by Ben Coes
“Tell me about his financials.”
“Nothing unusual. He has a few hundred thousand in a 401(k). His wife has a little bit of money. Nothing weird. No other financial ties. Sometimes we would see agents take money and buy equity in a company somewhere, usually the country they intended to run to. You find that by a travel pattern correlated to alias and in-country incorporation or legal activity. That’s what I have most of the team focused on right now. If we find something interesting, we dig in. Unlikely, but that’s where I’d go if I was trying to hide some money.”
“Sounds like a—”
“Needle in a haystack,” said Calibrisi, nodding his head. “Exactly.”
“But is there anything else about Buck that makes you suspect him?” asked Jessica. “I mean, of all people. He does not seem like someone who would betray his country.”
“We looked at that, too,” said Calibrisi. “Biography. Education. Employment history. Psychographic. Demotions that might lead to bitterness, et cetera. I agree with you, there is nothing there to suggest a grievance or motivating event. The guy has done a lot for this country. He’s come damn close to dying several times. High-risk sort of mission work. Do you realize that in 1983, after the Beirut suicide bomb that killed so many marines, Buck went in, alone, at night, and killed Arafat’s head of security, one of the guys who helped design the bombing in the first place, El-terhassa? I mean, that was a legendary hit. So no, it doesn’t fit. I suspect him only because I just see eliminating every one else in that room really quickly.”
“And because of his background, we might never eliminate him or prove anything.”
“Or find anything,” added Calibrisi.
“Ambiguous. I hate it.”
“I’m sure my background has some ambiguity in it too,” said Calibrisi. “It’s the nature of being an ex-spook.”
“So what do we do?”
“Well, you do what we’re doing. You excavate anything and everything in this guy’s background. You watch him like a hawk. And you try to develop something from one of these events that ties back to him, gives you good reason to bring him in.”
“I think we should bring him in now.”
“And do what? Board him? Run a pharma package on him? I mean, it’s a slippery slope, Jess. You have nothing solid to go on at this point. If you start to do things like that, you’re stepping over the line. Just my opinion.”
“I don’t like waiting. Two thousand people died today at Long Beach.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to torture Vic Buck,” said Calibrisi. “Look, that’s one man’s opinion. It ain’t my decision though. It’s Lou’s, the president’s. Take it to them if you want.”
Jessica leaned back, thinking about how to proceed.
“In the meantime, I’ll keep going. We might find something. I know what I’m doing. We’re tightly focused. If he slipped up at some point, we will find it. What’s going on with the investigation down in Cali? Have the dead operatives given us anything to go on?”
“Not yet,” said Jessica.
“What about the guy we were exfiltrating?”
“I wish I knew the answer to that,” said Jessica.
40
PARQUE CENTRAL HOTEL
HAVANA, CUBA
Dewey walked from the hotel to a travel agency two blocks away. He purchased a one-way ticket to Melbourne, Australia, leaving the next afternoon. He didn’t have a plan beyond landing in Australia. Just get out of Cuba. Tonight he would drink, maybe stumble back to the hotel. He wanted to push aside the events of the past few days.
He had dinner at a small restaurant near the port. After he ordered, he went back to his hotel room. He went to the bathroom and removed the Colt from the back of his pants.
He looked in the mirror. He threw water across his face, washing his short hair with soap in the sink. He put a fresh bandage on his shoulder.
He tucked his handgun back between his belt and the back of his pants, then walked out of the Parque Central and into the crowded streets of the city. The temperature stayed in the mid-sixties at night, and the sidewalks pulsed with energy as people poured out for the evening.
He walked through the east side of the city, toward where the Parque Central concierge told him the nightclubs were. At Paradiso, he took a right. The streets were densely packed with people. Many turned and stared at the big American. He was taller than most of the Cubans. A few said hello to him as he passed, or nodded. But for the most part they just stared at him, a six foot three Americano walking among them.
