Black Horizon (31 page)
Authors: James Grippando
And it was killing her.
“Good. Two hundred sit-ups,” said Sicario. “Gloves on, quick combination on each up count.”
Josefina dropped to the mat on the floor, silently counting off the stomach crunches, but she soon lost track. Memories were always a distraction, and bad memories were the worst.
There had been two attackers. Only one had done the talking. Josefina had followed the directions to the letter. Don’t call Swyteck, since his phone might be tapped. Call his friend Theo. Tell him that the exchange was going through you, with instructions to follow. Josefina knew that the chances of a happy ending were not good, but she saw no way out.
“We’re done,” said Sicario, as he untied the laces on her gloves. “Good work. Shower.”
He left her alone, and Josefina took a seat on the bench. She pulled off her gloves and bent over to unlace her shoes. She loosened the left one and was starting on the right when she froze. Another pair of feet had come into view, and she recognized the shoes. Her old friend Vivien owned only two pairs.
Old friend.
Josefina straightened up but remained on the bench, her back resting against the wall. Vivien sat beside her.
“It’s time to make another phone call,” said Vivien.
Josefina said nothing. Acquiescence. No choice but to obey.
“Don’t be angry,” said Vivien. “This is going to make us all rich.”
“I don’t want to be rich,” said Josefina.
“Fine,” said Vivien. “Then just do as you’re told, and don’t make trouble. Be a good Burnt Sugar.”
K
ey West was raving mad—even more than usual. Jack and Theo ran straight into the frenzy at the north end of Duval Street.
More than a week had passed since Jack’s last visit to Mallory Square. In the immediate aftermath of the Scarborough 8 explosion, Key West’s most famous wharf had turned into media central for “spill watch.” Much of the media had drifted up to the middle Keys, along with the most damaging effects of the oil spill. The traditional carnival-like atmosphere at sunset, however, had yet to return. Although the people had retaken Mallory Square, they didn’t feel like singing, juggling, or painting their kids’ faces. They were pissed, and they wanted the world to know it. The wharf was jammed with angry protestors, and the overflow had clogged Duval Street all the way back to Rick’s Café. Some carried sandwich boards, while others painted their messages right onto their half-naked bodies. Theo got caught up in the mood, and before Jack knew it, he was leading a chorus of drunks, thrusting his fist into the air, and shouting nonsense.
“B-P must pay! B-P must pay! B-P must—”
Jack pulled him away. “Theo, what the hell does BP have to do with this?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you shouting that?”
“What am I supposed to shout,
Cubapetróleo y Petróleos de Venezuela
must pay? No wonder you don’t get rap, dude.”
Jack kept walking, pushing farther into the crowd. The handful of protestors that had first appeared outside the Truman Annex a week earlier had grown into a veritable Keys rebellion. The television media had left behind scaffolding and elevated camera platforms, which organizers (in the loosest sense of the word) had transformed into a makeshift stage for activists to make their plea. A handheld microphone passed from one speaker to the next, open to anyone with a grievance. An impromptu moderator stepped forward to limit each speaker to a few minutes, tops. One man read a poem he had written about the reefs back in middle school and cried. Another found countless ways to inject the f-bomb into a single rambling sentence.
I’m effing tired of this effing oil effing up our effing island and our effing government doing not an effing thing to effing . . .
The loudest applause was for a seventy-five-year-old woman who gripped the microphone tightly with both hands and said nothing. For a solid thirty seconds, she let out one long, primal scream.
Jack was about to move on, but the moderator caught his attention with the announcement of a “special guest” who was “one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change.”
“Climate change?” asked Jack.
The moderator continued with the buildup, heaping one accolade after another on “a courageous man” who had come “all the way from Los Angeles in a show of solidarity to launch an appropriate response to irresponsible congressional leaders who have cast reckless accusations against so-called environmental terrorists for the Scarborough 8 disaster.”
A chorus of boos came from the crowd, not for the speaker, but for the congressional leaders. In truth, Jack had been so focused on the national security hearing that he’d lost track of the accusations led by the senator from Utah—the ones that shifted the blame from Barton-Hammill to left-wing radicals who opposed offshore drilling. Jack watched with interest as the microphone passed to the speaker from Los Angeles—“Please welcome Dr. Allen Crenshaw”—whom the crowd received with enthusiastic applause.
“Thank you, thank you,” said the gray-haired and ponytailed Dr. Crenshaw. “We have many folks with something to say, so let me get right to the heart of the matter.
“Ever since the discovery of huge oil reserves in Cuban waters, U.S. oil companies have been pushing the U.S. government to lift the trade embargo against Cuba so they could have one more way to line their pockets and profit from offshore drilling at the expense of the environment. Now, Big Oil is not stupid. They have pushed this agenda secretly, behind the scenes. They know that Cuban-American groups would boycott their brands if Big Oil came out publicly against the embargo against Cuba. Am I right, Victor?”
