confidential nature of their discussion and gave him a ten-minute snapshot of the Joplan situation, emphasizing the critical timing. When he was finished, Sanazaro leaned in and folded his arms on the table.

“So what you need is for this man Joplan to talk, and you think I can convince him it’s the thing to do.”

Warfield nodded. “Assuming you’ve got friends in the right place.” LaRez’s eyes were partially obscured by wild untrimmed eyebrows. Warfield figured it was intentional. Hard to read a man if you can’t see his eyes.

“Not the kind of favor I specialize in,” LaRez said.

Warfield felt himself wince but quickly stood up. He had come to ask. He had failed. He understood. This was clearly not a man who bluffed. Warfield needed to move on to another solution and there was no time to waste.

LaRez motioned for him to sit down and continued. “But I have no patience with people who are disloyal—whether it be to their family or their country. And America has been good to me. Where is your man Joplan?”

“Alexandria Detention Center, in D.C.”

LaRez stared out of the plane’s window at another aircraft landing in the distance. “If you could get him transferred to Atlanta, that federal pen there…that possible?”

Warfield said it was.

“Cosmo Terracina is the man there who will help you. Can you believe life without parole, and what he did was nothing if you think of the damage a traitor like your Joplan can do, or those Islamic terrorists.” LaRez shook his head in disgust. “I’d be proud to have Cosmo sit at my table again. He’s an honorable man.”

Warfield and Macc looked at each other and at LaRez. He wasn’t offering any more information about this operator named Cosmo and they didn’t ask.

“Tell me the requirements,” LaRez said.

“Well, first, you already know it has to be fast,” Warfield said. “Cosmo’s job is to convince Joplan of the joys of confession. I mean rock-bottom bare-it-all download. But Cosmo’s gotta be careful. Joplan’s no good to me with his brain kicked out. I have to find out what’s in it. When he’s ready to talk, I’ll send somebody in.”

“Cosmo has a way of influencing people to see things his way.”

LaRez shook hands with both men and held up his hand in protest when Warfield tried to thank him. “It is my country, too. Besides that,” he said, glancing at Macc, “you are a friend of my friend.”

“Three things…three things,”
Cosmo Terracina said. “Better have ’em all if you plan stayin’ alive.” His stagewhisper voice was cavernous and raspy from years spent in smoky game rooms and lounges. “Number one is
instinct
. That bellyful of guts you got, well that don’t count for much if you don’t feel it in your bones when something’s coming down. Number two is they gotta
fear
you, shake some on the inside when they see you. I mean because they know you don’t take no shit off nobody.
Nothin’
. They don’t know how the hell you gonna react. You may whack ’em over a nickel. And
luck
. That’s number three what I’m telling you. You ain’t lucky, then fear and instinct, they don’t mean nothin’ either, Doyle. But in your heart here,” Cosmo Terracina had said to Doyle Riley years ago in Boston as he fisted his own massive chest, “in your heart you gotta be fair. You treat people fair as long as they show you respect. They don’t show you respect, then you gotta deal with it.”

Riley had seen Cosmo’s philosophy work for him in prison as well as it had worked on the streets of Boston.

For the power-hungry and impatient, eliminating an established boss like Cosmo was a tempting shortcut to power. For some who tried, it had been an early trip to hell.