Red Bishop One

By David Chacko

A Colombian drug lord holds the United States hostage from his jail cell on the eve of a presidential election. The violence he calls down cannot be stopped without appeasing him--or unmasking a conspiracy that has been dormant for most of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Foremost Press
• Release date: Feb 5, 2010
• ISBN: 9781936154296

David Chacko

A lot of what a writer does at the desk is the result of research being plugged into what happened every day of his life up to that point. Where he's born doesn't mean a lot except that's part of what he brings to the work. So let's say I was born in a small town in Western Pennsylvania where the coal mines closed thirty years before, then let's say that I found my way to New York and Ohio and New England and Florida and Istanbul with lot of stops along the way. I don't remember much about most of those places except that I was there in all of them and I was thinking. One of the things I was thinking about, because I'm always thinking about it, is the way people and governments lie to themselves and others. Those two thing--the inside and the outside of the truth--might be the same thing, really. That place of seeming contradictions is where I live. And that's where every last bit of The Satan Machine comes from. The lies piled up around the attempted assassination of the pope like few events in the history of man. Most of it had to do with geopolitics, especially those strange days when the world was divided into two competing blocs that were both sure they were right in trying to dominate. So an event that was put through the gigantic meat grinder was one that would be mangled nearly forever. That's what I've been thinking about--the hamburger, so to speak. The results will be told in several blog entries from my website, so you might want to mosey over to www.davidchacko.com. I can guarantee you a good time.

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RED BISHOP ONE

David Chacko

Published by Foremost Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2001 by David Chacko

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Mike Zivkovich

Foreward

Red Bishop One is the third novel in the trilogy of The Iron Rose. The first two books in the series are The Black Chamber and White Gamma. Although Red Bishop One may be read as a standalone novel, some knowledge of the characters and circumstances of the first two books would be useful.

It would also help to recall a time when the first George Bush ran as a candidate for the presidency, when the troubles in Central and South America were very much in the news, and when the Drug Wars, which were an extension of those problems, reached the shores of the United States.

PART ONE

AN AUTUMN KILL

SAVAGE

Warfield caught the aircraft early as it came over the switchback that was known as Moccasin Ridge. No attempt had been made to evade detection. The helicopter swept up the valley floor on a line-of-sight course toward the farmhouse, making a last-minute yaw into the pasture where the boy tethered his pony.

The aircraft hovered for thirty seconds before throwing out discrete sections of light from its belly. Warfield was almost certain that he and his family were in no immediate danger, but he waited, monitoring the transducer-fed CLASSIC system, until the chopper touched down and the first man was out on the ground.

Only one man. He made the usual head-down run before he cleared the rotors and stopped forty yards from the house atop the first of the buried sensors that linked with the LED display on the monitor. No other tone-coded data came through. The system’s infrared should have caught any more figures that attempted to debark.

Although Warfield did not recognize the man, he could not be sure because of the heavy green tint from the night-vision scope mounted on the M-16. Whoever it was seemed aware that he could be a dead man given the wrong approach. He stood still, his hair and clothing raked by the mechanical wind at his back, presenting himself for inspection.

He would have been told exactly what to do by the people who knew Warfield best. The insignia on the side of the helicopter was the announcement of its source and its advertisement. The bird, assumed to be an eagle, clutched in his talons a shaft of lightning bolts on one side and a skeleton key on the other. The symbol meant to suggest that no secrets could be kept from its swift prying eyes.

Who is it, Stephen?

Warfield heard Bettina’s voice over the VHF on the kitchen counter in the back of the house. That fine and familiar sound seemed stretched and bumped toward nervousness by the frequency-hopper. Still, she sounded calm, almost laconic. Completely deceptive.

It’s Savage, he said, using the cryptonym they had always used when working for NSA.

* * *

Not that it was much of a cryptonym. The National Security Agency lay on Savage Road at Fort Meade, Maryland near that purposeful sieve known as the nation’s capital. Warfield had met Bettina at NSA, fallen in love, conceived a child, then became separated for almost five years. The process of being reunited had been so complex and violent that the life Warfield had made for himself in the intelligence community, which was the only one he wanted, had not survived.

