served with Mitchell's brother when he had been deputy commandant at the U. S. Army School of the Americas.
The correspondent wrote that he had no information that would be helpful to the priest but wished him good luck with his research.
From his time in the service Sloan knew that immediate family members of deceased veterans were, by law, entitled to those records. What was the army hiding about the brother's death?
Mitchell had kept his checkbook in a briefcase sleeve. Sloan scanned through the entries. Two five- thousand-dollar deposits had been made the past three months.
His retirement pay went into the account automatically. From the looks of the checks Mitchell wrote, he lived frugally and was a heavy supporter of a group that politically opposed the continued operation of the School of the Americas.
Sloan filled out evidence inventory sheets and then got on the Internet and started surfing for supplemental information that might help him fill in some of the blanks. When he was done, he checked the clock.
Day shift was over, and he hadn't even started writing up his supplemental report.
Bobby decided to talk to the chief first. He dialed Kerney's extension and the chief picked up immediately. Sloan started talking about Mitchell's briefcase filled with intelligence goodies. Kerney cut him off and told him to meet him in the staff parking lot with the evidence in five minutes.
Sloan toted everything out the back door. The chief was waiting in his unit with the motor running and the passenger door open. He got in, wondering where in the hell they were going and why. Kerney's jaw was tightly set and his mouth formed a thin, compressed line. Sloan decided it was probably better not to ask.
Kerney took Sloan to the downtown library, where they settled into the second-floor audiovisual room. Bobby gave him a quick review of the Mitchell evidence.
'Also, Brother Jerome told me that an envelope mailed to Father Mitchell was missing from his office,' Sloan said, 'so we've got a connection between the homicide and the burglary.'
Kerney gazed out the window that overlooked Washington Avenue and the bank building across the way.
'Don't you think it's odd that we have two homicides involving national security?' Kerney asked.
'According to what I heard, the feds took that issue off the table in the Terrell case,' Sloan said.
Kerney turned away from the window.
'Two things you told me put it back on the table. During his military career Ambassador Terrell served as commandant of the School of the Americas and later was the commanding general of army intelligence.'
'That's interesting,' Sloan said.
'Do you think Mitchell was trying to get something on Terrell?'
Kerney sat in a straight-back chair and shook his head.
'I don't know.
Mitchell's brother was at the School of the Americas long after Terrell's retirement. But he was killed while serving as a military attache in Venezuela.
That raises two additional points. Embassy attache assignments are heavily geared to intelligence gathering. And Terrell is a member of a trade mission to South America.'
'You're racking up a whole lot of coincidences here, Chief.'
'Give me your thoughts on Mitchell's research.'
'It's a real slumgullion. At first I thought Mitchell was concentrating his investigation on the murder of his brother in South America, six years ago. That seemed to be what got him started. He left his teaching position right after his brother's death and wrote dozens of letters to the army trying to get more information about it.
The army stonewalled him.'
Sloan took a sip of coffee from the jumbo-size takeout container the chief had bought him on the way to the library. It was cold and bitter tasting.
'But when you watch the videos you'll see that they jump from one subject to another, so I don't know where Mitchell was going.'
'We can start with the fact that Mitchell didn't buy the story of his brother's death,' Kerney said.
'Okay, at the very least a cover-up took place,' Bobby said.
'Maybe the priest's brother wasn't whacked by banditos who simply wanted his cash and his car. But based on what I saw on the videotapes I watched, that theme isn't even touched on. There's an interview that concentrates on vague accusations that the army has been burying a sizable amount of money for the last five years in DEA aid to Colombia.
There's a Q and A with a U. S. Treasury official about drug money being laundered through banks in Panama. In another tape a retired army major is talking about the time he spent at the Fort Benning School of the Americas with the priest's brother that doesn't reveal diddly.'
'Let's watch the tapes,' Kerney said.
Some of the videos were brief, and none ran over twenty minutes. An ex-Canadian intelligence officer talked about the National Security Agency sending cryptologists to Brazil for an unknown purpose. A former DEA agent revealed that the Joint Military Intelligence College had developed a field-intelligence and drug interdiction curriculum for the Ecuadoran army. A professor of economics explained 'dollarization,' an effort to persuade Latin American countries to join Panama and Ecuador in adopting U. S. currency as their official legal tender.
A treasury official detailed information about a financial crimes advisory on Panamanian drug-laundering schemes. An expert on international banking summarized the ways in which large sums of money were electronically transferred between foreign and domestic financial institutions.
Kerney quickly ran through the tapes Sloan had previewed and then clicked off the VCR with the remote.
'What do you think, Chief?' Bobby asked.
'I've been thinking about geography,' Kerney said.
'Panama, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Brazil. If I'm not mistaken, all of those countries border Colombia. Some political analysts are saying that Colombia could be our next Vietnam. Half of the country is controlled by rebels, including a lot of the coca-growing regions.
Maybe the government is getting all their ducks lined up before they send in the troops. That kind of planning can't be done openly. It would raise too much of a stink here at home.'
'A secret trade mission might be the way to go,' Sloan said.
'I'd say a major clandestine military and civilian intelligence operation has been launched,' Kerney said.
'A trade mission could well be part of that strategy.'
'We always seem to come back around to the ambassador,' Sloan said. His butt felt numb. He shifted in his chair to ease the discomfort.
'It does seem that way,' Kerney said. He straightened the leg with the blown-out knee and rubbed the sore tendons.
Sloan yawned.
'This stuff about banking, money laundering, and international finance may have something to do with cutting off the drug money flowing in and out of Colombia.'
'Maybe so,' Kerney said.
'Without money the jefes couldn't fund their private armies and pay off the rebel forces they do business with.'
'So what did Father Mitchell learn that the government didn't want him to know?'
'That's what we've got to find out,' Kerney said.
'Have you dug up any more background about him?'
'A couple of things. Like his brother, Mitchell pulled a tour of duty at Fort Benning. In fact, that was his last post before he retired. He could have probably stayed on active duty if he'd wanted to. I cruised the Internet and learned that army chaplains are in real short supply.
He made some trips back to Benning recently, but I haven't found any documentation by Mitchell about it yet. Maybe something will surface on the audiotapes.
'Mitchell ran up travel expenses of over five thousand dollars in the last three months. You don't have that kind of money to throw around on a retired major's pay, especially if you're sending half your pension to a group called the School of the Americas Vigil Committee. I think somebody helped Mitchell out financially. He made two
