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1205 18 April 2007
“An unexpected pleasure, Frank,” FBI Director Schmidt said as he offered his hand to DCI Lammelle. “What can I do for you?”
“How do you turn off the recorder, Mark?”
“Excuse me?”
“Turn it off, Mark. I don’t want this recorded for posterity.” After a just perceptible hesitation, Schmidt pointed to a door. “I’ve got sort of a bubble in there,” he said.
“Fine, providing you swear on your honor as an Eagle Scout that the recorder in there is shut off.”
Lammelle then held up his right hand, palm outward, center fingers extended, thumb and pinky crossed over the palm, in a gesture signifying Scout’s honor.
“Frank, I don’t thinking mocking Scouts is funny. I was an Eagle Scout.”
“I know. I know a lot about you, Mark. And so that you know a little more about me than you apparently do, I was also an Eagle Scout. Is that recorder going to be turned off, Scout’s honor?”
“The recorder will not be turned on,” Schmidt said.
Lammelle wagged the hand that made the Scout’s honor and raised his eyebrows.
Schmidt sighed, then made the sign with his right hand, and said, “Scout’s honor.”
As they both put down their hands, Schmidt asked, “What’s this all about?”
“Why don’t we wait until we get in your bubble?”
Schmidt waved him through the door into a small, windowless room equipped with a library table, four chairs, a wall-mounted flat-screen television, and an American flag. There were two telephones on the table, one of them the red instrument of the White House telephone network.
When Schmidt had closed the door behind him, Lammelle laid his attaché case on the table, opened it, then sat down and took from it a manila envelope.
“Beware of spooks bearing gifts, Mark.”
Schmidt took the envelope, removed a stack of photographs, and examined them.
“This is the guy who dropped the letter in the post office in El Paso,” Schmidt said. “Two hours ago. How the hell did you get this?”
“A friend gave it to me. Do you know this guy’s name?”
“No. Not yet. I’m working on it. Is that why you’re here? You want to know his name?”
“His name is José Rafael Monteverde,” Lammelle said. “He’s the financial attaché of the embassy of the República Bolivariana de Venezuela in Mexico City.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“I am sure. And how about a little tit for tat? Show me what was in the envelope.”
“I shouldn’t even be talking to you about this. And you shouldn’t have been nosing around El Paso. Christ, you could have blown the FBI surveillance!”
“I hate to tell you this, Mark, but my friends said your surveillance guys were about as inconspicuous as two elephants fornicating on the White House lawn. Not that it mattered, because they didn’t follow Señor Monteverde across the border into Juárez”—Lammelle pointed at the photographs—“where most of those were taken.”
Schmidt’s face had tightened at the fornicating-elephants metaphor, and now he appeared to be on the verge of an angry reply. But then he shrugged and instead said, “The ‘don’t follow anybody across the border’ order came from the President.”
“He does have a tendency to micromanage, doesn’t he?”
“He’s determined to get Colonel Ferris back from the drug cartels. I can’t fault that.”
“The drug cartels don’t have him, Mark.” Lammelle pointed at the photograph of José Rafael Monteverde. “There’s the proof.”
