W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (37 page)

“What should I get, Mr. McCarthy?”

“An umbrella, a ruler . . . just something that’ll reach the fucking letter!”

The President looked from McCarthy to Cohen:
“And?”

“. . .
and
about forty-five minutes later, he called us back into his office, and gave us the letter Ambassador Vargas gave you. He then told us Ambassador Vargas was on the telephone. He told Vargas that I was going to bring a letter he wished Vargas to give to you, and that verbal message. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked me if I would accompany Ambassador Vargas here to verify the verbal message.”

“But you have seen the letter?”

She glanced at McCarthy on his knees digging for the letter, then looked back to Clendennen. “Yes, sir. Ambassador Vargas showed it to me on our way here from the Mexican embassy.”

“That miserable, ungrateful sonofabitch!” Clendennen exploded. “After all I’ve done for him! Millions of dollars in aid!
Ten
fucking Black Hawk helicopters! Pretending I don’t know what’s going on at the border. Not one word about his being blind to that secret drug cartel airport! And all I wanted him to do was provide me a little cover in case something goes wrong.”

Cohen didn’t reply.

“And what is this bullshit about taking this Abrego character to a prison . . . the Ox something . . .”

He looked to where now both McCarthy and Mulligan were on their hands and knees, trying with a letter opener to get the letter from under the desk.

“Just pick up the fucking desk and move it out of the way, for Christ’s sake!” the President ordered.

They immediately tried. It proved too heavy for both of them.

“Jesus Christ!” the President said. “Douglas, get them some help. I want that goddamn letter!”

Special Agent Douglas went to the outer office and returned with the two Secret Service agents who guarded the outer office.

As Mulligan, Douglas, McCarthy, and one of the latter took a grip on the desk, one of the outer-office Secret Service agents fashioned a hook from a wire clothes hanger and, as they lifted, he managed to stab the letter with it, then pull it out from under the desk.

He extended it to the President, who snatched it, tearing it on the makeshift hook of the clothes hanger.

The President looked at the letter and found what he wanted.

McCarthy walked quickly to him and read over his shoulder.

“What’s this business about taking Abrego to the . . . how the hell do you pronounce this prison?”

Secretary Cohen furnished the correct pronunciation of Oaxaca to the President.

“Never heard of it,” the President said. “Or anything about us taking Abrego there. Thus, I know goddamn well it wasn’t in my letter to Martinez.”

He looked at McCarthy.

“Was it?” he asked.

“No, Mr. President, it wasn’t,” McCarthy said.

Cohen thought:
Yes, it was. What’s McCarthy up to? I read the draft letter aloud right here in the Oval Office!

“Then where the hell did it come from?”

“Possibly from the FBI?” McCarthy asked innocently.

“That’s probably it, Mr. President,” Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan chimed in. “No telling what the FBI said to those people, or vive-ah-versa.”

Secretary Cohen thought:
That’s vice versa, you cretin, not vive-ah-versa
.

Then she thought:
So Mulligan’s part of whatever is going on here.

What the hell
is
going on here?

And then she noticed that McCarthy was looking at her carefully, as if he expected her to say,
“I’m sorry, but in the letter I took to President Martinez—the one he said you wrote, Mr. McCarthy—there were specific references to taking Abrego to the Oaxaca State Prison.”

She said nothing.

“Get Schmidt and Crenshaw in here,” the President ordered.

“Right now. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

“You don’t want to talk to them on the telephone, Mr. President?” Special Agent Douglas asked.

“If I did, Douglas,” the President replied sarcastically, “I would have said, ‘Get Schmidt and then Crenshaw on the phone.’ ”

“Yes, sir,” Douglas said, and walked to a telephone on a sideboard to summon Schmidt and Crenshaw.

The President turned to the secretary of State.

“You don’t know anything about this Oaxaca Prison?”

Cohen was aware that McCarthy seemed very interested in what her reply would be.

“Just what I’ve heard and seen here, Mr. President,” she said.

“Then I don’t see any point in taking any more of your valuable time, Madam Secretary. If I need you later, I’ll call.”

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Cohen said, and stood up and walked out of the Oval Office.

When the door had closed, the President asked, “McCarthy, do you think she’s telling the truth?”

“I have no reason to believe she’s not, Mr. President,” McCarthy said. “But I just thought it might be wise to ask her to keep what she heard here to herself.”

“Yeah,” the President said.

“Should I bring her back in here, Mr. President?”

“No. You can tell her as well as I can that she goddamn well better keep what she just heard in here to herself.”

 

 

McCarthy caught up with the secretary of State as she was about to get in her limousine.

“Madam Secretary!” McCarthy called. “A moment, please.”

She turned to face him but didn’t speak.

“The President asked me to tell you he hopes you understand that what took place in the Oval Office just now has to be kept between us.”

Cohen nodded but didn’t reply.

“And let me say I appreciate your wisdom in not getting further into the business of what was and what was not in the letter you took to President Martinez,” McCarthy said.

Again she didn’t reply. But her eyebrows rose in question.

“None of us want him to go off the deep end just now, do we, Madam Secretary? Now would be a very bad time for something like that to happen.”

“Now?” she asked, and then before he had a chance to reply, said, “Good morning, Mr. McCarthy,” got into the limousine, and gestured to the State Department security officer who was holding the door open to close it.

