His mother was down the hall. Weeping.
Rob fought back his own tears, then—did nothing.
* * *
THE BLACKNESS OF THE ocean beneath them gave way to the lights of Maiquetia as the 757 banked over the shore and descended into Simon Bolivar International Airport. J.J. peered past Moyer out the window, watching the flashing running lights bounce off the runway. A second later they were wheels down and taxiing to one of the airport’s two terminals. They had made better time than expected.
The moment the aircraft came to a stop, the clack and click of seat belts releasing filled the passenger compartment. Scores of people stood as if doing so would get the exit doors open sooner. J.J. stayed in place. He saw no sense in standing in the narrow aisle pressed between strangers like salami on rye.
Ten minutes later they stood in a line, computer bags hung over their shoulders, waiting for their turn in immigration. J.J. reminded himself that nothing could go wrong here, though neither he nor Moyer carried anything suspicious. Even the bags they had checked in the U.S. contained what anyone would expect to find in the luggage of two men traveling on international business. A decade ago they might have tried to smuggle personal weaponry, broken down into its most basic parts for later reassembly, in special luggage, but not now. In August 2006 Venezuelan authorities searched and seized diplomatic cargo intended for the U.S. Embassy. The authorities claimed they found parts for a military aircraft ejector seat and 176 pounds of chicken. The U.S. lodged complaints about the improper search of diplomatic packages. J.J. wondered what the embassy needed with an ejector seat and chicken.
If diplomatic material could be searched, then certainly the luggage of two Americans could fall under close scrutiny. They had other ways of getting the equipment they needed.
“Passports, please.” The words belonged to a short, dark man with a thin mustache that hung to his lip below a heavily veined nose. He oozed contempt and boredom. “Anything to declare?”
“No.” Moyer handed over his passport.
“Nature of your visit, please?” The man studied Moyer’s documents.
“Business.”
The immigration officer squinted as he looked at Moyer’s picture and ran a thumb over the image. “Your passport looks new.” He studied the small book’s spine and fingered the other pages.
“It is.”
“Do you travel on business often?” The officer’s English was good.
“Several times a year.” J.J. saw Moyer’s shoulders tense.
“Yet your passport seems only days old.”
Moyer chuckled. “It’s my wife’s fault. She washed my other one. Let me tell you, it’s a real pain in the fanny to get a new one on short notice. If you know what I mean.”
“Do you have another form of identification, Señor?”
“Sure. Would a driver’s license do?”
J.J. could do nothing but act bored, even as his mind raced like an Indy car. His passport looked much like Moyer’s. Everything else about the documents was perfect, but no one had guessed that some civil servant would care about how new or old a passport appeared.
Moyer removed his driver’s license with the false name and address and handed it to the man.
“I can’t believe some of these people.” The voice came from behind J.J. He turned and saw the grandmother that tried to talk his ear off on the plane. “What’s the hang-up?” Her voice rose above the ambient noise of the airport.
J.J. started to warn her against irritating the immigration officer, then decided against it. Odds were that the man wouldn’t be too hard on a woman, and she might just cause enough disruption to distract the man.
The officer compared Moyer’s driver’s license photo to the one on the passport. He fingered the license. J.J. had never seen such a tactile man. “Your driver’s license also looks new. Did your wife wash that as well?”
“Are you married?” Moyer asked.
The man nodded.
“Have you ever made your wife mad? Yes, she washed my driver’s license and everything else in my wallet—my passport, my license, my credit cards. My cell phone too. I’d had a few too many the night before. She claimed it was an accident. I think it was revenge.”
The man nodded.
“Come on, mister,” the woman said. “My family is waiting for me.”
The immigration man lifted his head and frowned.
“Look,” J.J. said to the woman. “I don’t have anyone waiting on me. Why don’t you take my place?”
“Thank you.” She pushed past him, jostling J.J. with her shoulder bag. She was now one behind Moyer and much closer to the officer.
