The Venezuelan

by Bill King

  “No, I even asked her if her man was able to make an educated guess as to what country she was talking about. She said Donovan kept insisting it was just some generic contingency planning exercise she happened to be working on at the moment.”

  “Do you believe her? Donovan, I mean?”

  “It’s always possible. After all, that’s a lot of what we do here.”

  “But you don’t totally believe her?”

  “No…no, I don’t.”

  ◆◆◆

  At four in the afternoon, a call came into the Polícia Militár station in central Brasilia from two uniformed policemen. A man matching the description of the Canadian, Olivier Gauthier, was seen coming out of a local bakery carrying what appeared to be a bag of bread.

  By the time two police cars, lights flashing and sirens blaring, arrived on scene less than three minutes later, a large crowd had gathered on the sidewalk at the intersection fifty feet from the bakery.

  When the responding officers, their weapons drawn, were able to make their way through the throng of onlookers to the center of attention, they saw two policemen lying face down on the sidewalk, dead. Both had been shot twice each, once in the chest, once in the head.

  There was no sign of Gauthier.

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 32

  Manaus, Brazil

  Cortez pulled out the Iridium 9555 satellite phone from his shirt pocket and dialed Jack Gonçalves’ number. Before he had left for Brazil, the two men agreed that Cortez would check in every afternoon at six o’clock. Since Manaus was two hours ahead, that would translate to four o’clock Houston time.

  “Pete, I’m glad you called a little early today,” said the SSA, who picked up after the third ring. “I have an interesting development to share, something that might help us to make some sense of this whole Calderón thing.”

  “Great. Let’s have it.”

  “Margaret Donovan met with a State Department official a few days ago and asked a few technical questions about formal recognition following a coup d’état…hypothetically speaking, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Cortez.

  “She claimed to be working on general contingency plans at the time.”

  “Well, I heard something today that may be related to that,” said Cortez.

  He proceeded to fill in Gonçalves about the conversation he and Robideaux had earlier that day with Lima and Sanchez, in particular Sanchez’s comment about the military training exercise in Ciudad Guayana.

  “Three infantry battalions are participating, one of them an airborne battalion,” said Cortez.

  “That certainly gives one pause for thought,” said the SSA. “A force of that size could cause a lot of mischief down there.”

  “The Venezuelan colonel also told me there are reliable reports that Calderón has been hiding in Guyana for the past month or two.”

  “Did he say where?”

  “No, Jack, but if I know my old buddy, it sure as heck won’t be anywhere in the jungle,” he said. “I seriously doubt that his eight months in the Amazon wiped away any of the city slicker in his temperament.”

  “Well, there aren’t many urban locales in Guyana, aside from Georgetown and a few small towns,” said the SSA. “My guess is that he’s almost certainly somewhere in the immediate vicinity of the capital.”

  “I think it’s also safe to assume that, if he is hiding out in Guyana, there must be at least a few high-ranking Guyanese officials who are also involved,” said Cortez.

  “Yeah, unfortunately, I don’t think our normal solution of simply asking the local government for information would be an appropriate course of action.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “I may just have an idea, Pete. Let me call you back in the morning after I check on something.”

  ◆◆◆

  The headlines on the front page of most of the major newspapers across Venezuela all screamed the same thing: “I am Fósforo! I am Coming!”

  The evening news on all the television networks carried the same lead story, accompanied by surveillance footage of Mateo Calderón staring defiantly into the security camera at the two police armories in El Tigre and Ciudad Bolivar, and clearly saying those very words. Ominous words.

  Disturbing as it was, that was old news, though. Last week’s news.

  The real news was a series of pictures of Mateo Calderón that were taken at various prominent places throughout Caracas and Maracaibo. Each photo was taken with him holding a copy of the previous day’s newspaper with the front page prominently displayed.

  Most Venezuelans took the news in stride. There was no widespread jubilation, but neither was there panic. For most people, the reaction was indifference. Idle curiosity, at best. After all, how much worse could things get?

  Not so for the government, though. Their reaction was panic. Pure panic. They had a good thing going, they knew it, and they weren’t going to give it up without a fight. A serious fight.

  Even though most Venezuelans had seen their standard of living drop precipitously over the past decade, the nation’s leaders were doing just fine. Same for the senior officers in the military and the national police. For them and their families, life was good.

  Call it the price the Maduro government paid for their loyalty.

  A change in leadership at the national level would almost certainly disrupt the gravy train. That’s not to say that corruption would be a thing of the past under a Calderón regime. It’s just that they would have to start all over again to prove their worth to the new leaders. That was totally unacceptable.

  They would fight to the death to hang onto their privileged status, no doubt about it.

  ◆◆◆

  When Zachery Jellico’s shiny new silver Mercedes G550 SUV pulled up to the front door of his River Oaks mansion in Houston, a black SUV was already parked in the circular drive. Jack Gonçalves and another agent, FBI credentials in hand, were standing at the front door waiting for him.

