TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS
BY LESTER COLEMAN
Chapter I
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THE DOGS OF WAR had seen better days. Their host, leaning on a silver tipped cane, greeted each of them with an imperial nod. A Thai house boy escorted them directly to the conference room, carpeted wall-to-wall in white bearskin. Outside, in the south Georgia dust behind the private lake, in red and black berets, they had once fired silenced submachine gun pistols on the testing range. The crickets had made more noise. They were tough men. One was a General, another an Admiral, still on active duty, the rest retired, with medals and memories from campaigns long past. They were afraid of nothing in the world except, perhaps, their host, who could see they were ill at ease, and this pleased him. Despite his years, he stood ramrod straight, displaying the spare roughness of the bad guy in a Sergio Leone movie. There was a ghost of a smile in his blood speckled eyes. He had headed a dozen companies with $ billions in Defense contracts, devoted to the clandestine sciences, sequestered in obscure office parks from Chantilly, Virginia to San Marino. He once operated a bomb testing range in Utah and a private boot camp in Belize, and had deported himself like a Caliph of Kuwait, flying around the world in a private Lockheed Jetstar in the company of his pet wolf hound, Shultz, and a covey of stunning blondes who were the raw stuff of Madonna unzipped. That was what he called his "past life."
The gray faces in the room appeared in a collection of nostalgic black and white photos along one wall, candid shots of youthful smiles in battle dress, of times long gone, making "V" 's for victory, and hoisting long neck bottles of Blue Ribbon beer. Several depicted the "New Country Project" a "black-op" on behalf of a group of wealthy white supremacists on Mouri Island in the southwest Pacific. The self styled secessionists believed the local militant population of the island was turning off tourists, and little Mouri could become a haven for off-shore investments, gambling casinos, resorts, and golf and tennis clubs for the ultra-rich. The new currency would be called the Rand. A mercenary force was formed around a nucleus of Vietnam vet Green Berets strong enough to withstand local opposition. The date for the invasion was set for New Years Day, 1975. Three months before liberty Day key members of the mercenary force were indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia for conspiracy to export weapons. The wealthy backers on the island were hauled into the Colonial Crown High Court, charged with treason. They were found guilty, their land and business holdings confiscated. Each was given a twenty year suspended sentence on the condition they would leave Mouri Island and never return.
Five years later little Mouri and the scattering of islands lying 1200 miles north, north- east of Australia received independence. The newly elected Prime Minister's guests of honor included members of the "New Country Project".
The FBI was intentionally tipped off about the project, killing the invasion. To the amazement of the agents assigned to the case, charges against the mercenaries were dropped before the ink was dry. Half a world away, "New Country Project" had a fat bank account, a collection of sea front villas, warehousing and docking facilities, and a new friend in Mouri Prime Minister Kingsley DuGaullmie. The guests had gone a few miles with the man who owned the toys surrounding them, cigars that shoot a single bullet, attaché cases with built in submachine guns, and a shoulder holster rocket pistol that could zap an entire roomful of people. Some used to run with him on wild nocturnal speedboat raids to Cuba, scenes out of some paramilitary Strange love film, their host playing the bag pipes under a moonless Caribbean sky. Others had fought and drank and whored with him in Manila and Saigon and Bangkok. The two elders in their 70's, sat shoulder to shoulder on a leather sofa, eyes under bushy brows still stern with the vision of command. As his mentors, they knew their host best, from the daring days of the old OSS---the World War II spooky Adam whose rib was extracted from the Pentagon in protest to create the Eve of the CIA, and all the forbidden fruit that came with it.
A red light flashed in the room, indicting that the electronic main gate had opened to the 60 acre estate. A non-descript gray Chevy sedan popped up on the monitor on a wall festooned with the paraphernalia of death; unsheathed swords, bayonets, daggers, throwing knives, and blowguns that spit curare tipped darts. The image in the sedan, seated behind the driver, was easily recognizable as General Jamie Morton, the retired rotund Chairman of the Joint Chief's. Fenced in like a military reservation, the grounds were policed by attack dogs, and nasty anti-intrusion devices were secreted in the underbrush. It was no place for a Scout troop to stray off course. Above their host's desk was an elaborate communications system plugged directly into the Highway Patrol and the police department in nearby Wenona Springs. There was an intercom connecting him to the firing range, the hand-to-hand combat training area, and the kitchen, where there was a ready supply of his favorite dish---steak tartare.
