CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CARACAS–MONDAY LATE-MORNING
A summer thunderstorm gathered steam outside, but nothing could dampen the spirits of the team gathered inside in GeoGlobal’s conference room. They were putting pastries, scrambled eggs, and pieces of fruit on their plates from a buffet set on a sideboard.
Tripp poured coffee from a silver carafe and offered a cup to Samantha. “Nice of Victor to put out a spread for us.”
“Are you kidding?” Joe remarked. “That’s the least he could do. We just saved the company fifteen big ones.”
Tripp laughed. “Guess you have a point there. Well, fifteen minus your fee, which I’m sure wasn’t cheap. We were never cheap.”
“A damn sight cheaper than paying that ransom,” Joe said, munching on a chocolate covered donut.
Samantha filled her plate with fruit and turned to Joe. “I can’t thank you enough for putting this great team together.”
“And thank you for making the first call,” Joe replied.
“By the way, do you ever get up to D.C.?” she asked.
“Sure, from time to time,” Joe said. “Why?”
“Next time you’re coming up, let me know. There’s someone I’d like you to meet. Her name is Angela,” Samantha said with a grin. She took her coffee and sat down at the long conference table.
Tripp spooned up some eggs and a roll and joined her. “Guess Victor will be with us in a few minutes.”
“Honey, I was just thinking, in all the confusion and, uh, other activities last night,” she said with a mischievous smile, “you never told me what all happened when they had you up in that casita, or whatever it was. You just said they drank beer and watched soccer. So what did you do all the time? Did they let you exercise or anything?”
Tripp took a sip of his coffee and finished the sweet roll. “Well, it was like this. I was in a back room tied to a rickety old metal bed. I tried my damnedest to find a way to get out of there. Tried every single day, but it was really no use. I did take a swipe at one of the guys, thought I could nail him when the other one had gone out. But I was chained, he had the gun, and all I was able to do was really piss him off. It was pretty frustrating.”
“I figured with your Navy background, you’d try something like that.” Samantha said. “Now that I think about it, I’m glad that you stuck it out till Joe got there. I mean, you could have been killed getting into a fight with those guys.”
“I guess. Anyway, they brought a little food once in a while because they had to keep me alive. Mostly beans and bread. And I listened to all their conversations. I could understand them, but I never let on.”
“I know you speak Spanish.”
“Right. Well, anyway, they played cards, went out every few days for sandwiches and beer, but most of the time, as I said, they watched games on TV. Well, that and government news programs.”
“Could you hear the shows?”
“Oh sure. Place wasn’t that big. So I would just sit there, or lie there, and when they interrupted the soccer games I’d have to listen to el presidente give speeches all the time and then hear about how he was making a ton of money because the price of oil and gas was going way up.”
“Did they give any reports from America? I mean, did you hear about the other pipeline explosions?”
“Sure. I mean, there I was with absolutely nothing to do but listen to that damn socialist crow about all the good stuff he was doing for the peasants. So I played some mind games trying to keep track of where he was speaking, how many stupid promises he made and all of that. And I noticed kind of a weird thing. It was sort of a pattern.”
“What kind of a pattern?” Joe asked, looking up from his plate of eggs and donuts.
“Well, he was making speeches at all these churches,” Tripp said.
“Churches? I never thought he was the religious type,” Samantha said, taking bites of banana and pineapple.
“I figure he was trying to appeal to the crowds before the elections, which are next week, you know.”
“Yes, I know about that. What patterns were you talking about?” she said.
“So I’m listening to the speech at St. Anne’s chapel and then a day or two later, I think it was two days later, they have this newscast about the pipeline that blew up. They said it was the fourth line to explode in the United States and how it meant that the prices would go up again. Then later the president goes to the church of Santa Catarina. And a while after that, there are more attacks. There were two on Christmas Day, right?”
“Right. And that’s the day I bailed out of the White House and flew down here,” she said.
“In the midst of all of that?” Tripp asked.
“I needed to get here. I had talked to Joe, and we arranged this whole contract with Greyfield. But wait. Wait. Go back to what you said about that last church.”
“Santa Catarina,” Tripp replied.
“Was he there once or twice?”
“Twice. How did you know?” he asked.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed, almost knocking over her coffee cup. “This is unbelievable. But it could be. It just could be.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Tripp said as the other team members stopped eating and leaned forward to listen.
“I’ve got this crazy idea.” She tossed her hair back and sat wide-eyed.
“Samantha, what is it?” Joe asked.
“He could have been sending a signal, planning the attacks.”
“Who could have?” Dick said.
“El presidente?” a pilot suggested.
“What? How in the world …” Tripp interrupted.
She held up her hand as if she were asking for a pause. She thought for a moment and said, “Stick with me on this. The man gives a speech somewhere, a church, wherever, and soon after that, one of our pipelines blows up. Maybe he was giving a time signal or something, and maybe he had agents in those states, and they were following orders to blow up the lines.”
“But that’s crazy,” Joe said. “Isn’t it?”
