No Man's Dog (14 page)

“But it’s all right out there,” Joe said, pointing at the screen in horror. “The cops . . . anyone can crack in there. Can’t they?”

“Well, they can,” Moos conceded, “but it isn’t so easy. For that matter, the cops already know how to crack into the street grapevine. They have funds built into their budgets for paying for that kind of info. Actually, this is a lot more secure. There are so many of these sites, and new ones coming online all the time . . . I don’t think the cops could keep up. Besides, if they do crack into it, what do they learn? Just a bunch of gossip. Who knows if any of it is true? Even if you were a cop and knew what you were looking for, could you trust something like this, even if you found it in the first place?”

“Well, Big John got one thing wrong,” Joe said, calming down. “I’m not married.”

“Oh, yes, you are,” Brooker said. “You live in Montana and there, if you represent yourself as married, you’re married. Even if you and Helen say you’re Mr. and Mrs. Humann. You’re married.”

“Good lord! Is it true?” Joe was aghast. “Can’t I do something about this? Do I have to get divorced?”

“Do you want to be divorced?”

“Well, I sure as hell don’t want to be married,” Joe said. “I mean, that wasn’t the point.”

“Relax,” Brooker said. “It probably won’t make any difference, as long as Helen doesn’t contest it in court.”

“She wouldn’t do that,” Joe said.

“So, what’s the prob?”

“Well, it’s right there, on the Internet.”

“Oh, that. I can take care of that. In fact, I was going to discuss that with you. I’ve decided to start a service. I’ll be your
private little eraser and go through the Internet, constantly, and remove or change any data that mention you. For a fee, of course.”

Joe was relieved. “That’s a great service. Can you actually do that? I mean, that there . . .”—he pointed at the screen—“that’s Big John’s site. How can you change stuff on his site?”

“I haff mein vays,” Brooker said, mimicking a movie SS man. He bent to the keyboard and began to type in instructions. Soon he was presented with a series of technical-looking sites, with numbers and odd code figures. He typed some more, hit a final key with a flourish, and sat back. Shortly, they were presented with the page they had been looking at. It now reported that Jim Sarris was living in Crested Butte, Colorado, married to Hallie Bury, under the name of Jim Sarkisian.

“Big John will see that,” Joe said. “He’ll change it back.”

“You know what?” Brooker said. “I’ll bet he won’t see it. These guys put up tons of stuff every day. They rarely, if ever, go back to read what’s on there. But if he does change it, I’ve left a little invisible code. It’ll notify me that ‘Joe Service’ has been mentioned. I’ll change it again, or even delete it, make it impossible for the page to function, to be called up. If John notices that, he’ll fiddle with it for a while, then go on to something else. He’ll think something has gone haywire with the formatting on that page and it isn’t worth his time to fix it. Don’t forget, he isn’t that interested in these ‘items.’ In the meantime, I have a search device out, constantly scanning the network, looking for your name. I get messages all the time. I’ve got some waiting on those computers over there. I’ll get to them in a bit.”

“That’s great,” Joe said. “Uh, what do you charge?”

“Well, you know, Joe, I’m going to make you a deal. I only thought of this after I started looking for your name, this morning. When your name started popping up, I have to admit, I was a little surprised. My first thought was, Joe ain’t gonna like this. And then
it occurred to me, How can I remove this stuff? I figured it out in about twenty minutes, maybe an hour. It’s a great gambit, eh? I can market this. I’m always looking for something to pay the rent. You know? There’s got to be a lot of guys like you out there who’d pay for this service.”

“How much?” Joe said, tiring of Brooker’s gleeful prating.

“Well, you’ve been very generous, over the years,” Brooker said, “and you just laid a bundle on me. This first time is free. How’s that? That would include the stuff I already gleaned, that’s waiting for me to work on. All subsequent ‘hits,’ how about a hundred a hit?”

“Hey, sure,” Joe said. “It sounds like a deal. Only . . . ,” he hesitated.

“How many are there likely to be? Over a week? I don’t know,” Brooker admitted. “I’ll tell you what, though. I’m not a guy to skin you. How about we put a cap on it? Say, a grand a month, max.”