For the past year he had been in deep cover, the deepest, impersonating himself. Warfield had not liked the experience because he knew that he could have been doing useful work, but he had done it willingly to ensure the safety of Bettina and the boy. The noise sitting out in the pasture was the end of all that, and Bettina knew it best.

What does he want?

Bettina was looking out the window at the tall muscular soul who still stood in the pasture. Like Warfield, she was calculating every ramification of being blown and called back into the business.

He doesn’t know, Bett. He’s a messenger. Jack would use an android if he could.

That would be better, she said. Now we have to deal with this one, the pilot, the flight coordinator, Jack, and whoever is looking over his shoulder.

With luck that would be no one. Jack Brindisi was the Deputy Assistant Director of NSA, accountable in theory to the Director, who was accountable, loosely, to the head of CIA, who was accountable to no one in these the last days of the Cheerleader’s reign.

There’s no sense taking chances, said Warfield. As soon as I leave, go Spiral. No further voice communication.

Bettina nodded as if she were already into the drill, which she was. If Jack knew their location, he would know everything except the things in their minds.

And bodies. Warfield took Bettina into his arms with the knowledge of one year in hiding that had been like five. Five good years. In that time, he had never been distracted from the rhythm of the seasons and rarely obsessed with his own importance. He had been able to coax the boy into calling him father, winning him with love, outdoor things, a pony. Warfield had done these things knowing that the increments of affection between them would be doubled in the arms of the mother  and he was not wrong.

The long embrace that had turned into a kiss and into another with her on her tiptoes climbing him, climbing to that familiar nexus of joining, suddenly ended when she pushed hard with her tongue, pushed hard with her body, and moved away.

You don’t have to go back, Stephen.

Warfield shook his head. Jack might take no for an answer, but he wouldn’t like it. And he wouldn’t send for me if he had a choice.

She stepped back, flowing away like water. Seeing her in the close distance, Warfield was unsure about leaving. Bettina was as beautiful as wives could allowably become. She had let her obsidian-black hair grow to the length he liked, and she turned her natural arrogance like a No-Mask turned to everyone but him, so she always seemed to be what she was not  dark, Spanish, rigidly controlled.

Say goodbye to Stephen. He’s going to miss his father.

Where is he?

I went in to wake him, but he was already up. He wants to see the helicopter.

* * *

So it was that Warfield gained more cachet with a five-year-old by entering an unstable machine than by all the manipulations of the past months. Standing by the run before the barn in his dinosaur pajamas, the boy waved and called Adios, papa! because he always reverted to Spanish, his first and most natural language, in times of stress or awe.

He had wanted to invade the helicopter, but Warfield wasn’t having that. He had no way of knowing what this was about, or if it had a purpose other than the obvious: to remove him from the sight of witnesses.

The pilot had not said a word in any language  not even to clear his takeoff  and the messenger who shared the passenger compartment spoke when spoken to. He seemed to be exactly what he was  a capable manhandler. Jack liked Special Forces that had been hamstrung or herniated out of service. This one looked as if he might have mustered out below Capricorn. His skin was tanned and the back of his left hand bore a fresh scar like the white blaze on the face of young Stephen’s pony.

Good book?

The man looked over the paperback that he held in his left and recently wounded hand. That allowed him to seem engrossed in a neutral task while maintaining a level watch on Warfield’s hands.

It’s a spy novel, he said. The idea is that Kennedy was assassinated by Diem’s family. It was retaliation for the murder of Diem.

Lyndon Johnson thought so, too.

The man’s clear blue eyes flickered with interest, as if he had never heard that before. LBJ told you that.

Second hand. But it wasn’t a good theory then, and it isn’t much better now.

Why?

Because the Diems would have tripped all over the KGB if they wanted to get to Oswald.

Well, it’s fiction, said the man. I guess we’re still looking for an excuse for how it went wrong.

By it, the Beret meant the war. No one who was there could bear to think it might not have been different.

Where were you?

Command and Control North, he said without emphasis. In Laos, mostly.

Special Operations Group?