When President Truman created the CIA in 1947 the Pentagon launched a secret counter-attack against the new agency. The typical CIA officer was viewed by the military brass as a prep school brat with an Ivy League degree, born with a silver foot in his mouth. From the beginning plots were hatched to assure the CIA was riddled with scandal, and with each fumble at the civilian agency the Pentagon began retrieving bits and pieces of the intelligence puzzle. By 1964 Truman admitted he had created a monster. " The CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the President," Truman wrote in 1964 from his home in Independence, Missouri. " It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities."
By then the Pentagon had re-established it's own intelligence service, the Defense Intelligence Agency. President Kennedy created the DIA in 1963 under the pretense it would consolidate separate intelligence operations in each of the armed services. It never happened. The DIA secretly evolved into it's own independent creation, with a $600 million budget, with no Congressional oversight or direct accountability to the President. The DIA was what the CIA could never be, a truly covert operation, free to function in the cloak of secrecy, buried in the bowels of the Pentagon. CIA Director Richard Helms once complained that the DIA had evolved into a 900 pound intelligence gorilla. No one listened. Helms nor anyone else knew about was the existence of a mini-DIA sub group in the Pentagon basement. . It was briefly known by the military high euphemism as the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) and it was it's founders who were enjoying their host's Georgia hospitality.
Officially the ISA had never existed. Funded with $20million diverted from the Pentagon's black budget, the ISA had expanded to more than 300 officers who were trained in tradecraft, supplied with false passports, and fake social security numbers. ISA's creation was a direct result of the CIA's botched attempt to free the American hostages in Iran in 1980. It had set up hundreds of front companies, established safehouses and caches for money and weapons, recruiting local agents around the world. There had only been one serious threat to the ISA's security.
Three years after it's formation, a shave-tail, first term Congressman from Arkansas, who landed by accident on the House Intelligence Committee, began mouthing off about "some sort of off the reservation spook op over yonder at the puzzle palace." Freshman Representative, Calvin Leroy Cordin from Little Rock, seeking to get his eager, unheard-of-self in the Washington Post, took the hook planted by Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger's Special assistant, in a middle of the night phone call. .
" Cal?"
"Ugh huh. . . ."
"Wake up Congressman. ."
"Yeah, who the hell is this. . . ."
" Doesn't matter Congressman. . ."
" You know what time it is,?
" Depends on the time zone."
" Well in my fuckin' time zone it's quarter past two!"
" Guess it's gotta be middle of the night somewhere, right?"
" Who is thi. . ."
" Like I said," the casual voice on the line said. " Who I am is not important."
The Congressman rolled over and double checked the digital numbers on the clock next to the bed. " What do you want", he asked?
" Actually it's what you want. . . maybe a Senate seat, or a shot at the White House. . . . the things fame can buy, all you need is that one opportunity that comes along for some once in a life time. . . right? Understand what I'm saying?"
Cordin sat up, cradling the phone on his right shoulder while he ran his hand through his brown wavy hair.
" I'm going to make you famous." The words were uttered with the caller's lips close to the mouth-piece, just above a whisper.
" I'm listening," the Congressman replied.
And listen he did. It was the first of a string of middle of the night phone calls. Over the next few months Cordin's caller talked about " Yellow Fruit", about Business Security International, a cover company in Annandale, Virginia for a super secret covert spy operation run out of the Pentagon. Funds were being diverted for first class world travel, Rolls-Royces, padded expense accounts. Cordin announced each and every revelation on the floor of the House with camera's rolling. His once quiet Sunday's spent with his perfect political wife and infant son, turned with glee into televised sessions with Frank Sesno and Sam Donaldson. It was all good politics and Cal Cordin rose from obscurity to a house hold name in six short weeks. And, back into obscurity in just three.
