Houston Intercontinental Airport to Washington D.C.
April 2011
Despite the collegial and almost conciliatory approach by the CIA’s representative in Managua on the eve of my departure, I still expected to be harassed by U.S. government officials upon my arrival at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. I wasn’t disappointed.
The arrivals hall was virtually empty, and I walked leisurely past the overweight security guards armed with clipboards and dressed in blue blazers and polyester slacks. They instructed me to proceed to a passport control booth where an unsmiling, plump Hispanic woman with a pock-marked face sat menacingly.
“Where are you arriving from?” she asked with a heavy Spanish accent. Her officious tone didn’t quite qualify as rude, but it was far from welcoming.
“Nicaragua,” I responded in a neutral tone.
“What were you doing there?” the agent asked.
“Working on a story. I’m a journalist.” Normally, I would have claimed I was there as a tourist to avoid further questions, but I expected some red flags to appear on the agent’s computer screen, and I thought I could avoid at least some suspicious questioning if I confessed to my sins up front. No telling what the computer would show.
She took my documents and swiped my passport, waiting for the computer’s response. “A journalist?” she asked. “What’s there to report about Nicaragua these days?”
“You’d be surprised,” I responded with a good-natured laugh.
Her answering smile disappeared slowly as she read the message that appeared on her screen. She looked puzzled and kept glancing up at me with a perplexed expression. I waited for the inevitable.
“One moment, please,” she mumbled. She picked up the telephone, dialed an internal extension and gave her booth number. “Please step to the side,” she instructed suspiciously and added, “Someone will be with you in a moment.” She called the next passenger in line, and I stood there awkwardly, waiting for my escort to arrive and take me to secondary screening.
This wasn’t the first time I had been selected for additional questioning at passport control based on a security warning in the computer data base. I wasn’t surprised, and I wasn’t particularly upset. I recognized that this was a weapon the government used for intimidation purposes in the hope that the ‘offending’ party would panic and do something stupid. They were usually fishing. In my case, I knew they were after my Sloane manuscript or any notes I had taken in Nicaragua. They were probably also looking for some payback over the San Jorge hotel incident. They were going to be disappointed, and this interview would only offer me more material for my project. I almost looked forward to the encounter.
I was left to cool my heels for about fifteen minutes before two armed Department of Homeland Security officials made their appearance and escorted me to a secondary screening room. They offered me an uncomfortable plastic chair to sit in while I waited another twenty minutes before the principals made their appearance. I knew the long wait was calculated to increase my nervousness and anxiety. I had been through it too many times, though, and found it more amusing than intimidating. I had plenty of time till my onward flight left for Dulles Airport in Washington, and I was in no hurry.
Two nondescript bureaucrats with bad haircuts and wearing cheap, ill-fitting suits finally arrived, and I assumed by their appearance and demeanor that they were Homeland Security or airport officials merely following the instruction protocol the computer had generated. Judging from their questions, they obviously had not been briefed on my specific case and were only there to administer a little perfunctory harassment at the request of higher authorities. They did search my bags thoroughly and seemed genuinely disappointed that I did not have any written notes with me or travel with a laptop computer. After the contents of my travel bag had been haphazardly replaced, I was dismissed abruptly and led back to join the stream of international passengers riding the escalator down to the baggage claim area. Jesus, the Nicaraguans were more professional than these guys. I wasn’t sure why they even bothered.
My connecting flight to D.C. was on time, and by early evening I was back in my Capitol Hill condo, gathering my thoughts and impressions from my meetings with Ortega and company. I spent several days writing, editing, and making long lists of questions that remained to be answered. Top on my list was something Laura had raised at the Camino Real bar in Managua and that had haunted me ever since. She had hinted that there was some information concerning Mako Sloane that was so sensitive that its revelation could put people’s lives at risk. I interpreted her additional comment about this information possibly causing armed conflict as hyperbole, but she had me wondering what that could possibly be. What I had discovered in Nicaragua was astonishing enough, but I didn’t think it rose to the level of the sinister implications Laura had alluded to. I thought back to Sean O’Keefe’s recollections of a drunk Mako Sloane in prison speculating about the reasons for his arrest. Could there be anything to that? A KGB clone project, O’Keefe had mentioned. What the hell was that about?
