West of Laredo by Tom Armbruster (epub e reader txt) 📕

WEST OF LAREDO


In sizing her up I see a young, athletic, professionally dressed woman. I always wait a beat for the smile to fade, the veneer to flicker, even momentarily. It's a pivotal moment, the subject usually wondering how much I know. This time, I might have expected defiance, anger, fear. Any number of emotions. She looks right at me. No blink. No theatrics. She is in command of herself. Confident. A Foreign Service Officer. Then there is the flicker of an emotion. A slight look downward, saying to herself perhaps, 'did it really come to this?' But then she looks up, a little more determined. Ready for a hostile interview. Good. Game on.


As Diplomatic Security Chief I've ended many careers. Sometimes the file is just too heavy. I know going in that the officer will have to go. Sometimes the officer comes in looking condemned and finished right off the bat. The end then is just a negotiation of terms. Both of us know the offense is unpardonable or indefensible and the lamb goes off to slaughter. The officer with the homemade DVD labeled "My Sex Adventures in Africa." Not really a tough call. He had to go. Especially since the adventures were in exchange for special considerations on the visa line. That sort of 'tit-for-tat' is not allowed.


Sometimes the officer is too damn good to let go. Lee Penny is a junior officer. Not too much invested by the Department. She doesn't appear to have any "lifelines." No Congressman willing to go to bat, no press to complicate decisions, and the State Department's Western Hemisphere Deputy Assistant Secretary wouldn't touch the case. Three life lines gone. I can make the decision without political constraint. Good.


So I don't go there. I don't ask about congressional contacts or press articles. I say, "Tell me what happened in the car, that night at the Prosecutor's Office." In reviewing tapes of prior hostile interviews, I know at this point I'm showing no emotion. Not good cop. Not bad cop. Just Trey Samuelson, DS Agent. I watch Lee Penny try to draw a connection between that night and today's proceedings. This could be her last official meeting of her short career. That night was when she learned diplomatic immunity wasn't necessarily enough to keep you alive.


I raise my eyebrow, Spock-style, waiting. The building air conditioning clicks on and Lee probably feels a breeze of our stale Rosslyn, Virginia office air. Then the connection between the hostage situation and me clicks.


"You must have been in the Ops Center when they spun up the anti-terror response team." Lee says.


"Yes, I was. We were ready to launch a rescue team from San Antonio. You were in the company of some pretty serious narcos. Tell me what happened."


Lee takes a breath.


Look, I know risk. I don't do plea bargains, I'm not a prosecutor or a defender. Lee Penny has to convince me that the risk of her doing national security damage by staying in the State Department is zero. Zero. Period.


I think the answer will come in Lee's story about a midnight hostage situation in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the river from Laredo, Texas. If the risk is zero, Penny continues her diplomatic career. Off to Zimbabwe, or Rome, or Kabul, or wherever the hell they send her. If it's over zero, her State Department file will get one page thicker and I'll close it forever. End of career, end of story. I figure it can go either way.


*2*


Lee Penny decides gardeners are the happiest people in the world. Flores and Mores, pronounced the Spanish way, is the perfect TexMex name for the gardening company that sends a man every Saturday. Every Saturday, Lee comes downstairs across the patio with the cool adobe tiles on her bare feet and into the bright sunlight with a cafecito, a bowl of fruit, and an empty glass vase. Isola, the gardener, stops working with a smile and lets Lee Penny practice her Spanish. Isola is over 60, slow moving, a bit heavy, always sweating, and always smiling.


Lee smiles back at him. "Estoy acqui un poco temprano hoy, porque tengo que irme al Piedras Negras por la tarde. Tenemos un nuevo Americano en el carcel. Un caso feo." Penny is indeed up earlier than usual. Ready to go to Piedras Negras, Mexico four hours north of Nuevo Laredo across the desert. Another American is in jail after another Friday night on the border. An ugly case.