He walked into the neighborhood at the end of Paradiso, the Julio. The rapid, deep sound of Caribbean music filled the street air. Loud, booming drums mixed with a fast beat. Groups of young women stood on the sidewalks, beautiful Cuban women, waiting to get into one of the nightclubs that were crowded into the end of the small street. Everyone smoked.
He walked to the front door of the closest club, a place called Zanzibar. It was packed with people and the music grew louder as he walked inside. He went to the bar and ordered a whiskey.
He stood at the bar and turned, looking at the crowd. He sipped his drink as slowly as he could, but it was hard not to down it quick. He ordered another one and paid. He talked briefly with a young Cuban woman who had long, black hair, a pretty dark woman with large, warm brown eyes. She introduced herself—Sanibel. He spoke with her for a few minutes. Then he circled the perimeter of the dance floor. He finished his drink and left.
He went to three more clubs. He had a drink at each of the clubs. He was starting to feel the effects of the alcohol by the third nightclub. It was past midnight. With no better notion in mind, he returned to Zanzibar, looking for the young woman, Sanibel. He ordered a beer at the bar.
Sanibel returned from the dance floor. She was sweating and even sexier than he remembered. Her white short-sleeve shirt barely covered her chest; he noticed for the first time how large her breasts were. She approached the bar and stood. She was with a man now, a young, scraggly-looking guy with a beard. She glanced from the end of the bar at Dewey and smiled. He signaled to the bartender, and had him bring her a glass of champagne.
She said something to her dance partner and left him for Dewey.
“Thank you,” she said in English, toasting him with the glass.
“You’re welcome.”
“What’s your name again?” she asked. “I’m sorry.”
“Dewey.”
“Hello, Dewey,” she said, extending her hand. “Journalist?”
“No.”
“Military?”
“No. Tourist. You?”
“Teacher,” she said. “From Havana. I teach math.”
“Do you like to dance?”
“Sure.”
They put their drinks down on the bar and went to the dance floor. They danced for several songs. Sanibel was a natural dancer and she moved around Dewey in time with the music, smiling at him. She rubbed against him. He was loose from the alcohol and he let it course through him, and tried to keep up with her. At some point, she took his hand as they danced and they held hands through several songs, dancing closer to each other. He leaned forward and kissed her. She tasted sweet, and her lips were soft. He wanted to take her back to the Parque Central. He would, if she would let him. Perhaps one more dance, another drink, then back to his suite. He liked her.
Then, over her shoulder, across fifty feet of dimly-lit room and hundreds of people, Dewey saw the man who had come to kill him.
He was Arab, dark-skinned. He stared at Dewey from across the room. He held no drink. He was dressed in a gray T-shirt, muscled. His eyes were dark and serious; they traced Dewey as he moved.
Dewey continued to dance with Sanibel. He stayed close to her, but kept a subtle eye on the stranger. He didn’t want to let him know he knew he was there. He looked for others but saw no one. Sanibel moved in closer again and put her hands around him. First on his back, then lower, as she kissed him. Her tongue entered his mou
th this time. It tasted sweet, of champagne. He kissed her back. The man kept his eyes on him from afar. Then, suddenly, almost imperceptibly, he glanced behind Dewey, toward the bar. Dewey swung Sanibel around.
At the bar stood another killer, this one shorter, with a mop of hair, younger than the thug in back. He too looked dangerous, and he did nothing but stare. They’d surely seen him before then. Had the alcohol dulled him? It was too late to worry about that. He had a situation on his hands. He would need to kill them.
The thug in back moved first.
He stepped quickly through the crowd, pushing aside people. Dewey turned. His partner at the bar moved forward at the same time. Dewey spun around again. The man at the back reached for his waist. Through the crowded dance floor, he could see the man raising his gun.
Dewey’s first concern was Sanibel, whose arms were wrapped around his neck. As the first man approached, he attempted to throw her to the ground, out of the firing line, but she resisted, a look of fear crossed her face, fear of Dewey, who she thought was trying to harm her. She pulled out of his grip. The man in back fired.
