Black Horizon

by James Grippando

  The crowd erupted. Jack cringed.

  Theo was into it. “B-P must—”

  Jack ended Theo’s renewed chant with an elbow to his solar plexus.

  The speaker’s voice rose, channeling the crowd’s energy. “Let me assure you, Key West: there will be justice! My friend, Victor—come on out here, Victor. My friend Victor Garcia-Peña and I will be bringing Big Oil to justice!”

  Center stage, the two men laced their fingers together in unity, and Jack could hardly believe his eyes as Victor and his newfound friend on the left raised their arms triumphantly. The crowd cheered even louder. Jack was feeling nauseous. He started walking toward Duval Street. Theo was right behind him, slapping high fives with strangers in the crowd, leading a new chant.

  “Big-O must go! Big-O must go!”

  Jack turned around sharply, glaring at Theo. “Shut up!”

  “You shut up.”

  “Shut up and stop acting like an idiot!”

  Jack walked away. Theo followed him through the crowd.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  Jack kept walking until they were beyond the crowd’s rough perimeter.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what’s the matter with me, Theo. My client is way too young to be a widow and has to live the rest of her life knowing that her husband was incinerated on that rig. Today I had to tell her that her case against the consortium can’t move forward. Judge Carlyle may think she’s doing us a favor by pushing us into federal court, but it won’t be a picnic filing a new lawsuit against the biggest defense contractor the Pentagon has ever known—who, by the way, has the U.S. Justice Department on its side. It’s going to be one national security roadblock after another. I don’t know if I’m ever going to recover a dime for her. And now, you watch what happens: Monday morning, Victor Garcia-Peña and Johnny Greenpeace, or whatever his name is, will file a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against Big Oil. Freddy Foman and his band of thieves will probably join with them. And that bullshit lawsuit will probably get to trial before Bianca gets another day in court. That’s what’s the matter with me.”

  Jack turned and started down Duval Street. Theo caught up at the corner.

  “Jack, dude. I’m sorry, man.”

  Jack kept walking. “It’s okay. Not your fault.”

  Theo’s phone rang. He checked the number, grabbed Jack by the shoulder and yanked him to a halt. “Dude, it says ‘out of area.’ ”

  “So do a lot of calls.”

  “Including the last one I got from Josefina in Cuba,” said Theo.

  The ringing continued. Jack grabbed his own phone and opened a “record” app. “Put it on speaker so I can listen and record it.”

  Theo did so, then answered, trusting his instincts about the caller’s identity. “Josefina?”

  “Sí. I need to be quick, so just listen. Tell Jack that the first piece is free. New Providence Trust Company, 200 Marlborough Street, Nassau, Bahamas. Ask for Mr. Jeffries. Jack is authorized to access safe-deposit box A-36. All he needs is a passport. Keep the FBI out of this.”

  The line clicked. Josefina was gone.

  “Did you get it?” asked Theo.

  “Yeah.”

  “First piece is free,” said Theo. “First piece of what?”

  “The answer to the ten-million-dollar question,” said Jack. “Who blew up the Scarborough 8?”

  Chapter 50

  At seven o’clock Andie was off to meet her new boyfriend on Second Avenue. She probably would never tell Jack, but if ever she had to, it was better than an undercover husband.

  The Black Horizon team had been pleased with Andie’s report on “N.Y.C. Gadets,” save for one detail. An undercover agent locked inside a storage room with Long Wu was one thing. Locked up with a target as dangerous as Noori was quite another. It was decided that, going forward, she shouldn’t work alone. Enter the boyfriend/business partner.

  Hope my new beau likes pregnant women.

  Andie was walking across the East Village to the designated meeting spot at Astor Place. She cut over on Ninth Street and immediately saw why this nineteenth-century immigrant neighborhood had become a mecca for artists, musicians, students, and writers. More recent gentrification had priced many of the free spirits out of the market, but it was hard not to feel the draw of the new cafés, bars, and boutiques. One shop, in particular, caught her eye. Dinosaur Hill.

