Chasing evil, p.29
Chasing Evil, page 29
“Can they hear us?”
“No,” I told him.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure they can’t hear.”
He had tears in his eyes.
“On the way here, in the car,” he said, “the man handcuffed to my right arm—I don’t know which one he is because of the hood—he told me: ‘If you talk to the Americans we will torture and kill your wife and children.’”
I leaned in close.
“What is it they are worried you will tell us?”
He hesitated.
I leaned forward and said in a low voice: “I told you we already know what happened here. As a show of good faith, that you want our help, at least whisper in my ear the name of the person who set up the assassination.”
He slid toward me until his mouth was an inch from my ear:
“The president’s son.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and nodded.
* * *
I knew what we had to do next.
Once you get the truth, John said, get out.
I went out into the living room where the Russian contingency was waiting, dying to hear the results. John said not to trust anyone—not anyone—he emphasized.
But I had to trust my colleague, so I told the rest of the group that the test results were incomplete and the agents needed more time. I waited about 10 minutes or so before I calmly asked the legat into the back room. I didn’t want it to be obvious. I told him what happened.
“Oh my God,” he said, running his fingers through his hair and pacing.
“In a few minutes, I’ll tell my guys to pack up,” I told him. “We’re going back to the hotel and the three of us are going to sleep in the same room tonight because I don’t want to wake up with a dead hooker in my bed tomorrow. We’re getting on the first plane out tomorrow morning. We’ve completed our mission. We got the admission. We’re out of here.”
The local FBI representative looked astonished and pointed toward the living room.
“We have to tell them!”
I look at him, dumbfounded.
“If you tell them,” I said, “you’re going to get someone killed.”
But he was already out the door.
A minute later, the FBI legat was telling the Russian group everything the athlete said—including the fact that one of the SWAT-type guys in the room threatened to torture and kill the young man’s family.
My heart felt like it was going to explode. I wanted to vomit.
“There’s nothing to worry about, my friend,” one SWAT-like guy in a crummy leather jacket said to me. “Everything will be taken care of tonight.”
* * *
A few hours later, I was in the backseat of the General’s black Phaeton luxury Volkswagen sedan, with blacked-out windows. Beyond those windows, it was pitch-black outside. My two FBI colleagues were in cars behind me.
The sedan moved up a winding road on the side of a mountain.
The General sat in the front passenger seat and the interpreter sat with me in the back. He was freaking out.
“Bob, do you see where we are!”
“No, where?”
“This is the hill where the assassinations happened!”
I cursed myself. Why didn’t I listen to John?
Was there a way I could have gotten us out of that condo without ending up in the back seat of the General’s car, going up this godforsaken road?
I tried to get the General’s attention, giving him every excuse I could think of to take us back to our hotel. I was sick, I said. I had essential medicine in my hotel room that I needed. We were exhausted from the day. We had a plane to catch.
“You’ll be fine,” said the General. “We’re going to take good care of you.”
The translator gave me a look, like: We’re about to die, and they’ll never find our bodies.
Obviously, thankfully, we did not die that night.
Instead, the General led the entourage of five cars to a mountaintop restaurant and presented us with the local delicacy—a boiled goat’s head. As it turned out, the General was so insistent on getting us to the dinner because he wanted to ask for our help on a local, unrelated murder case. (We didn’t do it.)
As the vodka flowed, the General stabbed a fork into one of the goat’s eyes, twisted it, and held it up in front of the two-dozen guests at the table.
“Every part of the goat’s head has symbolic meaning,” he announced. “We give the eyeballs to the elders and the leaders, so they will have vision to see the future!”
He handed the fork to me. The eyeball was dripping with sinew.
“I give this to my new brother, Agent Hilland, the leader of our table!”
After that night, I don’t know what happened to that athlete or to the businessman sick with cancer. Did they live or die? No clue.
But I do know what happened to me and that goat’s eye. I got out of the former Soviet Socialist Republic the next day, but not without paying a small price: I chewed and swallowed that eye.
It was gray and rubbery, like a hard-boiled egg cooked too long. When I bit into it, a vile, viscous fluid shot to the back of my throat.
And I do know what happened to the sitting president whose son orchestrated the murder of three men. He remained in power, and his corruption continued. Anything more than that, I’m not at liberty to say. Any other details and outcomes, I can never talk about.
When my plane touched down on American tarmac, my adrenaline was still pumping from my supposed near-death experience. I thought about that politician, shot in the head. About that athlete, who probably met a nefarious end. And about that panicked drive up the mountain, certain I was heading toward my execution.
I was grateful to be home. The goat’s eye was getting away easy.
No shortage of goats’ heads, a local delicacy, at the market
* * *
By 2006, organized crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger—also known as the “Irish Godfather”—had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitive list for seven years, second only to Osama bin Laden.
