by Flynn Vince
“I’m not telling you anything, Art.” Rapp winked. “The only thing I’m saying is that my brain tells me these two guys are Middle Eastern, not Mexican as their names would suggest.” Rapp looked at his BlackBerry and said, “My gut tells me there’s a chance these might be two of the three guys we’re looking for and your gut should be telling you the same thing.”
“That’s all you’re going to give me… your gut?”
“For now… yes. I gotta run, Art. Deploy the team and see what they dig up.” Rapp turned to look for Kennedy.
“Where are you going?” Harris asked.
Rapp ignored him and threaded his way through the crowd toward Kennedy. She was surrounded by too many people Rapp didn’t want to talk to, so he maneuvered into a position where he could catch her eye. It took a few seconds, but Kennedy eventually saw him.
He pointed his finger straight up and mouthed the word Now.
Rapp left the room and pulled up Marcus Dumond’s phone number. He listened to it ring in the hallway across from the gift shop while he waited for Kennedy. The computer genius answered on the fourth ring.
“What’s up?”
“Are you in the building?” Rapp asked. “Which building?”
“Old HQ.”
“Yeah. I’m down in the basement working on-”
Rapp cut him off. “Drop whatever it is and get your butt up to Irene’s office on the pronto.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“Only if you’re late.” Rapp ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket, just as Kennedy joined him in the hall. Two of her bodyguards hovered nearby.
“What’s wrong?”
Rapp started walking. “I’ll save the good stuff for your office.”
They moved quickly down the wide hallway, while Rapp filled her in on the developments in Iowa. They turned a few times until they got to a door that led to Kennedy’s private elevator. No one spoke on the ride up to the seventh floor. When the door opened the two bodyguards stepped aside and Rapp followed Kennedy to the left and into her office.
“I asked Marcus to join us,” Rapp said. “He should be here any second.”
Kennedy leaned against the front of her desk, placed her hands on the edge, and crossed her legs at the ankles. She was dressed to the nines for the cameras. Dark blue skirt and jacket with black nylons, black pumps, and an ivory blouse. “I’m not sure I understand why you’re so concerned.”
“Yesterday, when you sent me on that little hop to go meet with Catherine and George?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I told you last night they gave me some pretty good intel.”
Kennedy could tell by his sour expression that there was a catch. “And?”
“Let’s just say your friends up on the Hill wouldn’t approve of their methods.”
Kennedy noticed how he referred to them as her friends. “So you’re nervous about sharing the intel with the FBI?”
“Yes… and I promised George up front that I would be really careful with the stuff he gave me. Between the two of us, I’m about 99 percent sure it came from his top source inside the Cuban government.”
Kennedy nodded and considered how nervous she would be if she had to share one of her top sources. “Understandable.”
“I told you they IDed two of the three, and they have a line on the third.”
“I remember.”
“Well… you’re not going to believe this.” Rapp pulled out his phone and showed her the photos. “Art just sent me these. This is why I asked you to come up here. They found these fake IDs at the crime scene in Iowa. One of these-” Rapp checked the small screen. “This one right here, I’m almost certain, is a Moroccan named Ahmed Abdel Lah, who Catherine tells me is one of the three men we are looking for.”
“And just how does she know that?”
“Unofficially, and I mean really unofficially, someone Catherine trusts picked up Ahmed’s brother and had a long talk with him. I don’t know all the details, but it sounded pretty solid to me.”
“And?”
“You know Catherine as well as I do. She wouldn’t dump something like this on me if it was bullshit.”
“What about the other photo?”
“I don’t know. When Marcus gets up here I’ll have him send it to George and Catherine. I don’t want it to come directly from either of us. Better to make it look like it was part of an information dump.”
Kennedy thought about it for a second and said, “So Ahmed’s brother was more than likely tortured.”
Rapp shrugged as if to say of course he was.
“And if we share this information with the FBI, they will want to know where we got it?”
“Exactly.”
“And then at some point in the not-so-distant future they’ll send a couple dozen agents and attorneys over there to question Ahmed’s brother and Catherine’s man.”
“And we can’t let that happen,” Rapp said.
“No, we can’t.” Kennedy stared out the window.
“What I need you to do is come up with a plausible explanation for why we think this double homicide is linked to the attacks of last week, and do it in a way that doesn’t compromise George and Catherine or their people.”
“We could alter those photos and dump them into the database.”
“Not a bad idea, but Art already ran them through TIDE and came up with nothing. This has to come from overseas.” Rapp looked toward the door, hoping to see Dumond. “As soon as Marcus gets up here he’ll know how to handle it without leaving any fingerprints. I also have him looking into an issue in New York.”
“New York?”
Rapp was getting ahead of himself. “The farm in Iowa was purchased through an LLC… I don’t know… six… eight months back. The lawyer who handled it was out of New York. I wanted to get a look at his files before all the Dudley Do-Rights show up on Monday.”
“Follow the money?”
“You got it. I’m half tempted to fly up there myself and slap the guy around a little bit. Make sure I get the whole story out of him.”
Kennedy shook her head. “I don’t like that idea.”
