Three Weeks in Washington, page 5
part #3 of Titus Ray Series
“Looks like it’s time for a little reassessment.”
“No. It’s time we found out why a Hezbollah recruit on a suicide mission had a million dollars’ worth of drugs in his possession.”
“So you’re still sticking with your theory? You think Felipe and his partner were sent here by Hezbollah to scout out the venue before the main event?”
I nodded. “I still believe they’re connected to Hezbollah, but I have to admit I’m not exactly sure how those drugs fit into their agenda. Remember though, the Zeta drug cartel in Mexico has an ongoing relationship with Hezbollah in Syria, and it was the cartel who helped Ahmed Al-Amin cross the Texas border and enter the U.S. a few weeks ago.”
Mitchell handed me the backpack. “The only way to know for sure is to get Felipe to talk, but when I was in there just now, he wouldn’t say a word to me.”
I wanted to point out he hadn’t exactly exhibited a caring attitude toward the guy, but instead, I opened up the backpack and pulled out a box of crackers.
“I think we can use this as an incentive to get him to talk to us.”
“Crackers?”
“What’s the one sentence Felipe uttered during our forty-five-minute drive over here?”
Mitchell thought for a second. “Tengo hambre.”
“Correct. He said he was hungry. I’m guessing either this guy loves to eat or he’s one of those hungry-all-the-time kind of people. Maybe he could be induced to talk if we bribe him with some food.”
Mitchell looked skeptical and grabbed the crackers out of my hand. “You think we’ll get him to crack if we give him some ... crackers?”
He chuckled at his own joke.
“As amusing as that was, Ben, I really don’t think it’s going to take much to get Felipe to talk.”
Mitchell glanced down at his watch. “Let’s hope you’re right. Carlton and his entourage will be here in less than ninety minutes.”
* * * *
Mitchell returned to the study and sent Arkady out to the foyer so I could make arrangements with him for a food delivery from Millie’s kitchen.
Arkady didn’t question me about my odd request, nor did he seem the least bit curious as to why Felipe, who was still wearing the FBI shirt, was tied down in an armchair in Carlton’s study. His attitude made me wonder how often Carlton had used The Meadows for an off-the-books enterprise.
Although I doubted Felipe was a practicing Muslim, as Arkady headed out to the kitchen to confer with Millie, I told him, “Be sure and leave off the pork.”
Arkady waved his hand at me without looking back and disappeared down the hallway.
Meanwhile, I grabbed Felipe’s backpack and reentered the study.
When Felipe saw the bag in my hand, his eyes widened, and the duct tape around his mouth appeared to move a little, as if he might be trying to smile.
I realized it was the first time Felipe had seen the backpack since I’d ordered him to drop it at the entrance to Building 172. Once that had happened, he’d probably thought he’d never see the bag or its contents again.
Now, for the first time since grabbing him, I detected a measure of hope on his face.
I motioned for Mitchell to join me at the small square gaming table in a corner of the room. The tabletop consisted of a solid wooden chess board, and even though there appeared to be a game in progress, I’d never heard Carlton talk about playing chess before.
He was excellent at recognizing patterns, thinking ahead, and analyzing weaknesses, so it didn’t surprise me he was also a chess player.
After sweeping the chess pieces into the drawers at the sides of the table, I set the backpack on top and started pulling out the drugs. Mitchell followed my lead, and we made a big deal about finding the drugs inside and discussing what the value of the heroin might be on the streets of D.C.
Although our exchange was in English, I felt sure Felipe was picking up the gist of what we were saying.
After putting on this little show for several minutes, I walked over and ripped the duct tape from Felipe’s mouth, demanding he tell us about the drugs.
He moved his jaw up and down a few times, as if wanting to make sure everything was still working properly. After that, he said he was thirsty.
I twisted the cap off a bottle of water and allowed him to drink about half of it before removing it from his lips and putting it back down on the table.
“What were you planning to do with the drugs at the Navy Yard?”
He held his handcuffed wrists out in front of him and said, “Take these off, and I’ll tell you everything.”
I didn’t believe him, but I took the fact he was trying to bargain with me as a good sign.
“Explain what you and your friend were doing at the Navy Yard this morning. Once you do that, I’ll remove your restraints. That’s the way this works, not the other way around.”
He frowned. “Reyes was not my friend.”
“No? Then why were you with him this morning?”
He nodded his head in the direction of the table, where four packets of heroin, stacked two across, were on display in front of Mitchell.
“I have a solid buyer for those,” he said. “Take me to him, and I’ll split the money with you.”
After seeing the look on Felipe’s face when he’d spotted the backpack, I wasn’t surprised he was trying to work out a deal with me now.
I shook my head. “Tell me about your relationship with Reyes. What were you doing at the Navy Yard? Why did you shoot all those people?”
There was a knock on the door, and Mitchell quickly tossed the heroin inside the backpack before Arkady walked in the room.
The smell of onions wafted in after him, and I spotted slabs of sizzling steaks, fried potatoes, and onion rings on the large tray he was carrying.
After placing the tray on the gaming table, Arkady looked over at Felipe. “Shall I bring in a plate for him?”