Like a Key West Summer storm, the information down pour stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Cordin's source, who he had affectionately dubbed, "Deep Phone", stopped calling. Cap-the-Knife, as Weinberger was called behind his back, suddenly had legal problems of his own. Rumors of conspiracy charges floated out of the Justice Department. The Yellow Fruit investigation never got out of closed sessions before the House Intelligence Committee, which eventually issued a report, under seal, that Cordin's accusations were "unfounded", "reckless" and " without merit". Cordin's perfect image of a young congressman on the way up, was transformed instantly into a "yahoo conspiracy theorist from Arkansas----the place where God would stick it if he was going to give the world an enema." The following year Cal Cordin lost his freshman House seat to Colonel Lucish Alexander Markum, U. S. Army, retired, a native of Arkansas, Desert Storm hero, and among the names encrypted in the computer on the Host's desk.
The ISA opposed the secret arms deal to fund the Contras from the beginning. It was a disastrous concoction of CIA Director William Casey. During World War II Casey had been one of them. But, struck with power, he had gone off the reservation, a mad man, out of control, a danger to National (Pentagon) security. Casey, the master spy-craftsman, built a Trojan Goat, named Lt. Colonel Oliver North, a jug-eared Marine who marched in shoes to big to fit, wearing his newly anointed White House status on his sleeve, ordering Generals around like raw recruits.
It was decided before Sunday brunch, at one of the stately homes along Fort Meyers' "Generals Row", that Casey's diabolical creation had to die. On October 23, 1986 YELLOW FRUIT dispatched a lone agent, code named JERIMIAH, to Beirut with a detailed account of North's visits to Iran and the secret sale of TOW and HAWK missiles to the Ayatollahs, the clandestine profits diverted to fund the Contra rebels, in direct violation of a Congressional resolution.
The story broke in al-Shira, a Beirut Newspaper November 9. The scandal wrecked the secret arms deal, and added another notch in the Pentagon's gun pointed at the CIA's heart. Champagne flowed down the corridors of the Puzzle palace while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General James "Crow" Williams danced a jig in his office. Within months Casey was dead of a brain tumor, Iran-Contra was shuffled under the Oval Office Carpet. Ollie North was turned out to graze before televised hearings on "scapegoat goat" Hill.
JERIMIAH was back in South Bend in time for the Fighting Irish homecoming game.
Since NEW COUNTRY the world had changed remarkably. The Soviet Union was gone. For the first time, America was a nation without an enemy. Without enemies, she was a nation without purpose, without direction. The government evolved into an absurd parody of American culture, which cherishes it's foes and delights in fomenting competition. The Treasury Department, for example, defended it's turf against the Department of Commerce, and the economic wing of the State Department, in a ancient ritual of clashing priorities and personalities. Traditional rivalry had become so entrenched in Washington that two blue ribbon studies of the intelligence world defended its output of overlapping analyses. Thirteen agencies rubbed against a fault line that periodically erupted, giving delighted Washingtonians a new tongue - wagging scandal. The host had given his guests the gift of finding their own faults. There was a difference between knowledge and wisdom, and only the wise could know the difference. They were old warriors reborn, with a new master and a new mission:
Two super powers dominating the earth had truly endangered mankind----but, one superpower, left to it's own devices, unchecked, would evolve into Caesar Nero, a monster.
History was not to repeat itself.
J. EDGAR HOOVER's bulldog jowls are permanently enshrined in a bronze bust that greets all who enter the grand foyer of the National Headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The "Director", as he liked to be called, ruled the FBI for more than 40 years, from it's beginning in 1932. It was not the first federal police agency. That honor is held by the U. S. Marshal Service founded in 1847. The FBI was the creation of totalitarian corporatism , a weapon forged against the organized labor movement where Hoover saw a communist behind every picket sign. The Bureau's later claim to fame was it's luck at catching bank robbers and Italian bootleggers. Irish whiskey runners such as Joe Kennedy in Boston went untouched. After Hoover's death, the Bureau, like it's founder, fell on hard times. A book exposed Hoover as a closet cross-dressing transvestite, and his beloved G-Men he had left behind, as thugs. No subsequent Director had succeeded in serving out a full ten year term.
