being surveilled, your SAC will be fired. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m going to get this Colonel Ferris back,” the President said. “And this is how I’m going to do it. First step: Get on the phone right now, Schmidt, and tell your SAC what I just said-that he is not to arrest anybody without my permission, and if anyone he is surveil-ling in this situation even suspects we’re watching him, you will transfer him to Alaska.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go do it,” the President ordered as he pointed to the door to the outer office.
“Mr. President, I can contact SAC Johnson on my cell phone; it has encryption capability.”
“Well, then take your cell phone with its encryption capability in there and call him.”
He waited until Schmidt had reached the door and then turned to Secretary of State Natalie Cohen.
“Has Ambassador McCann proved to be as capable as I thought he would be, Madam Secretary? More important, how close has he managed to get to President Martinez?”
“Ambassador McCann is both highly capable, Mr. President, and has already established a good relationship with President Martinez.”
“I want you to get on the horn to McCann, Madam Secretary, and tell him to see Martinez right now, and get him to send me a letter.”
“Sir?”
“Give it to her, Clemens,” the President said.
McCarthy handed Cohen a sheet of paper.
“Or words to this effect,” the President said. “Read it aloud, Madam Secretary, so everybody will be on the same page.”
Cohen took the sheet of paper, glanced at it, and began, “This is apparently a draft,” and then read the letter aloud:
draft draft draft draft draft draft draft draft draft draft
{This would be better on Martinez’s personal, rather than official, stationery} date
My dear friend Zeke,
I come to you to ask for an act of Christian charity and compassion.
As a devoted father and family man yourself, you know that once in a while-perhaps more often than we realize-every family produces a worthless son, even a murderer.
Such is the case with the Abrego family, a thoroughly decent family who work a small farm in Oaxaca State. They have had two daughters and a son, Felix. According to Bishop (need a name) a truly wise and Christian man, whom I have known for years, and who brought this to me, Felix started to go bad when he was twelve, and despite every prayerful thing his mother and father and his priest tried to do for him, kept moving ever faster on the path to hell.
Bishop (Whatsisname) knows this, because earlier in his career he was the Abrego family priest. And as a wholly honest man, Bishop (Whatsisname) is as willing as I am to admit that, guilty as charged, Felix Abrego fully deserves the punishment laid upon him by an American court for brutal acts of murder. He is currently imprisoned, for life, without the possibility of parole, in your federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
Senora Abrego, his sixty-seven-year-old mother, has been diagnosed with a particular nasty cancer (get a name for the cancer?) and has less than four (two? three?) months to live. She is confined to her bed, and can get around only in a wheelchair.
Obviously, she can’t travel to Colorado, and she wants to see her son for a last time before she dies. I’m imploring you to help me arrange that.
What I propose is this:
There are at least a half dozen “open” Policia Federal warrants involving Felix Abrego. They have not been actively pursued because it was reasoned that since he is already confined without the possibility of parole, it would be a waste of time and money to try to convict him of something else.
I have been told there is a provision in U.S. law whereby a prisoner like Felix Abrego may be released from prison into the custody of the U.S. Marshal Service and taken for interrogation to a foreign country, such as Mexico.
In this case, if you would use your good offices to approve a request from the Policia Federal to bring Abrego to Mexico for interrogation, your Marshals would transport him to the Oaxaca State Prison, where they would turn him over to prison authorities.
This would permit the Policia Federal to interrogate him. And it would also permit Senora Abrego to visit her son for the last time before her death. Once that inevitably happens, Abrego could either be returned to the United States to complete his confinement or, alternatively, tried here. In this case, there are so many charges against him here that he would almost certainly be sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in a Mexican prison.
If in your good judgment something can be worked out, please call me at your convenience and we can work out the details.
With warm regards,
Your friend
Ramon
“Well?” the President asked when she had finished.
“Mr. President, what is it you wish me to do with this?” Secretary Cohen asked.
“I told you. Get it to McCann and have him take it to President Martinez.”
“Mr. President,” Attorney General Crenshaw said, “the long-standing policy of the United States has been never to negotiate with terrorists.”
“Who’s negotiating with terrorists?” Clemens McCarthy replied for the President. “What President Clendennen is going to do is send a convicted criminal for interrogation in Mexico, which has the added benefit of permitting a terminally ill woman to see her son for the last time. If that also results in the release of Colonel Ferris, what’s wrong with that?”
“It’s bullshit, McCarthy, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Crenshaw said.
“There’s a lady present, Mr. Attorney General,” the President said. “Watch your mouth!”
“I beg your pardon, Madam Secretary,” Crenshaw said.
“Obviously, Mr. Attorney General,” the President said, “you have some objections to my plan to secure the release of Colonel Ferris.”
“Yes, sir, I have a number of-”
“I’m not interested in what they might be, Mr. Attorney General. This is the plan of action your Commander in Chief has decided upon. My question is whether your objections will keep you from carrying out my orders to see that what I want done is done.”
“That would depend, Mr. President, on what orders you give me.”
“Fair enough,” the President said. “If I ordered you to have this fellow Abrego moved from his present place of confinement to the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution, would your conscience permit you to carry out that order?”
“Mr. President, are you aware that Abrego has been adjudicated to be a very dangerous and violent prisoner requiring his incarceration in the Florence maximum-security facility?”
“So Clemens has told me.”
“And that La Tuna is a minimum-security facility? What they call a country club for the incarceration of nonviolent white-collar offenders?”
“Are you going to be able to obey my orders or not?”
The attorney general looked at the secretary of State and saw on her face and in her eyes that she was afraid he was going to say no.
“Mr. President, if you order me to move Abrego from Florence ADMAX to the La Tuna minimum-security facility, I’ll have him moved.”
“Good. I like what the military calls ‘cheerful and willing obedience’ to my orders to my loyal subordinates.”
President Clendennen turned to Secretary of State Cohen.
