Ghost (17 page)

Just before 10
A.M
., I reach the address Bob has given me. It turns out to be a construction site surrounded by a chain-link fence. I walk the fence line until I find a gap that I can squeeze through. It is a tight fit, but I manage. I step into the ground floor of what appears to be a future office building. It is hardly more than a steel girder skeleton right now. The floors are unfinished. There are no exterior or interior walls. As I climb a set of stairs built into one corner, I’m greeted by dozens of pigeons that have taken roost here.

I reach the fourth floor and my hand unconsciously reaches for my Model 19, snug in its shoulder holster. Gripping the handle, I move off the stairwell into a maze of wires and cables, stacks of cinder blocks, plywood, and tools. Up ahead, there’s a room already framed and drywalled. It is the only one finished in the entire building. I approach silently, moving with short, smooth strides until I reach the doorway. Peering inside, I see only two chairs. The room is unfinished; the exterior wall has yet to be built. Somebody could be thrown right off the building from that side of the room.

I check my watch. Ten
A.M
. Showtime. I move to one of the chairs and position it so my back is to the outside opening. I cover the doorway. A flock of pigeons soon fly in to settle down along the exterior I-beam. A few wander deeper into the room. They don’t even appear to notice me. If they do, they don’t seem to care.

Footsteps in the stairwell focus my attention. I hear a soft shuffle outside the room. Every nerve is alert. My hand is poised to skin my S&W at a split-second’s notice. A tool clatters, followed by a soft muttered curse. A moment later, a shaggy-looking transient steps into the doorway. He’s dressed in an old army fatigue jacket that has long since seen better days. It is threadbare and covered in stains. His jeans and boots aren’t much better.

“Burton?” the bum asks.

I nod.

“I’m Bob.” He grins at my surprise. I stand up and shake his hand. He’s unshaven and smells like soap is but a distant memory for him. It is an excellent cover. He’s obviously a pro.

I sit back down. He slides away from the door and asks, “Do you have a gun?”

“Of course. Two.”

“No problems. You’re okay.”

“Yeah, I’m one of the guys in a white hat.” We both chuckle, then he adds, “I checked you out myself.”

“Trust, but verify,” I reply. That’s one the cornerstones of our profession.

He looks at his watch. “They’ll be here in two minutes.”

Like clockwork, 120 seconds later Victor walks through the doorway, trailed by three other U.S. Marshals, all of whom look like refugees from Woodstock.

Who’s next? Jimi Hendrix?

Victor takes a seat, and I’m instantly repelled by the man. His wardrobe looks like a cross between
Miami Vice
and
Saturday Night Fever.
It’s a pseudo-macho, bottom-feeder-meets-fortyish-disco-junkie sort of look. He’s sporting a white leisure-suit coat over a button-down shirt that Victor apparently forgot to button. This oversight reveals a tangled, hairy chest and a thick gold chain draped around his neck. I wonder if he’s bought this stuff off the rack. Where does one go for such attire? Drug Scum Emporium?

He has long black hair, which he’s pulled into a ragged ponytail. It dangles below his collar like a coonskin hat gone bad. It serves to highlight a diamond earring dangling out of his left lobe. His black eyes settle on me. It gives me the creeps watching as he checks me over. This dude has a bad vibe. A very bad vibe.

He crosses his legs, and I see he’s sporting a pair of off-white sharkskin dress shoes. Slip-ons, no laces. Obviously, he doesn’t plan to kick anyone.

The marshals form a perimeter around us. One of them takes up a position behind and off to one side of Victor’s chair. He crosses his arms and scowls. He looks like a hippie bouncer.

Victor reaches into his shirt pocket. The move makes everyone tense. He pulls out a cigarette case and extracts a smoke.

“What do you want?” he asks. His voice is low, accented, and hostile.

“I need some information about some associates of yours.”

Victor scoffs. “Associates.” He finds a lighter in his jacket pocket and spins the flint until he gets a flame. He lights his smoke and watches me.

“Associates,” I agree with him, “in Colombia.”

A fleeting expression of fear scrabbles across his face. He quickly stamps it out. His face hardens, and by the time he answers me, he looks utterly ferocious. I find myself missing Ahmed. At least he looked harmless—without his assault rifle, anyway.

“Who?” he growls.

I give him the names.

“Bad men. Very bad. You’d do wise to say away from them.”

