by Ben Coes
“He’s in Havana,” said Karim when they had finished. “We know where he’s staying. You follow him, find him, kill him tonight. No mistakes.”
“Who is this American?”
“That you don’t need to know. He’s a threat. Like Marks, only much more so.”
“What do you want me to do with him?”
“He’s a tall, middle-aged American. He’ll stand out like a sore thumb. You find him, you kill him. Then back to South Bend.”
“That’s all? Just kill the American?”
“That’s all.”
“What does he look like?”
Karim placed a black-and-white photo of Dewey on the seat in front of Karim. “It’s from many years ago. He was in the military.”
“Branch?”
“Army. His name is Andreas. Dewey Andreas.”
Mahmoud held the photo in front of his face for more than a minute, studying Dewey’s face. “He doesn’t look very pleasant.”
“We understand he had a beard and long hair as recently as two days ago,” said Karim. “That may have changed. He doesn’t look as good as the photo. He’s older.”
Mahmoud continued to study the photo. He looked up at Karim and handed it back to him. “You told me Marks had a military background. That he was a U.S. Navy SEAL, that he might be difficult. You also said he was as old as a grandfather and limped around like a woman. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Marks nearly killed me. And now that’s all you can tell me about this one?”
“We’re trying to find out more,” said Karim. “He was in the army, like I said.”
“Then you’re a fool, or a liar.”
“Don’t you speak—” Karim began.
“If I don’t,” Mahmoud cut in, “we may fail. If I’d been more respectful of Marks, I would’ve carried my UMP in with me. If this matters, you have to tell me everything you know. What branch of the Army?”
“Rangers. Then Delta.”
“Fuck,” said Mahmoud. He sat in silence. “I know Delta,” he said. “We studied them at Jaffna Camps. They’re a nasty bunch.”
“So are you.”
“How old is he?”
“Forty-two.”
“What happened in Colombia?”
“Nothing. That’s outside your cell.”
“Then put it in my cell.”
Karim shook his head, exasperated. The plane suddenly tipped its nose downward as a bell went off in the cabin, indicating that they were in an approach pattern to Jose Marti International Airport outside of Havana.
“Andreas was in charge of the Capitana rig. He ran it. We had a group of men there. We needed his help to get into the target, the pumping station at the seabed. Something happened. We don’t know what. The cell should’ve been picked up by helicopter just before the detonation of the facility and flown back to Cali. But when the helicopter arrived, only Andreas was aboard. He must have taken over the rig.”
“CNN said a hundred men survived.”
“Yes. But we succeeded despite that. The problem is, the man who ran the cell knew a lot. He knew everything. Andreas may have gotten information out of him.”
Mahmoud nodded and closed his eyes as the Gulfstream swooped down and made its landing on the private terminal airstrip at Jose Marti Airport. The jet taxied to a stop near the entrance to a small brown brick building that served as the private air terminal.
“There’s a white van in the parking area just behind the building.”
Mahmoud and Ebrahim climbed out of the jet. From the bottom of the plane’s steps, Mahmoud turned.
“I will wait for you here, in the plane. If anything happens, text me immediately.”
Mahmoud took a last look at Karim. He shook his head, then turned to walk away.
“He’s dangerous,” said Karim from the top step of the jet. “If you see him, shoot to kill. Even if in public. If you must martyr yourself . . .”
Mahmoud registered the words without turning to acknowledge them. He and Ebrahim walked quickly toward the brick building, passing it on the left, then saw an old white Ford van awaiting them in the gravel parking lot. Mahmoud’s limp lessened, his mind began to sharpen as the mission took over.
Ebrahim drove from Jose Marti to downtown Havana, toward the port. When they arrived at the port, Ebrahim found a remote street near the fishing piers on the western side of the port. It was an older section of the port, with dilapidated corrugated steel warehouses perched atop crowded docks, lined with small fishing boats.