“Everybody says I’m crazy all the time,” Samantha said with a wave of her hand. “Maybe he’s crazy too. But think about it. Who benefits when our lines are sabotaged and the price goes up?”
“OPEC, Mexico, every oil and gas producer all over the place,” Tripp said.
“And that includes Venezuela. You said he’s been bragging about getting more money for his programs, especially before the election,” Samantha said.
“But how could we prove it? And how could we find his agents, if that’s what they are, before they blow up any other lines?” Tripp asked.
“I don’t know … yet. But we’ve got to figure out where he gave other speeches and see if they were right before the first three attacks. And, oh Lord …”
“Oh Lord what?” Joe said.
“There have been six, and your company said they had seven pigs, so that means one more is coming, and we don’t know where or when,” Samantha said.
“When?” Tripp ran his hand threw his hair and said. “Maybe soon.”
“How soon? What do you mean?” Joe said.
“Well, he made another speech, but it wasn’t at a church. So that doesn’t fit the pattern.”
“Okay, so we get a break. But we’ve got to find out where and when he made other speeches and see if we can tie them to the first three attacks.” She looked over at the conference room door and saw Victor Aguilar coming in. “Victor, can you come over here a minute. We need your advice.”
“Certainly.” He rushed over to shake hands with Tripp. “Sorry I’m a bit late. Good to see you. I can’t tell you how relieved we all were when we heard about the rescue. This calls for a big celebration.”
“I agree,” Samantha said. “But first, we need to check something out. Can we use your computer? We need to double check some dates.”
“Dates?” Victor asked with a puzzled expression.
“Yes. It’s really important,”
Samantha said, getting up from the table with Tripp in her wake. “Can we go use it now?”
“If you need to,” Victor said. He waved to Joe and the other members of the team. “Give me a minute, Mr. Campiello. I’ll be right back.”
Victor sat at his desk and powered up his computer. Samantha told him what she needed. He went to the government’s website and scrolled through pages of information. Samantha and Tripp leaned over and watched the screen as Victor clicked on various headings. “Here’s one. He made a speech at Jane’s Diocese. Oh, and here’s another one at St. Anne’s chapel.”
“Keep going. Keep going,” Samantha said excitedly.
“And, let’s see, it looks like the first one was at Santa Catarina’s,” Victor said.
“That’s it,” Samantha exclaimed. “Every time he gave a speech at a church of some sort, a day or two later, there was an explosion on one of your pipelines.”
Victor swirled his chair around to face her. “You’re sure? This is amazing. Unbelievable. The president was tipping off someone to blow up lines in America? How could this be?”
Samantha nudged Tripp who was still studying the screen. “Wait. Tripp, you said that he made another speech somewhere else. Where was it?”
“Uh, let me think. Oh yeah, it was at Casa Natal,” Tripp said.
“That’s the birthplace of Venezuela’s leader, Simon Bolivar. It’s certainly not a church,” Victor said.
Samantha put her hand to her mouth and gasped. “Oh no! Oh my God!”
“What the hell is going on?” Tripp asked, taking hold of her shoulders.
She reached down and grabbed a piece of paper off Victor’s desk along with a pen and started to scribble down some names. “Let’s put them in order. Victor, you said the first one was a speech at Santa Catarina, then came St. Anne’s Chapel.” She wrote the names furiously and then asked, “And what was the next one?”
“Jane’s Diocese,” Victor said.
“Right.” She turned to Tripp, her pen poised in the air. “And then the ones you saw were … where were they again?”
“Uh, St. Anne’s. Guess he went back there or something. And then the last one was at Santa Catarina.”
“And you said he went there twice?” Samantha asked.
“Yeah, twice.” Tripp thought for a moment and said, “Come to think of it, he gave a speech and then went back and gave another one. So, yeah, twice. Why?”
Samantha completed the list and held it up. “Number one, Santa Catarina. Catherine of Aragon. Number two, St. Anne’s, Anne Boleyn. Number three, Jane’s Diocese, Jane Seymour. Number four, St. Anne’s, Anne of Cleves. Numbers five and six, Santa Catarina again, Kathryn Howard and Katherine Parr.”
The two men stared at her in stunned silence. “The wives of Henry the Eighth!” Tripp almost shouted. “How the hell did you figure that out?”
“And why would the president of Venezuela care about the wives of an English king?” Victor said. “This is completely remarkable.” He paused and added, “But come to think of it, we did hear that he likes to read books and see movies about former dictators, kings, all kinds of leaders, so maybe he got this notion …”
“And since he’s playing some sort of weird game here, the question is what could be the seventh target?” Tripp asked.
Samantha stared at the list in her hand again, stopped and suddenly waved the page in front of the two men. “Along with geology, I studied English Lit at Princeton. I read books about that period, and that’s how I remembered the names. Also Evan, he’s on the NSC staff and works on Venezuelan issues, he made some comment about how their president studies the old kings too. But, wait. You said he spoke at a place commemorating your leader, right?” she asked Victor.
“Yes.”