Mitchell, who was already devouring an onion ring, immediately spoke up. “That won’t be necessary.”
There was no mistaking the look of disappointment on Felipe’s face. As soon as Arkady had left the room, I pulled up a chair, and sat down across from him.
“There’s a lot of good food over there, Felipe, and I don’t mind sharing it with you. But first, you’ll have to tell me what you and your partner were doing at the Navy Yard this morning.”
His eyes narrowed. “I told you. Reyes was not my partner.”
“You said Reyes was not your friend. You didn’t say Reyes was not your partner.”
Felipe raised his voice. “He wasn’t my partner or my friend. He wasn’t anything to me. Don’t you get that? I barely knew him.”
“Okay, so you barely knew him. If that’s true, then why were you at the Navy Yard with him this morning?”
This was it. My interrogation of Felipe had reached critical mass.
Either Felipe was about to clam up, or he was about to start giving us some answers.
I was betting on the latter.
Chapter 7
Felipe didn’t answer my question. Instead, he turned away from me and stared out the window.
Just when I’d made up my mind to try a different approach with him, he turned around and said, “I was with Reyes this morning because his roommate, Alejandro, couldn’t make the trip with him. He said Alejandro was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix.”
Although I was eager to learn more about the absent Alejandro, I didn’t want him to know that, so I asked him again, “If you barely knew Reyes, what were you doing in D.C. with him?”
Felipe glanced over at Mitchell.
I was betting it was the food commanding his attention and not Mitchell, and I decided to put that theory to the test. “Look, Felipe, tell me about your relationship with Reyes, and I’ll untie your hands and let you eat steak until it makes you sick.”
He glanced down at his shackled wrists for a moment, and then he looked up at me and said, “Reyes came over to my place three days ago. He said he wanted to buy some reefers from me, but after we’d made the transaction, he asked if I’d be interested in making a delivery to the East Coast with him. After he told me how much he’d pay me, I said yes, and that’s when he went out to his car and brought in the backpack.”
When Felipe paused, I jumped in. “Had you met Reyes before he showed up at your place?”
“He was at my apartment with some other guys once, but I didn’t actually talk to him then. One of the other students made the purchase. After that, whenever I saw him around campus, he always spoke to me.”
“So I’m guessing he knew you as the local campus drug connection?”
Felipe nodded. “I guess so.”
Mitchell asked, “Reyes was a drug dealer then? That’s what he was doing at the Navy Yard this morning?”
“Reyes isn’t ... wasn’t a drug dealer. He said he’d agreed to help a friend in Mexico get the heroin to a buyer on the East Coast.”
“Was this buyer at the Washington Navy Yard?” I asked.
“No. I’d never heard of that place until this morning when Reyes drove us over there. He told me the buyer lived in the Royal Courts Apartments on 4th Street, but instead of turning in at the apartment complex, he turned in the opposite direction and drove us onto that military base. I couldn’t believe what he was doing because I could see there were guards at the gate, and I knew they might search the car and find the drugs.”
“He drove you right up to the gate?”
He shook his head. “No, instead of driving up to the gate, he pulled off onto the shoulder before we got there. When the guards started yelling at him, he got out of the car, opened up the trunk, and pulled out the backpack. That’s when he took out the two rifles.”
Felipe bowed his head. When he looked up again, he said, “I had no idea the guns were even in there. He handed me one and told me to follow him or I’d end up dead. When he grabbed the backpack, I followed him. What else could I do?”
“You could have said no,” Mitchell said. “You could have refused to go with him.”
Felipe shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. He would have shot me the way he did those guards.”
Mitchell was out of his chair and up in Felipe’s face within seconds. “You’re responsible for the deaths of all those people today, whether you pulled that trigger or not.”
I grabbed Mitchell’s shoulder. “Back off.”
He turned and walked away.
Whether role playing or not, Mitchell’s bad cop routine bordered on perfection.
In contrast, I apologized to Felipe for Mitchell’s behavior and offered him a drink of water.
After taking a swig, he handed the bottle back to me. “Since Reyes took the backpack out of the trunk to begin with, how did you end up with it?”
Felipe looked down at his wrists. “You promised to take these off if I told you about him.”
“I’ll do that as soon as you explain why you were the one carrying the backpack instead of Reyes.”
He sighed and laid his head back against the chair for a few seconds. When he looked up again, his speech was hurried, as if he might want to get the whole thing over with quickly.
“After Reyes shot the guards, we ran over to the next building, where he herded everyone inside an office. There were two women, a young kid, and an old man in there. Reyes found a small closet inside the office and locked them all inside. I kept asking him why he was doing this, but all he’d say was that he was doing it for Allah. When I—”
“Allah? He said he was doing it for Allah?”
He nodded. “A few hours after we left Fayetteville, he told me he was a practicing Muslim. He had a prayer rug with him, and we had to stop several times so he could perform his prayers.”
Mitchell asked, “Did he tell you why Allah wanted him to kill people?”