The official looked at the woman and tightened his jaw. He handed the passport and driver’s license back to Moyer, pulled a small booklet from a pile to his left, made a couple of notes and slammed a rubber stamp on one of the pages. “This is your three-week visa. Welcome to Venezuela. Enjoy your stay.” The words were delivered in robotic fashion. He waved Moyer through.
The woman was cleared in what had to be record time. J.J.’s heart picked up a few beats as he handed the man his passport. To
J.J.’s surprise he cleared immigration with no trouble. The man glanced at the passport, then at J.J.’s face. “This is your three-week visa. Welcome to Venezuela. Enjoy your stay.” The immigration officer was still working, but part of him had already checked out for the day.
J.J. made eye contact with Moyer. They had just dodged a bullet.
Customs went smoothly and minutes later they entered the main terminal. For some reason J.J. had expected a trashy building with technology just this side of the Stone Age. Instead he saw a newly remodeled structure, with colorful walls, large windows, and highly polished floors. He should have remembered: never make assumptions.
“Think you can get us a rental car?”
J.J. turned to Moyer. “I think I can manage.”
“Good. There’s the rental car counter.”
He looked at the signs over the counter. Aco Alquiler, Amigo, Auto 727, Avis, Budget, Hertz, Margarita Rental, and Rojas. “I think I’ll go with Hertz.”
“Got a reason?”
“Yeah, I recognize the name.”
“Works for me. While you do that, I’ll take care of some otherbusiness.”
Before J.J. could ask, Moyer moved at a brisk pace to the men’s restroom.
CHAPTER 16
MORNING LIGHT PUSHED THROUGH a gap in the heavy draperies, falling across Moyer’s face as he lay in bed. The radio alarm-clock read 6:15. He had been awake for over an hour. For him, this was sleeping in. Still, being awake didn’t necessitate crawling from bed. Clean white sheets and a thick comforter conspired to keep him in place, and he felt content to let them do so.
After leaving the Caracas airport, he and J.J. had checked into the Palacio de Sol, an upscale business-class hotel near the center of the city. When Moyer pushed his credit card across the marble-topped check-in desk and signed the room agreement, he saw his tax dollars were paying over $300 a night for a two-week stay. They were warmly welcomed and their baggage carried to their rooms by a bellhop in a red uniform that looked as if it had been salvaged from a 1950s movie set. A twenty-dollar tip put a smile on the man’s face.
Both rooms were on the eleventh floor of the twenty-fivestory hotel. At the briefing that morning, Kinkaid had described the hotel as a step above most of the other facilities in the area, complete with luxury suites. Neither Moyer nor J.J. got a suite. They had to settle for a “standard room,” but standard proved better than he hoped. White plaster walls supported a coffered ceiling. Thick blue drapes hung over sheer inner drapes, the former being pulled back to let in the lights of downtown Caracas. A king-size bed dominated the space. A workstation of cherry-veneered wood occupied one corner. Two heavily padded chairs anchored the other corner. Photo artwork of the Venezuelan countryside hung on the walls.
Moyer had wanted nothing more than to unpack and crawl into bed. The day h
ad been long and taxing. In less than fifteen hours he had gone from sitting in a doctor’s office, hearing how he might have colon cancer but not to worry, to being shipped to a foreign country.
Despite the lure of the bed, Moyer had more work to do, though it wouldn’t appear like work to most people. He and J.J. were to meet in half an hour and make their way to the hotel bar. Sometimes the best way to maintain low visibility was to keep a high profile. They had to assume that someone might be watching them. They had done nothing thus far to draw attention to themselves, and they wanted to keep it that way. They were traveling as businessmen, so they had to do what traveling businessmen often did—knock back a drink or two. It was all part of hiding in plain sight.
The bar looked like most bars Moyer had been in but with better furniture. Flat-screen televisions hung from the ceiling, each strategically placed to allow anyone in the bar an unencumbered view. Each television had been tuned to a sports channel. Clips of soccer and baseball games beamed from the screens.