“That’s quite a nut,” Joe said.

“Well, you think about it,” Brooker said. “I’m excited about this prospect. It may turn out to be lucrative. Right now, I don’t know what to charge. If I get a lot of clients, I can drop the fee down. I’m not looking to get rich, just looking for a way, at last, to make a decent living. I have a lot of expen—”

“I hear you, I hear you,” Joe said. “Okay, let’s go with that plan. We can work it out. Now, what else have you got?”

Brooker smiled and set to work. Shortly, he pointed to a Web site on the screen filled with a text. “This is the site of a weirdo over in Michigan—
www.hillmartin.net
. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but these sites often have bizarre names. It’s run by a guy named M. P. Luck, some kind of kooky patriot-militia nut. He’s got quite a bit about that bombing. And look.”

Brooker moved the cursor on the screen until it highlighted “Joe Service.”

“What’s he got to say?”

“Sit down, you can read the whole thing. But basically it says that you’re a federal agent, that you provided the explosives and the whole plan, although you didn’t personally attend the action.”

Joe was startled anew. “I did all that?”

“Well, according to Luck, you did. He also mentions that he’s being investigated, despite the fact that he was nowhere near and knew nothing about it until he saw it on television. It’s all a government plot.” Brooker looked at him expectantly.

“It’s nuts,” Joe said. He sipped his soda. It wasn’t bad ginger ale. “What’s the source of this guy’s info? Does he say?”

“He has inside sources, he says. The official line is that the bombing was related to drugs, to the cocaine and heroin trade. Apparently, a known drug dealer was being arraigned at the time. The plot was supposed to cause a diversion, to spring this guy. Unfortunately, the explosions were too big. The drug kingpin, or whatever he was, got killed.”

“No kidding? Well, it’s all wrapped up, then,” Joe said. “All they have to do is find me.”

“Well, the Homeland Security doesn’t mention you. They’re still not sure that the drug stuff wasn’t just a subterfuge, that it was really a terrorist act, possibly involving Islamic radicals. And there are other possibilities that the feds aren’t revealing yet.”

Joe nodded. “And why are they investigating this Luck?”

Brooker said that it seemed the “other possibilities” might point to a homegrown terrorist group, such as the one that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building.

“The thing about Luck’s site,” Brooker pointed out, “it’s all in the open. Anyone can read it and he gets lots of hits, has a regular group of subscribers, and so on. His deal is he’s a nut on so-called takings. Property that’s confiscated by the feds, condemned, phony legal claims. Apparently, he’s had property problems himself, and
he’s livid about the legal expense. The info about you is sort of unusual for him. Where he got his poop, I don’t know, but I get the feeling that he doesn’t have the inside track on these other sites, like Big John’s. Someone fingered you to him.”

“Can you tamper with his site?” Joe asked.

“Oh, sure, but do you want me to? This is just hearsay. It’s of no value. Maybe he got it from someone on the inside at Homeland Security, maybe he just deduced it from questions he was asked, say a detective mentioned your name. Maybe he’s just guessing, made it up. It’s not worth changing. And I’d say that Luck is not like Lynn, that he’ll notice if something is changed on his site. He’ll be upset and pursue it. I’ve got asbestos firewalls, but he might be able to track it back to me. I don’t know. I’d leave it.”

“Who was questioning him?” Joe said.

“Some ex-Detroit cop, a guy named Mulheisen.”

8

Dogs of War

T
he deputy director of operations was a stocky man who liked to dress in a kind of faux military way—tan gabardine twill suits, preferably, with dark green ties that could be mistaken for army neckwear. Recent events in American history had offered him new and improved opportunities to take a militaristic posture, but while he was the civil service equivalent of a full-bird colonel, he still wasn’t entitled to wear the neat little silver eagles on the epaulets that he coveted. He had never been in the military, as it happened, but he felt like a general at times. He was frankly envious of his underling’s career, that underling being Vernon Tucker (Lt. Col., USAF, ret.).