As I rummaged through my travel bag, looking for the faded photograph of Sloane and Yeltsin that Marbelly had lent me, I came across Laura’s business card with a name and phone number jotted on the back; ‘Drake Herrin’ followed by a cell number with a Northern Virginia exchange. I was adrift in my research and needed some direction. Why not? I decided to call Laura’s uncle. I knew Drake Herrin by reputation, of course. What student of the Cold War and the CIA didn’t?
I reached Herrin after a couple of attempts, and he seemed quite receptive to my invitation to get together. I realized Laura must have let him know I might call. His only surprise, he said, was that I hadn’t called earlier. I imagined the loneliness and solitude of a retired intelligence officer unable to regale his grandchildren or neighbors with tales of forgotten glory because of security considerations. There were regulations against excessive candor, and they were stringently, albeit selectively, enforced.
Herrin gave the name of a well-known bar on Pennsylvania Avenue behind the capitol and suggested I meet him there in fifteen minutes. He was in the neighborhood, he claimed, but didn’t have much time. I suspected the timing was a security precaution since it would be almost impossible to organize surveillance to cover the meeting that quickly, even if the telephone conversation had been monitored live. I was seated at the bar when an elderly, but spry gentlemen with shoulder-length white hair, dressed in a tweed sports coat and wearing a navy blue and white polka-dotted bow tie, strolled nonchalantly toward me. Herrin had said he would know me, and I had the good sense not to show any overt signs of recognition. The old man approached, stood at the bar next to me, and ordered an Old Pulteney scotch on the rocks: a double. As he walked away with his drink, I happened to notice he had left a note scribbled on a paper napkin. I picked up the napkin and read, ‘Dumbarton Oaks Mansion, 1830.’ I thought it strange that the old operations officer would be playing his clandestine games here on Capitol Hill but decided to play along in case he knew something I didn’t. Occasionally that happened.
I had some time to kill and sipped my ice-cold Blue Moon slowly after removing the orange slice and laying it on the napkin beside the mug. The juice from the orange slice seeped through the napkin and smeared the writing on Herrin’s note. My cell phone rang.
“Hola, buenas tardes, Max. This is Laura in Managua. Listen carefully. Drive by the entrance to the mansion at exactly 6:30 and circle the block. If you’re clean, Drake will call me, and I’ll let you know it’s okay to pick him up. If you have a tail, I’ll let you know that too, and then you’ll need to drive straight home. I look forward to seeing you next week by the way.” A click, and that was the end of the conversation. I hadn’t said a word.
This was getting a bit more involved than I had anticipated, and I wondered what was behind it all. Of course, I knew the agency probably still had its eye on me, but this level of security seemed extreme to me.
At 6:30 sharp I was cruising down 32nd street heading south past the19th century mansion according to my instructions from Laura. Two blocks down the street my phone rang again, and Laura said, “Looks good, go pick him up.”
Forty-five minutes later, Herrin and I were sitting at a private table in a Northern Virginia Lebanese restaurant that obviously hadn’t gained much favor among the local populace. Drake hadn’t been satisfied with his counter surveillance in front of the Dumbarton Oaks mansion and directed me on an intricate route apparently designed to flush out any overly curious federal employees, and we gradually made our way, first across the Key Bridge, and then into rural Fairfax County. Although confident that nobody had been following us, Herrin nonetheless sat facing the entrance to the restaurant, scrutinizing carefully the few local aficionados of Lebanese cuisine who came in for dinner and the cars passing by out on the street.
“Mr. Crandall, I’ve always been an admirer of your work. I especially enjoyed your series in Newsweek on the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. You do your research. It’s a rarity in this day and age. I like that.”
Drake Herrin was a character, to put it mildly. He affected an idiosyncratic accent that was a combination of a mid-Atlantic upper class accent and a Southern drawl. His long, unkempt white hair hid a small gold earring worn in his left ear, an incongruous adornment which, as it soon became clear, was just one of numerous indications that an eccentric personality was losing his grip.
