Golden Years Read online

  “We’d never do that!”

  “The hell you wouldn’t! You lifted them from their home. Your guys came over the hills behind the house. Drugged the two of them and took them to Rosetta in a copter. Do you still paint them black … ?”

  “You can’t prove any of this!”

  “I don’t have to prove it, Colonel. I just have to say it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Ah, now we get down to business … I want the two prisoners returned to their home by end of business California time today—5:00. I want a signed promise that she will be left alone by you spooks permanently. I want a signed statement admitting what happened. And I want a check to her for a million dollars in reparation for the harm of incarceration.”

  “Her husband is rich. They don’t need the money.”

  Confession!

  “And they very likely won’t want it and won’t take it. But you’d better offer it to them … I want a confirmation call by three o’clock Chicago time to this Chicago number … Rosemarie …”

  I gave him a sheet of notepaper with the number of an answering machine in the locked darkroom at our house and a message “The deliverables will be delivered on time.”

  “If it’s not there by 3:05, we give a preliminary signal that the press releases should go out. They will go to the various media outlets at 9:00 DC time unless we tell our people to stop, 6:00 local time if you’re having trouble with some of your people. That will give you a one-hour period of grace.”

  “What press release?”

  “Would you read it to him, Rosemarie?”

  Washington

  An American hero of the Cold War has been held prisoner in a CIA safe house in northern California for more than two years, according to Charles Cronin O‘Malley, former ambassador of the United States to Bonn and one of the “wise men” who counseled President Johnson about the Vietnam War. The woman, known now as Bride Mary O’Brien was “brought in from the cold,”according to Ambassador O’Malley, because it was feared that her capture by the enemies of the United States would reveal many Cold War secrets. The government gave the young woman a new name, plastic surgery, and a real estate business in California. Subsequently she married and bore a child. She and her husband owned a vineyard in the Napa Valley of California.

  At the time of her rescue, Ambassador O’Malley said, some elements of the intelligence community disagreed with the policy. They argued that her work was so sensitive and that her secrets were so dangerous to the security of the United States that she should be eliminated—terminated with extreme prejudice, in the terms of the trade. This plan was rejected because the American intelligence community, the ambassador said, takes care of its own, especially when their own have been heroes who have served their country at enormous personal risk.

  Then on April 15, 1970, Ms. O‘Brien and her three-year-old child Samantha were “lifted” from her vineyard. The two seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. However, according to Ambassador O’Malley, they were taken to a “safe house,” a well-known intelligence community prison in California called Rosetta House.

  The little girl was held hostage, as was Ms. O‘Brien’s husband, whom Ms. O’Brien’s captors threatened to eliminate if she made any attempts to escape.

  Probably, O’Malley said, the change in policy was the result of a turnover in intelligence leadership and the anticipation of a new administration in Washington which would be more concerned about Cold War security.

  “In a couple of months,” he said “they will take her and her daughter Samantha on a flight out over the Pacific Ocean and push them off the helicopter as they did many Viet Cong prisoners during the Vietnam War. It will be a terrible death for an American patriot who was willing to give her life in the service of her country.”

  “You’re bluffing, Chucky,” Colonel Chandler said through clenched teeth. “You have no evidence.”

  He leaned forward over his desk, tense, pale, and angry.

  “Once this story hits the papers,” Chuck said, “it doesn’t matter whether I have evidence or not. However, a persuasive dossier will follow the release of this document to all the major news sources in the country. Would you read them the last paragraph of the second release, Rosemarie.”

  “Sure,” I said calmly.

  Ambassador and Mrs. O’Malley disappeared late Monday. Friends expressed fear that they had been taken prisoner or perhaps shot by government agents.

  Colonel Chandler exploded from his desk, his face red with fury.

  “You fucking cocksucker. You can’t say that.”

  “If any of our fail-safe contacts are not made, then that goes out too. You’d better pray hard, Billy Boy, that our guardian angels protect us from your cowboys!”

  He sank back into his chair, a man defeated. It was time for the good cop to make her pitch.

  “I’m surprised, Colonel Chandler, that you don’t seem to grasp that we’re on your side. We could just as easily have called a press conference and told them this story … Maybe in front of your Rosetta House jail. We could have spread all your dirty linen out for the whole world to see. This way we free Bride Mary O’Brien without any publicity and protect you folks while you put your house in order. Instead of getting into a macho argument with my husband, you ought to be grateful for the deal we’re offering you. If you free that poor woman today before anyone can harm her, there’s no publicity and a lot less chance that you and the boys over at the Bureau or out at Langley will end up with egg on your faces.”

  “You haven’t figured out what she did for us?”

  “We don’t need to know and we don’t want to know You can count on it; however, if we let this story out, someone will find out and there’ll be even more scandal that she’s been held in prison for two years because she loves her country. Mr. Casey will be out of the CIA immediately and the rest of you will be looking for jobs.”

  I make a very good good cop.

  “I figure she was in Indonesia,” Chuck said—another one of his uncanny psychic guesses.

