Stop at Nothing

by Michael Ledwidge

  Reyland stared at the bristle of satellite dishes and cell tower masts rising from the huge trailers’ roofs.

  Port New York Center 11, as the site was officially known, was one of the very first federal-to-local law enforcement fusion centers set up in the scramble after 9/11.

  He had actually attended the not-so-publicized ribbon-cutting ceremony with Dunning and the former FBI director almost fifteen years before.

  Up the stairs and through the door of the huge center trailer a moment later, it looked like a war room. There were columns and rows of desks and computers everywhere.

  Reyland looked at the huge screen that took up the entirety of the back wall. It was divided up into smaller ones that showed street traffic and various locales. One screen showed New York City’s Central Park. On another was Kennedy International Airport.

  Center 11 usually had an alphabet soup of JTTF, FBI field agents, NYPD, Port Authority cops and New Jersey state troopers manning it. But today it was staffed with a small group of hand-selected counter-intel agents and contractors for a special covert counterterror training exercise.

  Or at least that was what Reyland was describing it as in the official report.

  Reyland turned as Emerson brought over a tall balding Hispanic guy wearing steel-rimmed glasses.

  “Robert, you know Agent Arietta, right?” Emerson said.

  “Of course. Edgar, how are you?” Reyland said, putting out his hand to the lanky Hispanic.

  Arietta, who was rumored to be somewhat autistic, didn’t even glance at it or him as he called out, “Bring up array one.”

  The patchwork grid of screens instantly morphed into one big screen that showed the parking lot of a small brick building on a suburban street somewhere.

  “Okay. This is Eric Wheldon’s apartment building in Pelham, Westchester,” Arietta said.

  “Where did Wheldon work again?” Reyland said.

  “He rode a Middle East desk at Langley,” Emerson said.

  “Is that right?” Reyland said. “I wonder how much he’s going to like getting rode in a Leavenworth mop closet after we get through with him.”

  “We’ve been on it since four in the morning,” Arietta continued. “We were about to pop in for a peek around five when he came home alone with no girl. But the good news is we were able to get this with a shotgun mic through the crack in a window.”

  “Okay. I can meet him tonight if it’s legit,” came a voice over the overhead speaker. “Okay. Okay. Get me a number. I’ll call him back with the location.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Reyland said.

  “It means he’s meeting up with someone tonight,” Arietta said. “The New York office has been watching this joker on and off since his last leak came out at the Washington Post. We’ve been watching him for the last three months. Whenever he meets with people, it’s usually one of three locations.”

  Arietta went to a keyboard and the screen suddenly changed into three side-by-side views of the city.

  “Here at the Roosevelt Island Tram on the East Side,” Arietta said, pointing. “Or this diner here on Tenth Avenue in Chelsea or this hotel here down from Madison Square Garden.”

  Reyland looked up at the already-congested pre–rush hour New York City vistas, the crush of cars, the stressed-looking people. The resolution of the images was remarkable. It was like he was standing in the flat-screen section of a Best Buy.

  “These camera angles seem high. Traffic cameras, right? Are these live feeds?” Reyland said.

  “Yes, it’s called the 3RT Retina system,” Arietta said, heading over to a keyboard. “It’s brand-new. We just got it patched into the traffic cameras a month ago. Watch this.”

  Arietta went over and clicked some more keys. All of a sudden, red computer-generated squares appeared around the license plates of the cars and on the faces of people in the crowd. The squares followed along with the moving subjects as driver’s licenses began to appear along the bottom of the screen. One after another after another.

  Reyland looked in shock at the smiling driver’s license faces that began to line up along the bottom of the screen. The computer was ID’ing everyone, he realized. He felt a fluttery feeling in his stomach as he watched.

  “This is live?” Reyland said. “In real time. You’re picking all this up live? And ID’ing everyone live? I’ve never seen this.”

  “It’s the new video analytics platform coupled with the latest in facial recognition. We have the software tapped into that new Cray at the DOE at Oakridge. They just put it online. With our full trunk-to-block fiber-optic linkup, the speed of the processing is mind-blowing. We’re talking two hundred petaflops, which is the equivalent—”

  Reyland put up a hand.

  “Yeah, uh-huh. It’s quick and powerful. Great,” Reyland said. “Bottom line, if our little navy friend shows her face in one of these locations, we got her?”

  “Her face is already in the system,” Arietta said with a nod. “If she shows her face, the computer will know in a fraction of a second.”

  “Ruiz, what do you think in terms of a setup?” Reyland said.

  The short, stocky mercenary stepped forward. He’d been watching everything silently from near the rear of the room among his contingent of men. He pursed his lips and squinted his eyes as he slowly looked from one location on the screen to the next.

  “Let’s get some printouts of these locales,” he finally said. “And we’ll take a look-see.”

  43

  Gannon got off the train at Pennsylvania Station at 6:45 p.m. and walked through some corridors and came up a set of stairs onto cold Seventh Avenue. On the dark sidewalk in front of Madison Square Garden there were incredible crowds of commuters, and he had to wade against the flow of the massive herd of them to get to the avenue’s east side.