Bulger was the longtime leader of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang in the ’70s and ’80s and had been on the run as a fugitive from the FBI since 1995.
My boss in the Albany office, Bill Chase, was part of the original Bulger investigation team when he lived in Boston. He currently served as the special agent in charge of the Albany Division.
I admired him for many reasons, one of which was because he was as passionate about catching Whitey Bulger as I was about John Smith. Whitey was Bill’s white whale.
I didn’t know a lot about Bulger or the case. I was aware of what had transpired a year earlier, in 2005. Bulger’s handler, FBI agent John Connolly, had been indicted on murder and conspiracy to commit murder charges. In the years before that, Connolly was indicted on charges involving racketeering, falsifying FBI reports, accepting bribes, and basically helping Bulger evade capture. It was a mammoth stain on the FBI’s reputation.
When I strolled into Bill’s office one morning in early 2006 to join him for a coffee, he was in front of the television cursing.
“We just missed catching Whitey!” he told me, ticked off and moving around the room like he wanted to hit something. He explained that FBI agents were tipped off that Bulger would be at a specific location in Piccadilly Circus in London, but the timing got messed up. The agents arrived 20 minutes after Bulger left the scene.
“We’ve done everything humanly possible to get him,” Bill lamented, as I sat down with my coffee and put one on his desk for him.
“We’ve spent millions of dollars in source payments, we’ve done undercovers … and we can’t get this fucking guy,” he vented.
He sat down. “What we need,” he said, “is a miracle.”
Bill took a sip of coffee. The word “miracle” hung in the air.
“You know, I saw this guy on TV last week—a psychic,” he said. “He was amazing. He can talk to dead people and predict things. Man, I wish there was a way we could contact this guy. Maybe he could help us. His name is John Edward.”
I nearly spilled hot coffee in my lap.
“Um, Bill. I know John Edward.”
“Fuck you.”
“No, really.”
“You know John Edward?”
“Yeah.”
“You shittin’ me?”
“Not shittin’ you.”
I told Bill the story of how I met John eight years earlier, a cynic determined to take him down. I told him about the reading John gave me that shook me to my core, and how he then helped me with the Smith case—and others.
“Please set up a meeting,” Bill pleaded. “Tell him we’ll pay.”
“He doesn’t want money,” I said. “His two stipulations to me from the start have been that he won’t take money and what he gives us is off the record. His name can’t appear in any paperwork. I made those promises to him, and I’ve honored them.”
Bill promised to do the same and implored me to call John, which I did as soon as I returned to my desk.
I should have known John would be wary.
Not only were he and his guides leery of me bringing “new energy” into our unique, well-honed relationship … but they were especially sensitive about cop energy. As I discovered recently when I called John about another case and neglected to inform him that two other law enforcement officers were on the phone with me. John’s guides gave him nothing. Crickets. And I got a scolding about it later.
“My guides will work with you,” he said, “but they don’t want to work with anyone else. They were put off that you didn’t ask if you could bring new people in.”
“I understand,” I said. “But listen. This case is a big deal. I want you to know that.”
John paused for a moment—consulting with his guides, I’m sure.
“Okay.”
* * *
A week later, Bill and his buddy from the Boston FBI office, Agent Dave Donahoe, met John and me for a clandestine meeting in a hotel room on Long Island. Donahoe was the lead on the Bulger case, and he’d known Bill for decades. He, too, had to be convinced to take this meeting.
“What are we seeing a damn psychic for?” he grumbled to Bill, on his drive over from Boston.
I told them to bring items that belonged to Whitey, if they had any, and to add “control” items—but not to let me know which was which.
“John has no idea what the case is,” I assured them.
In John’s hotel suite on Long Island, the living room was configured with a long coffee table, a couch on one side of the table, a small love seat on the other side, and a wingback chair alone at one end.
I made introductions, and then something odd happened after we all sat down. Dave and I sat next to each other on the couch, John sat across from us on the loveseat, and Bill took the wingback chair.
Bill and Dave laid out a dozen items on the coffee table including a passport, a watch, a book, a skull ring, and a hunter’s knife. But as John scanned the items, I could tell he was bothered. He looked up at Bill.
“I need you to do me a favor,” John said. “Can you switch places with Bob?”
We did as he asked without questions, and I relocated to the wingback chair. Then, it was time to begin. Or not.
John looked at me with an odd expression.
“Bob, can we talk in the other room for a minute?”
We excused ourselves and I followed him into the bedroom. He shut the door.
“Hey, is everything okay here?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, can we trust these guys?”
“Yeah. I mean, I think so.”
“I keep getting the feeling like something’s not right. They’re showing me a bad cop or a bad agent.”
Ah, I thought. He must be picking up on John Connolly, Whitey’s indicted handler who was now in prison. That explained why he asked me to sit on my own, on the wingback chair. To “separate” my energy from the others.
