Although the sun was already dipping beyond the horizon in Flint, it was still high in the sky in Limón, and the first image I saw was an aerial shot of a beautiful yacht.
I knew the feed had to be coming from a drone flying overhead. Most likely, the drone’s controller was working out of our base in Corpus Christi, Texas, one of several connected to the National Reconnaissance Office.
Although the boat appeared small at first, as the camera slowly zoomed in, I realized the yacht was much larger than I’d imagined it would be. It measured at least 130 feet in length.
The hull looked blazingly white in the bright sun, with dark tinted windows spaced at regular intervals along the main deck. Adjacent to the pilothouse was a Jacuzzi, and I spotted three figures standing alongside it.
The name, El Mano Fierro, was clearly written on her starboard bow.
Seconds later, the image on the screen changed, and I was viewing the ship from land.
A camera was pointed at the yacht, at the spot where I imagined Hernando would be coming aboard, and I had a pretty good idea this video feed was coming from a camera being held by either Bledsoe or Mitchell.
As if to confirm this, I began receiving audio, and the first sound I heard was Mitchell’s voice.
“This will be the camera angle when he boards the yacht,” he said.
Carlton responded, “Affirmative.”
The video didn’t change, and I heard nothing for a couple of minutes.
Then, the drone operator switched on the thermal infrared camera and captured the heat signatures of six people aboard the yacht. Two were on the lower deck; one was on the main deck and the other three were standing around the Jacuzzi, a short distance away from the pilothouse.
I remembered Bledsoe telling Carlton the yacht had five crewmen aboard, so I felt positive the sixth man must be Ahmed.
Bledsoe said, “The Messenger is approaching the pier.”
Although Bledsoe was following Agency regulations by not identifying his asset by name, this old rule was a holdover from the decade when communications were not encrypted.
I realized Bledsoe’s asset was about ten minutes early—not really a good idea when making a drop—but I was sure he was nervous and wanted to get the delivery over as quickly as possible.
The screen on my monitor changed as the drone operator switched off the thermal imaging.
Now, I could see a wide-angled view of the pier.
The camera began to follow an average built, young Hispanic male, wearing a blue baseball cap, who was sauntering along the pier and stopping at some of the outdoor kiosks along the way
I assumed this was Hernando.
I watched as he paused and talked with one of the vendors, eventually making a purchase and placing it in the small shopping bag he was carrying.
Maybe I’d been wrong about him.
He appeared to be killing time and didn’t look as eager to make his rendezvous as I’d originally thought. If Bledsoe had schooled him on how to act relaxed, he’d done a good job.
I was guessing the shopping bag he carried also contained the package he was supposed to deliver to Ahmed. Bledsoe would have made sure of that detail.
Hernando stopped again. This time he purchased a carton of beer at a small bodega.
As he made his way toward the yacht’s berth, he swung the carton easily at his side, looking very much like a young man on his way to a fun evening.
After a few minutes, Bledsoe said, “The Messenger is on board.”
The image on my screen switched over to Mitchell’s camera, which displayed a dockside view of the yacht.
Hernando walked up the gangplank.
He was immediately met by two crewmen.
One of them quickly frisked him, while the other one grabbed the beer from his hand. When Mr. Frisker also tried to take the shopping bag from him, Hernando refused, although he allowed him to look inside and view its contents.
The three of them stood around for several minutes, laughing and talking together, as if they might be good friends.
Finally, I saw another man emerge from the shadows underneath an awning.
Mitchell adjusted the camera to get a tighter shot.
It was Ahmed Al-Amin.
Previously, I’d only seen grainy photos of the assassin taken with a long-distance camera.
Now, with the video zoomed in within inches of his face, I was able to study the actual movements of the man—the man who’d been intent on killing me but had assassinated my fellow operative, Simon Wassermann, instead.
There was no doubt in my mind Al-Amin had murdered hundreds of others, including Ernesto Montilla.
Judging from the crewmen around him, Ahmed appeared to be of average height. He looked more Lebanese than Syrian to me, but it was also easy to see how he was able to pass himself off as a Latino.
His face was long and slender, almost oval in shape, with a scruffy two-day-old stubble and a darker moustache. The sunglasses he wore hid his eyes from view, but I was able to see his lips, and they were thin, barely discernible.
As I watched him, I noticed the expression on his face never changed. It made me wonder if he’d ever smiled, even once.
When he walked across the deck, he did so with authority. While the profile I’d read on him described him as a narcissist with a high degree of self-confidence, I also got the sense he had little empathy for others and didn’t really care about what people thought of him.
Without greeting anyone, Ahmed joined the three men dockside. Almost immediately afterward, he began scrutinizing Hernando, looking him over for several long seconds.
I viewed this examination of Hernando as the type of caution required in Ahmed’s line of work, but it still bothered me for some reason.
Ahmed turned and said a few words to Hernando. That’s when Hernando handed him the shopping bag.
He took it without looking inside and then he turned to leave the deck. Without warning, Hernando put his hand out and grabbed Ahmed’s shoulder.