Ebrahim drove the van as Mahmoud remained in the rear of the van, preparing. He changed out of his clothing and put on the outfit Karim had packed, jeans and a gray T-shirt; anonymous, unnoticeable. Mahmoud inspected the weapons that were in the duffel. Karim had packed two HK MP7A1s, three silenced Taurus Cycle 2 9mm handguns, and a pair of long, serrated SOG combat knives.
“After we kill Andreas, perhaps we can invade France,” Ebrahim joked from the front of the van as he looked at the arsenal in the rearview mirror.
Mahmoud remained stone still; his face registered nothing.
37
KKB WORLDWIDE HEADQUARTERS
FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK CITY
Within one hour of his meeting with Marks, Joshua Essinger had gathered seven of the eight traders who worked for him. The eighth trader was already on his Christmas vacation, fly-fishing in Bali.
The trading floor looked not dissimilar to the control room on a nuclear submarine. The room was windowless, but bright and immaculate. Each trader had his own rectangular table atop which sat, depending on the trader, between four and a dozen flat plasma computer screens. The tables circled around a large, round cherry table that Essinger had had custom-made in upstate New York. On the table, a series of flat screens created a dodecagon, a twelve-sided circle of flat plasmas, each of which mirrored the trading activity of the individual traders, allowing Essinger to monitor their trades. Four screens were tied to Essinger’s own portfolio.
All told, “the desk,” as Essinger’s operation was referred to, ran between $25 and $35 billion depending on the day of the week, invested across the energy complex.
Four massive, custom-built plasma screens, ten feet high and sixteen feet wide, covered the four walls of the trading floor. On one screen, a map of the world spread out in light blue, green, and black. On the screen, every oil and LNG tanker in the world currently in transit was displayed in real time. Another screen displayed all electricity generation activity in the United States, also in real time, ported directly from the grid. Both screens enabled Essinger and his traders to analyze and predict commodity flows, spikes, gluts, and patterns, and construct trades around them whose goal was twofold: to hedge specific KKB production, and to make KKB money. The two were not necessarily always compatible, which was why Joshua Essinger and his young traders made so much money.
On the next plasma screen, a detailed list of all positions the floor was in at that moment. This one looked like Chinese algebra to everyone except Essinger and his team.
Finally, a last plasma played Bloomberg, sometimes Fox, volume down.
“Thanks for coming in, guys,” said Essinger, pacing around the center island. “I need your help on something.”
“You still haven’t found a date for New Year’s?” quipped one of the traders, a Wharton-educated math whiz named Tino Santangelo. The rest of the traders started laughing. Essinger remained stone-faced.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately, Tino, your mother couldn’t fit on the plane so, yes, it looks like I do need a date,” said Essinger. More laughter, even from Santangelo. Then Essinger turned, held a remote aimed at one of the large plasma screens, clicked it. Suddenly a video feed of Capitana, smoldering in smoke and flames, played. He aimed the remote at another plasma screen. A live shot video of the Labrador Sea where KKB’s Savage Island facility had once stood, now just dark blue ocean framed by snow-covered coastline, void of any trace of human activi
ty.
“No, I need your help doing something serious,” said Essinger. “We’re going to find the motherfuckers who did this.”
The room went silent.
“So you’re probably asking yourselves, how the fuck are we, a bunch of overpaid, highly educated, some would say brilliant, nerds with smallish biceps and little to no training in weapons, self-defense, or any other black art, how are we going to find the badasses who did this?”
“I own a BB gun,” said one of the traders.
“We’re going to make the assumption that whoever was behind this was trying to make money from it. If you knew these two events were coming, what would you do? Well, the answer to that’s easy.”
“Buy comp.”
“Correct,” said Essinger. “So if I’m buying comp, what do I have to do?”
“Well, obviously, place the order, make the trade, wire the money, clear.”
“And who do I do that through, that is, if I’m a really smart son of a bitch like the people behind this thing?” Essinger pointed to the Capitana video. “Where do I clear my trades?”
“I go outside the broker-dealer, right, boss?” asked Santangelo.
“Some other, smaller broker-dealer. Foreign?” asked another.
Essinger paused. Then, he shook his head.
“I create my own broker-dealer,” said another trader.