  “Don’t guess any further,” the colonel snapped.

  “We don’t have to,” I said pleasantly. “We know all we need to know.”

  Chandler pulled off his tie and took a deep breath.

  “Chuck, why couldn’t you have just come in here and talked to us like we all were civilized human beings? Why all the aggressive threats?”

  “Surely you know the answer to that, Billy Boy. Long ago I learned that one does not deal with your kind without credible threat. I don’t trust you or the FBI or the CIA or any other spooks. You would be reluctant to let your cowboys throw a national hero in the Pacific from two thousand feet. And her little daughter. But you’d let it happen for the good of the country or for the good of the intelligence community or whatever. You’d put us on the same helicopter with many tears and much guilt, but you’d still do it. I make no mistake that I’m dealing with a civilized human being … We have one more document that we need. Again it is for insurance—for us and for Ms. O’Brien and her husband. Would you read it please, Ms. Clancy?”

  “I hereby acknowledge that certain elements in the intelligence community kidnapped a hero agent Ms. Bride Mary O‘Brien and her daughter and held them as prisoners for two years. We profoundly regret this criminal behavior and promise that it will never happen again and that we will provide permanent protection for Ms. O’Brien and her family.”

  Chandler closed his eyes, rubbed the sweat off his forehead, and swallowed.

  “I can’t sign off on any of this. We’ll have to go upstairs and talk to the director.”

  “I assumed we would.”

  He picked up the phone.

  “Ambassador O’Malley is here, sir, with a very interesting proposition. I think you’d better speak to him.”

  “NOW!” Chucky insisted.

  “He says now, sir, I think we’d better do it now.”

  We rode up the creaky elevator and wal
ked down a corridor just like the one on the previous floor. The door of the office at the end of the corridor was wide-open. Colonel Chandler knocked tentatively.

  “Come in, Bill,” said a man with a hearty voice. “And you too, Ambassador O’Malley. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. And you too, Ms. Clancy. I love your stories in The New Yorker. They’re classic Irish tales.”

  He was a tall slender man with curly black hair shading toward white at the earlobes and a brilliant smile. His accent was New England and Harvard. Totally secure and in command of himself. We shook hands. Fifth-generation WASP aristocrat.

  “I must tell you, Ambassador, that your picture of Ronnie was perfect I also heard, though not from the White House exactly, your advice to him. I’ve been awake the last couple of nights wondering if you perhaps are right.”

  “I must warn you, sir, that my wife and I have taken precautions that our lives will not be at risk. We have a number of contact points along the way. If we do not leave this building in twenty minutes, for example, an alarm will immediately be sounded somewhere and you and the intelligence community will be in deep trouble.”

  He dismissed the prospect with a wave of his hand.

  “Ambassador, I am not a cowboy. Even if I were, I have enough sense not to mess around with you. Your reputation comes before you … What do these people want, Billy?”

  “Bride Mary O’Brien by 5:00 this afternoon, local time.”

  He raised a carefully shaped eyebrow.

  “My hat’s off to you, Ambassador. I don’t know how you know this story, but I’m impressed that you do.”

  “He knows it all, sir, except what she did for us and her real name.”

  “And we don’t need to know either,” I said, “and don’t want to know. All we want is that she be freed. Today.”

  He sighed.

  “That is a perfectly reasonable request, Ms. Clancy. I trust you will not be writing this story for The New Yorker.”

  “Can’t tell,” I said, smiling sweetly. “It would make an excellent story. Here are two press releases which, in the absence of freedom for Ms. O’Brien and her daughter by 5:00 local time, will be faxed to the major media outlets of the country.”

  He read the two of them quickly.

  “The president would have been much better advised to make you head of CIA than that old warhorse that’s up there now … What else do you want, Ms. Clancy?”

  Chucky was perfectly happy to let me take the lead.

  “We want this letter signed.” I handed the letter over to him.

  He glanced at it, read it a second time, and shrugged.

  “Reparations to Ms. O’Brien and her family?”

  “They’ll want a million dollars.”

  “Could probably hold us up for more … That’s all?”

  “If you sign it, it will be your promise that henceforth your cowboys will not threaten Bride Mary O’Brien and her family.”

  “You might have added to your press release that she was awarded secretly the Medal of Honor for her work … Billy, I told you I don’t like this sort of thing. Why didn’t we leave them alone?”

  “I recommended against it sir. You were not sitting in that chair then.”

  “You said local time, Billy. Ms. Clancy, you mean DC time?”

  “California time.”

  “That’s eight hours from now, isn’t it, Bill?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Plenty of time to get some of our people up there from LA?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, let’s get it rolling.”

  He signed the letter with a flourish and gave it back to me. “Adam Cain.” Never trust anyone named Cain?

  “When you can confirm that everything is in proper motion,” Chuck interrupts my little conversation with Mr. Cain, “please call this number and leave the following message on the answering machine: ‘the deliverables are being delivered.’ Say by 4:00 DC time. Otherwise, we will go into our faxing mode. Don’t try to trace the number because you won’t be able to do it.”