He nodded again. We did good work. There was a chance as long as we kept things controllable. I think in time we could have convinced them it was their war, too.

The Diems.

They weren’t as bad as what came later. That was total corruption.

Warfield did not argue. After American troops arrived in numbers there was hardly relationship between men and women in the country that did not come down to money; not a single business transaction made without bribery; and no commitment from the people who should have been fighting the war, because they knew  they could see  that the percentages were with the middlemen.

The messenger did not speak again. It was even possible that he became interested in the book that he pulled in front of his face. Everyone in the business read spy novels if only to tell them what they were not permitted to do.

Do you know who I am?

The Beret nodded again, as if he were determined to keep his watch and not be provoked to any action, which included a meaningful exchange of information. The noise of the rotors lent him an excuse.

I’m going to ask you to keep a tight mouth about what you saw tonight.

You don’t have to do that, he said in a voice that was deep and deeply insulted.

Warfield knew that the man would have had training; that he would never talk to strangers; but he also knew that the berets were a fraternity that talked among themselves.

Not even to your brothers.

He seemed surprised by the statement, but got over it quicker than the insult that had been implied. This is the ZI, he said. I don’t think you have a lot to worry about.

But you don’t know that, said Warfield quietly. Neither do I.

The man didn’t nod this time, but he absorbed the warning.

I want you to relay a message to the pilot, said Warfield. Tell him to monitor 12.4 on the marine band. In fifteen minutes, he’ll receive a two-group message. He’ll repeat that message to me precisely.

The look in the blue eyes said that the man now knew why he had been disturbed in his reading. Or what?

Or we’ll be turning back.

The man did not mistake the threat in Warfield’s voice. I don’t have instructions for anything like that, he said quickly.

You don’t need them. If everything checks out, there won’t be any problems.

I hope not, he said evenly, because you’ll have to go through me if there are.

Warfield nodded. He wouldn’t like that, but he would do it. The only sense of fraternity he felt was with his family.

* * *

The potential trouble was defused when Bettina’s signal came through with the plain text message that meant she had gotten clear on the first leg of the journey south. She would broadcast twice a day by means of the preset transceiver at the house, which was activated by a touch-tone phone call. Not even NSA would be able to trace the origination. In forty-eight hours or less, she would reach the next safe place.

A few minutes later, the pilot swung the helicopter onto a new heading to avoid the clutter around Dulles, or so Warfield thought. He could not calculate their precise location, but the timing was right. The house where they had lived what he now recognized as an idyll was only two hours overland from D.C. Warfield had chosen the location not for distance from the source but because the mountains across the Pennsylvania border were as remote as anything in the eastern half of the country. With a good antenna, he could pull in the Redskin games, too.

In twenty minutes, they were on the ground at Andrews Air Force Base, and Warfield was walking with Utt, which was the messenger’s name, across the tarmac toward a hanger and an open bay that housed a Gates Learjet. When Utt stopped at the foot of the short stairs, Warfield began to suspect that he was not going anywhere soon, though he might go somewhere, eventually, at Mach .8.

That suspicion was confirmed when he entered the passenger’s compartment. Jack Brindisi sat in one of the double-width reclining chairs like a Roman on his dais in anticipation of the Games. Although the DAD wore his usual funereal suit, he projected an air of hearty blood lust, a kind of ballistic warmth, like few people of the age. There were always barbarians at the gates. The ceremonies of intrigue that he presided over with skill and a completely devious mind were nothing less than the sketch of a larger conflict to come.

Sit down, Stephen.

Warfield looked around at the bar and velvet-velour before accepting the invitation. Ross Perot make a donation?

Jack almost smiled. They wouldn’t allow me Turnkey back, but almost anything that can be requisitioned is ours.

Warfield took the seat opposite Jack, wishing that policy could be manufactured as easily as public funds. Turnkey had been the highly classified section in which he had served with Bettina and other assorted specialists until it all went bad in Central America. The unit had been self-sustaining, a complete system  from intercept and surveillance to black ops. The key was always inserted by Jack, until the last time, when it was put in the hands of CIA, who destroyed it.

What about the boys across the river?

The DCI has quite a good relationship with us these days.

