CHAPTER TWENTY
CONFERENCE CALL
There were five Bureau vehicles and six Miami PD cars in the convoy, which exited the Airport Expressway going south on Twelfth Avenue and slowed to a crawl just as it turned west on Twenty-third Street. Two of the marked police units had already dropped off, blocking Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth streets, and at this point the remaining Miami PD units moved quickly to the other four intersections that would effectively isolate Thirteenth Avenue between Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth. Number 2744, an older single-family house, was located almost in the middle of that block, on the east side of the street. That address also graced the warrant held in the lead Bureau Suburban.
The first Bureau car to approach the house was an older bronze Volvo, chosen for the task because it looked so un-law enforcement-like. The two agents looked casually toward the house as they passed. Nothing looked out of the ordinary in the last-minute reconnaissance. “It’s clear,” the driver reported over the handheld radio.
With that the service of the search and arrest warrants began. The Volvo swung left at the end of the block and sealed off Thirteenth from that side, a block closer in than the marked unit. The five other vehicles, including four Chevy Suburbans carrying the FBI equivalent of a SWAT team, accelerated to the house and came to quick stops, two in the empty driveway, one on the lawn, and one in the street. The follow-up car blocked the end of the street opposite the Volvo just as the whop-whop of a helicopter came from the east.
“Go!” the team leader shouted over his hands-free radio. Twenty helmeted agents, clad in indigo jumpsuits and body armor, streamed from the vehicles and moved to their appointed areas of responsibility. As half of the team surrounded and secured the exterior of the house, staying low and covering every opening, the entry team moved as a single entity toward the front door. Two agents in the lead held a black steel battering ram, which they brought back as they neared their target. Upon reaching it, they swung forward, aiming for the lock side, and punched the wood-paneled door in with hardly any effort.
“Federal agents! Search warrant! Get down! Search warrant!” The scream was continuous as the first three agents entered behind the partial cover of a view-ported shield. They moved through the house, toward the back, followed by their seven colleagues, who secured each room, hallway, or closet as the penetration progressed.
“Freeze!” the leader of the point group yelled at the sight behind the door just kicked. His reaction was instinctive, yet what he saw caused him just the slightest pause. They didn’t often come upon
this
in a warrant service, and they certainly hadn’t expected it here. “Keep your hands in the open.”
Avaro had heard them come through the front door but had no time to react. The gun under his right leg could do nothing now. His hands, clad in fingerless black gloves, came up slowly so there would be no doubt as to his intentions.
Two of the agents from the follow-up team put their guns on the suspect from the doorway as the rest of the house was checked and secured. The team leader then stepped gingerly into the room, his MP-5 trained on the man. Proper procedure dictated that the suspect be instructed to “go prone,” but that was obviously not an option in this case.
“Do you have any weapons?”
Avaro’s eyes fell on the yellow “FBI” stencil on the agent’s chest.
The idiot had to call from his house! Fucking fool!
“Under my leg.”
The agents’ fingers placed the barest amount of pressure on the triggers of their submachine guns at the admission. One stupid move was all it would take.
But that move would not happen. The team leader sidestepped to the man and reached under his right leg. The bone in the atrophied limb was easily felt through the thin cotton pants. He eased the 9mm pistol from between the leg and the cushioned seat of the wheelchair and laid it on a table to the side. “Anything else?”
The barrel was a few inches from his face, and he looked through the sights in reverse to see the blue eyes of the FBI agent staring down the right way at him.
The stupid, fucking fool!
“No.”
“Baker King, this is Baker Leader, we have house secured and unknown male in custody.”
“On our way.” Agents Christopher Testra and Frederico Sanz got to the back room just as the house’s only occupant was being cuffed and Mirandized. That he was in a wheelchair surprised them, but only momentarily. What the rest of the room held was infinitely more interesting.
“Nice setup,” Testra commented. The compliment had a purpose beyond the commentary.
“Thanks,” Avaro replied.
Thanks...
The voice sounded identical. Testra got a nod from his partner. “You’re welcome.”
“So your guys page you, leave a number of a phone booth, you call them there, and...”—Sanz gestured to the sophisticated communications setup on the table— “What, you use this to keep in touch with your boss?”