Felipe ignored Mitchell and spoke directly to me. “Once he shot the guards, he refused to tell me anything, and he kept threatening to shoot me if I didn’t stop asking him questions. As soon as he put those people in the closet, he turned on a television set, and he got very excited when he saw all the policemen and ambulances arriving. That’s when I decided I had to get out of there. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the cops arrived and tried to rescue those people.”
Felipe sounded breathless as he began reliving that moment. “Reyes had dropped the backpack when he’d entered the office, so when he turned his back to adjust the volume on the TV, I picked it up and ran out of the room. He followed me out in the hallway and shot at me a couple of times, but I ducked inside a stairwell.”
He shook his head. “A few minutes later, I heard the two women screaming and some other shots being fired, so I guess he must have gone back inside the office and shot those people.” His voice trailed off. “He shot them all, even the boy.”
No one spoke for several seconds.
Finally, Mitchell said, “That’s the reason the SWAT teams decided to go in. They heard shots being fired.”
I asked Felipe, “When the SWAT teams arrived, how were you able to get away?”
“As soon as they entered the building, Reyes immediately came out of the office and began firing at them. I used the opportunity to escape through the fire exit door underneath the stairwell.”
Mitchell sounded skeptical. “How were you able to make it all the way over to the other side of the Navy Yard without being caught?”
“I found an empty building and slipped inside it for a while. I decided there had to be another way off the base, so I just started walking in the opposite direction of the front gate.”
I nodded toward the backpack. “And the drugs? What were you planning to do with them?”
He looked surprised at my question. “Sell them, of course. I told you. I have a buyer. If you let me go, I’ll split the profits with you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe Reyes had a buyer for the heroin. He was lying to you about that.”
Tiny droplets of moisture appeared on Felipe’s upper lip. He sounded desperate. “No, he wasn’t lying to me. The guy called him several times on his cell phone. I have his number.”
“What’s the number?” I asked.
“I wrote it down.”
“Where?” I asked. “I didn’t find anything in your pockets. You didn’t even have a cell phone on you.”
“I wrote it down on a bag of potato chips. It’s in the backpack. Give it to me.”
I didn’t give Felipe the backpack.
Instead, I dumped the contents on the floor at his feet, and Mitchell and I sifted through the stuff until we came across a snack-size yellow bag of potato chips.
Felipe said, “That’s the one. See? There’s the phone number. He’s the buyer.”
The writing was faint, but I could make out some numbers.
I handed the bag to Mitchell.
“That’s a D.C. area code,” he said.
I asked, “How did you manage to get this number from Reyes?”
“The day before yesterday, while I was waiting in the car for Reyes to come back from his midday prayers, I noticed his cell phone had been left on the front seat. He’d been talking to his contact before we stopped for lunch, so I took a look at the last number he’d called and wrote it down on the bag before he got back inside the car.”
I asked, “What were you planning to do with the number?”
Felipe shrugged. “I considered it insurance, just in case Reyes decided to double cross me or wouldn’t fork over the money he’d promised me.”
Mitchell said, “Weren’t you afraid Reyes would find the number when he decided to have a snack?”
Felipe shook his head. “He only ate healthy foods. Those apples and oranges in there belonged to him, and he didn’t touch the other stuff.”
I said, “Tell me about Reyes’ friend, Alejandro, the one who got sick and couldn’t make the trip.”
“I never met him.”
“Reyes never mentioned him?”
Felipe thought for a second. “He said the two of them went through school together in Caracas. He also said Alejandro was the person who’d invited him to check out the mosque where he was converted.”
“So Alejandro is also a Muslim?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
There was a knock on the door. When Mitchell opened it, Arkady stuck his head in and motioned for me to join him in the hallway.
I stepped outside and closed the door behind me.
“Mr. Carlton just called. He’ll be arriving in ten minutes.”
“Thanks for the heads up.”
When I turned to go back inside, Arkady grabbed my arm. I was sure his grip had bruised my arm.
“I don’t think you understand, Titus. Mr. Carlton doesn’t allow anyone to eat in his study.”
I attempted to reassure him. “Okay, Arkady. Give me a minute, and then you can come in and clear away the dishes. Douglas doesn’t have to know we broke his rules.”
I should have known better.
* * * *
As soon as I went back inside the study, I told Mitchell I needed to make a phone call before Carlton’s guests arrived, and he came over and helped me untie Felipe’s restraints and take off his cuffs.
Once Felipe was on his feet, I handed him the plate of food Arkady had left for me and pointed him toward the patio. “Enjoy your food.”
Mitchell took out his handgun and said, “Make the phone call. I’ve got this.”
As soon as I closed the French doors behind them, I scooped up all the stuff I’d dumped out of Felipe’s backpack and put it back inside.
Everything, but the yellow bag of potato chips.
A few seconds later, when Arkady came in to clear away the dishes, I walked over and handed him the bag of chips.
“Tell Millie to put this away for safekeeping. When I get hungry later, I’ll come and get it.”
He placed the bag on his tray and left the room without a word.
Once he was gone, I took out my phone and punched in Katherine’s number.
Katherine Broward was one of the Agency’s top intelligence analysts. I’d worked with her on several occasions, including Operation Clear Signal, and although we’d attempted to have a more-than-just-friend’s relationship several years ago, it had never gone anywhere.