The DDO could spend minutes lost in reverie, wondering what it had been like for Tucker to drive an F-105 downtown, to bomb Hanoi. That’s the way he thought about it: “drive a Thud,” a fighter-bomber. “Go downtown.” That was how veteran jet jockeys talked, as he understood it.
Jinking to evade SAMs.
Hot damn!

He hadn’t even heard what Tucker was saying, standing before his desk.
Dodging a firecan!
He looked at Tucker, a rather small man, compared to himself, but with an unmistakable military air, albeit the casually studied manner of those kinds of officers who
had done dashing things—pilots, tank commanders, cavalrymen. What did Tucker have that he didn’t? Tucker was a goddamn cowboy, as best as he could figure, but of course that was valued in today’s government.

The DDO longed to say, “At ease, colonel,” but Tucker was at ease. Instead, he said, “Who is this guy again?”

“Joe Service,” Tucker said. He didn’t register any annoyance, although he’d just spent five minutes explaining about Service. Evidently, the DDO hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

“I came to you,” Tucker said, “because, of course, even though I’m seconded to Homeland Security, my first loyalty is always to the agency. And in the past, we’ve had dealings with Service.”

“What’s he to us?” the DDO asked. “He’s not one of our agents, is he? I think I know all the agents, and I don’t remember the name.”

“No, sir,” Tucker said. “He was just a contact. We interrogated him in Denver, a while back. He gave us some interesting background information on Echeverria.”

“Ah, yes, Echeverria. That’s the guy who was involved in the bombing in Detroit.”

“Well, that’s one theory,” Tucker said. “Others think it may have been a homegrown militia outfit. Actually, the attack was in Wards Cove, a little town north of Detroit.”

“What do you think?”

“It could have been Echeverria. The connection between him and the prisoner who was killed is tenuous, but real.”

“Whatever happened to the al-Qaeda connection?” the DDO wanted to know.

“Not proven, sir. There could be a connection.”

“That would be ideal,” the DDO pointed out. “The guys upstairs would like that. Any chance of making that connection? Man, that would be great.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Tucker said. “That’s why I wanted to enlist Joe Service. If we could recruit him . . . He’s a clever fellow. He worked for organized crime for years, as a kind of in-house troubleshooter. He had some kind of falling out with the capos. He might be willing to help us make a connection between Echeverria and the Arabs. It’s known that Echeverria deals with heroin internationally. The A-Q are involved in that trade. They’ve probably had some contact.”

“Have they, by god! That’s great! But didn’t we do some kind of deal with Echeverria? The name’s familiar.”

“Oh, no, sir,” Tucker assured him. “That was the DEA . . . ‘War on Drugs’. . . they worked out an understanding, or something, but that’s their baby, nothing to do with us.”

“Well, what if we screw that up? Is that going to come back on us?” The DDO’s eyes narrowed, his brow creased. “I don’t want to get into a pissing match with Brown over at DEA.”

“Well, sir, that’s my point. Right now, this task force that I’m detached to, under Homeland, we can’t touch Echeverria, because he’s protected by DEA and the evidence we’ve got won’t expose him. But if we can show Echeverria is dabbling in terrorism, that’s going to take precedence, you bet. Nobody can say anything about that. Of course, the investigation is under the aegis of Homeland Security. But if the agency—you—can go to them and say, We’ve got a guy we think can help us break this, but we’re hampered, well, the agency looks pretty good when all this works out.”

The DDO’s face brightened. “That would be nice. But now . . . would this Service guy be ‘our’ man? I thought you said he wasn’t an agent.”

“He was never an agent,” Tucker said. “We want deniability on this, naturally. But he was an asset. He’s almost ideal for the purpose.”

The DDO appreciated that distinction. Deniability was important when things didn’t work out, but so was credit when things did.

Tucker explained: “When I said ‘recruit,’ I meant simply that Service would come under the rubric, so to speak, of a contract agent. The usual thing . . . you understand. He provides the link, without him being seen as our guy, not part of the personnel.”

“What can he do for us?” the DDO wanted to know.

“First of all,” Tucker said, “we think he had some kind of connection with that fellow Franko, who was involved in the drug trade in Kosovo. It’s a double cutout, because Franko wasn’t personnel, either, he was a contract agent. He was in touch with the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The A-Q had a demonstrable contact there.”

