“There’s a shock,” Raabe replied.
Sandor then told them that the National Counter-Terrorism Center was already working out some strategies of their own, and that the DNI was also reviewing the situation.
“I doubt they’re thinking what you’re thinking,” Raabe said.
“Just wanted you to know everything I know.”
Bergenn said there was no reason for them to get in the way of the other agencies.
“By the time they put a plan in place we’ll be all done and back home,” Raabe said.
“My thinking exactly,” Sandor agreed.
Bergenn said he would make the contacts Sandor requested. Raabe was still on a medical leave for the injuries he sustained during the operation in Pyongyang. He agreed to work from home, arranging for the equipment they would need. Then they planned to meet in three days in Curaçao.
Meanwhile, Sandor was going to take a short trip to visit a friend in St. Barths.
CHAPTER TWO
ST. BARTHÉLEMY, FRENCH WEST INDIES
SANDOR WAS GREETED at the St. Barths airport by Lieutenant Henri Vauchon. After a warm embrace Sandor took a step back and had a good look at his friend.
“Seems your shoulder healed up pretty well.”
The Frenchman shrugged. “Not too bad.”
“I take it you’ve been receiving the proper attention. Medical and otherwise.”
“Several women I know have been most helpful with my recovery.”
“I’ll bet. You still a local hero?”
“Glory fades quickly.”
Sandor smiled. “Isn’t that the truth.”
As they headed outside to the small parking lot, Vauchon said, “When you called you said you were coming down here for a short rest. I assume that’s a lie.”
“Why would you think such a thing?”
Vauchon grinned. “You booked yourself into Guanahani for only one night.”
“Come on, Henri. A lie is not a lie if the truth should not be expected.”
“Who said that?”
“A clever lawyer I know.”
“Sounds like it might have been written by Voltaire.”
“You’re so French. More likely came from Machiavelli.”
“What are you really here for?”
“Adina.”
“As I expected, although I doubt you’ll find him on St. Barths.”
“You may be surprised what we’ll find.”
Vauchon responded with a skeptical look, but Sandor let it go.
They reached the parking lot, where Sandor tossed his bag into the backseat of Vauchon’s car, then the two men headed into the port town of Gustavia. They parked along the main dock and made their way to the outdoor patio at Le Select. The lieutenant ordered burgers, grabbed a couple of bottles of beer, and led them to a small table on the patio.
“Look at you, Henri, drinking on duty in the middle of the day.”
“Perhaps no longer a celebrated hero, but still enjoying certain privileges.”
Sandor gave an approving nod.
“So tell me, what makes you think you will find Adina hiding here, of all places?”
“I didn’t say he was hiding here,” Sandor replied, then took a swig of his Caribe. “But we now know he was staying on a yacht here when he coordinated the attack on Fort Oscar. And he had men at that villa in Pointe Milou, both before and after the attack.”
“So this is the starting place for your search?”
“In a manner of speaking. I believe you can help.”
“You know I will if I can.”
“I want to review the electronic tracking records, see if we can identify his phone calls.”
Vauchon did not hide his pessimism. “Do you have any idea how many cellular calls are made in and out of here every day?”
“Of course,” Sandor said as he held up his hand. “I’m talking about a very limited search. I want to see if we can trace any calls to and from his base of operations in Venezuela during that short time frame. How many calls into and out of Venezuela could there have been?”
“Not many,” Vauchon conceded.
“We have some general intelligence about the area where Adina currently has his command center. If we can triangulate some of those calls from last month it might help to pinpoint the location.”
Vauchon thought it over. “Why not work this through Washington?”
Sandor took a gulp of beer without responding.
“Ah, I see. You have come all this way rather than simply phoning in the request or sending an email.” When Sandor remained silent Vauchon nodded. “Would it be fair to say that your visit is not official?”
“That would be fair.”
“Would it also be fair to say that you have been told not to pursue this matter on your own?”
“Fair seems such a strange word in that context. Couldn’t we just say that one friend is asking another friend for help?”
Their food came and Vauchon paid. “The least I can do,” he explained. “Last visit you bought me dinner at Maya’s.”
“I’ll buy dinner wherever you like tonight.”
“Because you need this help. Unofficially.”
“Because I enjoy your company.”
“Of course.” The lieutenant bit into his hamburger. Sandor waited. “Our systems are not what they were. The explosions at Fort Oscar were devastating.”
“I understand. But you can do it?”
“I believe so.”
“Without creating a problem for yourself?”
Vauchon drank some beer. “That’s another matter entirely. As I have mentioned, I do enjoy a certain, how would you call it, standing. And I am still well regarded by the DGSE,” he added, referring to the French intelligence service.
Sandor responded with an appreciative nod. “Don’t tell me you’re on a second payroll now, Henri.”
Vauchon smiled. “Using your expression, let’s just say they enjoy my company.”
