GIBRALTAR
Chapter 7
By the time McKenna returned to the CO's office, Brunette and Shields had the DMV printouts on the 1989 silver Lincoln Towncar, and much more. "Looks like we have some answers to your questions on the dog," Brunette announced.
"Stolen?" McKenna asked.
"March fifth, from a backyard in Corona, Queens. The owner had the dog tied up there. Dog gone, rope cut."
"Licensed?"
"Yep. Collar around the neck with the license and name–Duchess."
"So there's a good chance they've got a place somewhere in Queens," McKenna reasoned.
"They do, but we don't know how much that helps us," Shields said. He took the pile of printouts off the desk, and passed them to McKenna. "Let's see what you think."
McKenna took a seat and read while Brunette and Shields waited and watched him with undisguised interest.
The Towncar had been registered in the Upstate town of Catskill by Antonio Ramirez on March 12th, a month before. March 12th was the same day he had also registered his other vehicle, a 1990 white Ford van. Ramirez had a valid insurance policy with Colonial Penn for both vehicles, and the effective date of the policy was March 9th. The address Ramirez had listed when he had registered the vehicles was a post office box in Tannersville, a small Upstate town about 30 miles from Catskill.
Ramirez had obtained his driver's license on March 7th, five days before he had registered the vehicles, and he had done it the hard way, taking the DMV test for his learner's permit on February 8th, and passing his road test on March 1st. The address listed on both his license and his learner's permit was 91-02 Denman Street, Apartment 3A, in Corona, Queens.
Although Ramirez had only had his license for a month and a half, he had already earned his first speeding ticket during a run of bad luck. At 5:30 A.M. on the morning of April 7th–the same day his Lincoln had been issued the parking ticket on Fifth Avenue–he had been stopped by the State Police on the New York State Thruway and awarded his ticket for doing 72 mph in a 65 mph zone.
McKenna studied the printouts for a few more minutes. The last item was a blown-up fax copy of Ramirez's license, and he committed the face to memory. Nothing remarkable about that face, McKenna thought, and then he placed the papers on the desk without comment–but with a big smile.
"You got the deal, Brian?" Brunette asked.
"I think so. Do you?"
It was Shields who answered. "Yeah, we humbly think that we're just as smart and just as good as you are."
"It's got to work that way," McKenna said, still smiling. "If the big chiefs don't think they're just as smart or smarter than the Indians, the whole system falls apart."
"Very true," Shields said. "Orders issued by the chiefs without confidence aren't diligently followed by the Indians. The chiefs have to have a ninety-something percent track record to keep their confidence up and the system running."
McKenna had played this game with Brunette many times, and he knew just what Brunette and Shields were doing. It was to be a brainstorming session, and he decided to play along. "And how do the chiefs keep their confidence up?"
"Simple," Shields said. "This is how it's done by wise chiefs..."
"People like yourselves, for instance?"
"Yes, by wise chiefs just like us. When confronted with an important puzzle, they put their heads together, reach a conclusion, and decide on a tentative course of action. Then they find themselves an unusually discrete, smart, and talented Indian–someone like yourself, for instance–and they show him the puzzle. If this special Indian comes to the same conclusion they did, and he recommends the same course of action they're contemplating, then the orders are issued and the plan goes forward with confidence."
"Sensible," McKenna said. "But what happens if this Indian doesn't reach the same conclusions they did?"
"They never tell him. Chiefs can't be wrong and the Indians right, but they do reexamine their own conclusions, looking for holes. If they find the holes, then they modify the conclusions, alter the plan, present it as their own, and implement it."
"And if everything goes right?"
"They never mention the Indian, and they take full credit."
McKenna smiled, knowing that was the way it worked in some big circles–but never with chiefs like Brunette and Shields. However, he liked the game, and was still playing. "And if something goes wrong?"
"Blame the stupid Indian, of course."
"Of course. And how do they first present this puzzle to the Indian? Do they tell him it's a test to see how smart he is, and that they already have the answers?"
"That's right. So let's see how smart you are."
"I'm game, but tell me something first," McKenna said. "What are we doing with this information now?"
"How do you know we're doing anything with it?"
"Because Tommy Bara should be sitting in on this session, helping you two give me the test. He's not, so I assume you've already given him a mission."
"Very good," Shields said. "For starters, Tommy Bara and most of the Indians in your new unit will be very busy for the rest of the day and, I imagine, most of tomorrow. He already got to the postmaster in Tannersville and found out that Ramirez had listed his Queens apartment when he rented the post office box."
"When did he rent the box?"
"March seventh," Shields replied.