Rapp knew she wouldn’t, but asked anyway. “Why?”
“If this adds up like you say, the FBI will most certainly be all over this attorney on Monday. I know you can be persuasive, but there is no guarantee the attorney won’t file a complaint… in fact, once he’s surrounded by a bunch of federal agents I can almost guarantee he’ll file charges, and then I’ll have to explain to a lot of upset people what one of my top operatives was doing beating an American citizen and subject in a major criminal investigation.”
Before Rapp could answer, there was a knock on the door. Dumond entered the office and ambled over. He was wearing khaki flat-front pants, a short-sleeved blue button-down shirt, and an old black knit, square-bottom tie. With his afro he looked like a reject from the seventies. “What’s up?”
“We need your expertise,” Rapp said. He showed Dumond the two photos. “I need you to pull these off here and send them over to Charles and Catherine. Can you make it look like an information dump? Send it to them first and then send the photos to all our allies asking for help in identifying them.”
“No problem.”
“How’s it going with the lawyer in New York?”
“James Gordan,” Dumond said.
Rapp could tell by his tone that he wasn’t impressed. “Did you find the money trail?”
“The start of it. Chase Manhattan provided the funds for closing here in the States.”
“Where’d the money come from before it got to Chase?”
“Nassau, and that’s going to take a little longer to crack.”
“Why?”
“Royal Bank of Nassau… very good security. I’ll crack it eventually, but it’s going to take the better part of a day if not the weekend.”
“Shit.” All this international banking secrecy drove Rapp nuts.
“Give me
a few hours. I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“Good. Get to it. I’ll be down to grab the phone in a few.” Rapp looked back at Kennedy and said, “I think you should call George and Catherine. Try to explain our predicament.”
Kennedy looked at the clocks on the wall behind her desk and then hit the intercom button and asked her assistant to get Butler and Cheval on the phone. “Tell them it’s urgent, please.”
“Any ideas?” Rapp asked.
“A few. Nothing great, though.”
“I think I might be able to thread the needle.”
Thirty seconds later Butler and Cheval were on the line. “I’ve got Mitch here with me,” Kennedy said into the speakerphone as Rapp joined her at the edge of the desk.
“Hello, Mitch,” Cheval said, “you were going to send me those DNA samples from the six terrorists.”
“Sorry, Catherine, but I might have something better.” Rapp filled them in on the double homicide in Iowa, the explosives, and the fake IDs. “One of these guys looks vaguely familiar to me. I could swear I’ve seen a photo of him recently.” Rapp shared a look with Kennedy and added, “He looks Moroccan.”
There was a prolonged silence and then Cheval asked, “Why don’t you send me the photo?”
“On its way shortly. When you get it… maybe you could run it by your people in North Africa and see if they get a hit. Maybe it matches a passport on file.”
“I will do that.”
Butler cleared his throat and asked, “What about the other photo?”
“He looks Saudi to me,” Rapp replied.
“I see,” Butler said. “What exactly are you looking for, Irene?”
“Just trying to be careful, George. You know how this works. If we put these guys on our watch list and tip off the FBI, they’re going to want to know how we figured out who they were. So far, Mitch is running with the idea that they don’t look Hispanic like their names would suggest.”
“Yeah,” Rapp said, “I’m thinking Moroccan and Saudi.”
“I just received the photos,” Cheval said. “The one man is definitely Moroccan. I think I can get independent confirmation for you within the hour.”
“By independent, do you mean something the FBI could use in court?”
“Yes. I would be careful with this other photo, though. I’m not sure the Saudis will be much help. They might even begin to destroy evidence.”
“I’m not sure we need confirmation on both photos at the moment,” Kennedy said. “The Moroccan should be good enough to pass the entire thing off to the FBI nice and clean.”
“Anything from my end?” Butler asked.
Rapp leaned in. “If you could show the second photo to the right people, George, that would be great.”
“Will do.”
“And one other thing,” Rapp said. “You’re not by chance heading to the Bahamas this weekend, are you?”
Butler laughed. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Well, I’m flying over to Nassau in the morning.”
“What on earth for?”
“I need to talk to someone about a shipment of stolen drugs. And while I’m there I might visit one of your banks.”
“Oh,” Butler said, showing a bit of concern.
“If you’re interested, meet me at the Graycliff. Say around eleven. If not… send someone you trust. Someone who might help expedite things.”
“Let me see what I can do.”
“Fair enough. Just shoot me an email and let me know if you can make it.”
Kennedy covered a few more things with them, thanked them for their time, and then disconnected the call. She looked up at Rapp with a pensive stare and said, “The Bahamas.”
“Yes.”
“And when were you going to tell me about this?”
“I thought I’d send you a postcard from the beach.”
“Really… and just how do you plan on getting there?”
“Actually, I need to borrow one of your planes. The guy I’m going with is sending his plane to Cuba to pick up the man I need to talk to.”
“Cuba…” Kennedy frowned. “Who?”
“I think it would be better for both of us if I spared you the details.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Kennedy said with a shake of her head and a sigh.
