She remembered exactly what McCann had said: “I am not going to Martinez with that crazy letter. Is Clendennen out of his mind, thinking that he can push Martinez around like that? I’ll go with you, but that’s it. Otherwise, you can have my resignation.”
“And?” Clendennen pursued.
“President Martinez asked us to wait . . .”
“Mulligan,” Clemens McCarthy interrupted, “get me something so I can get this goddamn letter.”
“What should I get, Mr. McCarthy?”
“An umbrella, a ruler . . . just something that’ll reach the fucking letter!”
The President looked from McCarthy to Cohen: “And?”
“. . . and about forty-five minutes later, he called us back into his office, and gave us the letter Ambassador Vargas gave you. He then told us Ambassador Vargas was on the telephone. He told Vargas that I was going to bring a letter he wished Vargas to give to you, and that verbal message. Then, almost as an afterthought, he asked me if I would accompany Ambassador Vargas here to verify the verbal message.”
“But you have seen the letter?”
She glanced at McCarthy on his knees digging for the letter, then looked back to Clendennen. “Yes, sir. Ambassador Vargas showed it to me on our way here from the Mexican embassy.”
“That miserable, ungrateful sonofabitch!” Clendennen exploded. “After all I’ve done for him! Millions of dollars in aid! Ten fucking Black Hawk helicopters! Pretending I don’t know what’s going on at the border. Not one word about his being blind to that secret drug cartel airport! And all I wanted him to do was provide me a little cover in case something goes wrong.”
Cohen didn’t reply.
“And what is this bullshit about taking this Abrego character to a prison . . . the Ox something . . .”
He looked to where now both McCarthy and Mulligan were on their hands and knees, trying with a letter opener to get the letter from under the desk.
“Just pick up the fucking desk and move it out of the way, for Christ’s sake!” the President ordered.
They immediately tried. It proved too heavy for both of them.
“Jesus Christ!” the President said. “Douglas, get them some help. I want that goddamn letter!”
Special Agent Douglas went to the outer office and returned with the two Secret Service agents who guarded the outer office.
As Mulligan, Douglas, McCarthy, and one of the latter took a grip on the desk, one of the outer-office Secret Service agents fashioned a hook from a wire clothes hanger and, as they lifted, he managed to stab the letter with it, then pull it out from under the desk.
He extended it to the President, who snatched it, tearing it on the makeshift hook of the clothes hanger.
The President looked at the letter and found what he wanted.
McCarthy walked quickly to him and read over his shoulder.
“What’s this business about taking Abrego to the . . . how the hell do you pronounce this prison?”
Secretary Cohen furnished the correct pronunciation of Oaxaca to the President.
“Never heard of it,” the President said. “Or anything about us taking Abrego there. Thus, I know goddamn well it wasn’t in my letter to Martinez.”
He looked at McCarthy.
“Was it?” he asked.
“No, Mr. President, it wasn’t,” McCarthy said.
Cohen thought: Yes, it was. What’s McCarthy up to? I read the draft letter aloud right here in the Oval Office!
“Then where the hell did it come from?”