————
Given the unofficial status of Sandor’s request and the anxieties of the local military after the recent invasion of Fort Oscar, Vauchon reminded his friend that subtlety in their approach to this fact-finding mission would be at a premium. Sandor agreed. He knew that if any word were leaked to Washington about what he was up to the consequences would be dire. He would be disciplined by Byrnes and CIA Director Walsh, but that was of no great concern. The important thing was that he would be put under watch and his operation scrubbed, and that worried him far more than any bureaucratic scolding.
“Just think of me as Mr. Subtle,” he said.
Vauchon shot him a knowing glance. He had seen Sandor in action before. “All right, Mr. Subtle, let’s see what we can do.”
The destruction of the telecommunications center that had been secretly maintained in the lower levels of Fort Oscar had been damaging to the defenses in the Western Hemisphere, not to mention a horrific black eye for the French. It would be fair to say that no one in the world expected a terrorist attack on the glamorous island of St. Barths. And, since it came on the heels of the downing of a jetliner just outside St. Maarten, the lax precautions in defending the old fortress became a humiliation that reached from Gustavia to Paris. Vauchon told Sandor that enough heads were rolling to evoke historic memories of the Bastille in its heyday.
The lieutenant was the one man who had emerged as a hero from the debacle, having rescued a number of the fort’s civilian personnel as well as military guards who were taken captive during the attack. Yet even for Vauchon, gaining entrance to the new computers and gathering the information Sandor needed was going to be difficult. Much of the replacement hardware had been relocated to Guadeloupe, where access was simply out of the question. Whatever technology remained on St. Barths was now temporarily situated in a makeshift facility above the hills of St. Jean, under tight security.
It was nearly five o’clock in the evening when Vauchon pulled up to the whitewashed stone building
that housed the new telecommunications center. He left his car in a small parking lot below the building, then trekked up a steep path to the first checkpoint. Sandor was right beside him.
Vauchon knew the two sentries waiting at the entrance by name and, after polite greetings, their exchange became more formal.
“What brings you here, lieutenant?”
“Ah, this damned thing never ends. They want me to review some of the telephone records from before and after the attack.”
The guards exchanged a quick glance. Then one of them asked if Vauchon had written orders.
The lieutenant rolled his eyes, as if to say that such things were beyond caring about. “No, just a call from Guadeloupe. The Americans again.” He gave a tilt of his head and, although they were speaking in French, Sandor got the gist of the conversation.
Both sentries responded with knowing looks. The Americans.
“You really should have written orders.”
“I’d just as soon go home, believe me. I’ll tell them I couldn’t get in, let them worry about it.” Then he turned to Sandor and began to explain the problem in English.
“That’s all right,” the soldier said, not wanting to be criticized by a superior tomorrow because he had not cooperated with higher authorities today. And this was, after all, Lieutenant Vauchon. “Jean-Pierre is at the desk; he’ll pass you through.”
Inside the building Vauchon told the same story to Jean-Pierre, who, after a similar colloquy, granted them entrance. The real problem now became wrestling with the computers themselves. Vauchon had to be careful in requesting assistance because Sandor did not want anyone to know what they were looking for. On the drive over, Sandor made it clear that his demand for the utmost secrecy was not limited to his apprehensions about what would happen if anyone back in the States learned of what he was up to. Given all that had happened here, it was not impossible that Adina still had an informant somewhere on the island.
Vauchon issued an appropriate defense of his countrymen, insisting that they could be relied on for their discretion, but he realized that once Sandor embarked on this mission his life would hang in the balance between silence and betrayal. It was also not lost on the Frenchman that his friend had placed this sort of trust in him, and him alone.
Jean-Pierre directed the two men to a large room in the rear of the building. It was crowded with computers, monitors, and wall-mounted screens. As the steel door closed behind them the head technician walked up and extended his hand. “What are you up to, Henri?” Vauchon knew him well. His name was Philippe, one of the survivors of the attack on Fort Oscar.
“Just need to check some information for the Americans.” He introduced Sandor. “He’s been sent by the NTSB. Looking for telephone records before and after the attack.”
“Anything specific?”
Vauchon turned to Sandor, who said, “We need to button down how the attack was coordinated. We want to see how it might have related to the downed airplane.”
Philippe’s English was excellent. He required no translation. “Through phone records?” he asked with obvious skepticism.
“We want to see if the man who took the plane down might have had communications with anyone here on the island.”
“Haven’t we shared all of those records already?”
“Maybe so,” Sandor replied with a casual shrug. “I was sent to have another look.”
Vauchon said, “We don’t need to waste your time on this, Philippe. Just point us in the right direction.”
“No, no, that’s quite all right. Come with me.”
Whatever suspicions the technician may have had, he was fully cooperative in sitting with Sandor and Vauchon at one of the computer stations and bringing up what seemed an almost endless list of incoming and outgoing phone calls for the week in question. Sandor asked whether the content of any of the calls might have survived, already knowing the answer was no. He knew the country code for Venezuela, but these records covered all of the calls into and out of St. Barths and, as they scrolled through thousands of contact numbers, he realized he would be here for days if he was going to allow this man to persist in displaying a random search. He could not hide his frustration.
