Black List (24 page)
“It’s on the house.”
Harvath pulled out another twenty-dollar bill, left it on the table for the waitress, and followed the bartender out the back of the tavern.
A
block over, they came to a three-story building surrounded by a high concrete wall with a heavy wooden door that looked like it could be a couple of hundred years old. Guillermo produced a ring of keys from his pocket while the bouncer, Norberto, watched the street.
The bartender located the proper key, inserted it into the old iron lock, and turned. There was a loud click and then the door swung open. Harvath followed the man inside, and Norberto brought up the rear.
They had entered a wide rectangular courtyard. A jungle gym a stone’s throw from a statue of the Virgin Mary was all he needed to see to tell them where they were.
The walls were covered with murals of children playing interspersed with stories from the lives of the saints. Above the entryway was an inscription in Latin:
ALERE FLAMMAM VERITATIS—Let the flame of truth shine.
It was an interesting motto for an orphanage, but it resonated with Harvath. If anyone needed the flame of truth right now, it was he.
Beneath the inscription, Guillermo produced another key, opened the door, and shuttled his party through. “Wait here,” he said, once they were inside. “I will find Sister Marta.”
The interior reminded Harvath a lot of his grade school—the linoleum floors, the wooden lockers, the black-and-white photographs
along the walls, even the faint scent of disinfectant—were almost identical. With all the similarities, and remembering how so many of the nuns had looked alike to him back then, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Sister Marta had been a dead ringer for the principal of his school, Sister McKenna. Sister Marta, though, turned out to be nothing like Sister McKenna.
When she appeared, she was wearing blue jeans and a Rutgers sweatshirt. She was in her late thirties with dark chin-length hair and, despite not wearing any makeup, was quite pretty.
The bartender said something in rapid Spanish to her that Harvath didn’t catch. All he was able to understand was how he addressed her. It wasn’t as “Sister Marta” but rather Martita, adding
-ita
to her name as a form of endearment. The young nun, in kind, referred to Guillermo as Momo and gave him a kiss on the cheek before he and the bouncer turned to leave.
As the door closed behind them, Sister Marta welcomed Harvath and extended her hand. “I’m Sister Marta.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Sister,” said Harvath, trying to figure out what her relationship with the bartender was.
“You may call me Marta if you like. We’re not very formal around here.”
“Is that why Guillermo called you Martita?”
The nun laughed. “We may be informal, but we’re not
that
informal. Only family call me Martita. Guillermo—Momo, as I call him—is my uncle.”
“Your English is very good. Did you go to school there?” Harvath asked, indicating the university on her sweatshirt.
“No. We get lots of clothing donations here. The items that are too big for the children, we pass on to the poor. Occasionally, the staff will find something that they think will fit me and they set it aside. That’s where this came from.”
“What about your English?” Harvath asked, intrigued. There was an aura of instant likability about her. She was strong and, like most nuns he’d known, could probably be quite strict when she had to be, but she was also very personable.
“My family takes education very seriously. I learned English in school and French too. I teach both to the children here.”
“They’re all somewhere sleeping right now?”
“Yes,” said Sister Marta with a smile. “Upstairs. It’s the only time I can honestly say that most of them remind me of little angels. During the daytime, it can be a different story.”
Harvath smiled in return. “I’m sure you have your work cut out for you.”
She waved her hand as if to sweep the topic aside. “It’s late and you’re not here to learn about the running of an orphanage.”
“To be honest, Sister, I don’t exactly know why I’m here.”
“You’re here because it’s where God wants you to be.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” said Harvath, “but in this case, God used an intermediary.”
“You’re referring to Nicholas.”
“Yes, and I’m assuming I’m here because you can help me get to him.”
Sister Marta nodded. “I have arranged to get you aboard a special flight tomorrow that will take you across the border.”
Harvath looked at her.
“It’s not that kind of flight,” she replied, sensing that he suspected it might be drug related. “It’s all completely legal. I have contact with someone who runs a shuttle service that flies wealthy Regios back and forth to Texas for daily shopping trips.”
“Regios?”
“
Regiomontanos—Regios
for short—is what we call people from Monterrey.”
“Where do they fly into?” Harvath asked.
“A city called McAllen.”
“What about customs and immigration?”
“It’s a small airport,” she responded, “and the pilot is American. He brings people in and out all the time and they all know him there.”
“But his passengers still need to clear customs and immigration, even if they’re just visiting for the day to go shopping and then turning around and flying back to Monterrey.”
“That is correct, but it is much less formal than at a major port of
entry. As long as you have a valid passport, they swipe it and you get waved through. You do have a valid passport?”
Harvath nodded. “I do.”
“Then you shouldn’t have any problem. You should be able to walk right through.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“You don’t need to understand.”
“Why would you risk yourself for Nicholas?” he asked.
“What am I risking? I helped arrange a seat for you on a popular charter flight.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?” she replied. “Nicholas has been very generous to our orphanage. When he found out that Momo was having trouble with the cartels, when they wanted to use his bar to move money and weapons and drugs, he made it all go away, all of it. He didn’t want any of that near us. He’s a good man. I have no idea about his past and I don’t want to know. That is between him and God. All I know is that he has made a significant difference in the lives of the children here.”
