The Infiltrator, page 33
They hadn’t recognized their own father.
The next day, Commissioner von Raab summoned all Tampa personnel to his hotel suite shortly before appearing at an international press conference. NBC, CBS, ABC, and foreign news companies were buzzing everywhere. One of a few people I’ve met who is shorter than me, von Raab had an ego that filled the room and sat in a dining chair with his feet propped up on the table.
He thanked us for a job well done and then asked me, “What new things did you learn from dealing with these people undercover?”
“Well, sir, I can tell you that Europe better brace itself for a massive influx of cocaine. The cartel enjoys twice the profit selling their merchandise there, and they are gearing up to take advantage of that.”
Before the meeting broke, someone asked if I knew where the wedding gifts were.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I’ve been sleeping for the past two days. I haven’t been in the office.”
At the press conference, von Raab revealed that the Medellín cartel had targeted Europe as its new frontier.
At the start of my undercover assignment, eighteen agents worked the Tampa office, but that number had swelled to more than sixty. There were many I didn’t know, and those I did all had trouble recognizing me. A little light investigation revealed that most of the evidence I had passed to my handlers during the operation was sitting idly in file-cabinet drawers. Tapes lay uncopied and untranscribed. The handful of agents in the Tampa office assigned to the case had worked endless hours, sometimes around the clock. But there was just too much to do.
First on my list of office duties was tracking down Dominic’s cross. It hadn’t surfaced on any of the paperwork I had seen, which worried me. Who was going to approve a $25,000 payment to cover that loss? I called L.A. for an inventory of items seized from Alcaíno’s Pasadena home. No cross. But there was an entry for a small paisley-patterned jewelry box found in a nightstand beside his bed. That had to be it.
“I hate to bother you,” I said to the L.A. seizure clerk, “but can you pull an item from the Alcaíno seizure? It’s listed as a small jewelry box with a paisley pattern. Would you please look inside that box and tell me what’s in it?”
“Okay, pal, hold on…. That’s strange. There’s a diamond-studded cross in that box. Somebody screwed up. It should have been listed on the inventory. We should be able to get a pretty penny for this. It looks like the real deal.”
I explained the story, faxed him a copy of the agreement with Dominic, and got the cross back.
“Here it is,” I said, handing it back to him at his club early one night. “Thanks for everything. I hate to bug you with formalities, but here’s a receipt. The office would like signed proof that you got the cross back.”
“No problem,” he said, signing. “I’m glad I could help. I told you, I know you went to bat for me. I’ll never forget that. Thanks to you, I get to play with my kids instead of having my ass rot in jail. From what I see on TV, you really knocked down some big pins. I’m sure your star must be rising.”
“I doubt my star will go anywhere. That’s not what makes my clock tick; you know that. We’re going to be in for the fight of our lives. These guys and this bank have all the money in the world. They’ll roll out the highest-priced lawyers money can buy. I’m going to be tied up for a while on this thing, but if you ever need anything, call. What you and Frankie did for us in this operation made the difference. I really appreciate it.”
A few days later, I pulled up to the high-rise that shared the Tampa Customs office along with other private companies. Fire trucks and squad cars had blocked the street.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked a few guys from the office.
“They found a bomb in the stairwell on our floor. The Tampa P.D. bomb squad is working on it now.”
They were coming. Whether it was a prank or a warning didn’t matter. I could feel it. Escobar was bombing the hell out of his competition. Cops and innocent people were dropping like flies in Colombia. And he was exporting terror just as he had been exporting narcotics.
I slept fitfully that night. The next morning, my daughter was riding her bike in the front yard when a white-paneled van rolled down our block. The panel door slowly rolled open to reveal the muzzle of a gun. I ran out of the house screaming “No! No!” A hooded gunman opened fire as I dived on her and —
I jolted bolt upright in bed in a pool of sweat. It was only a dream. My heart was pounding. It had seemed so real. It was only a dream.
Come on, Mazur, pull yourself together.
Even with the help of a dozen transcribers, it would take more than a year to transcribe the tapes and proof the transcripts. While I was struggling with that Herculean task, dozens of news trucks and investigative reporters thronged the city, attending every hearing and digging for clues about the global effects of our operation. Their number one question: Who was Robert Musella? — a secret we intended to keep for months.
Then my phone rang.
“Bob, something strange just happened that you need to know,” said IRS Special Agent Dave Burris, who was coordinating his office with ours. “One of the guys in our office just did something stupid. He was on the phone with a defense attorney in town who asked him who played the Musella undercover role. This idiot told him it was you. We’re stunned. He’s been sent home; our bosses want him fired. I can’t apologize enough. I know you and Ev are already under a ton of pressure. I can’t undo what this jerk did. If there’s anything I can do to help you deal with this, just tell me. I’ll do it.”
“This is terrible,” I said as my mind reeled. “This coming on the heels of the bomb threat is not good, and the last thing my wife and kids need is a street full of news trucks and reporters. That will lead to a story that will let the cartel and the bank know exactly where they can find the government’s primary witness…. I’ve got to get ahead of this curve fast and relocate my family. I’m going to come up with a plan and see if I can get my office to support it. Thanks for calling me right away.”