Testra visually examined the multiline cellular system spread across the table. Two phones, indoor antennae, a coax cable going out the window—to a roof antenna, no doubt. And...
Hmm. You are a serious player
. “An encryption package?”
“Well,” Sanz said in a very teacher-like fashion. “We are a very smart fella. Now why don’t you be even smarter and tell us your name and who you work for.”
Avaro stared stoically at his inquisitors. He would say nothing, and there was no way they could make him talk.
“Mum’s the word, eh?” Testra picked up one of the cell phones and dialed a number from memory. “You were right to think we couldn’t tap your cell calls, at least not without a whole lot more trouble.” He bent forward and smiled at the defiant face. “But that don’t matter now... Hello, this is Special Agent Christopher Testra, Miami FBI. Blue Rainbow Sunset.” The confirmation of the code phrase came from the phone company supervisor without pause. “I have a federal wiretap warrant, and I need the name of the registered user of this number and a list of all calls made from it for yesterday and today. I’ll wait.”
Their prisoner’s expression changed as the seconds of waiting dragged to minutes. “I ain’t done nothing, man.”
“We’ll see about that,” Sanz said. “My guess is that your fingerprints are all over this stuff. I didn’t see any ramps from your doors, so my guess is you’re pretty much a homebody.” A quick flash of anger resulted from the comment. “Which ties you to this place quite nicely. And we have you on tape talking to a very bad boy about some very naughty things. No, I figure you’ve done plenty.”
Testra scribbled a few things on his notepad before thanking the supervisor and hanging up. “Well”—he looked down at the name—“Avaro Alvarez. Pleased to meet you.”
Alvarez? Avaro Alvarez?
“Did they have the call list?”
“Ten minutes, Freddy.” Testra caught the speculative tone of his partner, then the name clicked. He had worked too long on the Coseros case to forget the name of Alvarez. “Do you think his daddy knows what he’s doing?”
Sanz smiled. “We should know in about ten minutes.”
* * *
Some arrests required force. Others required guile.
“Hey, we got a gas leak.”
The booming voice from the porch startled Sam Garrity. His nose tested the air as he walked through the living room to the front door. There was no obvious rotten-egg smell, which had come to be associated with natural gas, though that was produced by an additive to the odorless gas. But smell or not, it was nothing to fool with. There had been problems in the neighborhood before with leaks in the underground lines. He didn’t need the added distraction on this day especially, but what was there to do?
“Where’s it this time?” Garrity asked the worker after opening the door. He was a stocky black guy, dressed in the blue jumpsuit that gas-company workers wore when the work got dirty—
Great! Digging again
—and carrying a probe that looked like a vintage metal detector less the sensor plate at the bottom.
“Not sure, but we got a pressure-drop warning,” the worker explained. “We’re checking all the streets and all the houses. It should take just a couple minutes. But if the sniffer detects anything, I’ll have to shut your meter off for a while.”
A “So what?” look flashed on Garrity’s face. “Who needs gas when you’ve got a microwave?”
The worker smiled, but not at the joke. “Sure, but cold showers ain’t no fun.”
“Yeah. Come on in.” Garrity stepped aside and let the worker pass through before pushing the door closed...
But it stopped against something, which his eyes identified as the foot of the worker just before he felt the touch of cold steel behind his left ear.
“FBI. If you move, you will be dead.” The agent tilted his head toward the microphone concealed under the jumpsuit. “Whiskey One. I’ve got him.”
In seconds there were two more agents in the front room. The trio put Garrity on his face, searched him, and cuffed him before lifting and setting him in a straight-back chair one agent had dragged in from the adjoining dining room. More agents, cops, and who-knew-who-else were arriving, and soon the street in front of Samuel Garrity’s modest Hyattsville home was impassable. One agent showed the stunned man the search and arrest warrants, reading the pertinent portions of both along with the requisite Miranda warning, then stepped out of the way as another man entered the living room.
“Hello, Sam,” Deputy Director, Intelligence, Greg Drummond said. “I hear you’ve been moonlighting.”