Essinger grinned. “Wrong. All of you. There is no other on-ramp to the trade. I have to take my trade to one of the four horsemen to clear it. Morgan, Goldman, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse. That’s the bottom line. This group is relying upon the fact that there will be literally millions of transactions on or around this time period, even in a segmented industry complex, like energy. They’re counting on it. They’re also counting on the secrecy of the broker-dealers. Confidentiality, that sort of thing. But what are they not counting on?”
Essinger looked around the room.
“They’re not counting on the SEC, right?” asked Santangelo. “They’re not counting on us pointing this out to the SEC.”
“Two for two, Tino,” said Essinger. “Wrong again. Christ, I’ve got pets smarter than you. We go to the SEC and we can kiss the data good-bye. They’ll block it off, lock it up, and we’ll see neither hide nor hair of it for six months while some bureaucrat fiddlefucks their way through the data. By the time they figure out who did it, the terrorists will be long gone, and more important, God knows how much more damage they’ll do to our country.” Essinger paused. “No, what they’re not counting on is the fact that KKB is about to use its massive leverage to strong-arm the crap out of these guys to get at this data. And, they’re not counting on Igor.”
Igor was the trading floor’s “IT guy.” He had three Ph.D.s, one from Carnegie-Mellon, two from MIT, all in math or computer-related fields. Igor was twenty-nine years old.
“So here’s what I want,” continued Essinger. “Get on the phone, now. Call the head of broker-dealer at each house: Morgan Stanley, Goldman, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse. Get them at home, in the Hamptons, Gstaad, Aspen, wherever the fuck they are. If you have to, run it all the way to the CEO suite. From me, and from Ted Marks. Got it? Ask nicely, then threaten. Threaten to remove all of our trading business—and we will do it. I want all energy complex–related trading activity in the month leading up to the attacks. I want subsidiary-level activity: U.S., England, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Europe. Have them omit any plain vanilla trades: Fidelity, Vanguard, et cetera, if they can.”
“I’ll take Goldman,” said one trader.
“JPMorgan,” said another.
“I got Morgan Stanley,” said another.
“Credit Suisse here.”
“Now the rest of you, divide up the banks. Call their compliance people. Same thing. Get all trading activity for the month leading up to the attacks.”
“Josh, that’s going to be more data than we can process,” said one of the traders. “I mean we’re talking—”
“Good point,” interrupted Essinger. “Someone call Igor and tell him to get his Russian ass in here. He’s going to be eating about fourteen terabytes for dinner tonight.”
38
HOTEL GRAND PRIX
PANAMA CITY, PANAMA
Marks and Savoy took one of KKB’s shining silver Gulfstream 500s from New York City to Panama City. On the way, they dropped into Reagan National Airport and picked up Paul Spinale, Savoy’s deputy.
They also brought along Dr. Harvey Getschman from Presbyterian/St. Luke’s, the surgeon who had performed surgery on Marks’s shoulder. A former army doctor who spent two tours in Iraq, Getschman needed little inducement to take some time off and accompany the two men, though he sat in the aft compartment and was not privy to the trip’s purpose.
The doctor was there to help administer Marks the drugs he still needed to control the pain from his hand and shoulder as well as rebandage both injuries every few hours. The potential for bleeding was still a problem in both wounds and the risk of infection remained severe. In medical protocol, and in the opinion of Getschman, Marks had climbed out of his hospital bed at least a week prematurely. But when the explosion at Long Beach occurred, and the doctor realized Marks and Savoy were somehow involved—on the side of the good guys—Getschman devised a traveling pack that would enable Marks to leave the hospital in comfort.
Besides clothing and weapons, a large duffel in the leather captain’s chair across from Savoy held the most powerful weapon Marks possessed: $10 million in cash. It was his own personal cash, not all of his savings, but as much as Savoy could carry. Truth is, Marks was worth more than $100 million and he would have brought it all if necessary. The money was there because Marks felt they didn’t have time to fuck around. They had hours, not days, and the stakes were escalating. The money to him was meaningless anyway. He had no family anymore. The only allegiance that burned within Marks now was to the country he loved. Through the sharp pain that stabbed at his hand and shot up his arm, a more powerful feeling coursed in his veins; the feeling of intense hatred for the traitor who somehow, somewhere was helping America’s enemies destroy her. He would spend every nickel he had and then, if necessary, tear the shirt off his back for just one moment with the treacherous bastard.