“What are their roles in the cartel?”

He shakes his head, blows a lungful of smoke at me, and says, “They are killers.”

“Assassins?”

“Whatever they need to be.”

I think about this for a minute. This is bad. I may be dealing with the 1 percent here.

“Tell me more about them.”

Victor flashes me a grin that could send children fleeing in terror. “Bombs. They like bombs.”

“What sort? Letter bombs? Grenades?”

Victor shakes his head. “No, no, no. Their specialty is the car bomb. They’re very good and very thorough. They kill their targets.”

This is a key piece of information. We will take precautions with the ambassador to minimize this threat.

I ask some follow-up questions and probe for details. Victor answers with short, blunt replies. After forty-five minutes, I’m done. Without another word, Victor stands up and storms out of the room. The three hippie-marshals follow right behind him. I’m left alone with Bob.

“Get what you needed?” he asks.

“Yeah. Not good news, though.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I appreciate the help,” I tell Bob.

He shrugs. “No problem. You took care of my guys in New York.”

“I was impressed with them. Very good men.”

“They said the same of you.”

I nod at the professional compliment.

“So, what’s with Victor?” I ask.

Bob steps forward and puts a hand on the back of the empty chair in front of me. “What do you mean?”

“He’s pretty creepy.” I don’t really expect an answer, but I felt compelled to mention it. The whole meeting has left me feeling sullied and unclean.

Bob leans toward me. He lowers his voice and says, “Victor gave up three Colombian cartel members.”

That’s why he’s in WITSEC. That’s why all the secrecy and the crazy rendezvous point.

Bob leans even closer. He’s only a few feet from me now. “The cartel has a million-dollar bounty on his head.”

“They must want him bad.” Victor obviously burned some powerful people back in Colombia.

“No doubt. He’s also a killer.”

I’m not surprised. Bob rakes one hand across his neck as he continues, “He cut an informant’s throat with a four-inch buck knife. Watched him bleed out. Like a kid stepping on a bug.”

“Nice guy.”

Bob shakes his head, stands upright, and walks back toward the door. “You have no idea,” he says over his shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

He turns and leans against the doorway. “If he thought you were dirty, he would have tried to kill you, too. Even with us here.”

I go stone cold inside. I have no doubt Bob is right. Victor was like a coiled snake.

“Don’t worry, we had your back the entire time.” Bob gives me a sardonic grin.

My mind flashes to the hippie-agent who stood behind Victor, arms folded. He had a shoulder holster under that Berkeley love-in costume he was wearing. He spent the entire meeting with one hand on his piece. That’s how much they trusted their WITSEC protectee.

Bob sees the recognition in my face. “Yeah. He’s that dangerous. Glad you got what you needed.”

He heads through the door. “See you around, Agent Burton.”

And then I’m alone with the pigeons, mind swirling with a dozen thoughts at once. My body uncorks one long shudder. That’s part of the post-adrenaline-rush letdown. I’ve never come face-to-face with pure evil until now. And here he is, under the protection of the federal government. He’s a killer who not only got away with his crime but will live on the taxpayers’ dime for decades to come. Why? He gave up three higher-ups for his own miserable skin. Somebody made the call to trade up and go for the bigger catch.

Justice became just another bargaining chip.

This is the way the world works. We’ve got to make these deals if we’re ever going to bring the cartels down and take out their leadership. Still, the idea that U.S. Marshals have to guard a man like Victor makes my skin crawl. Though logically I recognize that the Dark World is morally ambiguous, I cling to my black-and-white view of things. Right and wrong, they are the pillars of what I stand for and believe in. But the big gray gap between them just got a little bigger today.

I sit and consider that as the pigeons peck around my feet. I’ve got to be careful in this business. If I let it own me, I’ll lose my moral compass like so many others have in the past. You grow so obsessed with catching the bad guys that you’ll do anything to get them. Ultimately, it is all too easy to go too far. That’s when congressional hearings get held, careers are flushed, and once-good men get sent to prison.

The pursuit to protect can distort all logic, can justify any means. Take that first step, and it will be a long slide down. I don’t want to become what I revile—a man corrupted by his own good intentions.

I don’t want to make deals with the Victors of this world. There has to be a way to do this job and not lose the sense of right and wrong that’s motivated me all my life, thanks to my father. That was his gift to me, part of his legacy and an enduring wellspring of pride for both of us. Now I am my own man, and it defines who I am.