Garrity’s face, painted with surprise, followed the DDI as he strolled around the room like a disappointed parent who’d just caught his teenager in a lie. A very big lie.
“I’m just curious, Sam. Why?”
There was no answer, just an averting of the eyes.
“I see,” Drummond said knowingly. It was money. He had dealt with treason in many forms, and one thing that always stuck out when those motivated by ideology were caught was their willingness to slam the system they’d struck out at with their actions. Those motivated by greed had no such conviction that could “explain” their acts, even if they thought otherwise.
“Mr. Drummond, you should see this,” the supervising agent said, leaning through the doorway of a room down the hall that bisected the house. “We have some interesting stuff in here.”
Drummond saw Garrity’s eyes widen a bit as he looked to the agent speaking. “One minute. Well, Sam, how do we do this?”
“What do you mean, sir?” He added the “sir” out of habit, and subconsciously in the hope that it might bring some mercy.
“I mean that you can tell us everything—
everything
— and then we can see if anything can be worked out.”
The offer was thin, but then what else did he have? Everything they needed to hang him was in the room they were now pawing through. Garrity was far from a genius, but it took much less to realize that things were going to happen with or without his cooperation. He decided to get on the boat before it sailed without him. “All right. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“Good.” The DDI turned to his Agency bodyguard. “Pick a room and get the stenographer in here. We have a story to hear.”
* * *
Mike Healy paused after the Agency’s Florida liaison to the INS finished recounting what he knew. Getting him to do even that had taken some strong words from the DDO. CIA officers were not prone to disobeying direct orders from a superior, in this case the DCI himself, but then disobeying a deputy director had about as much appeal to it. It was the choice of who was on the other end of the secure phone.
“You are absolutely certain of this?” Healy asked after processing the believably unbelievable.
“Positive, sir,” the officer affirmed. “I did just like the director ordered. When Portero came in for an interview, he gave me this big long story about a missile and said he had proof of some kind. I thought he was a bit loony at first, but his past checked out. Plus he knew things that only someone in a government position would know. So, I got all the pertinent information and passed his story to Director Merriweather, just as ordered.”
“Pertinent information?”
“Right. Name, address, phone.”
“Anything after that?”
“About a month later the director called me personally and told me to forget what Portero had told me. So I did.”
Healy was thinking ahead of himself, trying to add this new piece to the overall picture. “No notes, correct? No hard copy of any kind?”
“It never happened, sir,” the officer said: “Just like the director told me... I forgot. Until now, that is.”
“Forget it again,” the DDO directed. “This time on my order.”
Click
. “Anthony, what have you done?” he asked after hanging up. Whatever it was, he couldn’t use the officer he had just talked to to prove it. The Agency relationship with the INS was quasi-legal at best, but very necessary, which meant he could jeopardize neither the officer nor the ongoing operation. And that, in turn, left no way to use the information to hang his esteemed boss high and dry.
“There has to be a way,” Healy told himself, wishing that determination were enough to make his desire a reality.
* * *
Nick Beney caught his boss coming through the door. “That was fast.”
“You said hurry. What’s up?” Bud asked, setting his bottled water on the deputy NSA’s desk.
“More now than when I called you.” Calling anyone out of a meeting with the President took guts, precisely the reason Bud had chosen Beney as his deputy. “Greg Drummond is on a mobile and Director Jones is at Hoover, and Mike Healy just got in the queue. He’s at Langley. All urgent, to use their words.”
“Wonderful,” Bud said. Urgent had to mean something about Cuba, and a trio of calls from the integral players in the situation could hardly signal anything positive. Life wasn’t that fair. “Let’s not make anyone wait. Conference it, and I’ll pick up in my office.”
Bud walked behind his desk and twisted the window shades closed to cut the glare from the afternoon sun. He finished the water with a quick gulp and lifted the handset. “Hello, everybody.” He was answered by three return greetings. “First of all, nobody is on speaker, right?” None were. The speakerphone was too much of a security risk, allowing those within earshot to hear things that were never intended for their ears. “And this is a four-corner conversation here, so let’s keep the interruptions to a minimum. Gordy, do you want to start?”