“Sounds ideal,” the DDO said. “Is there anything else?”

“Well, then there is M. P. Luck, the Michigan patriot movement guy. Service seems to have some kind of connection with Luck as well.”

“Wheels within wheels,” the DDO said. “What’s Luck’s position? Didn’t he give us something on Oklahoma City?”

“Ah. I wasn’t sure if you were aware of that,” Tucker said. “I didn’t want to say anything. No offense, sir, but that was the FBI’s baby and we’re not supposed to know about that. Of course, we do, but we can’t be seen to know, if you take my meaning.”

“Hey, I don’t know nothin’. But,
entre nous,
did we know?”

“It was ‘in the air,’ you might say. My impression was that Luck didn’t exactly cooperate with the FBI, but he was a source. But now we’re all in the same kennel. Right? My thinking is, we’ve got three or four players here, potentially: Service, Echeverria, Luck, and the A-Q.” He ticked them off on the fingers of his left hand. “The trick is to make a connection with all four. The key figure could be Joe Service, sort of the wild card, if you will.”

The DDO nodded, following closely.

Tucker went on, laying out the possibilities. “The DEA won’t want to give up Echeverria just on the basis of Service, but if we can make a connection between Echeverria and Luck, and between Luck and Service, and between any of them and the A-Q, these other agencies will have to relinquish their options and we’re well on our way to making a case.”

Tucker could see from the DDO’s expression that he’d lost him. “Here’s how it works, sir. Echeverria’s now an asset of the DEA. He’s providing them with an inside angle on various narcotics organizations in Colombia and the cocaine trade. He was injured in an explosion a couple of years ago. Very painful, lots of burns. The explosion was rigged by Joe Service—that’s a complicated history that we needn’t explore right now. But Echeverria is known to be seeking revenge against Service. If the DEA will surrender their purchase on Echeverria, I think we could lure him back to the U.S., to get Service.”

The deputy director was puzzled. “Do we want him to do that? Service is our man, sort of.”

“Well, there’s more,” Tucker said. “Echeverria had connections with a Chicago mobster who was heavily involved in the drug traffic in Serbia and Kosovo. A guy named Zivkovic. Franko was our contract agent in Kosovo, dealing with Zivkovic. It turned out that Joe Service was involved with this Franko, back in Montana—he’s actually living on Franko’s old property. Franko’s defunct now. Franko, through Zivkovic, had dealings with some KLA types. That’s the connection with al-Qaeda, at least provisionally. It’s a little sketchy, but the potential is there.

“Now we’re seeing a growing connection between Service and Luck. At this point, we don’t know what the connection is, but Luck at least seems to know Service. Luck is a suspect in the Detroit bombing, but it’s not exactly Velcroed. We have no evidence
he was there. Echeverria may have been connected, because there was a drug dealer at the scene, for a hearing, a fellow who had a demonstrable connection with Echeverria’s organization. But this connection is worthless to us, since the DEA is shielding Echeverria.”

The DDO’s eyes had gone glassy. Where was all this going?

Tucker hastened on. “Luck has had dealings with Echeverria, we think.”

“We think?”

“A few years back. He was flying stuff into Panama and Guatemala, maybe into Colombia. Perfectly legitimate, as it happens, industrial supplies. But get this, sir. It was things like money counters, trash compactors, computer equipment, stuff that could be used in the drug industry. Then he’d fly back, of course, presumably empty. Or it might be, he’d have some kind of legitimate produce. The DEA was never able to pin any of that on him, but they suspected he was also carrying drugs. Anyway, he must have had dealings with Echeverria.”

“Okay, now you’ve got them all connected, but I still don’t see the connection to the bombing. Cut to the chase, Tucker. Who was responsible?”

“Al-Qaeda,” Tucker said.

The DDO was baffled. “How’s that work?”