  Girlfriends had warned her not to venture into the baby stores until the third month, that anything could happen early in a pregnancy, and that it was wise to be patient and not open the door to added heartbreak. But there she was, a mother-to-be, with thoughts of Operation Black Horizon and fossilized dinosaurs—petroleum—almost perpetually on her mind. How could she not go inside? The woman who greeted her at the door was part artist, part salesperson, and eager to help.

  “Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

  “Something for my baby,” said Andie. “I’m planning ahead.”

  The saleswoman pointed out enough handmade wonderments and toys to make Andie think about having more than one child—colorful blocks, hand puppets from Burma, kaleidoscopes, marionettes from around the world, stained-glass fairies, wooden dollhouses. It was fun, but out of nowhere Andie needed to run to the bathroom. The saleswoman pointed her to the back of the store. Andie was back shortly.

  “False alarm,” said Andie.

  “How far along are you?”

  She turned sideways and pulled back her coat. “Seven weeks. Can you tell?”

  “Not yet. But get used to the bathroom urges.”

  Andie browsed and ended up buying a fluffy pink rabbit, which came with a verbal assurance that she could bring it back for a blue one if baby Viola turned out to be a Victor. She tucked it into her fake designer handbag and walked another two blocks. New boyfriend Dennis was waiting at the subway entrance on the corner.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “Which you’re not allowed to point out, since we’re dating this time, not married.”

  He smiled, as did Andie. Dennis was actually Special Agent Michael Brunelli of the New York field office, and the last time they’d worked together was during the Wall Street meltdown. They’d posed as husband and wife, a joint mission to prove that “too big to fail” didn’t mean “too big to jail.” It had been Andie’s job to tap the most lucrative sources of information about banking fraud: the wives and girlfriends of investment bankers.

  “You hungry?” asked Andie. “There’s a Ukrainian restaurant on Second Avenue I’ve been wanting to try.”

  “Ukrainian?” he said, making a face. “Damn. They told me I had to let you eat whatever you wanted to eat, but this may require combat pay.”

  Andie led the way, their small talk a comfortable continuation of the banter that had carried them through the Wall Street investigation, which had dragged on for weeks. His undercover experience was extensive, mostly organized-crime investigations, and Andie actually enjoyed listening to his stories. And if his principal role in Operation Black Horizon was to match up, muscle for muscle, against Noori, the Bureau couldn’t have made a better choice.

  “I read your Spice Market report,” he said. “Most of it made sense.”

  “Most of it?”

  He picked up their pace, gaining some separation from the group of college students behind them. “Are you actually buying the idea that the Chinese government blew up its own rig?”

  It was Andie’s job to test the FBI’s theory that Uighur militants were behind the Scarborough 8 disaster. After hearing Noori’s story of how he’d gotten from Xinjiang to Afghanistan to Guantánamo, she’d thought his accusations against the Chinese government were worth mentioning in her report.

  “It’s at least plausible that the Chinese government is making the Uighurs their scapegoat in order to turn world opinion against them.”

  “No way. Not possible.”

  “Eye-roll alert,” said Andie. “You know I can’t
take any man seriously who states his opinions as if they were fact. No way. Not possible.”

  “Fair enough. This is somewhere between fact and opinion. It’s politics. The politics of petroleum.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  He seemed glad that she’d asked. “Who do you think is the world’s biggest consumer of Iranian oil?”

  “We’re bringing Iran into this?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I’ll go out on a limb and say China.”

  “Correct-o,” he said. “And with the United States calling for economic sanctions against Iran, how do you think the White House feels about China buying up all that Iranian oil?”

  “Wild guess on my part, but I’ll say they’d like to see it dry up.”

  “Correct-o, again. So here’s the deal. China—you reduce your consumption of Iranian oil. And if you do, look at what you get in return: all the oil you want from the Cuban basin, with no competition from U.S. oil companies.”