“Do you do many favors for him?”
“In all these years, he has never asked me for one until now. I can only imagine you are very important to him.”
Harvath wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.
“He told me that you’re a good man,” she continued. “He said that you have spent most of your life in the service of others. That was all I needed to know. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m taking you to the plane in a few hours.”
“And when I land in McAllen?”
Sister Marta removed a piece of paper from her pocket and showed it to him. “He said you’re supposed to look for this.”
V
IRGINIA
R
eed Carlton wanted to avoid the D.C. area at all costs, and that included Georgetown. There were just too many cameras. He had risked it once to load Tommy’s dead drop and set up their first meeting, but that was enough. Banks agreed with him.
Banks suggested that they communicate via the classified section of the
Washington Post
until they could develop drops outside the city. It was an old espionage tactic that would allow them to fly beneath the radar. All they would need was a debit card purchased with cash at any drugstore, grocery, or Walmart. The only drawback was the lag time from when the ad was placed to when it actually showed up online.
Carlton explained to Banks how classifieds worked on the Internet. Thankfully, the older man was well versed enough in the Web that they were able to set up a system quickly.
The best way to hide their communications was to go to Craigslist where they selected two crowded but not obvious source cities. Outgoing messages were disguised as ads on the Oakland list and responses were posted on Tampa’s. This way, there was no billing trail. And while their communication wasn’t exactly instantaneous, it was about as close to
real time as they could get in exchange for such a low-level risk of being intercepted.
Twenty-four hours after setting everything up, Banks placed a coded ad on the Oakland Craigslist, requesting a meeting as soon as possible. Carlton responded through an ad of his own on the Tampa list, and a few hours later, they were seated at a late-night restaurant outside Fredericksburg.
“You’ve got big troubles, my boy,” Tommy said after the waitress had poured their coffees and walked away. “Your office has been locked up tighter than a bank vault.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s been sealed and they have guards on it.”
“Who does?” said Carlton.
Banks raised his coffee cup and took a sip. “FBI, but it feels like CIA.”
“So this
is
payback from them.”
“It’s suspicious, I’ll give you that. I reached out to a whole bunch of my Agency contacts and not a single one of them would talk to me. Not one.”
“So what does that tell you?”
“It tells me,” replied Banks, “that something pretty serious is afoot.”
“Yup.”
“But just because nobody wanted to talk to me didn’t mean I rolled over and gave up. Somebody, somewhere in the chain, scared the hell out of everyone and ordered them to play dumb. That’s some pretty serious pressure, so I decided to apply a little pressure of my own.”
Carlton studied the man sitting across from him. “I love you, Tommy. You Hoover’d somebody, didn’t you?” Much like storied FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, Thomas Banks had been rumored to have developed dossiers over the years on Agency higher-ups he didn’t care for. He wasn’t a blackmailer per se. The files in his mind were only for insurance, to be played like cards if and when he ever needed to accomplish an honest objective while a dishonest obstacle sat in his path.
“It’s probably better you don’t know the details, but yeah, I pulled a file I have on somebody there and I played it. It’s some pretty bad stuff from the 1970s. I don’t know what the statute of limitations is, but it’s
enough to cause him a whole mess of problems and hold up his pension, not to mention the PR nightmare it’d be for the seventh floor.”
“I appreciate your doing this for me.”
“Don’t thank me,” Banks replied. “The guy’s a weasel. He deserves it. The problem is that he didn’t give me very much.”
“One step at a time. I’m all ears. What’d you get?”
“The Agency can’t go after American citizens on American soil. That’s why the domestic legwork has fallen to the FBI. The real momentum behind this thing, though, seems to be coming from somewhere else. Someplace pretty clandestine with a lot of power.”
“More clandestine than the Agency? What are we talking about? The Director of National Intelligence?”
“Whoever it is, they’re the ones who appear to have built the case against you.”
“Me?” replied Carlton. “What are you talking about?”
“Actually, it’s not
just
you. It’s multiple players in your organization.”
“My ops division, you mean?”
“My guy wouldn’t say.”
“What’s their case? What do they think they have?”
Banks again raised his coffee cup for a sip, but this time stopped partway. “Treason,” he replied, half whispering the word.
Carlton was stunned. “
Treason?
You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s insane.”
“I agree, and I could tell just by the look on my guy’s face that he didn’t believe it either.”
“Is he someone I know?”
Banks set his coffee cup on the Formica table. “Like I said, it’s better if you don’t know the details.”
Carlton understood and, leaning back in the booth, pulled his cup and saucer toward him. “So, what specifically is the charge? What is it we’ve allegedly done?”
“That’s what I’m still trying to find out. The minute anyone hears the word
treason,
it’s like a toxic chemical spill just happened. Everyone takes a giant step back. Nobody wants to go anywhere near it. Get too close and it could affect you too.”