Busting Drug Dealers: Diaries of a DEA Special Agent by Fredericks Mike

Author:Fredericks, Mike
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Special Agent Press
Published: 2023-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

Map of Colombia; photo courtesy of Central Intelligence Agency public documents.

Chapter 18

The Dealer on the Twelfth Floor

Bogota, Colombia

1983

Landing in Bogota, we were met by DEA personnel at the airport and checked into the Bogota Plaza Hotel. The hotel would be our temporary quarters until we found a suitable apartment. I spent the next couple of days getting initiated. I was issued embassy identification, applied for firearms authorization with the Colombian government, and completed other administrative issues that accompanied a change of duty station, including a meeting with the ambassador.

Our first priority was to find someplace to live. The office set us up with a real estate agent, and we went apartment hunting. The potential danger posed by the drug cartels hadn’t yet escalated to the point that we were confined to secure compounds. By Friday afternoon we found a spacious multilevel apartment in northern Bogota on Carrera 4a just off the road to La Calera. Due to a combination of paperwork and waiting for our household goods to arrive from the States, however, even though we quickly found the apartment, we weren’t able to move into it for another four weeks.

Weeks of living in the El Paso motel, and another month in the Bogota hotel room, put continued stress on our new instant family. An advantage of transferring overseas, however, was being able to hire a housekeeper who doubled as a babysitter for Tor. Ginny began exploring, but soon found that although she was proficient in multiple languages, Spanish was different from Bulgarian, Russian, Macedonian, or English. She quickly regretted not taking advantage of offers from former FSI colleagues to give her a crash course in Spanish before leaving for Colombia.

One day, I came back to the hotel to find her livid. She was almost stuttering, “He cheated me!”

“Who cheated you?”

“That robber on the street! We went out to walk, and I bought some grapes. He cheated me.”

With no Spanish, Ginny found it difficult to communicate, but was finally able to complete the transaction. Proud of herself, she and Tor returned to the hotel to eat the grapes. It was only when having second thoughts about the price she paid that she calculated the exchange rate between pesos and dollars. The vendor had cheated her.

“I’m going to take Spanish classes at the embassy,” she vowed.

The language wasn’t a problem only for Ginny. Although I’d spent twenty weeks in language school, I still wasn’t proficient in Spanish. Once our real estate agent found us a beautiful apartment, she invited us to her home to celebrate. She gave me the day and time for dinner and the address of her high-rise apartment building.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.