Authors: Joseph Badal
“I think that would be the wise thing to do.”
CHAPTER 29
At 10:15 a.m., the leader of the three-man surveillance team was parked outside Bartolucci’s estate when Deputy Director Bishop called him and gave him a list of instructions. While he listened to the Director, he thought maybe it was time he got into another line of work. This operation had acquired a bad smell.
Rolf Bishop stared across his home office desk at Tim Morton, Special Operations Director, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Bishop understood the power of a CIA Deputy Director was theoretically limited by the laws of the land and by Congressional oversight, but, in actuality, that power was mitigated only by the Deputy Director’s moral constraints and the size of his testicles. Bishop knew that a man with no ethical parameters owns power without bounds.
“Nice saying,” Morton said. He pointed at a wall plaque behind Bishop.
Bishop turned and looked at the plaque inscribed with Lord Acton’s saying:
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely
. He turned back to stare at Morton. The man had put on a huge amount of weight since Bishop had last seen him a couple years earlier. He had to be carrying 230 pounds on a five-foot, eight-inch frame. His face was florid with broken blood vessels. His bloated nose looked like a road map of little red veins that spider-webbed onto his cheeks. “Yeah, nice saying,” Bishop said.
“What can I do for you?”
“How much would it take for you to risk your job, your pension, and your marriage?”
Morton’s expression barely budged. He met Bishop’s gaze, seemed to reflect on the question, and answered, “One dollar for the marriage; two million dollars in a numbered account for the rest.”
“Done,” Bishop said.
Morton smiled. “We’ve done a lot of business together over the years. You’ve paid me well and I know you’ve got me by the balls. But you’ve never offered me that kind of money. What’s up?”
Bishop ignored Morton’s question. He looked at his wrist watch: 10:55 a.m. Late afternoon in Zurich. He picked up his cellphone and dialed a private number in Switzerland. When the call went through, he was prompted to enter his code number and then his password. Thirty seconds later a man came on the line.
“Bergstrom!”
“Hello, Bergstrom. I want you to execute a transaction for me.”
“Yes, of course. Please proceed with your instructions.”
“Transfer two million dollars from my account into a new account in the name of Timothy Morton. Mr. Morton will call you later to set up a code and password.”
After he terminated the call, Bishop fished a one dollar bill from a pocket, smiled, and handed it to Morton.
CHAPTER 30
Tim Morton left Rolf Bishop’s office at Langley, drove to his DEA office, typed up a letter of resignation, and submitted the retirement papers he’d had in his desk for the past sixteen months. April 26 would be his last day at the agency. He finally had all the money he needed. He called the mayor of Philadelphia and requested an emergency meeting with him at two that afternoon. Morton was confident a call from the DEA special operations director was a rare enough occurrence that the mayor would clear his schedule to meet with him. Then he requisitioned a helicopter and flew from D.C. to Philadelphia.
Morton slugged back a swig of coffee. He placed the cup on the table and stared at the three men across from him—Mayor Katz, Police Commissioner Clarence Sullivan, and S.W.A.T. Commander Abraham Lincoln Brand. Katz and Sullivan had the self-satisfied looks of well-fed bureaucrats. Brand appeared to be the antithesis of a bureaucrat. The guy was tall, muscular, and wore a skeptical look complemented by piercing, intelligent, coal-black eyes.
“Gentlemen,” Morton said, “I am about to provide you with highly classified and extremely sensitive information. This is a matter of national security with diplomatic implications, so I must have your agreement that anything you hear today will be kept secret.” Morton could sense excitement radiating off the mayor.
The mayor spoke for the three of them. “There’s no harm in hearing you out, Mr. Morton. If we don’t like what you’re selling, then you have our promise not a word of what you tell us will ever leave this room.”
The other two nodded.
“All right, gentlemen, let’s proceed. On the outskirts of this city is an estate listed on your city’s property tax rolls in the name of Cornelius Capital Resources. I won’t bore you with the details of how this company is related to a series of other companies, some of which are foreign. I
will
tell you, however, that if you strip away the legal camouflage you will find the true owner of the estate is none other than Gino Bartolucci, the former head of
La Cosa Nostra
in Philadelphia.”