“This is what I’d like to do,” I told Tony Weda, head of the Customs undercover unit in D.C. “You gave me the green light months ago to start building another fake ID, just in case there were threats after the operation went down. I’ve put that whole ID in place. I have a driver’s license, birth certificate, bank accounts, credit cards, everything I need. I want to put all our belongings in storage, put the house up for sale, and get my family into a rental. I wanted to discuss this with you first because I’m going to need support here in Tampa. I’m not very popular in the front office.”
“I’m with you,” he said. “After you speak with Steve Cook, have him call me.”
Time for another family meeting. Ev was so pissed, the IRS should have put a security detail on the agent who revealed my identity. When the anger subsided, we all agreed that we had no choice.
In three days, we packed up and put everything in storage. We gave power of attorney to a lawyer and put the house up for sale. We moved into a hotel for two days before flying to Eleuthera in the Bahamas — no phones, no TV, just sorely needed family time.
A week later we moved in with a relative for two weeks while the other pieces of the security plan fell into place. The superintendent of schools sealed the kids’ records and briefed the deputy sheriffs assigned to each school. At the school where Ev taught, custodians locked all perimeter doors every day after students arrived, and the administration sealed all her personnel records.
With the new identity, I rented a house with a good security system in another county. We slashed back contact with family and friends, and used only a cell phone when we did. A friend in the auto business gave us a dealer tag for our car. That was about all we could do.
We couldn’t totally uproot and hide. I wanted to increase my family’s security, not terrify them. In the course of cutting the paper trail to us, I discovered another Robert Mazur in our town listed in the phone book. The office informed him of the problems that unfortunate coincidence might bring to his doorstep.
It took almost a month to arrange everything comfortably. Just when the situation had finally calmed down, a familiar face came my way. It was Al Henley, a Tampa DEA agent working with us on the operation. But Al wasn’t wearing his usual smile. He looked concerned.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said. “I just finished debriefing Joaquín Casals. Last night, he overheard Armbrecht and a few other defendants talking. They claim there’s a hit squad that’s been dispatched from Colombia, through Mexico, with the sole purpose of coming here to take you out. It was said that these guys are being paid $500,000 to get the job done. Now this may be a coincidence and unrelated, but an intercept by NSA recently picked up some chatter out of Medellín from the phone of a very high-ranking cartel member. NSA’s intercept suggests there’s a hit squad being sent from Colombia, through Mexico, to take out unknown government officials. I don’t know what to say, but I wanted to come to you immediately so you could do whatever you think you should to deal with this.”
“I know this is going to sound strange, but I was almost expecting this,” I said. But I never expected what came next.
21
BATTLES
* * *
U.S. Customs, Tampa, Florida
November 18, 1988
HENLEY GAVE TISCHLER THE NEWS.
An hour later, she called me. “Mazur, I just spoke with Al Henley. I understand he already told you about the threat. We’re going to assign some agents to guard you until we can assess it. Steve Cook will get with you on the details. I just want you to know that we’re going to treat this very seriously, and we’ll do whatever is necessary to ensure your safety and the safety of the other undercover agents.”
I agreed. The less said to Tischler the better.
“Tischler is on the warpath with DEA,” Cook said when he saw me. “She’s upset that they told you about the threat before going to her. She decided that we’re going to put a heavily armed four-man protection detail on you around the clock. We’ll use two four-man teams; each will pull a twelve-hour shift.”
“Are you serious?” I said, astonished.
“This is what she wants. On top of that, she’s ordering a protection detail for herself.”
Of course she was.
“Don’t I have any say in this?” I said. “This doesn’t make any sense. You and I both know that we don’t have the resources to do this for very long. So the only thing this protection team is going to accomplish is scaring the shit out of my family by having guys lugging machine guns around, in, and outside our home. Then, four weeks from now, when some idiot says they’ve assessed the threat and can’t confirm or refute it, the detail will be dropped. There’s no way in hell that I’m going along with this. I’ve spent half a year putting a new phony ID in place that enabled us to make it very hard for anyone to find us. On paper, Robert Mazur stopped existing in commercial databases. I’m responsible for my and my family’s security, and I’m telling you right now I’ve got that covered as well as it can be addressed. I’m not going to allow my children to be emotionally scarred. I refuse the protection detail.”
“Mazur, I don’t think you have a choice,” Cook said, eyebrows raised.
“Oh, really, Steve? I know a way that I have a choice.” I pulled off the ankle holster holding my Smith & Wesson .38 Special and laid it on the desk along with my badge. “If you’re telling me that I have no choice in this matter because I’m a federal agent employed by this office, then I quit. Now I’m a civilian, and this office can’t make me do shit.”
“Come on, you know you don’t want to do that. Take your stuff back. If you feel that strongly about it, write up a memo making your points, and I’ll take it to her to see what we can work out.”
“I don’t want to screw this case up by quitting before these trials are over,” I said. “You’ll have the memo in an hour.”