“And the leader of those six women was Henry the Eighth,” Samantha said.
“And that means …?” Tripp asked.
“Oh God, no!”
“Samantha, what?”
“Henry Hub!” she practically screamed.
“Henry Hub? In Louisiana? Where they set the price of natural gas?” Tripp said. “You’ve gotta be kidding. They couldn’t blow up Henry Hub. The gas is three hundred feet underground.”
“So it’s way underground. But tons of pipelines feed into it. So it’s different. It’s big. It’s huge. Gas comes in, gas goes out. It goes out to states all over the place. And if he’s planning his last attack somewhere around there, it could be the biggest of all,” Victor said. “My God, we’ve got to do something!”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
THE WHITE HOUSE - MONDAY LATE MORNING
The national security advisor sat huddled with Evan Ovich in his West Wing corner office, going over lists of his contacts working with the opposition forces prior to Venezuela’s elections.
“These are the student leaders who have evaded arrest so far,” Evan said. “They’ve divided the city into sections for distribution of pamphlets, cell phones, and all the rest. Then here’s a list of operatives in the other major cities and a third list of those working the barrios and countryside.”
“So they’re text-messaging all day long down there?”
“Just about. They’re got to get out the vote and also counter all the promises el presidente has been making the last week or two. It’s going to be close. Really close. Especially if he finds an excuse to arrest any more of those leaders.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Cosgrove” Wilma said, opening the door to his office. “I know you said you didn’t want any interruptions, but Samantha Reid is calling you from Caracas.”
Ken jerked his head up. “Caracas? What in the world is she doing down there?”
“I have no idea, sir, but will you take the call? She’s on secure line three.”
“Samantha’s in Venezuela?” Evan said. “We all know she’s been away, but Venezuela?”
Ken got up from the small conference table, walked back to his desk and grabbed the phone. “Samantha? Where exactly are you? Wilma said you’re in Caracas.”
“Yes, sir. I’m in the center of the business district in Caracas. I would have called you sooner, but this was my first chance to get to a secure phone.”
“Caracas? What in the world …?”
She quickly told him she had flown to Venezuela on her own to work with GeoGlobal to try and free Tripp Adams. She said Tripp had, in fact, been rescued by a private contractor, from Greyfield where Tripp used to work. She said she would brief him completely when she got back, but right now she needed his help. She explained her theory about el president’s speeches and how they might have been a signal to agents in the US to blow up the pipelines to raise the price of gas and oil. Before she could tell him her idea about the next target, he broke in.
“Wait a minute. First, that’s great news about Mr. Adams being rescued. I’ll get word to the State Department about that. But about the pipelines, you really believe that dictator was behind those first six attacks?” Ken asked. “That’s the first connection and the first motive anyone has suggested in this whole disastrous situation.”
“Yes, sir. I know it sounds terribly far-fetched, but the more we analyze it, the more it makes sense. Up to now, nothing else has made any sense at all. Not unless the FBI and CIA and other agencies have found the culprits while I’ve been away.”
“No. Sorry to say they haven’t, although they’ve been combing the states where it’s all been happening. We do have one bit of good news though.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“We finally got the go-ahead to move forward with Greg Barnes’ idea about our domestic satellites.”
“Greg’s idea?” Samantha asked.
“He’s the one who proposed it to me.”
“Actually … well … it’s not important now. I hear he’s got a big problem.”
“Yes. He’s under arrest. Awful business. Of course, we don’t know if he’s guilty. But still, it throws a pall over this White House. And he’ll undoubtedly be on a leave of
absence until the trial. But let’s get back to the pipelines. For now, as I said, we’re using the satellites.”
“Good. You need to train them on Erath, Louisiana,” she said forcefully.
“Louisiana? Why?”
Samantha went through the names of the churches again and their connection to the wives of Henry the Eighth. She then talked about the speech at Casa Natal and how it could be the final clue to a seventh attack at Henry Hub.
“This is the most incredible theory I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of incredible things in your job,” she said. “But when you put all of the pieces together, the puzzle takes shape. You have to admit it does.”
“You said he gave a speech at this Casa Natal place day before yesterday?”
“That’s right. And that means we may not have much time. In fact, if they follow their previous patterns, we may already be too late.”
“I’ll get the satellites focused on the whole Henry Hub area, and I’ll handle the FBI and local law enforcement. And, Samantha …”
“Yes, sir?”
“When are you coming back?”
“As soon as I can get on a plane. There are thunderstorms around here that might delay a takeoff, but GeoGlobal is fueling one of their planes right now so, hopefully, Tripp, uh, Mr. Adams and I will be on our way in a matter of hours. May I call you back while we’re en route to see if the satellites have picked up anything?”
“Of course you may. After all, this is your idea. An incredible idea. Call me when you’re airborne. I’ll be right here as the point of contact all day … and all night if need be.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
LOUISIANA–MONDAY OVERNIGHT
“This is the place,” Carlos said, pulling the car up to the fence around the pig insertion station. “Get everything out of the trunk. I’ll go cut the chain link.”
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