"Figures. Five days before he gets the Towncar and the van, and a week after he gets his license. Ramirez is their advance man, the guy with all the valid ID who set up everything they needed to pull off their kidnapping."
"Maybe, and now here's the first question for you," Shields said. "Why did he rent the box?"
"The obvious reason–to get mail at a place they figured we'd never find out about. But we got lucky. If it wasn't for that parking ticket, maybe we never would have found out about the box."
"What kind of mail?"
"Besides instructions from Spain, the regular kind of mail. Letters from home. We've got seven ETA people here that we know about, and they've been here for at least three weeks. Presumably, at least some of them have family, and they need a way to communicate with them."
"So the families would know about the box?"
"No. The families send their letters to an ETA drop in Spain. Whoever's manning that drop forwards the letters to the box in Tannersville."
"But why Tannersville?"
"Because it's near there is their base camp, the place where they're holding the ambassador right now," McKenna said. "Do you know the area?"
"I didn't, but I know something about it now. Ray told me that you and him rented a ski house near there for two seasons back in the eighties."
"Did he tell you how we paid for our season rentals?"
"I told him," Brunette said. "Cash, the only thing the owner would accept."
"That's right. Only cash," McKenna said. "People buy those houses as money-making vacation properties they can enjoy. Beautiful area in the Catskill Mountains, only a hundred thirty miles from town, straight up the Thruway. Right between two nice ski areas, but there's something for all seasons. Lakes, camping, hiking trails, horseback riding, you name it. The owners use the houses when they can, but they're always for rent."
"Got how that works," Shields said. "They take the mortgage off their taxes, and put the cash in their pockets without declaring it as income."
"That's how they do it," McKenna said. "The usual deal is that someone rents the house for three months, cash in advance with a big security deposit. As long as the renter has ID and looks halfway legitimate, he's in."
"And you think that's what Ramirez did?"
"That's what the guy calling himself Ramirez did. Antonio Ramirez is a carefully constructed identity, created just for this job," McKenna said. "As Ramirez, he rented the perfect hideout–big house in the woods with plenty of room for the rest of the team, no nosy neighbors, large transient population so the gang isn't noticed, and no paper trail leading people like us to them."
"What about the Queens address?" Shields asked.
"Waste of time, nobody's there," McKenna said, and then he noticed that Brunette was nodding and smiling.
So Ray agrees with me, McKenna thought, and he must have told Shields as much. Let's have some fun. "Is that what you have Bara doing, Gene? Wasting time and manpower to run down that Queens apartment?"
"You're not alone in that opinion," Shields said. "Tommy also thinks it's a waste of time, but he also knows it still has to be done."
"It does, but how much time he wastes depends on how it's done. Do you have him getting court orders for the Con Edison and telephone company records on the Queens apartment?"
"That's right," Shields said defensively, and both McKenna and Brunette knew why. Since the chiefs of security for the phone companies and utility companies in New York City were all NYPD retired bosses, Brunette knew that McKenna could get all the information necessary in an hour. If it worked out that he might need the information for trial purposes, he could then waste the time getting the court orders to make his evidence legally palatable.
However, both men knew that might be the NYPD way when time was short, but it was never the federal way. With a shared smile, Brunette and McKenna decided it would be done Shields's way, without negative comment.
"Okay, Bara will get the court orders for the phone company and for Con Ed, directing them to provide the billing information for their customer at the apartment," McKenna said. "He'll get the records indicating that someone calling himself Antonio Ramirez lives there and pays his bills, but it will take an intensive surveillance to establish that he's really not there anymore–and hasn't been since he got his driver's license."
"Why not?"
"Because he doesn't need the apartment after he got his license. That's when the rest of the crew arrived, and that's when he moved them in Upstate."
"Maybe it's not a total waste of time," Shields said. "Maybe he made some phone calls to Spain from the Queens apartment," Shields said.
"Maybe, if this gang isn't as smart and careful as we're giving them credit for."
"So you'd be surprised if he did?"
"Very," McKenna replied. "The ETA has been pulling kidnappings for more than thirty years. They've got over five hundred of their people in jail in Spain, so maybe they had to learn the hard way how to do it right."
"I agree," Brunette said, ignoring the rules of the game for a moment. "These three kidnappings are the biggest stunt they've ever pulled, so the plan was checked and double-checked to get it right. That means no stupid mistakes like phone calls to a traceable number in Spain."
"Let's say for the moment that we agree on that," Shields said, then returned his attention to McKenna. "Why do you think he got that Queens apartment in the first place? Just to get his driver's license?"
