Pirate Alley

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I went back to the States via Rome. Got a room in a modest hotel and looked up Sophia Donatelli. She had a few days off, so we spent them seeing Rome. She knew it backwards and forwards. I liked her a lot. She liked me a lot, too. Say what you will about Italian politics, but the women there are the most beautiful in the world, and the food!

From there I went to Paris and visited a friend I happened to know. She was gorgeous too, and the food!

My leg was well by the time I got to Washington in the last week of November, Thanksgiving week. The weather was mild. I didn’t bother taking my coat to work—my sport coat was enough.

Ricardo had broken the story about the Shabab warriors being murdered in an explosion after the Eyl battle. It had been all over the news in Europe, America and I suppose everywhere else. Al Qaeda had sworn revenge.

Ricardo had waited until the media hubbub over the returning hostages had died down somewhat. Everyone had had their fifteen minutes, or less, and life was returning to normal when Ricardo hosted a one-hour news show. He had lots of video, but none of the explosion. The camera had stayed on him as he related the tale of murder of defenseless men.

The press loved it and kept it alive. Congressional investigations had been threatened and scheduled. Subpoenas had been delivered.

An FBI agent and two congressional investigators were waiting for me at Langley that November morning when I unlocked the door to my tiny office. They escorted me to the conference room outside Grafton’s office, got the tape recorder and camera rolling and started questioning me. Having a legal education and some less-than-upright incidents in my shady past that I didn’t wish to discuss, I immediately refused to talk.

That upset them. They made unhappy noises while I worked on the coffee I had bought at the Starbucks stand in the lobby of the building. I smiled.

“Refusing to talk to us could cost you your job,” said the lead dog, a heavyset female with a rather large jaw.

“Really?” I replied and made a slurping noise with the coffee. “Fact is, I haven’t yet written my operations report. When I get it done, of course it goes to my boss. It’ll be classified. If you want to know anything about what my orders were, what I did, saw, said, witnessed, whatever, ask my boss for a copy of the report.”

“There is a report that one passenger from the Sultan was removed by Israeli intelligence agents, a Mohammed Atom. Do you know anything about that?”

“You have got to be kidding.”

“Did you know that there were two Mossad agents on the ground in Eyl?”

“For all I know, there could have been a hundred. Lots of shady characters running around there. Pirates, holy warriors, spies, SEALs, marines, British matrons and innocent babes like me. Take that Ricardo guy from Fox News—I thought he might be Russian intelligence, but damn if I know. I certainly didn’t ask him. Ask the boss for a copy of my report when I get it written.”

Some hot tongue work for a couple of minutes got them no place, so they turned off the gear, packed up and left.

I went in to see Jake Grafton. He was in his office with Sal Molina.

“Tommy Carmellini, Sal Molina.”

He asked how I did and we shook hands.

“Sal wants to ask you some questions,” Grafton said. He leaned back in his chair and ran a pencil back and forth through his fingers.

I mentioned the FBI and congressional investigators and my refusal to talk. “Fact of the matter is,” I told the president’s man, “my report will be everything I have to say about Somalia. If anyone asks about anything not in the report, I intend to take the Fifth Amendment. Everyone should do it at least once, so I thought, why not now?”

Molina stared at me stonily. “Have you been reading the papers?”

“I just flew in from Paris yesterday,” I said. “Read newspapers on the way. Some of the op-ed pieces read like the author belonged to al Qaeda. I’ve heard they can join that in college now, like they can the Communist Party.”

“The administration is under severe political pressure to explain the events that happened in Eyl.”

“Alleged events,” I said brightly, using my legal training.

“Tommy,” Grafton said, “I think we owe Mr. Molina an off-the-record oral statement. He can do with it what he will. Tell him what you personally witnessed in Eyl.”

I thought about it, took a moment to arrange my head and started with my team’s arrival near the airport after the Sultan was captured by pirates. My exposition took twenty minutes. I confess, I sanitized it somewhat. I never mentioned Nora Neidlinger, and I didn’t mention the RC control units. I did tell him about the woman who gunned the Shabab guy while he was in custody. I didn’t think the marines were at fault—who knew what she might do?—and said so.

Molina zeroed in on the wired-up batteries, the radio-controlled receiver and the explosives in the basement. “So you saw the three batteries?”

“Yes.”

“And you saw Admiral Grafton safety them by removing the wires from the terminals of the batteries?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t reattach the wires?”

“No.”

“Do you know who did?”

“No.”

“Two Mossad agents were in Eyl. Could they have rewired the batteries and triggered the blast from a distance?”

