Clear and Present Danger

'I take it that this is to be a progress report. You want to start off, Judge?'

'SHOWBOAT is fully underway. We've had a major stroke of luck, in fact. Just as we got a surveillance team in place, they spotted an aircraft taking off.' Moore favored everyone with a smile. 'Everything worked exactly as planned. The two smugglers are in federal custody. That was luck, pure and simple, of course. We can't expect that to happen too often, but we intercepted ninety kilos of cocaine, and that's a fair night's work. All four covert teams are on the ground and in place. None have been spotted.'

'How's the satellite working out?'

'Still getting parts of it calibrated. That's mainly a computer problem, of course. The thing we're planning to use the Rhyolite for will take another week or so. As you know, that element of the plan was set up rather late, and we're playing it by ear at the moment. The problem, if I can call it that, is setting up the computer software, and they need another couple of days.'

'What about The Hill?'

'This afternoon,' Judge Moore answered. 'I don't expect that to be a problem.'

'You've said that before,' Cutter pointed out.

Moore turned and examined him with a tired eye. 'We've laid quite a bit of groundwork. I don't invoke SAHO very often, and I've never had any problems from them when I did.'

'I don't expect any active opposition there, Jim,' the President agreed. 'I've laid some groundwork, too. Emil, you're quiet this morning.'

'We've been over that aspect of the operation, Mr. President. I have no special legal qualms, because there really is no law on this issue. The Constitution grants you plenipotentiary powers to use military force to protect our national security once it is determined - by you, of course - that our security is, in fact, threatened. The legal precedents go all the way back to the Jefferson presidency. The political issues are something else, but that's not really my department. In any case, the Bureau has broken what appears to be a major money-laundering operation, and we're just about ready to move on it.'

'How major?' Admiral Cutter asked, annoying the President, who wanted to ask the same question.

'We can identify a total of five hundred eighty-eight million dollars of drug money, spread through twenty-two different banks all the way from Liechtenstein to California, invested in a number of real-estate ventures, all of which are here in the United States. We've had a team working 'round the clock all week on this.'

'How much?' the President asked, getting in first this time. He wasn't the only person in the room who wanted that number repeated.

'Almost six hundred million,' the FBI Director repeated. 'It was just over that figure two days ago, but a sizable block of funds was transferred on Wednesday - it looks like it was a routine transfer, but we are keeping an eye on the accounts in question.'

'And what will you be doing?'

'By this evening we'll have complete documentation on all the accounts. Starting tomorrow, the legal attach s in all our embassies overseas, and the field divisions covering the domestic banks, will move to freeze the accounts and -'

'Will the Swiss and the Europeans cooperate?' Cutter interrupted.

'Yes, they will. The mystique about numbered accounts is overrated, as President Marcos found out a few years ago. If we can prove that the deposits result from criminal operations, the governments in question will freeze the funds. In Switzerland, for example, the money goes to the state - 'canton' - government for domestic applications. Aside from the moral issue, it's simple self-interest, and we have treaties to cover this. It hardly hurts the Swiss economy, for example, to keep that money in Switzerland, does it? If we're successful, as I have every right to expect, the total net loss to the Cartel will be on the order of one billion dollars. That figure is just an estimate on our part which includes loss of equity in the investments and the expected profits from rollover. The five eighty- eight, on the other hand, is a hard number. We're calling this Operation TARPON. Domestically, the law is entirely on our side, and on close inspection, it's going to be very hard for anyone to liberate the funds, ever. Overseas the legal issues are more muddied, but I think we can expect fairly good cooperation. The European governments are starting to notice drug problems of their own, and they have a way of handling the legal issues more... oh, I guess the word is pragmatically,' Jacobs concluded with a smile. 'I presume you'll want the Attorney General to make the announcement.'

You could see the sparkle in the President's eyes. The press release would be made in the White House Press Room. He'd let the Justice Department handle it, of course, but it would be done in the White House so that journalists could get the right spin. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I have just informed the President that we have made a major break in the continuing war against ...

'How badly will this hurt them?' the President asked.

'Sir, exactly how much money they have has always been a matter of speculation on our part. What's really interesting about this whole scheme is that the laundering operation may actually be designed to legitimize the money once it gets into Colombia. That's hard to read, but it would seem that the Cartel is trying to find a less overtly criminal way in which to infiltrate their own national economy. Since that is not strictly necessary in economic terms, the presumptive goal of the operation would seem to be political. To answer your question, the monetary loss will sting them rather badly, but will not cripple them in any way. The political ramifications, however, may be an extra bonus whose scope we cannot as yet evaluate.'

'A billion dollars...' the President said. 'That really gives you something to tell the Colombians about, doesn't it?'

'I do not think they'll be displeased. The political rumblings they've been getting from the Cartel are very troubling to them.'

'Not troubling enough to take action,' Cutter observed.

Jacobs didn't like that at all. 'Admiral, their Attorney General is a friend of mine. He travels with a security detail that's double the size of the President's, and he has to deal with a security threat that'd make most people duck for cover every time a car backfired. Colombia is trying damned hard to run a real democracy in a region where democracies are pretty rare - which historically happens to be our fault, in case you've forgotten - and you expect them to do - what? Trash what institutions they do have, do what Argentina did? For Christ's sake, the Bureau and DEA combined don't have the manpower to go after the drug rings that we already know about, and we have a thousand times their resources. So what the hell do you expect, that they'll go fascist again to hunt down the druggies just because it suits us? We did expect that and we got that, for over a hundred years, and look where it's gotten us!' This clown is supposed to be an expert on Latin America , Jacobs didn't say out loud. Says who? I bet you couldn't even drive boats worth a damn!

The bottom line , Judge Moore noted, is that Emil doesn't like this whole operation, does he? On the other hand, it did rock Cutter back in his chair. A small man, Jacobs had dignity and moral authority measured in megaton quantities.

'You're trying to tell us something, Emil,' the President said lightly. 'Spit it out.'

'Terminate this whole operation,' the FBI Director said. 'Stop it before it goes too far. Give me the manpower I need, and I can accomplish more right here at home, entirely within the law, than we'll ever accomplish with all this covert-operations nonsense. TARPON is the proof of that. Straight police work, and it's the biggest success we've ever had.'

'Which happened only because some Coast Guard skipper got a little off the reservation,' Judge Moore noted. 'If that Coastie hadn't broken the rules himself, your case would have looked like simple piracy and murder. You left that part out, Emil.'

'Not the first time something like that has happened, and the difference, Arthur, is that that wasn't planned by anyone in Washington.'

'That captain isn't going to be hurt, is he?' the President asked.

'No, sir. That's already been taken care of,' Jacobs assured him.

'Good. Keep it that way. Emil, I respect your point of view,' the President said, 'but we have to try something different. I can't sell Congress on the funding to double the size of the FBI, or DEA. You know that.'

You haven't tried , Jacobs wanted to say. Instead he nodded submission.

'And I thought we had your agreement on this operation.'

'You do, Mr. President.' How did I ever rope myself into this? Jacobs asked himself. This road, like so many others, was paved with good intentions. What they were doing wasn't quite illegal; in the