  The Arlington Hotel that Stick had told him to go to was halfway down 31st, sandwiched between a luxury wig importer and a shuttered Chinese restaurant called Bamboo Lucky 21. He was a little early, so he passed it and walked the rest of the block over to Sixth Avenue.

  He stood there on the corner in the steady rush-hour flow of people. He stepped aside for an Asian woman pushing a double stroller as an ambulance with a blaring siren slowly carved a path through the blocked-up intersection.

  Across the street, he watched a messenger chaining up his bike to a bus stop sign pole. Watching the man bend to secure the lock, Gannon immediately picked up the flat bulge in his jeans back pocket that he knew was a box cutter.

  He blew into his cupped hands, grinning in the cold as he thought about his previous life as a beat cop. He had actually loved foot posts. Being a sheepdog out among the sheep looking for the wolves.

  After another five minutes, he crossed the street and went back up to the old hotel. He thought it would be crummy inside, but the lobby looked newly redone. There was dramatic diffused lighting and maroon-colored wallpaper and a minimalist chunk of pale limestone for a check-in desk.

  The pretty young woman behind it had some kind of Rosie the Riveter retro thing going on with her dark hair. She smiled at Gannon as he sat in a chrome Euro-style chair opposite the desk.

  He took out his phone and looked at it and watched it trill as it changed the hour.

  “This is Eric Wheldon,” a voice said.

  “Mr. Smith here,” Gannon said. “The Arlington, right?”

  “Yes. You have some information for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it about?” he said.

  “Is it safe to talk on the phone?” Gannon said, looking at the desk clerk. “I thought we would talk face-to-face.”

  “It’s safe,” the voice said.

  “It’s about Dunning,” Gannon said quietly. “He didn’t die in Italy.”

  “Many people are speculating that.”

 
; “I’m not speculating. I know,” Gannon said.

  “Interesting,” said Wheldon, unimpressed.

  “I saw him with my own eyes.”

  “Saw him?”

  “I actually touched him—his corpse, anyway,” Gannon said.

  “I would love to believe you, Mr. Smith, but in my business, I need proof. All I have is my reputation for truth. Without proof, I cannot use your information.”

  “I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “I have a videotape of Dunning dead. As well as the others.”

  “The others?”

  “Yes. There were six dead altogether. Including the pilots.”

  “Where is this tape?”

  “We should talk face-to-face,” Gannon said.

  There was a pause.

  “Then turn around,” Eric Wheldon said.

  44

  The elevator and the hallway were nicely done like the lobby, but the room itself up on the fourteenth floor had faded beige walls and cheap gray office carpet and Walmart furniture. Gannon looked at the old radiator under the yellow-shaded window opposite the door. It looked like a public school classroom with a bed in it.

  “We can talk in here, Mr. Smith,” Wheldon said, opening an inside door on the left.

  The suite’s side room had a table and chairs and a little kitchenette in it. Beyond the table was the bathroom.

  “Please call me Pete,” Gannon said as he sat at the small table.

  “Okay, Pete,” the reporter said, sitting down opposite.

  Wheldon seemed smaller in person than on his videos and his eyes were bluer. He was in the same nice overcoat he was wearing in the video where he was walking up Park Avenue.

  “Now, before we get into this, how comfortable are you about disclosing your identity?” Wheldon said.

  “Extremely uncomfortable,” Gannon said.

  “Okay, so I’ll hold off taping,” he said. “Now, where did you see Dunning?”

  “I saw him on a Gulfstream 550 corporate jet that went down fifteen miles north of Little Abaco in the Bahamas,” Gannon said. “They said it was a turboprop plane on the news, but that was completely made up.”

  “How did you see it?”

  “I was out marlin fishing on my boat by myself, and I saw it go down and rip in two.”

  “Was it on fire or something? What was wrong with it?”

  “No, it came in almost gliding very low to the water. I’m not an expert, but I think it had run out of gas.”

  “Go on,” Wheldon said.

  “I was right on top of it when it ripped into the water, and I rushed over and saw that the front of it had snapped off and sunk down on a coral shelf. I run a diving business, so I suited up and went down to see if there were any survivors.

  “I saw Dunning there inside the plane. He was with two other white guys, one older, one younger. They looked like agents maybe. There was also a fortysomething-looking black guy in a hoodie and jeans as well as two uniformed pilots. They were all dead. As in already dead. Their faces were blue like they had suffocated or something.”

  “Did you report this?”

  “No,” Gannon said, shaking his head. “I didn’t know it was Dunning until I saw his picture in the paper yesterday morning.”

  “No, I mean the crash itself. You didn’t call anyone when you saw the plane go down?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Gannon looked at him.

  “Well, I tried to radio it in at first, but my boat radio antenna was busted. Then I...found the money.”

  “Money?” Wheldon said, squinting.

  “Yes. Diamonds and money. In a suitcase. There were several million dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills and a mother lode of uncut diamonds.”

  The reporter’s calm composure evaporated. His mouth gaped open as he sat up.