She received the call at 2 something a.m., woke up fully alert as she had trained herself to do, and determined since the American was already safely in jail that it could wait until morning. Her brown labrador "J.O." looked at her with the question in his eyes, are we going out? Now? And rolled over on his side when Lee's body language didn't signal a move. J.O. was asleep within minutes, snoring a labrador snore. Penny would remain spun up for another two hours, that's the downside of the instant wake-up training.


Penny offers Isola his cafecito but she is thinking about last night's call. An American was picked up in "Boys Town" and then was loud and abusive to cellmates in prison. "Boys Town" or "Disneyland" is slang for the whorehouses and bars just outside of Piedras Negras. Americans get in fights there, die of overdoses, and get arrested for all manner of crimes if they don't abide by the rules of "Boys Town." Lee had a couple of options, even at two something in the morning. Ride out there and get to the prison at seven a.m. or so. Dangerous to drive on the border that late at night and the American would likely be sober by morning. Or, send the leader of the U.S. Consulate's visa outreach team to the prison first thing in the morning. The team had adjudicated hundreds of visa cases the day before and they would be heading home at first light. She considered that. But decided they earned their sleep and their weekend. As the American Citizen Services Officer, Lee takes pride in knowing all her American citizen prisoner cases personally. She eventually followed J.O. to sleep and looked forward to meeting her new charge about midday.


Isola takes a sip of the coffee. He's been rambling on but Lee is thinking about her drive north. Isola talks about the flowers, which attract hummingbirds, which need more sun, which she might find in Havana, her next post a year away.


That is, if she is tenured into the Foreign Service. This is the make or break year for Vice Consul Lee Penny. Up or out. The Foreign Service is a demanding profession, it's harder to get into than Harvard and no one gets to be Ambassador by accident. At least none of the career Ambassadors. The car salesmen/political contributors are another story. For career officers the competition starts early and never quits. Lee will find out this year where she stands in the pecking order. In the Consulate pecking order now she is number 10 out of 10 Foreign Service Americans, the most junior. But she still supervises a retired FSO and four of the local hire visa officers, Miguel, Jose, Adan, and Isabela. They are Texans on contract with the State Department. They are the guys up in Piedras Negras.


"Bueno." Isola sees that Lee is somewhere else mentally so he sets his coffee down and heads back to work.

"Oh, can you bring a birdbath next week Isola?" Lee asks, switching to English since she couldn't figure out 'birdbath' in Spanish. "I'll pay you then if you find one for say, under $25 dollars." A tiny furrow crosses Isola's face.

"Ay, no es posible la proxima semana, mi cunado viene por mi. Yo tengo otras cosas."

"Isola. No es justo. No es humano." Lee teases Isola that his leaving is unjust and inhumane. He actually looks pained so she stops. Gives him a pat on the shoulder and says, "Hasta la proxima." Isola puts a fresh flower in the vase. Lee carries it upstairs into her apartment, grabs a litre of water from the fridge and walks quickly with J.O. to the Suburban.


Lee takes J.O. on most prison visits on the weekends. Mexican prisons are like that. There are always chickens, children, women with babies. People come in and out with the Director's OK. Painting and woodworking are popular pasttimes. For some reason, the cartoon Tweety Bird is a favorite subject of paintings and pinatas. Lee thinks Tweety is a Mexican god. Baseball and volleyball are also popular. There is none of the sterility of American prisons, and none of the security either, given the frequency with which Mexican drug lords "escape." Usually money or threats are exchanged and they walk out. Lee has dealt with six prison directors in three prisons in her one year in the Foreign Service at the U.S. Consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. One was killed on his first day. Two resigned. One is missing and two were fired.


As the Consulate's American Citizens Services officer, her job is to be an advocate for the Americans who get in trouble. Usually they just go too far in "Boys Town" or "Disneyland" or any of the countless other hangouts for drugs, women, and alcohol on the border. American women get in trouble too. She has a couple of women smugglers who traffic in people in the Nuevo Laredo carcel or prison. Aside from that, she gets alerts from the Secret Service whenever the Texas Governor's daughters cross into Mexico to party.


About an hour from Piedras Lee stops for J.O. They pull over at one of the