CHAPTER 61
NEW ORLEANS
HIS watch woke him up with a steady beep… beep. Hakim turned off the alarm and looked over at the dashboard clock. It was four-thirty in the morning. He reached down with his left hand and searched for the seat controls. After he found the big vertical knob he pulled up and the driver’s seat began to raise itself out of the fully reclined position. He looked over the steering wheel, half expecting to see a cordon of police officers. There were none. He smiled at the cars opposite him. There wasn’t a person in sight and beyond the edge of the concrete parking ramp he could see the sky in the east turning gray with the first hints of dawn. The relief felt good. So far his plan had worked.
On the drive into New Orleans he’d weighed his options and decided it was time to press his luck, before his window of opportunity closed. It was time for a bold move. He had a brief conversation with his Cajun associate, Timmy the Bayou Coke King. The Coke King told him he was running a boat in five days. The thought was Hakim could ride out for the transfer and then ask for passage on the other boat. The plan might work, but Hakim had other concerns. The first involved staying at the Cajun’s swamp shack for five days. The place was filthy. In his current state he was likely to catch a debilitating infection. His second concern was the vision of himself attempting to climb from one boat to the other in the inevitable swells. And that would be after pounding through who knew what kind of seas, at close to fifty knots. If it had been his only option, he still would have wavered, but he supposed in the end he would have simply dealt with the pain.
Fortunately, there was an alternative. There was a great deal of risk in the sense that he would be trapped as soon as he entered an airport, but sometimes the best course of action really was the simplest. He had an American passport and a matching credit card with a ten-thousand-dollar limit. On the way down the night before he’d pulled into a Wal-Mart parking lot outside Vicksburg and turned on his laptop. There were no direct flights, but in a way that was better. He had his choice of ten or more flights that would work, but the best combination was the 6:00
A.M. out of New Orleans with a connecting flight through Miami. He was very familiar with both airports. The security people at New Orleans International Airport weren’t exactly the cream of the crop, and the people at the Miami Airport weren’t much better. Miami was also one of the busiest airports in the world, and they were far more worried about who was entering the country than who was leaving it.
So Hakim said a quick prayer and booked the tickets through an online travel site. He then very carefully eased himself out of the car and slowly walked into Wal-Mart so he could use the bathroom and purchase what he would need for the next leg of his journey. Back in the parking lot he took all of his purchases out of the packaging and neatly placed them in the new carry-on bag he’d purchased. He was back on the road in less than thirty minutes and headed over to Jackson, Mississippi, where he pulled in to a truck stop. He hobbled in with his new roller suitcase and found the pay showers that the truckers used. He fed dollar bills into the slot and then entered the cramped space. Slowly and carefully he peeled off his clothes and rolled them into a neat ball before stuffing them into one of the two plastic Wal-Mart bags he’d saved.
Hakim stood in front of the streaked and scratched mirror and inspected the full extent of his injuries. The left side of his body from under his armpit to nearly his waist was one marbleized slab of purple. Both eyes were bruised, his nose was broken, and his lip was split. Even when confronted with the severity of his injuries, he had a hard time believing his friend had done this to him. He plugged in the electric clipper, set it to one, placed his head over the sink, and bega
n to buzz off his medium-length black hair. In a few minutes he was done. All of his hair was buzzed to a uniform quarter inch. He then took the electric razor and took off the two days of stubble on his cheeks and neck, leaving the thick black hair on his upper lip and chin. It was exactly the way he had worn it for the photo he used on his fake passport.
After a quick shower, Hakim placed the electric razor in his suitcase and put the clipper in the second bag with his shoes. He then put on his baggy khaki cargo shorts, a striped light blue and white polo shirt, flip-flops and a Budweiser hat. On the way back to the car he tossed the two Wal-Mart bags into a garbage can, then drove down to New Orleans and the Louis Armstrong International Airport.
He arrived a few minutes past eleven and pulled up to the short-term parking kiosk, where he grabbed his ticket and entered the large multilevel parking structure. He found the perfect open spot on the fourth floor. It was dark and the space was bracketed by a large SUV and a pickup truck. He carefully backed the vehicle into a tight space. There was barely a foot to spare on each side, which was good. If any security guards were on patrol this was the last row they would pick to cut through. Hakim set the alarm on his watch, reclined his seat, turned it all over to Allah, and went to sleep.
Now he had a flight to catch. He was about to open his door when he realized he needed more room. He started the car and pulled out of the spot. Near the end of the row he found two open spaces and pulled in. He popped the trunk and took the keys with him. He stuffed the keys in the pocket of the hoodie sweatshirt he had on over the polo shirt and then very carefully slid the carry-on over the edge and let it slide off the bumper to the ground. After extending the handle he grabbed the bag of cotton balls and tore it open. He took three and stuffed them in his mouth on the left side between his teeth and his cheek. He tapped his cheek with the palm of his hand and decided he could use a few more. After that he put just two on the right side and stuffed some extra ones in his jacket pocket. He then grabbed the dull metal cane he’d picked up at Wal-Mart and closed the trunk. With the left hand on the cane and his right hand on top of the wheeled carry-on he began hobbling toward the terminal.