Warfield was glad to hear that. He did not need more enemies at his back. The Director of Central Intelligence was of course immortal, but the intervals were filled with all sorts of strange flesh. The latest DCI had died as he had lived  an incompetent.

How about NSC?

They’re stable now, he said without irony. The new man is unprepossessing.

What does that mean, Jack?

He golfs.

That made two passes at humor, which made Warfield nervous. The DAD did not have the inclination, much less the glands, for the enjoyment of life. If the past were any measure, that meant something grim was in the works.

Why don’t you tell me what it is, Jack? I’ll say no and we can go on with our lives.

Are you really quite happy with yours?

I was.

You must know that I wouldn’t have interrupted your sabbatical without good reason  and a great deal in it for your own cause.

My cause?

Peace on earth, he said.

Now the back of Warfield’s neck had begun to sweat. One more comment like that and you lose the advantage, Jack.

Do you want to know how I found you?

No. But I can tell you that you won’t be able to locate the next safe place.

That would be in Bradenton, Florida.

Warfield had never wanted to do the DAD harm, because there was something in their relationship that he had always craved  like the heightened curve of emotion between kidnapper and victim. But all that changed when the best means of security that he and Bettina had devised was revealed so casually.

How many other people know about this, Jack?

None, he said.

That was never true. Jack meant that he had kept the information boxed between sources, so no one had the entire picture but himself. He would have done a good job of that unless someone in the datastream decided it was in his interest to link the boxes.

You still don’t trust Bettina, do you?

No, he said. But then I have a choice.

We never have a choice, Jack. Not with anyone in this business. Your secretary could go over tomorrow and you’d feed her all the secrets of your nasty mind. Forever.

Stephen, my secretary does not spend her summer vacations in Nicaragua.

Was it Bettina’s fault that she had no other place to run? Warfield paused for the truth. If you want to look for someone not to trust, try your new friend the DCI.

Jack didn’t answer at once. Lifting his drink from the sideboard, he sipped cautiously. He did not offer the refreshment around, nor did Warfield have a taste for ginger ale.

Pressing that point would be unwise just now, said the DAD, grimacing as if the drink were astringent. I don’t know how much you are aware of these things, but it looks very much like Langley is about to elect its first president.

I noticed.

We must tread warily. The little fellow from Massachusetts seems not to be doing well.

Warfield wondered if some latent sympathy lurked in the DAD’s statement. Until the fellow from Massachusetts had won the Democratic nomination, Warfield thought that Jack Brindisi was the only bloodless human being of Mediterranean descent that he had ever met. His secret theory was that both men were changelings.

What does this have to do with my family, Jack?

I don’t know, but it seems everyone is convinced the only thing that can stop the baton from being passed is what they call ‘a smoking gun’. This used to be called ‘dirt’ before things came to be laundered.

What kind of dirt?

Panamanian, he said.

Warfield said nothing. He waited.

What we have in that place is a canal vital to our national security, said the DAD. In addition, we have a corrupt military dictatorship sustained by CIA well past the point of usefulness.

Wasn’t Noriega told to resign?

Yes, said the DAD. He declined.

You think that more could have been done to persuade him?

Given the will.

So we’re being blackmailed by a drug-runner. I don’t think that’s the first time.

You’d know something about that, Stephen.

Warfield knew more than he wanted. He had spent the worst two months of his life in Colombia, which still thought that the neighboring country of Panama was its own  and should be returned with interest. He had lost two good friends to the Medellin drug cartel. In the end, with the luck of the righteous, Warfield had tracked down and laid hands on one of its capos, Hector Aleria, who had been taken back to the States for trial.

I think I can guess what’s going down, Jack.

I’m sure you’ll have a better idea after talking to Mister Aleria, he said. It seems he wants to share his expertise in exchange for certain considerations about his future. And for some reason he won’t let the information out to anyone but you. Strange, isn’t it?

Warfield thought so, too.

VALUE

Hector Aleria was the last drug-lord to be extradited from Colombia for his crimes, and perhaps the last ever. The Medellin cartel, of which he was a member, had decided that they would risk the destruction of their country