Judge Frank Riley was fairing no better. His confirmation had not been a smooth one. He was openly opposed by a growing number of advocates to abolish the Bureau, and secretly by the Association of F. B. I. Agents who served under him. His two major attributes were his unshakable self confidence, and his childhood friendship with another Generation X'er who occupied the Oval Office.
Riley was at his desk before day break. After a year on the job his mind refused to rest for more than five hours. He was going over the reports from the Atlanta Field office on the latest bombing. It was the most recent blast in a series starting with the Olympic Park explosion set by the self-professed "Party of God". This one was by far the most heinous, killing fifty, including ten people riding a glass enclosed elevator at the Omni Center, the world headquarters of CNN---who carried it live to their world-wide audience.
There was little doubt in Riley's mind that America was at war with itself. The country was becoming as fragmented as Lebanon had in the 80's. States governors were attacking the federal government, and from within, the bureaucracy was responding like a wayward mob. It was as if someone was absurdly plotting to destroy Washington--- inside out. Riley took a sip of cold coffee, turning in his chair to look out over Pennsylvania Avenue below. A light drizzle pelted a few early morning commuters, mid level bureaucrats mostly, in trench coats, black umbrellas obscuring their faces from his view. The Washington Post street vendor was hawking the early metro edition in front of the bright yellow kiosk emblazoned with the paper's familiar banner in orange letters. Riley reached into his top left hand drawer for the small Nikon binoculars. Removing his Armani frames he adjusted the focus to bring the headlines into clear view. " FBI STUMPED AGAIN "
"Good morning Director." The pleasant female voice jolted him.
Geraldine Rollin moved toward his desk in full stride without waiting for a reply. She was the picture of efficiency. Tall, in her early 50's, short black hair with hints of gray, reading glasses on the tip of her nose, she wore a white puffed sleeved blouse with red scarf, and a pleated gray wool skirt. Opaque white hose and black medium heel pumps completed her Bureaucratically correct look.
"Here. You can read behind the headlines," she said with a knowing smile, tossing the Post on his desk. . " Looks like a rehash to me, don't really see a reason for it except to turn up the heat on you sir."
" Thanks G. R.," Riley said. " Guess we should expect the usual calls later this morning from the usual Told-You-So- Son of Bitches on the Hill. What time do we expect the president's arrival at Andrews, from the G-7. . . or is it Eight now ?"
"1730"
"I want to speak with him as soon as he's aboard Marine One."
"I'll book the call Sir, SAG - Atlanta is on the com-line."
" Hollander? Tell him I'll call him back in ten minutes."
"Bet his butt is burning," Riley mumbled. Rollin ignored the remark, flipping through a stack of overnight LEGAT cables from FBI out posts around the world.
The Post story was what he had expected. It was bylined by that "pompous ass", Lionel Fried, and ran down the string of dead-in leads since the Omni bombing and a rehash of the body count. 30 dead, ten killed in the elevator containing the bomb that exploded while descending from the top floor. Scores of children on a school tour of CNN were trampled in the panic, shoppers and office workers screaming, scrambling in all directions, some blinded by flying glass. "Death's wail filled the air", Fried wrote. He also described one elderly man, who visited the Omni every day, found floating in the main fountain, dead of a heart attack. The replay of the news video was like a staged scene from a Sly Stalone film. A CNN reporter had been doing a mid-day live - shot on the mezzanine level, her back to the open atrium, music and the hum of the crowd below accented her delivery. At the top of the frame, the elevator descended slowly over her right shoulder, as she spoke.
"The Economic forecast for the next quarter is bullish, residential real estate in the South east is on a dramatic up-swing. . . . . ."
The reporter's hair suddenly stood straight up, as if she had been pelted by a gust of wind from behind. She lunged toward the lens, and disappeared out of frame. The camera continued to feed. In a mini-second the scene reverberated with the sound of the bomb, shattering the crowded glass enclosure three floors in the air, spewing bodies, and body parts down on the main floor below. One large chunk of the elevator's brass frame and decorative lighting was seen spinning toward the camera. A huge crashing sound was heard, The picture tilted 45 degrees, panned towards the roof, jiggled, and went dark. When they finally got to the decapitated cameraman's body, his camera was still running. The reporter was lying beneath him, unconscious but unhurt, save for a few scratches.