The pigeons grow curious. They approach me and wait, hoping for some bread crumbs. I scuff one shoe across the concrete floor. One of the birds flaps its wings and backs off. The others follow suit. For a long moment, they stay at arm’s length, studying me, assessing me as a threat. Funny, that’s what I came here to do, too.

Now I just hope the Dark World doesn’t take my soul.

eighteen

THE BRONZE STAR ASSASSIN

November 1, 1987
Bethesda

This is one of those days I’ve needed for a long time. Day after day of craziness, threats, terror, bombings, death, and hijackings will drive any man over the edge sooner or later, unless he can take a sanity break. Today, Fred Davis and I finally got a chance to go fishing again. We left early and spent the day casting fruitlessly into the Potomac River, jawing about old times. He starts flight school in a few weeks, so it was good to see him before he heads down to Alabama.

After I got home, my wife and I actually got to spend some time together. It is a rare Sunday when we’re both free from work commitments, and by dinnertime, I almost felt happy. Now, with the clock just about to strike nine-thirty, I’m more relaxed than I’ve been since joining the DSS. Shoes off, Tyler Beauregard asleep on the floor next to me, we’re kicked back on the couch watching Chris Berman recap all the NFL action of the day. The ’Skins beat the Bills 27-7. Thank God the strike is over and the real players are back on the field. Of course, football hasn’t been the same since Joe Namath retired. Then the Colts broke everyone’s hearts when they stole out of town in the middle of night a few years back.

The phone rings.

Oh, God.

Part of me doesn’t want to answer it. Today was too perfect. It rings again. I hesitate. Duty compels me to pick it up, but is it too much to ask for one night to myself?

It rings again. I know it’s just in my head, but with each ring the tone sounds more insistent, like it is trying to warn me of a brewing crisis. By ring four, I’m off the couch. Sitting on a nearby table is my new STU-III secure phone. It takes up most of a small briefcase, and every night when I come home, I plug it in. It has replaced the old code cards, which were such a pain to use. Now, from the comfort of my own townhouse, we can scramble all calls from FOGHORN and talk up to top secret. It is a great invention, but right now, I hate it.

“Burton.”

It’s FOGHORN. I listen to the agent on the other end of the line. Then I say, “Okay, going secure.”

I push a button on the STU-III. After a pause, it switches into scramble mode. We can talk freely now.

“Okay, go,” I say.

His first sentence knocks the relaxation clean out of me. His second has me reaching for the car keys. When we end the call, I make a beeline for the garage. I hardly have time to say good night to Sharon, who looks on at my departure with saddened eyes.

Fifteen minutes later, I reach the office and dash down the hallway to FOGHORN.

The agents on duty watch expectantly as I burst inside our communication center’s inner sanctum. My mind is racing. We’ve got to act fast.

“Okay guys, let’s crank up NLETS. Eastern seaboard. Send out descriptions of the suspect and his car. He’s heavily armed and dangerous. We’ve got to find him.” NLETS is the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. It allows us to mobilize police agencies all over the country.

The duty agents get busy. I get over to another secure phone and call the regional DSS office in Boston. “This is Agent Fred Burton. I need to talk with Special Agent Neeley.”

I’m patched through to his line. Neeley is the Boston ASAIC—assistant special agent in charge. He was the one who called out the hounds on this one, and now I need more information.

Neeley tells me everything he knows. By the time I get off the phone, I have no doubt that we’ve got a serious situation on our hands. A lone nut is on his way to kill the secretary of state and the president.

Rose Gallo had called Neeley at 9
P.M
. She told him that her son, Edward Louis Gallo, had been acting stranger and stranger throughout the weekend. On Sunday morning, he watched the TV news programs and suddenly erupted in anger. He paced around the house, screaming obscenities and threats. On one program, he saw both President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz. That pushed him over the edge. He blew a gasket, shouting, “Kill! Kill Reagan! Shultz, you’re
dead.
”

It was in that state that he went for his guns. He’d recently purchased two shotguns and a civilian version of the M16. He wrapped them up in an old army fatigue jacket, dropped them in the trunk of his 1986 Buick sedan, and bugged out of his Worcester, Massachusetts, neighborhood, leaving his mother in a state of near panic.