Tucker knew this was the delicate part. “The connection between Luck and Service is of my own making,” he confessed. “I fed some information to Luck, who has been putting it on the Internet, that Service is a federal agent.” He shrugged. “It was a pretty harmless ploy, just a little disinformation. But it was bound to interest Echeverria, as well as others, of course. It was also an incentive for Joe Service to come to us, for protection, of course. Anyway, the idea is that Luck could be an intermediary with Echeverria, get him to come to the States to attempt to revenge
himself on Service. The A-Q will be interested, because Luck is a highly visible advocate for the so-called patriot cause. Depending on what happens, the A-Q will be seen to have made an attempt on Luck’s life, at Wards Cove.”

“But I thought you said Luck wasn’t at Wards Cove!”

“He should have been,” Tucker said. “He had a case pending there. There was supposed to be a hearing, about the same time as the bombing, and about the time of the hearing on Echeverria’s associate. None of that implicated the A-Q, of course, because then we didn’t know that Echeverria and Luck were associated, or that Luck was involved with Service, or that any of them were associated with the A-Q. But if Echeverria were to be assassinated, or if he were to assassinate someone, such as Service, then we’d have the whole bunch and a case could be made to the public.”

The DDO shook his head. “I can’t see you selling that to the Homeland Security people. ‘Cause that’s who has to buy it, you know. They’ll be the ones who tell the DEA that their deal with Echeverria is off.”

“The plan isn’t ready to go to Homeland yet,” Tucker said. “It needs fine tuning. We need to know a little more about the connection between Zivkovic and the KLA, which we can connect to the A-Q. Joe Service can do that for us. Look, sir, I know it’s a little confusing, but that’s one of its virtues, if you ask me. The American public is happy to believe anything of al-Qaeda. Sure, it’s confusing, but that’s all to the good. Arab stuff is always confusing, and Balkan stuff, the KLA connection, is even more so. It can be explained in a lot of ways and we don’t have to do the explaining. The press and the rest of the media do that. They dig up connections, congratulating themselves, saying ‘Ah hah!’ We say ‘No comment’ and ‘That’s a security issue.’”

“I still don’t get it.”

“It isn’t ready to ‘get’ . . . yet,” Tucker said, a bit testily, trying to conceal his irritation with the DDO’s obtuseness. “But it will be ready, if we can loosen the ties between Echeverria and the DEA. That’s the key. That and getting Joe Service to do what he does best—find out things and, uh, clean up loose ends.”

“Why can’t you just find out who rigged that bomb?” the DDO said petulantly. “If it wasn’t al-Qaeda, that could come out and that would blow the whole thing sky-high . . . so to speak.”

“The consensus in the task force is that it was Echeverria,” Tucker said. “But we don’t have a shred of proof, and I don’t think we’ll get any, as it stands. There is no demonstrable connection with him, other than that one of his underlings was involved. The guys in the task force think it’s plausible that the drug dealer’s friends—let’s say Echeverria himself—wanted to cause a diversion so they could spring the guy. But blow up the place? That’s pretty extreme, or so the feeling goes. But these are extreme people, and maybe they just got carried away. That sort of smash and grab operation has been done in other countries—Serbia, for instance, by Zivkovic. Also in some Muslim countries, Turkey, Egypt, and so on. But we can’t make a case against Echeverria if he’s in Colombia.”

“What about Luck?” the DDO asked. “Maybe he did it, for his buddy Echeverria.”

“Service could help us with that, if I can get him close to Luck,” Tucker said. “But the real deal is to associate al-Qaeda. Service could help us with that, too.”

The DDO was thoughtful for a moment. “I just don’t see al-Qaeda blowing up a small-town courthouse. It ain’t a trade tower, or the Pentagon. It ain’t even Mount Rushmore.”

“It’s white picket fence America,” Tucker said. “And, oddly enough, there are a bunch of Middle Easterners living in the county. A surprising number, actually.”

“Arabs? With connections to al-Qaeda?”

“They aren’t Arabs, most of them,” Tucker admitted. “In fact, they’re mostly Christians. But the public doesn’t see that as much of a distinction. They’re Chaldeans, and some other groups. Who knows what a Chaldean is? It’s biblical-sounding. The point is: would al-Qaeda care? They publicly claimed credit. It seemed to demonstrate that they can hit in the heartland, in Ronald Reagan’s hometown, as it were. That’s the point.”