  “Always prudent, Ambassador … We should certainly have our own resources in place by then … Now do you want us to defray your expenses in this matter?”

  Chucky stood up, extended his hand, and said, “Always a pleasure to do business with you, sir.”

  Cain laughed. He really had not expected us to want a bribe.

  “I hope our mutual friends will take care to be discreet.”

  “We can’t guarantee anything.” I regained my proper role in this conversation. “We will counsel them to discretion, however. Besides, as you well know, the so-called Bride Mary O’Brien is a great American patriot. That’s usually an incurable disease.”

  He smiled wryly, shook hands with me, and we left his office.

  The flow of adrenaline through my veins turned off and I just wanted to lie down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Chuck

  “Two good cops wrapping up a deal,” I said to my gorgeous wife, as we rode down the creaky elevator. “You make a great good cop. You’d be an earthquake as a bad cop. Eight points on the Richter scale.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “No, do you?”

  “Too smooth, Chuck, too smooth. On the other hand he may realize that either we hold all the cards—which we do—or that it’s not worth the effort to fight us.”

  We emerged into the warmth of DC Indian summer, which is more humid than our Chicago version. Our limo pulled up. I looked carefully at the man who got out and opened the door for us. Same fellow. The driver was the same too. Two white Chicago cops to be replaced at Chevy Chase Circle by two Nigerian security guards, probably Nigerian army officers on the run.

  “Send the signal to Mr. Casey, sir?”

  “By all means.”

  The signal would tell Mike Casey that we had escaped the building. We’d send another signal from the airport.

  “Let me know if anyone is chasing us.”

  “Yes, sir. No one now.”

  Rosemarie and I were exhausted and the day had only begun. I glanced at my watch: 10:55. Our confrontation with the Feds had taken an hour and twenty minutes, not counting the disagreement with the cop at the door. Maybe it was his job to be rude, another spook trick. We should be airborne by 11:30. A six-and-a-half-hour flight would put us into the Santa Rosa Airport before 3:00 local time. Half hour to get to the Valley. Plenty of time.

  This was the most potentially dangerous part of the trip. I didn’t really believe that the Feds would try to kill us in the District. We didn’t have to be present for the return of Bride Mary and Samantha. If the cowboys brought them back only to kill the whole family, there wasn’t much we could do except wit ness it. They might want to kill us too. Abel Cain, as I persisted in thinking of him, knew that if our fail-safe message did not come through, the faxes would begin to roll and his career would be finished. Did he really control the cowboys?

  Did he suspect that we would be present at the exchange? If he were as smart as I thought he was, he would certainly suspect it. Did he want the cowboys to gun us down?

  Maybe Abel Cain was himself a cowboy.

  Probably not. But who could say for sure? Me and my big ideas.

  We were at Chevy Chase Circle. The exchange went smoothly. Our first drivers would send a second signal to Mike Casey. “Weather will be good for another hour or so,” the new driver said in a clipped British accent. “You should get out before the front comes through.”

  I looked up. Since we’d left I Street, a cloud cover had seeped over DC. We had better not be delayed.

  “Should I call ahead and tell your pilot you will be there by 11:30?”

  “Fine idea.”

  “No one following us?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did we really do that act, Chucky dear?”

  My wife was slumped in the seat next to me, looking worn and tasty.

  “No, it was all a bad dream.”

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p; I put my arm around her shoulders. She snuggled against me. Dear God, how could I possibly deserve such a woman?

  “No shooting yet …”

  “No way there’s going to be shooting.”

  I had been tempted to bring along a gun of some sort, just in case. There were two reasons for not doing so: I didn’t own a gun. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I did own it. In my inglorious years in the First Constabulary I was a notoriously poor shot.

  “You were wonderful,” I said to Rosemarie. “I couldn’t have asked for a better Dr. Watson.”

  She thought that was very funny. I held her more closely.

  At the airport I found a public phone and made another call to the answering machine. “Redeploying” was the code message this time.

  We climbed into the Gulfstream. The pilot greeted us with his big pilot smile.

  “We’ll climb over the front quickly. Some strong headwinds as far as the Mississippi, then smooth sailing. Estimate Santa Rosa at 2:45 local time.”

  “Grand!” I said, helping Rosemarie to her seat.

  The takeoff was smooth. These little jets did not need much runway to get in the air. It would be nice to have one … No, it wouldn’t. You could get sick in one of them just as easily. Besides, the Great Depression might come back …

  “Buy me one of these, Rosemarie,” I said.

  “Stick with Shovie’s little model trains.”

  A man gets no respect.

  Janet asked us if we wanted a drink. Rosemarie wanted a glass of iced tea. I ordered a Bushmill’s Green straight up.

  “Would Jameson’s do just as well, Mr. O’Malley?”

  “It would do just fine.”

  “Remember what Irish whiskey does to your daughter.”

  “I didn’t order a double.”

  “Where did we find her, Chucky Ducky?”