An hour later Moyer crawled into bed, turned on the television, found ESPN Deportes, and tried to make sense of the Spanish sports news. Not that it mattered. Five minutes later he was asleep.
Now that the sun had crawled over the eastern horizon, Moyer was ready to get to work. He shaved, showered, and dressed in a pair of loose-fitting jeans and a pale yellow shirt with the words OKLACO OIL stitched over the right breast. He replaced yesterday’s black dress shoes with a scuffed pair of leather work boots.
As he retrieved his wallet and hotel key, his Nokia E61i chirped. A text message had arrived: Lunch meeting is confirmed. The innocuous sentence would mean nothing to anyone reading over his shoulder. To Moyer it meant Shaq and Caraway had arrived and checked into their hotel. He studied the PDA display and noticed that another text message had arrived while he was in the shower: Hi Sweetheart. I miss you already. Junior misses his daddy. Call when you can.
Jose and Pete were on scene. Moyer smiled. Cell phones were normally devices so open that a high school student with a little knowledge and the right equipment could intercept a call or text message. The cell phone Moyer held was different. The modified Nokia phone carried the latest encryption software. A dual-layered RSA 1024-bit/AES 256-bit military-grade encryption had been loaded into the phone. To carry on a conversation free of prying ears all he had to do was key in a single digit. Even a text message was safe once the encryption was turned on. The phones were not new; many government leaders carried them.
“So far, so good.”
Someone knocked on the door. Moyer, with phone still in hand, peered through the peephole and saw a spread of white teeth. When Moyer opened the door, he found J.J. leaning close to where the door had been a moment before, still grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“What’s with the cheesy grin? You win the lottery or something?” Moyer stepped back, letting J.J. enter. He wore a gray shirt similar to Moyer’s, as well as jeans and work boots.
“Every day a man can climb out of bed is a good day.” J.J.closed the door behind him.
“That’s how you got it figured?”
“Absolutely. Optimism is my middle name.” He looked at the phone in Moyer’s hand. “Receive any interesting calls?”
“Usual stuff.” Moyer’s cryptic response carried enough meaning for J.J. to understand. “You ready to rock?”
“And roll—just as soon as I use the latrine.”
“What? They didn’t give you a bathroom?”
“Coffee. It’s all about the coffee.”
* * *
AFTER A BREAKFAST OF eggs and chorizo in the hotel restaurant, Moyer and J.J. pulled their rental car from the parking stall and started across the surface streets. Moyer drove, leaving J.J. free to take in the sights. Were it not for all the signs in Spanish, he might have confused his surroundings with any U.S. city of two million people. Like most cities, Caracas had an industrial area, a downtown business section, and numerous suburban neighborhoods. It was to one of these neighborhoods the onboard GPS led them.
The neighborhood comprised row upon row of small homes. Judging by the size of the trees near the street, J.J. figured the community to be more than thirty years old. The houses sported pale paint on hand-applied stucco. This was a working-class neighborhood, chosen because very few people would be home. Children would be at school, parents at work. The few people who might see them would be mothers of small children or the elderly.
They moved down the street slowly, though not so slow as to attract attention, and parked behind a dark green panel truck. The vehicle was ten years old if it was a day but looked well kept. Moyer pulled the sedan behind the truck and switched off the car.
He glanced at J.J. “Open the hood and fiddle around for a couple of minutes.”
“I’m not much of a mechanic.”
“You don’t have to be. Just look and touch a few things, then we’ll be on our way.”
J.J. didn’t need the explanation, but talking helped quiet his nerves. Moyer had been more somber than usual on the ride over.
They moved to the panel truck. Moyer unlocked the door and pulled the hood release. J.J. peered into the engine compartment. It was surprisingly clean for a vehicle of its age. He wiggled the radiator hose, studied the fan belts, and made certain the spark plug wires were in place. They were, of course. He expected to find nothing wrong. All of his activities were for the benefit of anyone watching. Two minutes later he stepped back and nodded to Moyer. The engine fired to life, and J.J. closed the hood.