The Philadelphia contingent did not seem particularly surprised. “No disrespect intended, but that’s not a startling revelation,” Police Commissioner Sullivan said. “We’ve got neighborhoods in this city where half the buildings and businesses are owned by someone other than the person named on the title and tax records.”
“I understand,” Morton replied, “but let me finish and then you’ll see the whole picture. On the grounds of that estate are several men who are behind a massive drug smuggling operation. Their product comes from one of the largest and most ruthless poppy growing syndicates in the world, based in Kampuchea, formerly known as Cambodia, and run by former high-level military leaders of the Khymer Rouge. Their goal is to gain control of a significant slice of the world narcotics business. They make the tactics of the Colombian and the Mexican cartels, for example, seem like child’s play. The DEA, FBI, and CIA have gathered intelligence on this syndicate for several years, but it was not until recently we discovered the connection to Bartolucci. It is our theory that Bartolucci abdicated leadership of the local mob to create a smoke screen. He effectively cleared his table of other criminal enterprises to concentrate on the development of this Cambodian partnership.
“We developed a tactical plan to expose Bartolucci. The exposure was to have coincided with a drone strike on the processing plant in Kampuchea. That’s where diplomatic considerations come into play. Unfortunately, we learned early today one of our undercover agents who is inside Bartolucci’s estate may have been compromised. We believe Bartolucci knows he has a spy in his camp and he suspects it’s our agent. He has called a summit conference of all of his partners for tomorrow morning at the estate and we’re afraid he plans to expose our agent at that meeting. You can imagine what they’ll do to him. This has forced us to move on Bartolucci earlier than we had planned. We’ve got to get our man out of there in one piece . . . tonight. I have agents in the area, but not enough to get this done. That’s where your S.W.A.T. team comes in. Besides, there would be a lot of noise involved with an assault on the compound. We couldn’t very well go in there without coordinating with local authorities.”
“Just a minute, Mr. Morton,” Captain Brand said. “We don’t engage S.W.A.T. until we have carefully and completely analyzed a situation. We have to know the physical layout; the number of personnel in the compound, including innocent bystanders; how well-armed our adversaries are; et cetera. You want us to enter unknown territory in the dead of night. That’s how cops and innocent people get killed.”
Morton eyed the S.W.A.T. Commander. He pulled from his briefcase the files Rolf Bishop had given him, including doctored aerial photos, and spread papers on the mayor’s conference table. “This first diagram shows the grounds of the Bartolucci estate. These next drawings are floor plans for each level of the house. These aerial photos were taken by a drone earlier today. They show a total of eight heavily armed guards, each carrying a large caliber pistol in a shoulder holster and a MAC-10. The grounds and the house are wired with motion and pressure sensors. But all electronic security systems are primarily dependent upon power from your local utility. If the juice is cut to the estate, the detection systems switch to generators which automatically kick in—but only after a one minute delay.
“One more thing. There’s a heroin stash on the estate. My agent reports there is enough heroin on the estate to fill a panel truck. This could be a very big drug bust. And, gentlemen, that bust will be yours. The DEA will take no credit for any part in the seizure. If I had the time to gather an assault team, I wouldn’t ask for your help. I would only have called you after my people assaulted the estate.”
“That’s about the most candor I’ve ever heard from a Fed,” Sullivan said.
Morton laughed. “I hate to admit it, gentlemen, but I need your assistance. There’s a very brave man inside that estate I want to rescue and a lot of heroin that would make my career. There’s about to be a bunch of Mafia gonzos in there I would love to arrest. But I don’t have time. My undercover guy will experience a horrible death if we don’t take immediate action.”
“Why don’t you just tell your man to take a walk and get out of there?” Brand asked.
“We haven’t been able to communicate with him for twenty-four hours.”
The mayor looked at his two police officials before he responded. “Mr. Morton, why don’t you give the three of us a couple of minutes to discuss your request among ourselves.”
After Morton stepped out, Mayor Katz looked at the other two men and asked, “Well, what do you think, boys?”
Katz had run Philadelphia for almost eight years and had done a great deal to make the city’s streets safer than they had been for decades. He was a popular mayor. His ever-smiling face made him seem like everybody’s favorite uncle. But his appearance and demeanor disguised a merciless political nature grounded in a winner-take-all mentality. He loved the opportunity Morton had laid out for them. A huge drug bust on a
Mafioso’s
property would make Katz a hero. Today mayor, tomorrow governor.