The muscles in my neck tensed up immediately, and I heard Bledsoe utter something underneath his breath. It sounded like “watch it.”
Ahmed turned and faced Hernando.
His body was perfectly still.
Perhaps sensing he’d made a mistake, Hernando quickly gestured at the Jacuzzi and started jabbering away. His face was animated. At one point in the conversation, he pointed over to the man who’d confiscated his beer.
The man in question smiled and raised the carton full of bottles over his head as if they were a trophy.
Everyone laughed—except Ahmed.
Almost as if he were thinking out loud, I heard Bledsoe say, “The Messenger may be asking The Subject for permission to stick around awhile and share a few beers.”
Carlton asked, “Was he instructed to do so?”
“Of course not,” Bledsoe said. “I told him to deliver the package and leave.”
Mitchell chimed in. “He did offer to find out where the yacht was going.”
Bledsoe defended himself. “I explicitly told him it wasn’t necessary.”
As the men disappeared underneath the awning, Carlton said, “Well, it looks as if he didn’t hear you.”
In a few seconds, the thermal imaging feed returned to the computer screen, and I watched as four bodies descended a staircase down to the main deck.
As I was trying to imagine the layout of the yacht, one of the Agency’s techs manipulated the video feed, split it into two sections, and displayed a schematic drawing of the boat’s interior on the left and the infrared figures on the right.
Now, I was able to tell immediately that all the men were in the forward section of the boat. The diagram identified the room as a salon and showed areas for seating as well as a section marked off for a wet bar. A galley was adjacent to the salon.
Unless the men ventured out onto the exposed deck area below the pilothouse, though, it would be impossible for anyone to observe their actions firs
thand. At this point, everyone in the Ops Center was totally dependent on observing the individual heat signatures to figure things out.
Bledsoe said, “I don’t like this.”
I felt the same way.
“It’s not ideal,” Carlton said, “but, since he put himself in this situation, let’s give him some time.”
Bledsoe said, “If this situation starts to go south, I’ll have to intervene. I’m not prepared to lose my asset.”
Mitchell said, “I’m with you.”
“I won’t be responsible for losing two operatives,” Carlton responded. “Ahmed is the Agency’s priority here.”
After a short pause, I heard Bledsoe say, “Understood.”
His response didn’t surprise me.
Although he occasionally bent the rules, Bledsoe wasn’t one for defying his superiors. His longevity at the Agency bore that out.
A few minutes after the group entered the salon, one of the men entered the nearby galley. When he returned to the salon, he didn’t join the other three but remained by himself near the galley entrance. It was only speculation on my part, but I believed the three men seated together were enjoying the beers provided by Hernando, and my instincts told me the person remaining aloof from the group was Ahmed.
As I sat in the hotel room, observing the scenario being played out on the yacht thousands of miles away, it occurred to me Hernando might not be in possession of a critical detail about Ahmed.
He didn’t touch alcohol. As a Muslim, he was forbidden to do so.
Since Mitchell and I hadn’t found any evidence of booze anywhere in the safe house, it was evident he was extremely disciplined about this restriction, even when he was on an assignment.
Such control might prove detrimental for Hernando, especially if Ahmed were the only clear-headed person in the room as the evening progressed.
Indeed, the results might be disastrous.
I picked up my cell phone, intending to alert Carlton, but then I remembered his last words to me.
I won’t take your call.
As I considered what to do, someone knocked at the door.
“Titus, it’s Harold. Are you there?”
* * * *
I closed the lid on my computer, and at the last minute, covered it with my blue sports jacket, thinking the military-grade computer might look suspicious to Harold.
I called out, “Coming, Uncle Harold.”
I looked over and spotted the folder, which Carla and I had received from the funeral home, and I quickly scattered the pages around the bed, hoping Harold might think the loose sheets of paper represented the project I was supposed to be working on.
Moments later, I unlocked the door and ushered Harold inside.
I said, “Hey, it’s good to see you.”
“I’m not disturbing you?”
I motioned toward the bed. “No, I was just finishing up.”
He seemed troubled about something and barely gave the documents I’d scattered across the bed a cursory glance.
“Tonight at dinner, Carla said you were in charge of planning Sharon’s funeral service, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. This won’t take but a minute.”
“Sure, come on in.”
We’d been standing in the cramped space between the doorway and the bathroom, so Harold moved on into the room. There was a comfortable recliner next to the desk, and at first, I thought he was headed over there.
Instead, he plopped himself down in the desk chair with his arm resting just inches away from my sports coat. I found myself hoping Uncle Harold’s hearing had deteriorated as much as the other parts of his body had. Otherwise, he might be able to hear the computer humming away beneath my jacket.
I took the recliner and tried to think of ways to get him to focus solely on me and nothing else. However, that wasn’t necessary, because Harold had only one thing on his mind.
“I’d really like to do the eulogy at Sharon’s service on Friday,” he said. “I’ve known Sharon since high school, and I love her like a ...” He paused. “Well, now that she’s gone, I guess I should put that in the past tense. I loved her like a sister.”