Suddenly, a silenced slug missed Dewey and ripped through Sanibel’s neck, and she was knocked backward, screaming, but still upright. Blood coated her neck, her hand reflexively reached for the wound. Another bullet, this one through her chest, and Sanibel tumbled over backward as the dancers in the immediate vicinity spread apart amid screams and pandemonium. She collapsed in Dewey’s arms, rapidly bleeding out. Screams echoed above the loud music and soon the dance floor was chaos as people ran for the door.
Dewey ran with the crowd as the two men chased him. He ran to the left of the crowd and kicked open a door near the bar, away from the entrance. He sprinted down Paradiso, then took a left on a side street. Halfway down the small, darkened street, he saw a woman reach into her handbag to get a set of keys. She stopped at an old Mercedes sedan.
At the end of the street, he saw the two killers running quickly through the crowd.
“Give me the keys,” he said. He held the Colt against her side. “Scream and you die.”
He took the keys from the woman, pulled the car out, and sped down the narrow street, leaving the woman standing in the middle of the street. He turned left to go back toward the Parque Central.
As he drove up Paradiso, he saw a set of lights go on in the small rearview mirror. The terrorists were a quarter mile back. They had marked him. The lights of a white van came into view behind him, several blocks to the south. He sped past the Parque Central.
Dewey drove up the central hill that ran through the middle of Havana, past the Capitol. He sped through the city’s business district, a handful of tall cement office buildings. Behind him, the lights of the van twinkled in the rearview mirror, getting closer.
The business district transitioned into suburbs, tidy streets lined with small, squat brick and cement houses. Dewey kept the pedal to the floor, pushing the sedan as fast as it could go. But the killers closed in. Dewey kept the pedal down, but it wasn’t good enough, and by the time the suburbs started to turn into farmland they were at his back bumper.
In the rearview mirror, he saw one of the killers lean out, a black machine gun in his hand. Bullets flew at the Mercedes, the sound of lead striking metal, then the rear glass shattered. The small roadway tightened into a dilapidated one-lane road, and Dewey swerved at a telephone pole, down another road, creating a temporary gap between himself and the killers.
In the distance, twenty yards ahead, he saw a rusty shack at the edge of the road, next to a break in the fields of tobacco. The van’s lights came into view again behind him, then more bullets, and he ducked as a spray of lead shattered the windshield of the Mercedes. Suddenly, Dewey swerved the Mercedes toward the rusty shack, aiming straight for it before skirting it at its edge and barreling the old car down through the break in the field. He was on a dirt road that went through the fields. The tall green tobacco stalks cascaded over the dirt roadway and brushed across the broken windshield of the Mercedes, pushing shards of glass down onto Dewey’s lap. He pressed the accelerator down to the floor and sent the old car lurching forward as fast as it would go down the dirt path.
In the mirror, he saw the lights behind him as the sedan entered the field road.
He drove for a hundred yards. Clouds of dust shot out as the tires of the car tore down the small path. He reached forward and cut the headlights of the old car. He now drove in blackness, trying to stay straight, not letting up on the accelerator, letting the sound of the stalks of tobacco rattling against the roof guide him through the field.
In a sudden motion, he swerved the car to the left, pulled back on the emergency brake, down into a row of tobacco stalks, swerving wildly in a 180-degree turn that left the car facing back toward the dirt path from the edge of the stalks, then jumped out of the vehicle, taking the Colt with him, lunging behind the Mercedes as the lights from the terrorists’ van shot down the path. He felt it then, the adrenaline, coursing down through his legs and arms. A smile spread across his lips as their vehicle plunged through the thick dust and tobacco. He moved back, behind the Mercedes, and braced himself. The lights grew brighter and the engine revved as the van closed in. Without warning, the killers’ van barreled into the darkened Mercedes, crashing into the steel front of the parked car. The noise was horrendous, the unnatural sound of metal meeting metal, glass breaking, and screams from inside the van as the terrorists were caught by surprise by the parked car. The van flipped on its edge, slid, then flipped completely over onto its roof, which crushed the van in upon itself.