I could see many traces of the old Drake Herrin in the elderly gentleman who sat across the table from me. The fabled accent, his eruditeness, and encyclopedic knowledge of world affairs and history made me wish I had been able to meet this impressive man in his prime. At 75, his mind was still sharp and incisive. As our conversation progressed, though, I became more and more aware that something had happened to Drake Herrin along the way and that he had become paranoid and even delusional about the CIA’s continued interest and surveillance of him, despite the fact that he had retired from the agency almost eight years ago. He made vague references to secrets he wanted to forget and decisions he regretted deeply. Herrin was eloquent but too subtle by half. I was left guessing at the reality that might lie behind his allusions to decades-old clandestine missions and government policies that sacrificed men and women, who for one reason or another became inconvenient to the powers-that-be.
“Laura told me you met Daniel Ortega,” Herrin suddenly ventured. “Is he still surfing?”
“You know about that?” I asked, my curiosity suddenly piqued.
“Just from the stories Sloane used to tell. Never had the pleasure of meeting the man myself. He ought to stick with surfing. Can’t run a country worth a damn.”
I glanced down at Drake’s hands and couldn’t help but notice that the tips of his fingers were stained a dark brown. I wouldn’t have given it any thought except for his mention of Daniel Ortega. Surely, Herrin hadn’t resorted to the ‘chronic’ to ease his conscience over a career spent in the clandestine service. Maybe he had been closer to Sloane than even Laura thought. His fingers looked exactly like Ortega’s, and I knew what that discoloration was from.
“I understand from Laura that Mako Sloane was your protégé of sorts.” I decided to take the bull by the horns in the hope that a little candor on my part would elicit the same from Herrin.
“Mr. Crandall, today’s younger operations officers sometimes lose sight of why we must strictly adhere to the ‘need to know principle,’ but, yes, I did indeed know Mako. Quite well, in fact.”
Herrin had been putting down his glass of scotch when I mentioned Mako Sloane’s name, and I thought I detected a slight trembling in his hand. He put the glass on the table and placed one hand over the over, perhaps to hide his tremulous hands.
“Laura tells me you’ve been researching material for his biography…an unauthorized one at that.” Herrin’s slightly British intonation, affected though it may have been, stressed the word ‘unauthorized,’ and he looked at me severely.
“Well, Mr. Herrin, I’ve never understood the use of the word, ‘unauthorized’ in reference to a biography, especially if we, as Americans, have any pretenses of believing in freedom of the press. But, if you are asking whether I’ve contacted Mako Sloane to obtain his permission to write a biography or to obtain his comment on some of the material I’ve come up with; well, you know what the answer to that is.”
“Freedom of the press is one thing, Max, if I may call you that, and self-preservation and common sense are another.” Herrin’s hands were now shaking so noticeably that he left his scotch on the rocks untouched and kept his hands on the table in front of him as if praying.
Herrin wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know already, but he should have known better than to phrase his warning in those terms to a journalist; especially if he really wanted him to drop the story. It had the opposite effect, of course. However, I did realize the main story line in the Mako Sloane biography was eluding me, but I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
“Mr. Herrin, I came across a curious photograph while in Nicaragua. I wonder if you could comment on it.” I carefully took out Marbelly’s snapshot of Mako Sloane with Boris Yeltsin and showed it to Drake Herrin.
Herrin took the photograph in his trembling hands, no longer attempting to conceal either his affliction or the effect the conversation was having on him.
“So this is Vasiliy...couldn’t have been more than five years old….” his voice trailed off as he continued to stare at the photo with the tattered edges taken over thirty years ago. “And this must be Nastya. My God, she was beautiful.” Herrin spoke under his breath and stared at the photograph as if I weren’t sitting across the table from him. A smile appeared on the elderly gentleman’s face that was incongruous with the impossibly sad expression on his face.
“What was the connection between Mako Sloane and Boris Yeltsin?” I asked bluntly. “Unless I’m mistaken, that’s who’s in the background of the photo.”
“Where did you get this?” asked Drake Herrin, utterly ignoring my question.
“His Nicaraguan daughter gave it to me.” I responded, studying Herrin’s face intently.
“Marbelly, you mean,” said Herrin after a poignant pause and looked at me piercingly. “You’re even better than I thought, Mr. Crandall.”