 

 

“It took you two long enough to get here,” President Clendennen greeted Attorney General Stanley Crenshaw and FBI Director Mark Schmidt as they walked into the Oval Office.

“Mr. President,” Crenshaw said, “we quite literally dropped what we were doing when we got Douglas’s call saying you wanted to see us right away.”

“And what exactly was it that you quite literally dropped when Douglas called?”

“A discussion of the latest development in El Paso.”

“Let me get this straight,” Clendennen said. “Schmidt, there has been a development in El Paso that you were discussing with Crenshaw?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Weren’t you listening when I told you I wanted to hear immediately of anything that happened?”

“Mr. President, I work for Attorney General Crenshaw,” Schmidt said, uncomfortably.

“You work for me, goddamn it!” the President said, furiously.

“Mr. President, I’m responsible,” Crenshaw said. “I told Director Schmidt to make me—”

“Well,” the President interrupted, “what
is
this latest development that you were going to tell me about when you finally got around to it?”

“It’s this, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said, and handed him a sheet of paper.

The President took it and read it:

“What the hell is this?” the President asked. “Where did it come from?”

“According to SAC Johnson, Mr. President, it was handed to one of the FBI agents on stakeout in the El Paso post office,” Schmidt said.

“Which suggests to me that the FBI agent didn’t succeed in being inconspicuous,” the President said. “Who handed it to him?”

“May I see that, Mr. President?” Clemens McCarthy asked.

The President handed him the letter.

“Try to keep it from going under the desk, McCarthy,” the President said, and then turned his attention to Schmidt. “I’m waiting.”

“A boy, Mr. President. A boy, twelve years old, Latino, handed it to one of the FBI agents. He said that a man gave him five dollars and told him to hand that—it was in an envelope addressed ‘To the FBI’—to him. I mean, he indicated to whom the boy was to hand the envelope.”

“And that man? Do we know who he is? Is it too much to hope that he was detained for questioning?”

“By the time they started looking for him, Mr. President,” Schmidt said, “the man had gone.”

“A regular James Bond, huh?” the President said with a snort, and then asked, “Do either of you have any idea what’s going on here?”

“I don’t understand the question, Mr. President,” Crenshaw said.

“That doesn’t surprise me at all,” the President said.

“Schmidt and I were discussing how to deal with the exchange when you called.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“We were thinking of sending FBI agents—instead of Marshals—on the helicopter for the exchange.”

“Jesus H. Christ!” the President exploded. “Let me tell you what would happen if you sent FBI agents on that helicopter. They would land at that airport and be greeted by, say, a dozen Mexicans, all armed to the teeth, who would relieve them of this fucking Mexican murderer and then wave bye-bye. They would not get Colonel Ferris, who is probably five hundred miles from Ciudad Juárez. I know what they think of your intelligence, but I’m surprised they think I’m also that stupid.”

Neither Crenshaw nor Schmidt replied.

“What we are going to do, gentlemen, is go along with President Martinez, that ungrateful sonofabitch. He wants Abrego turned over to this Mexican cop—what’s his name, McCarthy . . . ?”

“Pena, Mr. President,” McCarthy furnished. “Juan Carlos Pena, chief of the Policía Federal for Oaxaca State.”

“. . . for interrogation, which means to be turned loose,” the President picked up. “So we’re going to do just that. We’re going to take this goddamn murderer to the Oaxaca State Prison and exchange him for Ferris. He’ll be taken there, gentlemen, not by U.S. Marshals, not by the FBI, but by as many of those super Green Berets—what do they call them, McCarthy?”

“The Delta Force, Mr. President?” McCarthy asked, his confusion evident in his voice.

“No, goddammit! I said
super
Green Berets.”

“Gray Fox, Mr. President?” Attorney General Crenshaw asked, and his confusion was equally evident in his voice.

“Right,” the President said. “
Gray Fox.
As many of those Gray Fox people that’ll fit on three Black Hawks. They’ll either get Ferris back when they get there or they’ll bring the goddamn Mexican back and throw him in his Florence cell. I don’t think a goddamn Mexican cop is going to want to get in a fight with twenty, twenty-five Gray Fox guys. Get General McNab on the phone.”

“General McNab is in Afghanistan, Mr. President,” McCarthy said.

“Then get his deputy, that Irishman, what’s his name? McCool? Something like that.”

“O’Toole, Mr. President. Major General Terrence O’Toole,” McCarthy said.

“Well, get Major General Terrence
O’Toole
on the phone and tell him to get up here. And while you’re at it, get Naylor and Beiderman in here, too. I’ll teach that bastard Martinez he can’t fuck with Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen.”

 

 

“An unexpected pleasure, Madam Secretary,” DCI A. Franklin Lammelle said. “If I had known you were coming, there would have been a brass band.”

“Can we dispense with the clever repartee, Frank?” Natalie Cohen replied. “I’m really in no mood for it.”

“I tend to hide behind clever repartee when I have problems,” Lammelle said. “What’s yours?”

“Recording devices turned off?”

He nodded. “I usually turn them on only when the enemy is at the gates,” he replied, then realized that might qualify as clever repartee, and added, “Sorry.”

She nodded, accepting the apology.

“I just came from the Oval Office,” she said. “With the unnerving suspicion that there may be something to President Clendennen’s conspiracy theory.”

He raised his eyebrows, made a “give it to me” gesture with his hands, and said, now quite serious, “Tell me all about it.”

“Martinez didn’t buy that draft letter . . .” she began.