  “Listen, I know it was wrong,” Gannon said. “And I’m regretting it now, believe me. I should have immediately turned it in. And I would have. But no one came. I was out there for an hour, and there wasn’t a soul. I had no idea the damn US government was involved. I thought they were all a bunch of dead dopers or something, so I thought why not exit stage left? No harm no foul.”

  “This money and diamonds,” Wheldon said, staring at him with his intense blue eyes. “You still have them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Both?”

  “Both,” Gannon said. “It was stupid of me. Say the word, and I’ll go get them and give them back. I’ll do whatever to get this crazy bullshit to stop. That’s why I’m here. I want to make this right. Lying about the death of the FBI director is bananas. Just bananas. They can’t get away with it. I won’t let them. That’s unacceptable. People need to know the truth.”

  “Where is everything?”

  “Back in the Bahamas. I hid everything along with the GoPro footage I took from my dive.”

  Eric Wheldon stared at him with a dumbfounded look.

  “This video. You can tell it’s Dunning? Clear video?”

  Gannon nodded.

  “I can’t believe this. Is it somewhere secure?”

  Gannon thought of the ridge in the pitch-black, unmarked submerged cave a hundred feet underground.

  “Yeah, you could say that. Like I said, I had no idea it was the FBI director until I saw his picture in the Times yesterday morning.”

  “I can’t believe this,” the reporter said again.

  “That makes two of us, buddy,” Gannon said. “Now it’s your turn. What in the green world of God is going on?”

  45

  “It was a whisper jet,” the reporter said.

  “A what?” Gannon said.

  “A whisper jet. Tell me, were there any numbers or letters on the tail of the plane?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How about on the jet engines? Sometimes Gulfstream puts the ID tag number on the engines.”

  Gannon thought about the giant white fishing bob he’d seen.

  “No, there was nothing on them.”

  “That’s why they call it a whisper jet. National secrecy and security. It flies anywhere, and no one knows who or, in this case, what’s on it. The plane that went down was probably the FBI director’s personal jet.”

  “No! The FBI director gets his own private rock-star jet? A Gulfstream?”

  “Oh, but of course. Not just any kind either. An air force model with aftermarket add-ons like radar jamming. The attorney general has one as well. The least we could do is have our sworn protectors live as large as possible. It’s only taxpayer money after all, right?”

  “They can do that? Fly around without markings, jamming radar? Aren’t there rules?”

  “Sure there are. For everybody but the people who make them. Or in this case, claim to be enforcing them. You read the news today? You hear about Messerly?”

  “Messerly?”

  “The new NSA defector leaker guy stuck at the embassy in Europe.”

  “Oh, yeah. Messerly. I remember him. From last year, right? The new Assange. What about him?”

  “They just blocked all his social media accounts this morning. Just flat-out blocked them. Said he was too hateful. The single greatest whistle-blower of all time who’s trying to expose the illegal surveillance of the entire global population is too hateful? They apparently own the social media companies as well as the mainstream media now. They can do anything they want.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gannon said.

  “Could you excuse me for one second? I need to make a phone call.”

  “That depends. Who are you calling?”

  “It’s okay. A source. I just want to confirm something. Just give me a second, okay?”

  Wheldon left the room. Gannon could hear him tal
king in a low voice. He let out a breath and stared at the grimy bargain hotel room. At the little oven, at the half-open bathroom door. He wondered if coming here was actually a good idea.

  “You’re right, Pete,” Wheldon said as he returned and sat down. “Dunning’s plane isn’t at its usual hangar at Joint Base Bolling in DC. It never returned from Italy. Not only that, there are rumors that it never actually landed in Aviano Air Base in Italy like it was scheduled to.”

  “What do you make of that?” Gannon said.

  Wheldon shook his head.

  “I’m trying to grasp all this,” he said. “Dunning’s supposed to go to Italy but doesn’t arrive. Then there’s the diamonds. Uncut diamonds. Sounds like Africa. Has to be. Blood diamonds probably.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Gannon said.

  “This is what I think,” Wheldon said. “I think Dunning was running what they call a rat line. Basically, it’s smuggling using diplomatic cover. They used them in World War II to get the Nazis out of Germany into South America. They’ve been using them since probably forever to smuggle drugs or stolen valuables. Whatever you want to wherever you want. Hide it in the diplomatic bag. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.”

  “But in America? I don’t buy it. The FBI director? You’re saying he’s secretly a smuggler?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. I bet the stones from the plane are blood diamonds out of Sierra Leone or the Ivory Coast. Instead of Italy, Dunning went there. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dunning was facilitating an arms deal.”

  “An arms deal?”

  Wheldon nodded.

  “In the interim between when he was deputy director and director, he was counsel for one of the nation’s biggest defense companies. Since it’s illegal to sell guns to these rebel groups, they love to use untraceable diamonds.”

  “Like a secret cash-for-clunkers deal?” Gannon said.

  “Exactly. Only in this case, it’s diamonds for land mines or maybe attack helicopters. But on the way back, something went wrong with the plane and now their ass is hanging in the breeze.”