Had it been known that she worked for American intelligence, her colleagues would have shunned her, and Doctors Without Borders would have fired her. The fact that she would serve as a covert agent was a testament to her commitment to the poor of Central and South America. She knew that much of the poverty in the countries where she worked was a product of corruption promoted by the drug trade. So she was both healer and spy — the former role was her profession, the latter a personal obligation. Lisa Morales felt she simply had to do more than just fight malnutrition and disease. As she worked, she watched a gaggle of small children play soccer on a dusty, makeshift field adjacent to the clinic.
Without warning, an SUV pulled up and Christo got out accompanied by his enforcer, Tommy. The two men were a study in contrast. Tommy was clearly a thug, a blunt object alongside the slim, urbane Christo. Pandemonium broke out as the children rushed Christo.
“Christo! Christo!” they shouted almost in unison.
He patted them on their heads, picked them up two at a time, clearly basking in this sea of adulation. In truth, he loved these children as much as they idolized him.
Christo and Morales made eye contact for an instant. He nodded and moved on. He made a quick tour of the clinic, which his financial assistance made possible, but he was not there to see his pesos at work. He was there for the affection and near worship of the kids. For all his education and sophistication, Christo seemed to need the attention. After passing out coins and candy, he was back in his SUV. With Tommy behind the wheel, the vehicle swerved in a circle and accelerated sharply away, covering the children and the clinic in a fine layer of dust. Still, the children cheered wildly until he was out of sight.
Later that day, as Lisa Morales made her way into the small city after another fourteen-hour day at the clinic, a man on a motorcycle skillfully weaved his way through the afternoon traffic. He was riding a 1961 Triumph split-case TT dirt-racing bike. The rider traveled at breakneck speed, causing pedestrians to scatter and bicycle riders to turn sharply to avoid getting hit. The bike eventually disappeared into the disorder of the crowded streets. That evening, as Lisa Morales was putting a bottle of water in the refrigerator, she heard a motorcycle outside and headed to the balcony.
The biker, Walter Ross, took off his helmet. Ross was a CIA contract case officer. He was an experienced Latin America division handler and had been running agents in Central America long before Morales entered medical school. He was basically an expat who had not been north in quite a while. He was g iile. Hegood at his job and trusted by his own CIA handlers in Mexico City and at Langley.
“Hey, I’ll be right down, all right?”
“Whatever you say, Doctor,” Ross replied.
Morales ran down the single flight of stairs and joined Ross on the dusty street below. After exchanging greetings, they walked toward Barranca’s main plaza.
“How was the ride?”
“Left Colombia this morning,” Ross replied.
“Colombia to here in one day?”
“Piece of cake,” he replied, a tinge of pride in his voice.
“Look, about Christo,” Morales began, getting to the reason for Ross’s visit, “we now estimate he’s worth close to a billion.”
“Was that with a B?” Ross replied, the surprise registering on his face.
“That’s an estimate from Doctors Without Borders. They know a lot about him because he’s one of our primary backers in this area. He gives back a lot to the local people here with medical clinics, schools, and assistance to the elderly. But he’s no fool. He also lines the pockets of the politicians and police. So they’re extremely loyal to him. But why all of the Agency interest in him? I thought this would be a DEA matter.”
Ross smiled and lowered his voice. “We became interested when a 707 leased by him and filled with Soviet weapons was intercepted in Lagos.”
Morales and Ross continued to walk, passing through the plaza and down a sheltered path.
“Langley says the boys over at NSA have picked up some interesting intercepts connecting Christo to a jihadist network out of Southeast Asia,” Ross continued. “It seems that Christo and one of the guys running the network were childhood friends.”
“So what’s going to happen to this animal? We know he deals drugs, and now you say he’s an arms dealer as well. Can he be arrested or somehow be made accountable?”
“Sorry, Doctor. For now, Langley just wants us to watch him and report back on his activities.”
“He needs to be stopped,” Morales murmured. “He may give a lot of money to worthy causes, but the misery of his kind of business that spreads to the region is unconscionable.”
As she spoke, a camera shutter clicked and captured Ross and Morales in a frame.
THREE
The home of Dr. Lisa Morales was an average size apartment in a nondescript complex near the small town of Barranca. Very middle class. It was far from the luxury of Costa Rican resorts that catered to foreign tourists, primarily American tourists, on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The structure was concrete and glass set in sterile architecture — a building that attracted no attention. Perfect for someone who wanted to avoid notice and therefore perfect from the CIA’s standpoint for one of their informants.
Lisa Morales had been the resident physician for Doctors Without Borders in Barranca for almost a year. She had made her small, one-bedroom apartment as homey as she could. She was reasonably well paid for her work, including a stipend from the CIA, but her life was designed to look like that of a young, idealistic physician on a modest salary. A rattan sofa and loveseat set, along with a bamboo-and-glass coffee table, took up most of the space in the small living room. The secondhand furniture was underlaid by a worn light-brown carpet. Cheap curtains adorned the two street-facing windows in the room. The adjacent kitchen sported only basic cookware and an ancient refrigerator. There was nothing high-end in the apartment. A small card table with four folding chairs served as the kitchen table. The only thing special about her furnishings was the secret compartment in the back of a battered end table. She seldom kept anything of a confidential intelligence nature, but it was there if she needed it. To even a critical eye, all was average and uninteresting.
“Okay, Lisa, you’ve got eighteen points with a double-word score. But watch this,” Ross said.
“Go for it, Mr. Wordsmith,” she replied as Ross laid down his tiles.
“There it is, ‘seizure,’ that’s twenty-nine points, triple-word score.”
“You don’t like to lose, do you, Walter?”
“After twenty-five years with the Company, if I could stand losing I’d probably be dead by now,” Ross replied.
It was always this way with them whenever Ross visited. They took a simple game of Scrabble and made it a highly competitive exercise. It fed both of their type-A personalities and took their minds off the deadly serious business they worked at — gathering intelligence on drug traffickers so that others in the CIA bureaucracy could take action.
“You getting hungry yet?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am,” he replied. “What did you have in mind?”
“How about Chinese?”
“Here? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, Chinese is universal, you know that. You can get Chinese anywhere. Where have you ever been that you can’t get Chinese? And besides, I order from them all the time. How about chow mein?”