  They stopped at the red light. A cyclist zoomed past them, making Andie glad she’d heeded the red light. “You’re saying that the White House keeps up the trade embargo against Cuba as part of a deal with the Chinese?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “What proof do you have of that?”

  “None whatsoever. But how else do you explain the continuation of a fifty-year-old embargo that is a proven failure while the Chinese poke around for oil in our backyard?”

  Andie had heard crazier things since the explosion of the Scarborough 8.

  The traffic light changed, and they crossed at a tree-lined stretch of Second Avenue near Stuyvesant Square. The wind picked up as they turned north, and Andie noticed a hint of autumn color in the rustling leaves. “Can we be completely serious for a second?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  “If Uighur militants did this, why haven’t they claimed responsibility? This was so spectacular that practically every terrorist organization on the planet has tried to pin its name on it.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to turn public opinion against themselves.”

  “If that’s the case, it makes no sense to blow up the rig at all. The Uighurs want independence from China. How does blowing up the Scarborough 8 advance their cause?”

  “Maybe we need a better understanding of what their cause is.”

  Andie stopped. Her partner took several more steps before realizing that he was walking without her. He circled back.

  “What did I say?” he asked.

  Andie’s thoughts were still jelling. “You had the same reaction I did: we need to understand the Uighurs’ cause better. But hearing you say it made my mind work in the opposite direction.”

  “Gee, thanks. Nice to know that the chemistry we established on Wall Street is still alive and well.”

  “Stay with me,” said Andie. “I think the explosion of the Scarborough 8 had nothing to do with the cause of Uighur militants, their desire for independence, or their grievances with the Chinese government.”

  “Then why did they do it?”

  Andie recalled the look in Noori’s eye as he told of being captured in the Afghan desert, flown to Gitmo, and held without evidence for seven years. “This wasn’t a terrorist act against a Chinese oil rig by a group of militants.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It was one man’s personal act of retaliation and revenge against the United States for seven years of detention as an enemy combatant.”

  Andie’s partner was silent. She resumed their walk, moving quickly against the chilly breeze, but she got less than half a block before stopping short.

  “Another brainstorm?” he asked.

  “No,” said Andie. “Something far more urgent.”

  “What?”

  “I need a bathroom.”

  Chapter 51

  Jack and Theo reached Nassau by mid-morning.

  Two seats on a Friday-night flight out of Key West were impossible to snag at the last minute, even without an oil spill, but Bianca’s boss had managed to get them out by boat. Plenty of wealthy yacht owners had relied on optimistic projections that the Gulf Stream would carry the spill away from the Keys, or that most of the oil would evaporate before making landfall. The procrastinators were now paying top dollar to get their boats out of the impact area. Bianca stayed behind to run the café. Jack and Theo played first mate to Rick on the overnight delivery of a seventy-foot Johnson, which around two a.m. became prime fodder for the worst of Theo’s bartender jokes. “Hey, Swyteck, how do I make my Johnson seventy feet long? Fold it in half.” Ahr, ahr, ahr. Anything to stay awake as they cut through the waves in the blackest of nights.

  At a cruising speed of twenty-two knots, it was about a twelve-hour trip to Nassau. Jack and Theo split the last eight hours into four-hour shifts, so they were reasonably rested and ready to go upon docking. Rick, the all-night captain, stayed on the boat to sleep.

  A Bahamian immigration officer cleared them at the marina.

  “Purpose of your visit, gentlemen?” he asked.

  Jack paused. To find out who blew up the Scarborough 8? “A little business, a little pleasure,” Jack said.

  “Enjoy your stay.”

  The final leg of the journey was a ten-minute cab ride to the north end of the island. The driver dropped them on Marlborough Street, where they found themselves standing on a sunbaked sidewalk in front of a strip mall.

  “Not what I expected,” said Theo.

