Rules of Deception

54

Philip Palumbo followed a specific routine upon returning to the United States of America after a “hunting” trip abroad. Leaving the airport, he drove to his gym in Alexandria, Virginia. For two hours, he would ride a stationary bike, lift weights, and swim. Finally, when he’d sweated all the crappy food and dirt and noxious air out of his system, he would repair to the steam room where he’d get rid of the corruption. The lingering guilt that grew like a tumor in the dark of a man’s soul. He called it “going to confession.” Only then would he drive home and greet his wife and three children.

Today, however, he forgot all about purging his sins and pointed his car toward Langley, where he quickly found his way to the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives. Once there, he accessed a digitized file from the Latin America section detailing the company’s activities in El Salvador during the 1980s.

Inside it, he found a mission statement discussing the need to build democracy in the region as a bulwark against the communist Sandinista regime that had taken root in neighboring Nicaragua and was threatening the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador. Farther along, he found a mention of an Operation Mourning Dove, run out of the embassy in San Salvador beginning in the spring of 1984. The file listed the minutes on Mourning Dove as “Eyes Only,” and required a deputy director’s signature to access it. This was it. No other operation listed in the file was above Secret classification.

Palumbo flipped back to a list of agency personnel attached to the embassy at the time. He recognized the name of a colleague he worked with at the Counterterrorism Command Center: a lean, outgoing Irishman named Joe Leahy.

Palumbo found Leahy in a glassed-in office overlooking a cubicle farm on the operations deck of the CTCC. “Joe, got a sec?”

As usual, Leahy was dressed to the nines in a navy suit and polished brogues, hair slicked back like a Wall Street banker. Less could be done to disguise his nasal Philly twang. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I need to pick your brain about something that went on a long time ago. Got time for a cup of coffee?”

Palumbo led the way to the cafeteria and picked up the tab for two double lattes. They sat at a table in a back corner. “You were in El Salvador, right?”

“Back in the day,” said Leahy. “You were still banging freshmen at Yale.”

“Trying and failing was more like it,” said Palumbo. “What can you tell me about Mourning Dove.”

“There’s a name from the past. Why do you ask? You running an audit on that thing?”

Palumbo shook his head. “Nothing like that. Just background.”

“It was a long time ago. I was junior. GS-7. A punk.”

“It’s nothing like that, Joe. You’ve got my word. This stays between you and me.”

“Like Vegas. Right?”

“Yeah, like Vegas. Mourning Dove, Joe. Tell me about it.”

Leahy leaned forward and said, “It started as a training gig. A way to knock some of the recruits into shape. These were complete yokels. Half of ’em barely out of loincloths. We brought some Berets down from Bragg. Some firepower, too. The idea was to teach them basic soldiering. Help bolster democracy in the region. The usual bullshit.”

“I thought we had the School of the Americas at Benning for that?”

“Sure we do. But that’s official. This was sub rosa. Anyway, el presidente liked what we were doing, so he conscripted some of these units into his own private force. We did the dirty work. You’ve got to remember how it was back then, with Danny Ortega porkin’ Bianca Jagger, the Sandinistas firing up the region. No más communista. At least, that was the idea. It got out of hand almost from the beginning. There was nothing targeted about it. But it worked. Scared the shit out of everyone. By eighty-four, it was all done. The president won reelection. We packed up the bus and came home.”

“And what about the guys you trained? Any of them come home with you?”

“What do you mean, ‘come home’?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you found some men with skills and asked them back to work with the Company.”

Leahy’s easygoing tone vanished. “Now you’re getting out of your depth. These are dark waters you’re navigating.”

“Between you and me, Joe, a mick from Philly and a goombah from the south side of Beantown.”

Leahy laughed at this, but he didn’t say anything.

Palumbo went on. “The thing is, I think I came across one of them on my turf. Knocking out a couple of big-time operators, leaving all kinds of voodoo bullshit behind. Word is he coated his bullets in frog poison because he thought it prevented his victims’ souls from chasing him into the human world. You ever hear of that cockamamie shit?”

Leahy was shaking his head, the memories practically flashing in his eye.

“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Joe?”

“That’s Black Bag stuff you’re talking about,” said Leahy. “If you know what’s good for that lovely wife and those brats you got at home, you’ll drop it.”

Palumbo was as arrogant as the next agent. The warning only served to spur him on. “The guys he killed were involved in the plot with Walid Gassan. They were going to take down an airliner. It was a sophisticated job. We’re talking about a drone that does four hundred miles per hour loaded with twenty keys of Semtex. That’s a cruise missile, the way I see it. No way some Bojinka motherfucker’s able to pull this one off.”

“Sounds like the guy’s doing the right thing.”

“No doubt about it.”

“So if it isn’t the ragheads, who exactly do you think is behind it?” asked Leahy.

“I’m not saying. But I have an idea. I mean, how many people are there at the end of the day with those kind of resources?”

“You think it’s state sponsored.”

“Oh, yeah.” Palumbo tapped the table with his knuckles. “But this info stays between you and me.”

Leahy flicked his hands above his chest, a pantomime of making the holy cross.

“There was something strange about those files,” Palumbo continued. “It’s what I needed to talk to you about. You see, the name of the agent in charge of the operation was missing. It looked like it had been cut out before they digitized it. Tell me, Joe, which one of our guys was calling the shots for Mourning Dove?”

Leahy stared at Palumbo for a moment, then stood from the table. As he passed, he bent and whispered two words in his ear. “The Admiral.”

Palumbo remained in his chair until Leahy had left the cafeteria.

“The Admiral” was James Lafever. The deputy director of operations.