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.
“I presume that you are also going to cheerfully and willingly obey my orders to you, Madam Secretary, vis-a-vis having Ambassador McCann deliver Clemens’s brilliant letter to President Martinez?”
“I will take the letter to Ambassador McCann, Mr. President, but I’m not sure he will be willing to take it to President Martinez, and I have no idea how President Martinez would react to it if he does.”
“McCann will do it because he works for you, Madam Secretary-although actually, since I appointed him, he’s my ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary and knows who butters his bread-and Martinez will go along with it. What my good friend Ramon wants to do is not antagonize the drug cartels any more than he has to. And to keep the tourists and retirees-and all those lovely U.S. dollars- going to Acapulco and those other places in sunny Mexico. My plan will allow him to do both.”
He turned to Defense Secretary Beiderman and General Naylor.
“Now, as far as you two are concerned, I presume that you two, as loyal subordinates of your Commander in Chief, will both cheerfully and willingly obey this direct order: I don’t want any involvement by the military in this. Period. None. Either of you have any problems with that?”
“No, sir,” Beiderman said.
“No, Mr. President,” Naylor said.
“Okay,” the President said. “That’s it. Thank you for coming in. Douglas, show them out.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Special Agent Douglas said.
Attorney General Crenshaw caught up with Secretary of State Cohen as she was about to get into her limousine in the driveway.
“Natalie, we’re going to have to talk.”
“Not now,” she replied as she slid onto the backseat. “I tend to make bad decisions when I am so upset that I feel sick to my stomach.”
“We can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” he insisted.
“Give me twenty-four hours to think it over,” she said, and then pulled the limousine door closed.
FOUR
United States Post Office 8401 Boeing Drive El Paso, Texas 1005 18 April 2007
A very short, totally bald, barrel-chested man in a crisp tan suit leaned against the post office wall, puffing on a long, thin black cigar while reading El Diario de El Paso.
A man in filthy clothing-with an unshaven and unwashed face, and sunken eyes-sidled up to the nicely dressed man. If profiling was not politically incorrect, he might have caused many police officers and Border Patrol officers to think of him as possibly an undocumented immigrant or someone suffering from substance abuse or both.
The wetback junkie looked around as if to detect the presence of law enforcement officers, and then inquired, “Hey, gringo, you wanna fook my see-ster?”
“Your wife, maybe,” the well-dressed man replied. “But the last time I saw your sister, she weighed three hundred pounds and needed a shave.”
The junkie then shook his head, smiled, and with no detectable accent said, “You sonofabitch!”