  “Zachery Jellico, I’m Supervisory Special Agent Jack Gonçalves with the FBI, and this is Special Agent Leopold,” he said as Jellico approached. “We’d like to speak with you about a meeting you attended two weeks ago.”

  “Of course, Agent Gonçalves,” he said. If he was nervous, he sure didn’t show it. “If you don’t mind, let’s go inside and get out of this heat.”

  Jellico unlocked the front door and held it open for the FBI agents before following them into the house. He tossed his keys into a sterling silver tray in the front hall and led Gonçalves into his rosewood paneled study.

  “So, tell me, how can I help you?”

  “You met with two individuals—Margaret Donovan and Dominic D’Angelo—here at your home the week before last.”

  “Yes, but I don’t see why that should be of any concern to the FBI,” he said, a relaxed smile on his face. “Mrs. Donovan is a senior government official and Mr. D’Angelo is some sort of consultant that she brought along with her.”

  “Can you tell me about the nature of your discussions?”

  “I could, but I don’t see where that is any of your business.”

  Gonçalves would have been surprised had Jellico’s response been anything other than that. He decided to take a different approach.

  “Perhaps we’re getting off on the wrong foot, Mr. Jellico,” he said, folding his hands together in his lap. “Please rest assured that you are not the subject of our investigation. Actually, we’re doing a routine investigation of Mr. D’Angelo for his security clearance update.”

  He didn’t normally lie when questioning people, but as lies go, this one was pretty mild.

  “Of course, I understand, Agent Gonçalves,” he said, appearing to be mollified, at least for the moment. “We talked about a project Mrs. Donovan was working on…a classified project.”

  “Had you ever met Mr. D’Angelo before that meeting?”

  “No, that was the first time.”

  “How a
bout Mrs. Donovan?” he asked in a conversational tone. “Have you known her long?”

  “No, not too long,” Jellico replied. “We met at a political fundraiser several years ago. That was right before she went to work for the Agency.”

  Gonçalves nodded his head knowingly.

  “Do you travel to South America often?”

  “Occasionally,” said Jellico, suspecting that the FBI agent was subtly guiding the conversation to the subject that really brought him here in the first place. “For that matter, I travel all over the world, mostly for business but sometimes for pleasure.”

  “Have you ever been to Brazil?”

  “Sure. I go down there on a regular basis.”

  “How about Trinidad and Tobago? Have you ever been to Mr. D’Angelo’s home in Scarborough?”

  Up to that point, the questions had been fairly general. That last one, however, had come from way out in left field and was specific, very specific. It set off alarm bells in Jellico’s head.

  “Look, Agent Gonçalves, I don’t mean to appear rude, but I really have some important business to attend to,” he said, standing up to signal that, as far as he was concerned, the interview was over. “If you need to talk further, please schedule it through my attorney.”

  He reached into his wallet and handed Jack one of his lawyer’s business cards.

  “I’ll show you out.”

  ◆◆◆

  The last of the transport aircraft touched down at Manuel Carlos Piar Guayana International Airport just a little past noon. The final contingent of soldiers from the Venezuelan Parachute Infantry Battalion was now in Ciudad Guayana for the army training exercise that was scheduled to begin in twenty-four hours.

  Six deuce-and-a-half cargo trucks were parked side-by-side on the apron, waiting to transport the men to their cantonment area. Another half dozen trucks were being loaded with the battalion’s equipment.

  Colonel Antonio Cuellar stood next to the regional commander, Major General Alberto Trujillo Escobar, watching the activity.

  “That’s the last of them, mi General,” said Cuellar, removing a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiping his brow.

  The nearby Orinoco River, combined with the brutal tropical sun, usually kept the humidity this time of year well in the nineties.

  “Excellent. Excellent,” said the general, whose tight fatigue uniform looked as if it had been sprayed on. He was probably in his late-fifties and looked like he hadn’t missed a meal in decades. “What time are we scheduled to meet with the commanders?”

  “Fifteen hundred hours,” said the colonel. “We have some logistics details to attend to before the infantry battalions deploy to their initial marshalling areas tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Will we have some private time with the battalion commanders? I mean, just you and me, with no staff around?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve arranged a private dinner with just the five of us. You, me, and the three commanders.”

  “Good,” said the general. “I want to make sure they all understand how critical it is that each of them does his job according to the timeline we have laid out.”

  “They’ll be ready, mi general. I have spoken personally with each of them on multiple occasions over the past two weeks.”

  The general nodded his head and glanced down at his wristwatch.

  “Well, we have about two hours until the briefing,” he said. “Shall we grab some lunch beforehand?”

  ◆◆◆

  Chapter 33

  50 miles off the coast of Guyana

  The helicopter flight out to the Chinese floating production storage and offloading vessel—usually referred to by its acronym, FPSO—had taken only twenty minutes.

  The huge floating vessel is commonly used by the oil and gas sector in remote offshore locations that lack the expensive infrastructure found in more developed, land-based fields. As the name implies, the unit can receive, separate, store and ultimately offload subsea hydrocarbons onto tankers that then transport it to onshore refineries up to hundreds of miles away.