Moyer drove off down the street, with J.J. following in the sedan.
CHAPTER 17
THE PHONE RANG AT 9:12. Stacy dusted grainy laundry soap from her hands and picked up the handset. Already she had run and emptied the dishwasher, dusted the living room, and vacuumed the house. It was what she did when Eric went on mission.
“Hello.”
“Um … good morning. Is this the Moyer residence?” A male voice.
“It is. Who’s calling please?” Stacy leaned against the wall. She wasn’t in the mood for a telemarketer. “We’re on the ‘Do Not Call’ list, so if you’re a salesperson …” She heard the man chuckle.
“I’m not selling anything. Is this Mrs. Moyer?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“My name is Dr. Miles Lawton. I’m a physician. Is Mr. Moyer in?”
The voice sounded calm and pleasant, nonetheless the word physician made Stacy’s heart jitter. “Are you sure you have the right number? There are a lot of Moyers in the world.”
“I’m looking for Eric Moyer.”
“My husband is Eric Moyer, but he’s not in at the moment. May I ask what this is about?”
“Mr. Moyer came to my office yesterday for an examination and consultation. I stepped from the office for a few minutes, and he was gone when I returned. I thought I’d give him the day to call, but when he didn’t I decided to call.”
“He gave you this number?”
“Yes—well, sort of. The number he left is similar, but the last two numbers are transposed. It happens all the time.”
That sounded like something Eric would do if he were being secretive. “I’m sorry about all the questions, Doctor. I’m one of those privacy nuts. Sometimes my husband forgets to update my calendar as well as his, so I’m often a day or two behind.”
“I understand. I’ve done it too. Must be a guy thing. You say he’s out for a while?”
“Yes, he’s been called away on business. That happens sometimes. Everything is an emergency with his firm.”
Another forced chuckle. “Is there a way I can reach him? Phone? E-mail?”
Stacy’s mind began to spin. This could get complicated. “I’m afraid not. Why don’t you just give me the information and I’ll see what I can do to run him down.” Seeing a doctor without telling her gave “run him down” new meaning. What was Eric doing seeing a civilian doctor?
“Just a moment.”
Stacy heard paper shuffle.<
br />
“Yes, here it is. He gave your name as a contact and signed the release.”
“Release?”
“HIPAA Privacy Rule. Basically it means I can’t talk to anyone about a patient’s health without permission of the patient. But I see here that he signed the release.”
Of course he did. He also gave the wrong phone number. Why was he being secretive about his health? And how to make the doctor think she knew what was going on? “I know he’s sensitive about the problem. He had a difficult time talking to me about it.”
The line was silent for a moment. “So he’s spoken to you? That’s good. Such matters should be discussed between spouses.”
“When he calls, what shall I tell him?”
“I’d like him to come back in for the blood test and to arrange for the colonoscopy. We don’t want too much time to pass before getting the tests done. As I told him, colon cancer is only one possibility. Most likely he has a far-easier-to-treat ailment, but we don’t want to take any chances. Sometimes it’s hard for men to follow through on these tests. I’m hoping that you can encourage him to do so. We men like to act brave, but we’re often more fearful than we let on.” He paused. “I’m not saying your husband lacks courage, you understand. I’m sure he’s very brave in other ways.”
“You have no idea, Doctor.”
Stacy set the phone back in the cradle after three tries. She staggered to the sofa on legs that felt made of overcooked noodles rather than bone and muscles.
“Colon cancer.” They were the only two words she could muster.
* * *
J.J. WAS IN HIS element. Standing in the back of the panel truck, he made a quick survey of the equipment and weaponry smuggled across the border from Colombia. Entering the country by commercial airliner made bringing weapons and recon gear impossible. J.J. didn’t know who brought the truckload of equipment, but it must have been a long drive across Venezuela. “Everything there?” Moyer directed the truck along one of thecity’s highways.
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