  The bank with the impressive name—New Providence Bank and Trust Company—was little more than a storefront window tucked between a manicurist salon and a convenience store. Jack double-checked the address, but they were definitely in the right place. Seeing it, however, made Jack understand why he had been told to “keep the FBI out of this.” It had all the markings of a bank that could shut down its Bahamian operations overnight and flee to the Cayman Islands at the first sign of law enforcement.

  “Banks run the gamut in the Caribbean,” said Jack. “From the big boys, like BNP Paribas, to . . . well, this.”

  Jack was no expert on offshore havens, but he had as much experience with Bahamian banks as any Miami criminal defense lawyer. While the Bahamas had shown enough cooperation with international tax regulators to improve their official status to “gray” in the eyes of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, bank secrecy continued to be a pillar of the Bahamian financial-services sector. There were more than four hundred bank and trust companies within the eighty square miles of New Providence alone. It didn’t take a team of OECD officials to see that this particular hovel in a Nassau strip mall was among the island’s darker shades of gray.

  Jack and Theo walked past the manicure salon, the noxious chemical odor worse than oil-spill dispersants, and entered the bank. Inside were none of the usual trappings of private wealth management—no leather couches, expensive artwork, or rich wood paneling. The walls were basic beige, with commercial carpeting and simple furnishings to match. Two women were busy at computer terminals, separated by a simple workstation divider. In a separate office in the back, behind a glass wall, a Bahamian man dressed in casual slacks and a short-sleeve dress shirt was seated behind a metal desk, talking on the telephone.

  One of the women rose to greet them. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Yes, I’m here to access a safe-deposit box,” said Jack.

  She glanced at Theo, than back at Jack. “We allow only one customer at a time in our secured area. Will that be you?”

  “Yes. It is box A-36.”

  “May I see your passport, please?”

  “I was told to ask for Mr. Jeffries,” said Jack.

  “He’s a bit tied up at the moment. If I could have your passport, I’ll get his attention without delay.”

  Jack handed it over, and she went to Jeffries’ office. The next sixty seconds were tense, as Jack realized that the phone call from Josefina might well have been a ru
naround.

  “What if your name’s not on the access list?” asked Theo.

  “Then we burned through seven hundred gallons of fuel for nothing.”

  “Well, not for nothing,” said Theo. “They have casinos here. And a totally awesome waterslide.”

  Jack might normally have rolled his eyes and ignored Theo, but the waterslide made him think of his expectant wife and smile. “You could be one cool Uncle Theo.”

  The woman returned with Jack’s passport and, to his relief, a pleasant smile. “Come with me, please,” she said.

  She escorted Jack to a locked door and, with nine beeps of the key pad, entered the passcode. The door opened to a small room. The only furniture was a small table and one chair. While the front area had borne little resemblance to a bank, the walls in this secured room had a thicker, more substantial appearance. The steel door looked bulletproof. She told Jack to wait at the table, and she entered another room that was behind a second locked steel door. Two minutes later, she reappeared with a metal box—safe-deposit box number A-36.

  “Just press the button by the door when you’re finished,” she said, and then she left Jack alone. He stared down at the box.

  With good reason, Jack had decided to heed Josefina’s instructions and keep the FBI out of this. Nonetheless, he approached the opening of the box like a CSI detective. He’d brought latex gloves with him (with the oil cleanup, they were everywhere in Key West). Jack saw no security camera in the room, and a bank such as this did not earn its clientele by spying on them, so he pulled on the gloves without concern of being watched. He slid the metal top off the box and peered inside. He saw only papers. Actually, there was just one paper, which he removed.

  It was a computer-generated bank record for the New Providence Bank and Trust Company, but not from this branch. It was a Parliament Street address, in the heart of Nassau’s financial district. The only entry on the record was a cash deposit of fifty thousand dollars. The date of the deposit was the fifth of September, which hardly seemed like coincidence.