  In the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, offshore operations have taken place since the late 1950s, so there is a huge offshore subsea infrastructure of pipelines that can generally get the offshore production to the coast without the need for a FPSO.

  In newer developments, like Guyana, no such subsea pipeline system exists, so FPSO’s and tanker vessels are the only feasible way to get production back to shore. A brand new FPSO would cost upwards of a billion dollars to build, but in an industry where multi-billion dollar expenditures are not uncommon, that is still the cheaper—not to mention, quicker—way to bring the offshore field into operation.

  Hence, its growing popularity.

  Cedric Bostwick was dressed in civilian clothing so as to maintain a lower profile on the unit owned and operated by Shanghai Petroleum. None of the four Chinese officers and sixty-six crewmembers had any idea who he was.

  They did, however, know the man who greeted him as he climbed out of the helicopter. Zhang Wei was a senior energy official with the Chinese government, so they figured the tall black man who arrived in the helicopter must also be pretty important, too.

  The two men did not appear to know one another, judging by their body language.

  “I trust your flight out here was uneventful,” said Zhang. “I am Zhang Wei.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir,” said Bostwick, grasping the man’s proffered hand firmly and shaking it three times. “My name is Bostwick, Cedric Bostwick.”

  The vessel’s captain, dressed in a freshly pressed white uniform, escorted them to his private cabin, where he left them alone to conduct their business, closing the door to the cabin as he left.

  “Well, Colonel, I wanted us to meet face to face before we actually launch into this thing,” said Zhang. “Thank you for coming.”

  “And thank you for dispatching the helicopter for me,” said Bostwick, an embarrassed smile on his face. “I tend to get seasick on the open ocean.”

  Zhang laughed and said, “Unless a hurricane rolls in, you’ll hardly even feel the movement of the waves here on the FPSO.” The enormous vessel was at least three football fields long and more than fifty meters wide. In addition, its hull was also eighty percent full of crude, further stabilizing it against any turbulence from the water.

  Zhang sat down in the captain’s comfortable reading chair and offered his guest a single malted scotch, having already researched his preferences.

  “Let’s talk about the future, shall we?”

  ◆◆◆

  Ryan Carpenter looked anxiously down at his wristwatch. She’s late, he thought to himself. He was referring to Lucinha Baker, the Legal Attaché, whose office had called ten minutes earlier to let him know that her meeting with the embassy’s deputy chief of mission was running longer than expected.

  “She’ll be here any minute, Ryan,” said Pete Cortez, noticing his growing irritability. “The DCM cornered her just as we were leaving the office.”

  Cortez and Robideaux had arrived back in Brasilia the evening before from their brief trip up to Manaus and the border region with Venezuela. They were waiting for Baker to arrive before they discussed what they had learned, and more importantly, decide what they should do next.

  Two minutes later, Carpenter’s administrative assistant buzzed in Lucinha Baker, who hurriedly walked straight through the reception area and into his office.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, sitting down in the empty chair at the small conference table.

  All eyes shifted to Cortez.

  “Well, we’ve made some headway,” he said. “We now know through a confidential source that Margaret Donovan recently had a conversation with an official at State concerning diplomatic recognition following a hypothetical successful coup in an unspecified country.”

  “Interesting,” said Carpenter. “Any idea as to the identity of the unspecified country?”

  “No, but the person at State has a
long history in Latin America.”

  “Anything else?” asked Carpenter. “After all, Latin America has a long history with revolutions and coups. So far, this sounds like it could involve any of a dozen LATAM contingency plans we currently work on all the time.”

  Cortez was going to address Carpenter’s last point but decided against it. He didn’t want to get too specific for fear he might say something that might enable the chief of station to identify the original source of his information.

  “You could be right, of course, but our sources seem to think otherwise…that there’s a real-world operation going on,” said Cortez, pausing momentarily for dramatic effect. “An unsanctioned, off-the-books operation.”

  “I could inquire discreetly through my channels, but I suspect the Bureau has already done that,” said Carpenter, looking hard at Pete’s face for any telltale signs. “Am I right, Agent Cortez?”

  Cortez smiled sheepishly and shrugged his shoulders. Carpenter nodded his head in understanding.

  “Okay, Pete, let’s assume you’re right and there’s an off-the-radar coup attempt on the horizon. Any ideas as to the lucky country?”

  Cortez looked over at Robideaux and Baker before responding.

  “Well, I definitely don’t think it’s Brazil,” he said. “My hunch—and that’s all it is, a hunch—is that it’s either Venezuela or Guyana.”

  They all seemed to nod their heads in agreement.

  “Venezuela, I can understand, especially given the rash of raids on police stations by his old gang, M-28,” said Baker, speaking for the first time since her late arrival. “But why Guyana? That seems kind of random, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, but according to what Clarice and I learned while we were up in Pacaraima, that’s apparently where he’s been hiding out for the past month and a half.”

  “Could you possibly share with us the identity of your source for that last bit of information?” asked Carpenter.