“What do you think, Linc?” Sullivan asked his S.W.A.T. team commander.
Katz noted Captain Brand’s scowl. “Linc, you’re the guy who will have to lead an assault,” the mayor said. “What’s your opinion?”
“I got alarm bells ringing in my head. Since when does any federal agency ask for help from locals? And I gotta tell ya, I don’t buy Morton’s story about Gino Bartolucci running a drug operation. He got out of the rackets because he didn’t want to deal drugs. He’s been as clean as a whistle ever since, as far as we can tell. Something just isn’t right.”
Mayor Katz asked Commissioner Sullivan to weigh in.
“Mr. Mayor, I think Captain Brand has raised good questions. However, I feel he has, in the interest of prudence, ignored the fact that a senior DEA man came all the way from Washington. I can’t believe he would have done that unless this was very important. His presence here raises his story’s credibility. I think it’s admirable he cares more about his undercover agent than he does about getting credit for the arrest of a bunch of mobsters and confiscation of a huge narcotics haul. I understand Linc’s point about the Feds usually not coordinating with local authorities, and just because Bartolucci has been clean for years, doesn’t mean he’s clean now. Once a mobster, always a mobster. I recommend we do this.”
For the mayor, Sullivan’s support more than cancelled the S.W.A.T. Captain’s reservations. “All right, gentlemen,” he said. “I want you to work with Mr. Morton.”
“Then I’ve got to lay out some rules before we agree to this,” Brand said.
After Brand explained what he wanted, Katz left the room and brought Morton back in. He shook the DEA man’s hand. “Mr. Morton, it’s a go. Captain Brand will command the operation. He will have ultimate authority over the entire mission. Do you agree?”
“Agreed, Mr. Mayor.”
Morton reached into his briefcase and pulled out a large photograph. He handed it to Mayor Katz. “That’s the undercover guy inside Bartolucci’s estate. My sincere thanks to all of you.”
Morton shook hands with each of the men, turned to leave, but stopped at the door. He raised a hand and said, “Oh, I nearly forgot. There’s a crooked Maryland cop who’s in league with Bartolucci. She’s fed him intelligence information. Her name’s Jennifer Ramsey. She may be on Bartolucci’s estate. Be careful. She has every reason in the world not to be taken prisoner.”
When Morton left Philadelphia’s City Hall, he called Bishop’s cellphone number. “It’s a go,” he told Bishop.
“Did you give them the photos I provided?”
“Yeah. Who’s that undercover guy?” Morton asked.
Bishop laughed. “Don’t have a clue. I copied it off some guy’s Facebook page.”
Morton laughed. “Does Bartolucci really have eight heavily armed guards on his estate?”
“He has two or three guards armed with pistols,” Bishop said. “It’s amazing what you can do with Photoshop.”
“I wish I could hang around and watch what happens.”
Bishop said. “Where will you be?”
“Where I can’t be found. Some place far away, where the back blast from this operation can’t blow shit all over me. I put in my retirement papers this afternoon. Thanks for the retirement fund. It’s been great working with you.”
Bishop stared at his cellphone. He’d thought about eliminating Morton. Another possible loose end. But maybe it was best the man just took off and disappeared. In any case, he’d think about what to do with Morton, if anything, at a later date, after he’d finally taken care of David Hood.
An hour later, Morton rendezvoused with a CIA team parked in a van in a closed shopping center lot. He sat in the front passenger seat and turned to the four men in the rear of the vehicle. They all had the chiseled looks and the eyes of stone-cold killers. He guessed they were former members of Special Ops. Special Ops types who did off-the-books wet work. Fuckin’ Bishop was pulling out all stops on this one.
“The mission is a go,” he said. “A police S.W.A.T. unit will mount an assault tonight. While they neutralize the guards, you’ll go in and erase the traitor and anyone near him. That includes a rogue cop named Ramsey. Jennifer Ramsey. She’s feeding information to the traitor. This man,”—he passed a photograph of David Hood to them—“has betrayed dozens of our undercover agents. I don’t want him to have the luxury of a trial. Anyone inside that estate is an enemy of the United States.”