The Pretender by Marc Ruskin

Author:Marc Ruskin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

9

Starlight Lounge

The Rastafarian stood in front of the dingy social club, his dreads bundled into the traditional multicolored knit cap, his shirt half unbuttoned to reveal the taut muscles beneath. Drinking a beer, the Rastaman was deep in conversation with a middle-aged stocky wiseguy, with silver hair brushed straight back, a cigar in his thick right hand next to the oversized jeweled ring, his suit sharkskin—nothing but the best. Out of the shadows slipped an outlaw biker, muscular tattooed arms exposed by the sleeveless black leather vest. The cruel smile on his bearded face exposed stained teeth. This odd trio turned together to greet the banker, elegant in his finely tailored suit, his silver hair carefully groomed, his manicured hands holding a leather portfolio. By his side, a blond, blue-eyed man with an icy stare—he would have been the perfect poster boy for the Hitler Youth—stood guard with an insidious smile and military bearing, the twin lightning bolts pinned to his shirt collar betraying his neo-Nazi affiliations.

As I approached, those ten eyes, even the Nazi’s, fixed on mine: an intimidating crew, to all appearances—but they were only appearances, because I was in on the deal. All of us were simpatico, part of the FBI team, the UC team, enjoying a few beers in the Starlight Lounge after an evening of practical exercises in Hogan’s Alley, the simulated city at Quantico utilized by all manner of agents, including SWAT teams perfecting their hostage-rescue skills, surveillance teams, and us undercover specialists. (The neo-Nazi was Mike German, the key guy for working the Aryan Nation and white supremacist militias. Five years prior to German’s whistle-blowing and departure from the Bu.)

At the Starlight, I was Marc Ruskin, not H. Marc Renard on Wall Street, not Alex Perez buying fraudulent government documents and kilos of dope, not Sal Morelli scamming the insurance companies. Gone were my long ponytail, the gel job, the T-shirt, the bling. I was in “business casual” mode, because I was now management—yes, management, of all things—but a different kind of management, I hasten to add (considering the prior discussion). This was 1999, and I was assigned to the Undercover Safeguard Unit, which had been created in the early nineties to “address the needs of UCEs … throughout the six phases (selection, training, operational planning, deployment, decompression, and reintegration) of covert activity” (FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, August 2008, p. 2). It was an anomaly within the BUREAUcracy—an HQ entity dedicated to cutting through red tape, rather than adding to it. More recently, the formal training curriculum for wannabe undercover agents had been initiated, replacing the OJT (on-the-job training) that had sufficed for the older generation of undercovers. As we have seen in some detail, for my first decade working undercover, everything had been OJT (trial and error, monkey-see-monkey-do, learn-or-leave-or-worse). Now, finally, the undercover craft as practiced by the FBI was being codified, and not just the paperwork, in the field as well. We were actually changing the conditions for undercover work with major consequences.

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