April Smith: Judas Horse

There is always a double cross.

How far would the Bureau go?

In the car, my teeth are chattering with cold. We turn down a short road and past a restaurant. The restaurant is closed, but as we swing around, I see it is adjacent to a private airfield. If you sat on the patio, you could watch the planes. They look thin and flimsy, like scraps of paper.

The tower is lighted. A small jet waits on the tarmac, engines running. The door is open and the stairs are down.

“It’s best if you leave the country,” Donnato says.

I reel out of the car. The air is freezing and my shoulder is stiff. The sky has dropped to deep and final lavender.

“It’s waiting for you,” he says. “Go on.”

“Go on? To where?”

“I have no need to know.”

“You have no need? You can’t just dump me here.”

“Ana, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“What’s hard ? Knowing nothing? Leaving everything? The Bureau,” I whisper, almost ashamed. “The Bureau is my family.” He grips my arms. “I wouldn’t have been able to bring you here without cooperation on the highest level. From Galloway,” he adds, relenting. “Do you understand?” “Come with me,” I say desperately. “You once said you loved me.”

“I love you completely.”

“I love you, too.” I hold on to him. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.” “You’ll be flying into a private airport where there will be no customs. No questions asked.” “How is that possible?”

“Sara Campbell’s parents sent a private plane to pick her up. The mercenary, Sterling McCord, is bound to deliver her back into their hands. He was kind enough to say he would help get you out of the country.” I pull away and look into his eyes.

“Mike, he wasn’t just being kind.”

Donnato says, “I know.”

“What are you doing, baby?”

I search his face. The face I’ve loved and relied on every day of my life in the Bureau.

And then there is no hope for it. We kiss, just once, but so much so that when we stop and I open my eyes, everything — the airfield, the plane, the silhouettes of trees so full of life — looks washed with blue, as if the retina screens in the backs of my eyes have gone out of whack and I can no longer reliably describe the world.

My partner says, “You have to go.”

We grip each other until he releases me and walks to the Bu-car and does not look back.

I move numbly toward the plane. Sterling McCord is waiting at the stairway. A uniformed steward hesitates in the lighted door.

“You have a real good friend. He always will be.”

I have no answer but the ache in my heart.

“Sara’s inside. We better take off before she does. Would you like a hand?” he asks, and offers his.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll know when we get there,” he says, and guides me up the metal steps.

I follow, like a blind horse being led out of the flames.

I am grateful to the dedicated professionals in the Los Angeles Field Office of the FBI who shared their expertise with frankness and generosity: Special Agent George Carr, SWAT; Special Agent Kevin G. Miles, bomb technician; Supervisory Special Agent Bruce Stephens, retired; Special Agent in Charge Randy Parsons, retired; and especially Special Agent Larry Wilson, retired, whose experience as an undercover helped inspire this book.

At the FBI Academy in Quantico, I was educated in the rigors of undercover school by Stephen R. Band, Ph.D.; Carl Jensen III, Ph.D.; and Arthur E. Westveer, violent crime specialist. The interviews were facilitated with the much appreciated support of Philip L. Edney, public affairs specialist at FBIHQ.

This book grew out of a research trip to Oregon undertaken with my stalwart husband, Douglas Brayfield, and daughter, Emma, whose care for and knowledge of horses informs every page. Special thanks to Halle Mandel and Rick Sadle for their warm hospitality in Portland; to our guide, Crofton Diack; to Norm Sharpe and Frank Klejmont, formerly of the Portland police department; Captain Donna Henderson; Patrick Barry of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and at the FBI’s Portland Division, Public Affairs Specialist Beth Anne Steele.

I owe an enormous debt to the accommodating folks at the Bureau of Land Management, Burns District, who allowed us to observe the mustangs in the wild, a life-changing experience. Thomas H. Dyer, Mark L. Armstrong, Ramona Bishop, and Tom Seley all work tirelessly on behalf of the horses.

Thank you to hazelnut farmers Harry and Carol Logerstad; horse trainer Richard Goff; music expert Piero Scaruffi; Barry Fisher, Crime Laboratory Director, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s department; pathologist Lisa Sheinin, M.D.; author and FBI historian Richard Gid Powers; equine veterinarian David Cox, DVM; and Michael Grunberg of Sandline International, who were all kind enough to answer dozens of inquiries.

An author is sustained through three years of writing not only by the compassion of strangers, but by the good humor of family and friends, publishers and agents. I am thankful to my son, Benjamin, for his spirited counsel; my parents and my brother, Ronald, for their faith; to Michelle Abrams, Susan Baskin, Carrie Frazier, Lauren Grant, Joy Horowitz, Evan Levinson, Janice Lieberman, Linda Orkin, and Julie Waxman for being such good pals; Angela Rinaldi for wisdom in all things; to everyone in the first-rate Knopf organization, headed by the incomparable Sonny Mehta; and to the terrific assistant editor, Diana Coglianese. On the agent side, thank you once again to the beloved Molly Friedrich; Bruce Vinokour and the team at CAA; and the two outstanding individuals to whom this book is dedicated: FBI Special Supervisory Agent Pam Graham, for her integrity and friendship, and David Freeman, who gave the greatest gift one writer can give another, which is to find the soul of a troubled manuscript and light the way home.