The Enemy Inside

FIFTY-TWO

The day after arriving home from the ordeal at Supermax, I dispatched Harry to meet with Alex Ives’s father. At Ives’s office at the airport, the two of them made all the necessary arrangements. The small air cargo jet would return to Mexico, pick up Alex and Herman, and bring them back, at least partway.

I’ve been pushing everything else off my desk to deal with all of this, and I have a growing stack of mail and telephone messages screaming at me. One of them is from the judge’s clerk downtown as we edge toward the meeting I’m trying to avoid, and another from the guy out in Del Mar, Becket.

As soon as Harry returned to the office he gave me the details, time and date for the pickup at the dirt strip east of Ixtapa. I sent a message to Herman on the Internet bulletin board in Tampico, Mexico: “It is time to come home.”

In cryptic terms I spelled out the details. He already knew the location. I let him know that I would watch the board for any message coming the other way in the event that they couldn’t make it.

Because Alex lacks a passport we cannot fly him back the way he went out, directly across the border on the jet. Landing at a US airport, TSA, which does air cargo security, and ICE, Immigration and Customs, would nail him. They would probably see to it that the company transporting him lost their license, too. Alex would end up back in the pokey for violating the terms of his bail, and Harry and I would be sitting on a hot seat in front of some judge downtown.

With all of the stories about people walking across the southern border, the fact is, it isn’t that easy.

So the jet, loaded with a light cargo of consumer electronics, will fly south to Mexico City and drop off part of its load. It will then make a quick detour west, taking less than an hour to the dirt strip, pick up Alex and Herman, and then head north. It will land again at Tijuana to deposit the rest of its cargo. Because the connecting flights, the two cargo drops, are within the country, Mexican authorities at Tijuana are not likely to take a hard look at the plane.

Herman and Alex will be picked up by a car near the cargo terminal at Tijuana. Alex’s father has made arrangements for this. They will be driven to the fishing port at Ensenada, and from there, they will board a fast forty-two-foot sport fishing boat owned by an American buddy of Ives. He will transport them well out to sea, then north, up the coast, where they will land at Mission Bay, the boat’s home port.

On board will be three American sport fishermen with bad sunburns, along with a couple of large yellowtail tuna that the skipper will buy off the docks in Ensenada.

If all goes well, Alex and Herman should be back in San Diego within two days. The question of where to hide Alex has also been solved, at least for the time being. I will hide him with Betz. Alex has always wanted to meet the whistleblower. Here is his chance.

Before I left the Supermax facility in Colorado, I made a phone call to another acquaintance in Washington, D.C. His name is Zeb Thorpe. Harry and I call him “Jug-Head.” A former marine, Thorpe is actually the executive director for the National Security Branch of the FBI. At one time he held my life, along with Harry’s and Herman’s, in his hands. To the extent that you can trust anybody in circumstances like these, I trust Thorpe.

I asked him if he knew Fenton Yasuda. He did. According to Thorpe, Yasuda is a straight arrow, a career prosecutor who has worked his way up within the Department of Justice. Although the position he currently holds is an exempt appointment, he is no political hack. Thorpe says he is someone I can trust. So I do. Thorpe also gave me some other advice and said he would make a few phone calls.

With that, Yasuda and I, out of the presence of everyone else, made a deal. As agreed, the government transported Betz and me back to Miramar, the Marine Air Station near San Diego, where they will temporarily house Betz until other arrangements can be made. It was Thorpe who called ahead of me to the station and cleared the way.

The fact is, we have no other choice. I can’t take Betz to my office or to my house. Neither place would be safe. The minute they knew he was there, they would descend on both of us.

I am hoping that Betz will be at Miramar no more than a few days, a week at most. US Marshals will provide security inside the compound. Marine guards at the gate filter everyone coming and going. If it is carefully worked out, arrangements might be made for his daughter to visit him there.

On the plane back Betz and I set up a code. He is to call me three times each day using the back line at the office and my home phone at night. I will not pick up, as I will not recognize the incoming phone number. He is to leave a message on voice mail that my laundry is ready to be picked up. If I don’t get the message, I will call the marshals and start to worry.

My fear is not that someone will kill Betz, at least not immediately. The concern is that they may try to kidnap him in order to squeeze him for information as to the location of the Swiss bank records. Once they have those, none of us will be safe.

With everything that has happened, the strange thing is that we still have no clue as to who is behind all of the bloodletting. Is it being driven from within the government or from the outside? There is no question that Grimes is caught up in the middle of it. Other members of Congress as well. But I doubt that they are the ones perpetrating the violence. I could understand an individual member under pressure, being blackmailed, desperate enough to kill the person threatening them. But this, a highly organized series of assassinations, carefully planned and executed-it doesn’t fit.

Instead, it is far more likely that the members, some whose names were given to Harry and me by the banker, Korff, are the commodities that are being protected. Someone invested in their corruption is shielding his capital outlay.

If Harry and I had anything solid, documents or a witness pointing us in the right direction, it would be something we could give to the D.A. or to the cops. Anything to get them off our backs on the case against Alex.

It’s what I was hoping for in the declaration from Ben, her statement under penalty of perjury naming the man who hired her to lure Alex to the party, the man with the silver bird-headed cane. But I don’t have it, and she’s dead.

I could produce Betz. He could testify to the fact that others had a motive to kill Serna, but without something more it would be meaningless. The prosecution would claim that it was nothing but a desperate attempt to shower blame on a phantom conspiracy. They would demand to see the evidence, the mysterious bank records. The feds would be on us in a minute, US attorneys up to our hips, demanding that everything be sealed, motions to remove the entire matter to the federal courts. And while we were arguing, someone would stick a knife in my back. Betz would end up with another lawyer, someone looking to get a good grip on his throat to find out where the bank records are kept.

Bizarre as it is, we are still saddled with the vehicular homicide case and a meeting in front of a judge in his chambers the day after tomorrow. I am hoping that Alex will be back in time.