“Is there any way to refine this search?”
“Of course. We can pull out different area codes, exchanges, any of that. But it’s impossible to know what calls were made from whose phone unless we have the number,” Philippe explained. “We’ve already been through this. We don’t know if they were disposable cell phones, which they probably were, and we have no other parameter for filtering.”
“I see.”
“I am certain that your government already has several copies of this entire printout,” he restated with some impatience.
Sandor reached into his pocket and pulled out a small paper containing a number. “This was the phone number of the cell used by the terrorist that was captured in Pointe Milou.” He handed it to Philippe. “Can you try this?”
Sandor watched carefully to see how the technician targeted his search. The screen quickly changed, now displaying only a dozen outgoing calls. Two of the receiving numbers contained the country code for Venezuela.
“Can we get a printout of that activity?”
Philippe hesitated, then agreed. He hit the Print Screen command and a laser printer at the end of the table came to life. “Anything else?”
Sandor glanced at Vauchon, who said, “Philippe, can I speak with you privately for a moment?”
Before the technician could respond, Sandor offered them both a polite smile. “I’ll be fine,” he assured them.
As Vauchon led a reluctant Philippe to the far end of the room, Sandor went to work at the keyboard. Tracing the steps he had just seen, he revised the filter to ask the computer only for phone calls made to and from numbers bearing the country code for Venezuela during the week already entered in the field requiring a time frame. Almost instantly the screen provided a record of more than thirty calls. Sandor punched in the command to print the list, then returned the filter to its previous field.
Vauchon, meanwhile, was complaining to Philippe about how weary he had become entertaining these interminable requests for information and cooperation, all the while doing his best to position himself so that the technician had to stand with his back to Sandor. When Vauchon saw his friend reach out and pull the newly printed sheet from the machine, he brought his griping to an abrupt end. “Ah well, let’s see if we can finish this, eh?”
Sandor stood as the two men approached. He had already shoved the second sheet in his pocket and held up the first printout for them to see. “Well, gentlemen, perhaps this will prove helpful. As you say, we already have the entire list of all calls made during that period, so my work here is done.” He offered his thanks to both of them, then allowed Vauchon to lead him out.
————
Back in the car, Sandor showed Vauchon the information he had taken.
“Is that what you need?”
“I hope so. Nice work in there, by the way. DGSE might have the right idea, getting you into the espionage racket.”
“I didn’t say they had.”
“Come on, Henri.”
Vauchon shook his head. “I don’t think I’m cut out for your business. My nerves couldn’t take it.”
“You get used to it.” Sandor paused. “By the way, I didn’t like your friend Philippe.”
“He’s a bit of a tightass.”
“Maybe. Could have been a little more helpful, since he was one of the crew you saved back there at the fort, am I right?”
“You are.”
“Therefore I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.”
Vauchon nodded. “All right. I will follow up for you.”
“Thanks. So tell me, what happened to that cute girl who worked at the villa up on Pointe Milou?”
“Stefanie?”
“That’s the one.”
“The one you spent the night with at
Guanahani?”
“How indiscreet of you to mention that. What kind of a Frenchman are you?”
Vauchon laughed. “She’s been seeing one of my soldiers. Met him when we were finishing up our investigation.”
“Pity,” Sandor said.
Vauchon laughed. “Did you think you ruined her for all other men?”
Sandor stared out the passenger window. “It was a thought,” he said. “Come on, let’s have a drink, then I’ll buy you that dinner.”
CHAPTER THREE
HATO AIRPORT, CURAÇAO
THE UNITED STATES military has maintained a small air base west of the Curaçao airport since World War II. It began as a staging area for antisubmarine patrols and has gone through various incarnations over the years. Today it is used by the Joint Special Operations Command to support AWAC flights, as well as Colombia’s anti-narcotics initiative and counter-FARC operations. There were three reasons why Sandor chose this airstrip as the base for his unauthorized mission.
First was the proximity to the coast of Venezuela. Second, an old friend was stationed there as commanding officer. Third, when he told Byrnes that Curaçao was the spot he had chosen for some R&R, it at least provided a credible story.
After spending the night on St. Barths, Sandor grabbed the early flight to St. Maarten and made the connection to Curaçao. He didn’t bother to check into a hotel, instead taking a taxi directly to the air base. At the gate he asked for the man in charge.
When the CO got the call that Sandor was at the perimeter checkpoint, he jumped into his Jeep and drove out to meet his former platoon mate.
“Sandor, you old pretender.” Captain Doug Carlton was a tall, muscular black man, with a personality to match his size, a deep voice, and a warm Georgia accent. He turned to the sentry. “Let this boy through,” he ordered.
“Commanding Officer, pretty impressive,” Sandor said as he climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep. “What’s the real deal with getting yourself stationed down here? You working on your tan?”
Carlton laughed. “Glad to see nothing’s changed. You’re still not funny.”
During the short ride back to Carlton’s office they caught up on a lot of names from the past, at the end of which Sandor said, “Bergenn’s on his way here.”
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