Dewey stood up and stepped into the pathway behind the wrecked van. The engine whirred as one of the tires continued to gyrate in the night air. Moans of pain came from inside the destroyed van. Dewey reached inside the Mercedes, turned the headlights on. Only one worked, and it illuminated the overturned, destroyed van that lay smoking in front of the Mercedes.
He moved quickly toward the van with his Colt in front of him. He walked to the driver’s side and looked in. It was the short one from the bar with the mop of hair. He lay on the ground, what had been the ceiling of the van, crumpled up. His face and head were covered in blood. He was young, early twenties. Dewey reached in and felt for a pulse; still alive. He felt for a weapon as the man looked up at him. He found a silenced handgun next to the man’s left leg. He picked it up and tossed it into the tobacco field.
He walked around to the passenger side and pulled the dented door open. It fell off its hinges to the ground. The tall killer was wedged against the dashboard, his head turned helplessly toward him as he kept his handgun aimed at him. He was covered in blood; it was the terrorist from the back of the club, the one who shot at him, who killed Sanibel. He reached in and grabbed his thick, muscled arm, pulling it behind his back and yanking it up until the humerus bone snapped. He then put both of his hands on the man’s head and pulled him from the van, placing him on the ground in front of the Mercedes’ shining headlight. He checked him for weapons, pulled a knife from a sheath at his left ankle and a handgun tucked into his pants below his back. He threw both weapons into the field.
He went back and dragged the driver from the van and set him next to the other man. Dewey pulled a knife from a sheath at the man’s calf, finding him equally badly injured. The driver’s legs were broken, the right badly contorted in the middle of his thigh. The taller man was in slightly better shape, though dazed and bloody.
Dewey propped them up. The bright headlight shone in their eyes. He leaned against the dented front of the old Mercedes, next to the light, and kept the Colt trained on them.
“Welcome to Cuba.”
41
KKB WORLDWIDE HEADQUARTERS
Joshua Essinger stuck his head inside the office door.
“Got anything yet?” he asked.
Igor Karlove sat at his computer, back to the door. He said nothing. In fact, he didn’t even turn around. His long, blond hair was combed back and it covered his ea
rs. From earbuds his iPod blasted Exile on Main Street so loudly that the vocals were audible from the doorway.
On the computer screen in front of him, lines of letters and numbers were scrolling down quickly. Every once in a while, Karlove would hit the keyboard, type something, then sit back and watch as script rolled across the screen.
Essinger walked up behind Karlove. He reached down, pulled the buds from his ears. The Russian looked up nonchalantly.
“Hey, Josh.”
“How’s it going?” asked Essinger.
“It’s going.”
“How long’s it going to take?”
“There’s a lot of data here. It’s going to take a while. I had to take down the KKB network and tap capacity. Any CPU not logged in is helping out. I also asked a buddy over at EMC to let me use one of their stack farms. It’s just a lotta fucking lines.”
Karlove reached out, hit the enter key, typed something furiously, then sat back.
Eight hours after Essinger’s meeting the evening before, most of the data was in: a list of all energy complex–related trading activity in the month leading up to the attacks that had cleared through Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Credit Suisse, the four major broker-dealers in the world. The information was held in secure, heavily encrypted databases within each financial institution. With approval had come not a big file or set of files, but rather, a temporary entry provision, essentially a password, that enabled Karlove to access the data and extract it from the four databases within each firm. Karlove had had to write a program that accomplished three objectives; extract the data, format it in a common framework, and purge any trades that were made by one of the big “vanilla” mutual funds. The data involved was massive—more than seven billion lines of code. But the program that Karlove wrote was elegant, brilliant, and stunning in its simplicity and efficiency, and less than five thousand lines of code. It would have taken one of the big consulting firms weeks to develop a program to accomplish what was needed by Essinger. It had taken Karlove less than four hours.