His eyes suddenly filled with tears.
“I didn’t realize you and my mother had known each other that long.”
He nodded. “We dated a few months during our freshman year in high school, but then, when I introduced her to Gerald, it was all over between us.”
“You dated my mother?”
He laughed at my surprise. “Yes, I did.”
He shook his head. “But we never talked about it. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me because, not long after she dumped me, I met my sweet Dorothy. But your dad was the jealous type, so Sharon told me never to mention it. She said your dad thought we might get back together when he was stationed over in Vietnam. That was just crazy talk, because, by that time, I was in love with Dorothy.”
I was amazed to hear this.
In fact, for the very first time in my life, this revelation made me wonder if the reason there’d been such animosity between the two brothers was because of Harold’s past relationship with my mother.
However, I had no time to think about Harold’s disclosure. My main objective was to get him out of the room as quickly as possible.
I asked, “Do you have an idea what you’d like to say at the service?”
Earlier in the day, I’d seen the look Carla had given Eddie when Harold had volunteered to speak at the service, and I knew my sister well enough to realize she didn’t feel Harold should be given the chance to say anything at all.
“I haven’t written it out, if that’s what you mean. During our sales conventions, I never used notes, but everyone would always tell me I gave a great speech. I remember one time in Chicago when the sales—”
“Uncle Harold,” I said, interrupting him, “I think it would be just fine for you to have a part in the service. Could you keep it under five minutes? I’ve asked a minister to be in charge of the service, and I want to give him plenty of time to speak. He was the one who visited my mother in the nursing home.”
He grinned at me. “Sure, I can do that. A minister, huh? I remember she especially liked some good-looking guy who used to show up on Tuesdays.”
Hoping he would take the hint, I stood up and said, “Well, it’s settled then.”
However, he remained seated and started in on a story I’d heard a hundred times before.
I resumed my seat.
As he was wrapping up his second anecdote, I glanced down at my watch and estimated that Hernando and Ahmed had been together for over an hour.
When Harold saw me look down at my watch, he finally took the hint. “Well, I’d better leave and let you get back to work.”
As he pushed his overweight body out of the chair, he put his hand on the desk to steady himself, and that’s when he partially brushed aside my sports coat. When that happened, the gray metallic surface of the computer was clearly exposed.
He stared down at the table.
“Titus, I must say I’m disappointed in you. At your age, you should know it’s better to hang your clothes up the minute you take them off. That way, they’ll last longer. I’ve had this jacket for thirty years now, and you can see how good it still looks on me.”
I took his arm and steered him away from the desk.
“You’re right, Uncle Harold. I should take better care of my stuff. Good clothes are hard to come by.”
Suddenly, he pulled away from me, and there was a look of panic on his face.
“Do you remember my room number? Am I on this floor?”
“I don’t know your room number, Uncle Harold, but you told me you and Dorothy were up on the third floor.”
“Oh, wait,” he said, reaching inside his pants pocket, “Dorothy wrote it down for me.” He pulled a small slip of paper out of his pocket and waved it in the air. “I’ve got it now.”
His memory lapse didn’t bode well for Friday’s e
ulogy, and I wondered how I was ever going to explain to Carla why I’d allowed him to speak in the first place.
What was I thinking?
I was thinking about Hernando. I was praying Ahmed wasn’t going to kill him.
That’s what I was thinking.
Harold paused when he came to the door.
“Titus, tell me. What’s the one thing you need in this world in order to be happy?”
His question startled me, and I stammered around for a second.
He said, “It’s important to know the answer to that question, son.” He waved the little piece of paper containing his room number in front of me. “For me, the answer is Dorothy. I couldn’t live without Dorothy. I need her to make my life complete.”
“That’s a good answer.”
He reached over and squeezed my hand. “I think you’ve mellowed, Titus. You’re a lot nicer than you used to be. Aging does that to a person you know.”
I wasn’t sure that was true.
I had met a lot of grumpy old people.
Chapter 19
When I went back inside the room and lifted the lid on my computer, it took a few minutes for the satellite to reacquire the signal from the Operations Center.
While I waited, I tried to put aside the visit from Uncle Harold and concentrate on the operation. Despite my efforts, I thought about his question.
What’s the one thing you need in this world in order to be happy?
I realized it might be a good idea to give that question some more thought.
When the video began pixelating across the screen, I saw the sun had set in Limón. However, the lights on both the yacht and the pier made it possible for me to distinguish some features on the upper deck of the boat.
Then, the screen came into focus, and I immediately saw Hernando, plus the two crewmen he’d encountered when he’d first boarded the boat. They were descending the gangplank together, and Hernando looked unharmed.
When the audio came back on, I heard Bledsoe’s voice. He sounded relieved. “There’s The Messenger. He’s about to leave the boat.”
Mitchell said, “I don’t think he’s alone, though. His new friends are leaving with him.”
As the men disappeared from view, Carlton said, “Could someone please move the camera?”
Two Days in Caracas Page 13