I shrugged. “Anyone could have. I didn’t, and didn’t see anyone do it, but it was a long night. The building was used to hold Shabab prisoners. The explosion of the weapons cache could have been an accident. There were over two tons of Russian PVV-5A in there, hundreds of RPGs, tens of thousands of rounds of AK and machine-gun ammo, MON-50 Russian claymores … the whole basement was an explosion waiting to happen. And it did.”

I shrugged again. “I repeat: I had nothing to do with that explosion. But if I had thought of it, I would have been perfectly willing to go down to the basement, wire up the detonators and push the button on a radio controller from a safe distance. If someone did that, they did the world a favor. That part of the world, anyway.”

“The prisoners had surrendered.”

“I am sure Allah considered that when he totted up their accounts. Do surrendered martyrs get fewer houris, fewer little boys?”

Molina grimaced. “The president is out on a limb, and you are doing nothing to help him get off it.”

“I didn’t hold a ladder for him to get up there,” I stated, “and I won’t hold a ladder for him to get down.”

Molina looked at me awhile, then transferred his gaze to Grafton, then back to me.

“We only lost five killed, eight wounded in the rescue operation,” Grafton said. “The president should be crowing about that. And giving out medals to the families in a White House ceremony.”

“Does that include me as a wounded casualty?” I asked.

“No.”

I pulled up my trouser leg and showed Molina my scar. It was still pink. “Nine wounded.”

“You clown,” Molina said to me. He told Grafton, “We’re doing a ceremony.”

Grafton opened his drawer and took out a piece of paper. He passed it to Molina. Looked like a hundred-dollar bill to me. “The counterfeit money went into the ocean with bin Laden. He can spend it in hell. The paper will eventually decompose. Here’s a souvenir.”

“No one knows that money was counterfeit,” Molina said, fingering the C-note.

“My suggestion is we leak the story. The administration can deny it at first, then sheepishly admit it. Everyone will have a good laugh on the pirates, and the president will look tough. That will get him part of the way off the limb, anyhow.”

Molina smiled. The smile turned to a chuckle; then he laughed out loud. “Jake, you are one amazing son of a bitch. Okay. Okay.”

“I know a guy over at the Post. Jack Yocke. I’ll call him and send him this bill. He’ll be delighted to break the story.”

Molina laughed his approval. He tossed the C-note on Grafton’s desk, got out of his chair and retrieved his sport coat from the couch. Put it on.

“What happened to that million dollars in real money that you took with you?”

“I gave it to Ragnar. Maybe it’s still in Eyl. Consider it an investment.”

Molina walked over to a print on Grafton’s wall of a naval battle in the age of sail and stood scrutinizing it. “We’ll probably never know exactly what happened after the battles in Eyl,” he said soberly, all trace of mirth gone from his voice, “and perhaps that is best. Just so it stays that way.”

He turned around. “Merry Thanksgiving to you both,” he said and trooped out.

When the door closed, Grafton asked, “How was your French lady?”

I sighed. “Très bien. Very très bien.”

“Welcome back to the world.” He leaned forward in his chair and picked up a file, passed it to me. “I’ve got another assignment for you.”

I looked at the cover for the file. Didn’t open it. “I hope you intend to send me somewhere that has ceramic conveniences and toilet paper. I’m really tired of squatting over a hole and using leaves. Or pages from the Federal Employees Handbook.”

“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy.” His eyebrows danced, and a grin crossed that leathery face. “I’ve put you in for the Company camping award. If you win, you get a CIA coffee cup and an embossed compass at the Christmas party. Tough competition, though.”

“I feel so lucky! I’ll buy a lottery ticket on my way home tonight.”

He nodded at the file in front of me. “The IRS says an international ring of thieves is defrauding the government by submitting false income tax returns claiming refunds for people with Puerto Rican Social Security numbers. The real people don’t even know about the returns. Puerto Ricans don’t pay federal taxes. The FBI and IRS want our help. You are the help.”

“Not the revolution in Mali? I thought I was in line for a government-paid trip to Timbuktu. ‘Them being three and us being two…’ I have thought up an excellent list of reasons why I shouldn’t go. Want to hear them?”

“Some other time.”

We talked for a half hour about my new assignment. As I was leaving he came around the desk to shake my hand. “Thanksgiving dinner at my place, Tommy,” he said. “Anytime after noon.”

I grinned, then headed off to study up on IRS refunds—and write an ops report. A little fiction never hurt anyone. Hell, maybe fiction was my calling, the start of a new career.