In Panama City, a private car met them at the airstrip and took Marks, Savoy, and Spinale to a meeting with the deputy minister for Panama Economic Development, a young, overweight Panamanian named Orvela Marcados-Sariga. PED would have been the department KKB would work with on development-related projects in the country, such as the acquisition of mineral and drilling rights. The meeting had been hastily set up by an executive at the foreign desk at KKB headquarters in New York.
They met at a private table at Yuca, the opulent restaurant in the ground floor of the Hotel Grand Prix.
“We’ve heard about the attacks on your company,” said Marcados-Sariga. “And on you personally. I hope you will accept our condolences.”
“Thank you,” said Marks.
“Coming so soon after the attacks, I assume this is related?” asked Marcados-Sariga.
“Your assumption is correct,” said Marks. “I’ll get right to the point. The time for KKB to pursue new foreign investment has come—sooner than we could have anticipated. We’re looking at two significant development projects within your country: the Heley tar sands project and the development of an offshore gas territory near Miraflores. Either one of these projects, if developed, would mean billions of dollars to Panama.”
“Yes, I have worked on both of these projects,” said Marcados-Sariga. “It is very exciting news, Mr. Marks. We have tried to be helpful in any way possible to the executives of your company.”
“Which my people and I appreciate, señor.”
“How can I be of help to you today?”
“We want to speak with someone within the Panamanian security forces,” said Savoy. “Someone high up, and preferably someone who is knowledgeable on internal Panamanian security issues. Someone at PPF.
”
Marcados-Sariga set down his glass and looked from Savoy to Marks. “What does it have to do with the projects?”
“Nothing,” said Marks. “Other than we expect cooperation and discretion. Otherwise, you can kiss the projects good-bye. We’ll take our business elsewhere.”
“I understand,” said Marcados-Sariga. “This can certainly be arranged.”
“How quickly?”
“Certainly within the week,” said Marcados-Sariga. “Sooner if possible.”
Marks opened his briefcase. He pulled out several bricks of $100 bills and placed them down on the table.
“That’s a hundred thousand,” said Marks. “For you. We want a meeting this afternoon.”
The Panamanian’s eyes bulged as he stared at the money.
“Let me make a call.”
Two and a half hours later, with a slightly lighter duffel bag in the trunk of the sedan, Marks, Savoy, and Spinale pulled into a gated compound an hour’s drive from downtown Panama City.
The location served as the headquarters of Panama’s special forces commander, General Sarijo Qital. It was one of more than a dozen such compounds spread out through the Panama countryside. Qital, a Western-educated man of fifty, had been brought in by Panama’s president to help clean up the country and attempt to rid Panama of its legacy drug industry and private militias. Consequently, the outlaw groups who still controlled the large drug trade in Panama despised Qital. He had been targeted many times and needed to rotate on a nightly basis between the “camps,” as he referred to them.
“He will meet with you,” Marcados-Sariga had said after arranging the meeting. “The president himself is forcing him to do it. Qital is a difficult man, I must tell you. He has a short temper. Good luck.”
After driving from the city into the hills, they followed the directions that had been given them, taking a left-hand turn up a small, nondescript dirt road. After a mile, they came to the gates. Two men dressed in plainclothes bearing automatic machine guns met the sedan at the gates. They asked Marks, Savoy, and Spinale to step from the vehicle and patted them down. Searching the car, they looked at the duffel bag, opening it up, then zipped it back up. It wasn’t the first bag full of money the men had seen. They signaled Marks, Savoy, and Spinale up the long gravel road through lush, yellow Guayacan trees. At the end of a winding slope, a massive brick building sat in the midst of a clearing.