But now with his question, I wondered about Bill and Dave. I didn’t know Dave at all, and Bill I’d known about a year. He seemed to be a genuine guy who truly wanted to find Bulger. If they had ulterior motives, why would they meet with a world-famous psychic?
“Okay, let’s go back in,” John suddenly said.
We returned to the living room and sat down again. John scanned the items on the coffee table for a second time and picked up the passport.
“Whoever this is,” he began, “he is a very powerful guy. He’s alive. And he’s very, very smart.”
Again, John stopped and looked up at Bill. He put the passport down. Apparently, it still wasn’t time for Whitey.
“May I be personal with you?” he asked Bill. I knew what that meant.
“Sure,” said Bill.
“You lost your father recently?”
The energy in the room shifted. Bill looked like someone had shot an arrow through his heart.
“Yes,” Bill said.
“He’s here,” said John. “Your dad is showing me you and your brother standing watch over his body. You wouldn’t leave his side.”
Bill nodded. He was trying not to cry. On the emotional Richter scale, he jumped from one to ten in seconds.
John continued.
“He’s literally showing me you and your brother in the hospital, right after he crossed over, standing by him. Like you refused to leave him alone.”
Bill kept nodding, tears streaming down his face now.
“We’re a military and law enforcement family,” he explained. “We don’t leave the dead unattended until they are buried. My brother and I took shifts guarding him. We didn’t leave his body.”
John paused.
“Your father wants me to acknowledge that you have two boys, and your younger son is very sick.”
That was a trigger that set all three of us non-psychics in the room off. Bill, the big boss, broke down in tears. I put my head in my hands. And Dave, the cynic, had his mouth open in shock.
“Your father wants you to know that he’s watching over your son,” John said. “And that when it’s time for your son to cross over, he will take care of him.”
Bill tried to respond, but he was too choked up to talk.
“I needed to pass this information along from Bill’s father,” John explained to us, “before we did anything else.”
We all got it. Except for John, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
* * *
It took Bill, me, and Dave a few minutes to compose ourselves.
Once we did, John picked up the passport from the table and began again. The information came like a torrential downpour.
“This guy has a ‘J’ name, like John or James. I think it’s James or Jimmy. Whatever this is, he was in charge. A very powerful guy. I’m getting a John Gotti feeling, like a powerful gang or mob family. But whoever this is, he’s not Italian.”
We all nodded. John looked at Bill and Dave with the same expression of discomfort he had earlier.
“Look. I don’t know you guys. And I don’t mean any disrespect. I know Bob, and I trust Bob. And I know he wouldn’t bring you to me if he didn’t trust you. But I’m going to tell you right now, there’s a dirty cop in your organization who has something to do with whatever this is. Someone who…”
John thought for a moment.
“… helped this James get away. He tipped him off. But this was not a one-time incident. There was a relationship between the FBI guy and this James for years.”
Bill and Dave both nodded vigorously.
“And there was money back and forth. This guy James was working the FBI guy.”
John put down the passport and picked up the watch.
“Who died by suicide recently? Like, a week or two ago?”
Bill looked surprised.
“Someone involved in this case, close to James, killed himself two weeks ago.”
John paused again.
“This guy James is a sociopath,” he stated, as fact.
“He has no empathy for anyone. And the crazy thing is … in the same way that some people thought of John Gotti as a hero and loved him even though he was a cold-blooded killer—this guy James is like that. People idolize him, even though he’s killed people. John Gotti used to throw block parties with fireworks and people loved him. But they were also afraid of him and his extreme power and control. This guy is the same. But I feel like you guys already know all this and I’m not telling you anything new, right?”
“Right,” they both said.
“The dirty agent,” John said. “You guys know who he is. He’s a ‘John’ too. He’s already in jail.”
“Yes,” they said.
“But…”
John looked directly at Bill.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” Bill said.
“I know you’re all FBI agents, but I feel like Bob and Dave are the same and you’re different, you’re higher up. Three or four levels up.”
“Yes. I’m a special agent in charge, so I am in charge of an office.”
“But you answer to somebody above you, like a headquarters?”
“That’s right.”
Pause.
“I don’t know if it’s your boss,” said John, “but there’s a person above you. Whatever the next level is. One person at that level, maybe two, they don’t want this guy James found.”
I noticed John only called Bulger by his true name, “James”—never by “Whitey.”
“Because when he’s found,” John continued, “he’ll have a book with all sorts of names and notes, going back years. So, when you catch him, he’ll have this dossier…”
Bill and Dave sat up on the couch. The energy in the room doubled.
“So, we’re going to catch him?” asked Dave, revved up.
“Yep. Absolutely,” John said, matter-of-factly. “You’re going to get him.”
“When?” asked Bill. They were both on the edge of the couch.
“I’m bad with time,” said John. “So, I can’t say. But there’s no doubt you’re going to catch him.”