Ev agreed completely — a protection detail was the last thing we needed. But that didn’t stop Tischler from trying to convince her otherwise.
“Hi, Evelyn, this is Bonni Tischler, the special agent in charge in Tampa. How are you?”
“Fine, Bonni. What can I do for you?”
“I assume Bob has told you about the threat we identified against him. In light of that, I think it’s important for you and him to accept the protection detail we’ve arranged. I suggest you talk to him and have him reconsider his position. We have to take this very seriously.”
“Bob and I have already discussed this, and there is no way Customs is going to continue to traumatize my children. Throughout Bob’s career and especially during the past two years, I have worked really hard to give my kids as normal a life as possible. This is the first call I’ve received from anyone at Customs since this case started. The kids and I have been treated like nonentities for the past two years, and now you want to help. Where were you six months ago, a month ago? Not here, not calling to see how we were or if we needed anything. No one called. So neither you nor anyone else is going to tell me how to manage the lives of my children.”
“Well, if Bob is not going to follow my orders,” Tischler persisted, “he may not be able to continue to work in this office. For his safety, I will have to transfer him to Washington or maybe Pembina, North Dakota.”
“Oh, please.” Ev laughed furiously. “You don’t care about his safety. You can threaten a transfer all you want, but you can’t do anything to harm us. We’ve been through hell and back. We don’t need this Customs job. We’ll be just fine without it. Our mission at this point is to put our family back together. We won’t move to Washington, Pembina, or anywhere else. It’s not going to happen. We’ll decide what’s best for us. Customs will have no role in any decisions we make about our family. There’s no need to discuss this any further. Good-bye.”
Assistant Regional Commissioner Leon Guinn — who had supported our undercover operation since the beginning — approved my memo declining the protection detail. But that didn’t resolve the underlying issue. I had a lawyer draw up a last will and testament.
The slightest irregularities automatically triggered my defense mechanisms. Late one night, while I was working on transcripts in the dining room, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” said a strange male voice. “How are you?”
“Okay.”
“Are you a compromising kind of guy?”
“Who is this?”
“Oh, you don’t know?” and then he hung up, sending my mind spiraling into what-ifs. But the voice never called back.
Another night, after picking up my son from a sporting event, I noticed a truck parked 150 yards away from our front door, on the other side of a wooded pond, pointed in our direction. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat.
Ev killed all the lights in the house while I pulled out my binoculars, which, through the blinds, revealed a man with his own pair of binoculars trained on our house.
“I’m going out the back,” I said. “You guys lock the door behind me, and don’t open any door for anyone. I have a key. Just stay in the kitchen with the lights out.”
Ev and the kids understandably freaked out as I told them not to worry and grabbed my badge and my Colt .357 Magnum.
I worked my way down the street, out of sight, staying low, through the woods behind the truck. Its windows were down, the engine off, and a burly guy was sitting in the driver’s seat staring at our house.
He jumped as I popped up on the passenger side holding my badge out in one hand and my .357 in the other, shouting, “I’m a police officer. Put your hands on the wheel so I can see them. Who are you and what are you doing here?”
He grabbed the wheel, stuttering, “I-I-I’m just w-watching w-wildlife. There’s three alligators that l-live in that pond. I swear — I’m just studying what they do at night. I live close by, just across the county line, five miles from here.”
“We’ve had some burglaries in this area, and you got me and some other folks in this neighborhood nervous.”
I wrote his tag number down and walked back to the house, where I reassured my family. “It was nothing. That was just a nice guy watching alligators in the pond. I’m sorry I overreacted. Let’s have dinner. Everything is fine. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”
The next day, the tags checked out — and I’d been one second away from blowing away an innocent man. If he had made a stupid move, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
What the hell was I thinking?
Meanwhile, at the office, while my fellow agents and I put in long days transcribing tapes, I constantly had to submit lengthy affidavits to be filed in London to extradite Chinoy and to prosecute Akbar and Baakza. And I was preparing to testify in the Detroit trial of the Giraldo brothers and the New York trial of Pedro Charria.
As if that wasn’t enough, internal audits were questioning the expenditure of every last dollar on C-Chase. Putting in fourteen-hour workdays seven days a week left me averaging four or five hours of sleep a night. And agents on the case kept getting reassigned to other duties at a time when we needed a dozen more agents to work with us. We lobbied for more people to comb through the truckloads of records seized from BCCI and Capcom. We needed to uncover the banks’ relationships with other drug dealers. Instead, we dwindled to a skeleton crew, despite repeated pleas from Cook, me, and every overworked agent on the operation. Recurring memos to the front office detailing tasks still undone and resources needed changed nothing.
I was starting to come unglued. At a self-serve, automatic car wash before a meeting, I rolled down my window and plopped coins into the machine. I pulled forward and put the car in park as the equipment made its way toward the car. My mind was a thousand miles away, contemplating the trial in Tampa, when a wave of water and soap deluged me. I’d forgotten to roll up the window, and now there was a two-inch puddle of water in my lap and on the seat. I was a mess.