Seven bombings, no suspects, no leads, and only clues that went down blind alleys. It was as if a shadowy hand hovered over the investigation, moving top government agents like pawns on a chess board, pointing them in this direction, then that, until they were checked in a corner, back to square one.
" Damn", Riley said just loud enough to be barely heard by Ms. Rollin.
" What was that sir," she asked?
" Oh nothing," he replied, tossing the paper on his desk. " Just this Atlanta case, it's generating enough heat to burn a hole in this chair. If we don't solve it soon, and I mean damn soon, I'm going to be out the door carrying my head in a cardboard box. "
Rollin's personnel file detailed her formative years in South America where her father had been a mining company executive. Geraldine was not a zealously religious girl when she went off to Rome at age fourteen to study at Mary Mount, a Catholic girls bordering school. Nor did she do little more than attend Mass during her undergraduate years at George Washington University. But, to the bewildered delight of her parents, after graduation she returned to Rome. She entered the Sister's of Mercy as a novice, and took her vows four years later. Sister Geraldine, as she came to be known, spent the next five years working in the open seaward slums of Istanbul. Then, Just as suddenly as it had happened, she exchanged her habit for a place at Columbia law school, finishing at the top of her class . She never took the Bar exam. She took the FBI entrance exam instead. Within six months she found herself among the first women taking target practice at the Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Her parents were more than dumbfounded. Their only child, once a Daughter of God, was now carrying a Sig Sauer 9mm automatic. Her Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Arabic was flawless. Her first assignment was chasing smugglers in McAllen, Texas, a thermal dust bowl on the Mexican border. Then there was a two year hitch in New Orleans. She arrived in mid spring, in time to adjust to the steamy swelter that almost made her stop shaving her under arms. At the annual office Memorial Day picnic and Craw-Dad Boil, she spotted the dignified balding man she was looking for, tall in his early 60's, sipping a Dixie beer. Aaron Kohn headed the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, and was easily recognizable from the photograph she had seem before arriving in the Crescent City. He was old F. B. I, an expert on "Naw'lens"O. C., and it's resident "Don", Carlos Marcello, "The Little Man" who stood only 5' 2" in his Elevator shoes. Kohn was to be her mentor. Secretly, she spent her off hours and weekends in the archives and records the Commission had compiled on Marcello dating back to the 40's. The Bureau had nothing like it, and she wondered why? Was Hoover really soft on the Mob as it had been rumored? Did he know that Marcello ordered the hit on President Kennedy, and looked the other way? Aaron Kohn was the only man alive who was in the right place, and who knew all the players in the plot, personally. The Warren Commission never knew about Kohn's files because the FBI didn't tell them. When Kohn died, five FBI Agents went to the office to remove the files. The cabinets were empty. The documents had set sail the night before on a Liberian freighter destined for Porta Lampura, Honduras
Rollin left the Big Easy a year later, returning to Turkey, this time as Assistant Legal Attaché in Ankara, tracking the French Connection from the Opium fields in eastern Turkey to heroin labs in Lebanon. It was a far cry from her days as a Nun working in the back alleys of Istanbul. After the 24 month overseas tour, they assigned her to Melville, Long Island working the Pizza Connection, undercover, as Tracy Morino, the Italian wife of Stevie Morino, a "half-ass wiseguy" who was really her partner, Special Agent, Steven Carbone. . She joined the Washington field office in the late 80's and moved to headquarters three years later. After more than 20 years with the Bureau, she was like a classic military top sergeant. With more savvy and experience than the Bureau's all male enter circle, she enjoyed direct access to "the boss", and the power to screen access to him. As Assistant to the Director, Geraldine Rollin actually ran the FBI.
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MOHAMMED MEBASHI FELT THE FEAR in the pit of his stomach. Even his tightly belted cleric robe could not stop it.
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TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS BY LEX COLEMAN A TED SMART BOOK, UK LIMITED DISTRIBUTED IN THE U. S. A. BY BARNES & NOBLE AVAILABLE DIRECT FROM THE DEEP POLITICS BOOK STORE