She hadn’t seen him since. So, at nine o’clock this evening, she made the hardest phone call of her life.

All night long we wait for word from the street. The local D.C. cops are supposed to be checking motel parking lots for the Buick. Others are on patrol, hoping to intercept Gallo before he reaches the capital. Meanwhile, we alert the Secret Service to the threat and give our own agents guarding the secretary of state a thorough briefing. Everyone mans their battle stations. We hunker down and wait.

A deranged man is coming to kill two key American leaders. Our protective security teams are the last line of defense. We’ve got to trust the local beat cops to do their jobs. They are the front line of this battle.

Dawn comes. No word. Rose has yet to hear from her son. She grows so concerned that she reports him missing later in the morning, despite the fact that every law-enforcement agency between Boston and D.C. is already out looking for him. This is understandable; she’s being a mom.

Monday night, and nothing. The evening drags on without a single clue. Gallo’s Buick has simply vanished into the vast American landscape. Finally, I have to get some sleep. Before midnight, I head home and fall asleep in my suit.

FOGHORN’s phone call shakes me out of exhausted slumber. I grab the STU-III and even before I go secure, the agent tells me, “The car’s been located, sir.”

“On my way.”

God bless the D.C. police. An alert Metropolitan Police Department beat cop spotted Gallo’s black ’86 Buick in the parking lot of the Regency Congress Inn. I know the place. It is a fleabag motel in a very poor, mostly African American district in north D.C. It sits on New York Avenue, one of the major thoroughfares into the capital from the northern suburbs.

Time to call in the cavalry. The MPD are already bringing in reinforcements, and we do the same. At Foggy Bottom, I grab a G-ride (a government car), another Crown Vic, and speed to the scene with lights flashing. Scott Tripp, the ASAIC from Secretary of State Shultz’s security detail, meets me at the motel. He’s the number-two man in what we call “the Detail.” For us, guarding SECSTATE is like guarding the president is for the Secret Service. There’s no higher duty within the DSS.

By the time we get to the scene, the MPD have already brought in a SWAT team. The area’s cordoned off. Gallo is an out-of-work chemist, and there is concern that he’s got explosives with him. The police stop traffic and clear the block. Very quietly, the MPD evacuates everyone from the motel. We confirm Gallo is in there.

Scott and I huddle up with the MPD leadership and discuss our options. We don’t want this to turn into a siege. We decide waiting him out is a poor option. He could be heavily armed in there. Once he wakes up and sees us out here, he could start shooting. Better to surprise him. We decide to send in the SWAT team.

The entry squad lines up near Gallo’s motel room door. Scott and I are not far away, watching the scene from behind a parked car. Our weapons are drawn. We’ll be the SWAT team’s backup should things go wrong.

The entry team moves to the door. Using a heavy battering ram, they smash the door in just as they start yelling, “Police! Police!” Within seconds, the cheap door crumples inward. Now comes the most vulnerable moment: getting through the doorway. If Gallo’s in there waiting, he can kill the entire team should it get hung up in the entrance. That’s why doorways are called fatal funnels.

The SWAT guys pour inside the room. We hear shouting and the sounds of a scuffle. Then a gunshot rings out. Scott and I look at each other, and without a word, we charge across the parking lot, weapons in hand. We reach the doorway, pause on the outside, then together swing through it.

We are too late. Edward Louis Gallo is lying handcuffed, facedown on the bed. He doesn’t appear to be hurt, just pissed off. He’s swearing at us. I look over at Mike Brooks, one of the SWAT team members, and ask, “What happened?”

Mike shakes his head and replies, “Accidental discharge. One of our guys tripped. Had his finger on his Uzi’s trigger.”

“Damn near blew my head off!” screams Gallo from the bed.

Thank God nobody was injured. What would we have told Rose Gallo if we’d accidentally killed her son?

A D.C. cop walks through the door and announces, “Press is here. The traffic situation must’ve gotten their attention.”

I look at my watch. It is after eight. The morning commute has started, and we’ve got New York Avenue sealed off. It must be a total goat rope out there, especially with the press on the scene now.

We get Gallo on his feet and call for a cage car. He looks disheveled in a pair of trousers and a white T-shirt. We stuff him in the back of the car, which will take him to MPD headquarters. We’ll follow in a few minutes. Both Scott and I are eager to talk to Gallo and find out what he’d been planning.