"That's right, because he needed more than his bogus passport in his Antonio Ramirez name to register the vehicles he'd need. He needed a driver's license. To get that, he needed a phone bill and a utility bill to show DMV in order to establish state residence."
"So what kind of ID did he use to rent the apartment? Just his passport?"
"And whatever else their forger cooked up for him. Not too important, because he probably paid cash in advance for the place, and I bet it's a dive."
"Why didn't they just have their forger cook him up a driver's license?"
"Spanish forger with no experience in our driver's licenses? Too risky. They knew they'd have the kidnapped ambassador and plenty of armed people in the van at some point, and they didn't want a shoot-out with the police if they got stopped on their way back to Tannersville. So they asked themselves: If it had to be a license good enough to pass police inspection, why not spend a little time and money to get a real one? After all, according to Ibarretxe, they're well-funded."
"Sounds plausible," Shields said, but one look at Brunette told McKenna that he was right in line with their conclusions. "How am I doing on my test?" he asked.
"Not bad, so far," Shields said. "But you don't get your final score until you tell us what your plan would be."
McKenna wanted to get that part right, so he took a few minutes to think it over. Just when he thought he had the answers, his cell phone rang. "I'm on my way back with your photos," Joe Walsh said.
"How'd we do with them?" McKenna asked.
"You'll like them. Twenty-eight nice shots of seven bird watchers, and one of them's a real beauty."
"The woman?"
"She could make the cover of the Terrorist Times any time she wanted."
"Are the photos good enough for identification?"
"Even if you're blind in one eye and can't see too good with the other. Good photographer, good camera, and a great developer, so you've got good pictures."
"Thanks, Joe. Looking forward to seeing you," McKenna said, and ended the call. He then relayed the information to Brunette and Shields, and was about to give his plan when Shields's cell phone rang. It was a short, mostly one-sided conversation. Whoever had called was doing the talking, and he was a "sir" to Shields. Since Shields had reached a point in his career where not too many people got that designation from him, McKenna figured the caller was somebody very high up in the government. When he ended the call with, "Yes, sir. It's already been done. Matter of fact, he's sitting right in front of me," McKenna knew what the call was all about.
If he didn't know, Shields was going to tell him. "Know who that was?" he asked McKenna.
"Either the attorney general or the director of the FBI," McKenna ventured.
"The director. And do you know why he called?"
"Because Ibarretxe got to the secretary of state, the secretary got to the attorney general, and he got to the director."
"And then he got to me, telling me to try to have you assigned to the case."
"Was it a bad call for you?" McKenna asked.
"Could've been, but it turned into a good one when I told him that I already had you assigned."
"So you are a very wise chief after all?"
"Moderately wise," Shields conceded. "Let's hear your plan."
"It's a pretty simple one, but it will require a lot of manpower. There are about ten small towns in the resort area centered around Tannersville that fit the bill, meaning towns with lots of rental houses so that this group won't be conspicuous. You have to relocate whoever's working this case to someplace near there."
"According to you, that would be a lot of people," Shields said. "It would probably be best to rent a motel."
"A motel close enough to the resort area, but far enough away to keep the locals from getting nosy. We know they use the Thruway to come down to town, so one on Route Thirty-two near the Thruway exit would be best."
"Are there many motels there?"
"Plenty, and this is the off season. You could get a good deal if you rent the whole place."
"And then?"
"Tedious police work. We'll have their pictures, and we know their cars, so part of the team stakes out the post office, gas stations, supermarkets, the Thruway entrance, and any place else they'd be likely to go."
"And if any of these people show up?"
"They have to be followed back to their house, and that will be difficult on those back roads. They'll be on guard, and looking for a tail, so we'll need some equipment ready to go."
"Locating transmitters?"
"If they leave the car for a few minutes, that would be the way to go."
"And the rest of the unit? What would they be doing?"
"Cruising the back roads in very inconspicuous vehicles, looking for a house with the van or the Towncar parked outside–and maybe a golden retriever someplace in the yard. That's a lot of back roads, but it still shouldn't take that long to find them."
"What about garages? Do many of the houses have them up there?"
"No, and those that do usually place them off limits to the tenants as part of the agreement. The owners like to store their own stuff in there."
"So how long do you think it will take to find them?"
"A week, at the most."
"And when we do?" Shields asked.
"To capture them without getting the ambassador killed? Sorry, Gene. That's another puzzle calling for another plan. How'd I do with this one?"
Shields looked to Brunette, and got a nod and a smile in return. "Pretty good," Brunette said.
"Pretty good? Meaning?" McKenna asked.
"Meaning I think we're ready to proceed with our plan with a high degree of confidence," Shields announced.