Before we leave, a bomb squad gingerly opens up Gallo’s Buick. There’d been some fear that he’d wired it with explosives, but that turned out not to be the case. However, the trunk contains a mini arsenal. We find the AR-15, the civilian version of the M16. Nestled next to it is a Remington Model 820 Wingmaster 12-gauge shotgun. Gallo had sawed off the barrel and had removed the stock. He’d built himself a nice, compact street sweeper with it. He also had a Mossberg pump shotgun with him. Altogether, we gather up 110 shotgun shells and nine magazines for the AR-15—that’s over 200 rounds of .223 ammunition. Edward Louis Gallo wanted a fight.

An hour later, Scott and I reach MPD headquarters. Traffic had been utter gridlock, and local news radio station WTOP covered the scene live. The press is all over this one, and reporters are hanging around the headquarters, trying to get some information out of the police. Fortunately, they ignore us as we head inside to meet with our would-be assassin. We link up with a Secret Service agent and an MPD detective. Together, we’ll do the first interview.

The D.C. cops give us an interrogation room and bring Gallo to us still in handcuffs. When he sits down across from us, I see that his eyes have a hollowed-out look. It is eerie. Gallo isn’t all here. He starts mumbling to himself. Scott and I exchange quick glances. We may not even be able to interview him. He’s clearly not well.

“Mr. Gallo,” I ask, “what are you doing here in D.C.?”

Without looking at me, he shouts, “I’m a tourist! I’m an American tourist!”

“What did you come down to see?”

“I’m a hunter! I was going hunting.”

“Hunting for what?” I ask. “What do you hunt with an AR-15?”

He doesn’t respond at first. Then he mutters something under his breath. He becomes incoherent again, but suddenly through the nonsense, he recites Secretary of State Shultz’s private address.

“How did you know that?” I ask, stunned by this revelation.

Gallo mumbles incoherently. In mid-babble, I hear him say something about his television controlling his mind.

Thirty minutes later, we end the interview. “The guy’s a whack job,” the Secret Service agent says as we part ways.

“Maybe. But how did he know the SECSTATE’s home address?”

The Secret Service agent shrugs and heads out. The MPD detective turns to me and says, “We’ll probably transfer him to St. Elizabeths Hospital. Your fed buddy’s right. Gallo’s a nutcase.”

I return to Foggy Bottom unsettled by the entire episode. Something is not right here. Gallo should not have known where George Shultz lives. That is closely guarded information. We need to do a full workup on Gallo.

In the days that follow, Gallo is held without bail on multiple weapons charges. The MPD does transfer him to St. Elizabeths Hospital, where he receives psychiatric care. In the meantime, the pieces of his past start to come into focus.

Edward Louis Gallo was once a brilliant chemist with great potential. He worked for ten years as a manager at the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District in Millbury, Massachusetts. His coworkers had nothing but praise for his intelligence and analytical abilities. He was well liked and affable enough, though he wasn’t close to anyone in his office. His neighbors said the same thing. Nice guy. Very smart. Kept to himself.

Then his dad died in 1982. His grandfather passed away not long afterward. Gallo was devastated by their deaths, and he never really recovered. He began hearing voices. He flew into fits of rage without any provocation. Sometimes the neighbors would see him standing in his front yard, screaming and cursing at invisible people. At work, his performance deteriorated. He got into verbal altercations with his coworkers. He developed an explosive temper and sometimes threw books around when upset. A couple of times, his peers found him walking in frantic circles around a bench outside their office.

In 1986, Gallo lost his job. He spent the next fourteen months watching television and living with his mom. He grew angrier, and his rage gradually focused on two individuals: President Reagan and Secretary of State Shultz. He would curse them every time they came on his television. He would shout their names and scream that he would kill them. When he finally left the house on Sunday, November 1, he’d been fixated on the two men for months.

Edward Louis Gallo may be a mentally ill chemist, but he is also a combat veteran. After graduating from college in 1968, he joined the army and served as a young lieutenant in Vietnam. He was a ninety-day wonder, and he served with great distinction. His unit saw heavy combat around Saigon, and before he came home in the fall of 1970, Gallo had been awarded the Bronze Star for valor. Bronze Stars for meritorious service are a dime a dozen from Vietnam, but Gallo’s is for bravery on the battlefield. He’s a war hero.

His military records also show that he is an expert marksman.