Jack did a double take—
Victor?
—as his gaze shifted to stage right. Victor Garcia-Peña, ultraconservative from Florida, was in the wings, smiling at the environmentalist from southern California.
The speaker continued. “The White House refused to change its policy toward Cuba. Chinese, Venezuelan, and Russian companies moved in. So Big Oil upped the pressure on the White House. They warned the U.S. that foreign oil consortiums aren’t safe. The only safe solution, Big Oil said, was to end the embargo and allow U.S. companies to drill. Now there’s an oxymoron for you: ‘safe offshore drilling.’ ”
That drew scattered laughter and applause from the crowd.
“Let me wrap this up,” the speaker said. “When I heard the senator from Utah blame environmentalists for the explosion of the Scarborough 8, one thought came to my mind. Big Oil didn’t get invited to the dance. To get into the dance, Big Oil warned us that drilling by anyone else but U.S. companies would mean environmental catastrophe. Now look around us. Could it be that Big Oil made its own warnings come true?”
The crowd erupted. Jack cringed.
Theo was into it.
“B-P must—”
Jack ended Theo’s renewed chant with an elbow to his solar plexus.
The speaker’s voice rose, channeling the crowd’s energy. “Let me assure you, Key West: there will be justice! My friend, Victor—come on out here, Victor. My friend Victor Garcia-Peña and I will be bringing Big Oil to justice!”
Center stage, the two men laced their fingers together in unity, and Jack could hardly believe his eyes as Victor and his newfound friend on the left raised their arms triumphantly. The crowd cheered even louder. Jack was feeling nauseous. He started walking toward Duval Street. Theo was right behind him, slapping high fives with strangers in the crowd, leading a new chant.
“Big-O must go! Big-O must go!”
Jack turned around sharply, glaring at Theo. “Shut up!”
“You shut up.”
“Shut up and stop acting like an idiot!”
Jack walked away. Theo followed him through the crowd.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Jack kept walking until they were beyond the crowd’s rough perimeter.
“I’ll tell you exactly what’s the matter with me, Theo. My client is way too young to be a widow and has to live the rest of her life knowing that her husband was incinerated on that rig. Today I had to tell her that her case against the consortium can’t move forward. Judge Carlyle may think she’s doing us a favor by pushing us into federal court, but it won’t be a picnic filing a new lawsuit against the biggest defense contractor the Pentagon has ever known—who, by the way, has the U.S. Justice Department on its side. It’s going to be one national security roadblock after another. I don’t know if I’m ever going to recover a dime for her. And now, you watch what happens: Monday morning, Victor Garcia-Peña and Johnny Greenpeace, or whatever his name is, will file a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit against Big Oil. Freddy Foman and his band of thieves will probably join with them. And that bullshit lawsuit will probably get to trial before Bianca gets another day in court.
That’s
what’s the matter with me.”
Jack turned and started down Duval Street. Theo caught up at the corner.
“Jack, dude. I’m sorry, man.”
Jack kept walking. “It’s okay. Not your fault.”
Theo’s phone rang. He checked the number, grabbed Jack by the shoulder and yanked him to a halt. “Dude, it says ‘out of area.’ ”
“So do a lot of calls.”
“Including the last one I got from Josefina in Cuba,” said Theo.
The ringing continued. Jack grabbed his own phone and opened a “record” app. “Put it on speaker so I can listen and record it.”
Theo did so, then answered, trusting his instincts about the caller’s identity. “Josefina?”
“Sí
. I need to be quick, so just listen. Tell Jack that the first piece is free. New Providence Trust Company, 200 Marlborough Street, Nassau, Bahamas. Ask for Mr. Jeffries. Jack is authorized to access safe-deposit box A-36. All he needs is a passport. Keep the FBI out of this.”
The line clicked. Josefina was gone.
“Did you get it?” asked Theo.
“Yeah.”
“First piece is free,” said Theo. “First piece of what?”
“The answer to the ten-million-dollar question,” said Jack. “Who blew up the Scarborough 8?”
A
t seven o’clock Andie was off to meet her new boyfriend on Second Avenue. She probably would never tell Jack, but if ever she had to, it was better than an undercover husband.
The Black Horizon team had been pleased with Andie’s report on “N.Y.C. Gadets,” save for one detail. An undercover agent locked inside a storage room with Long Wu was one thing. Locked up with a target as dangerous as Noori was quite another. It was decided that, going forward, she shouldn’t work alone. Enter the boyfriend/business partner.
Hope my new beau likes pregnant women.
Andie was walking across the East Village to the designated meeting spot at Astor Place. She cut over on Ninth Street and immediately saw why this nineteenth-century immigrant neighborhood had become a mecca for artists, musicians, students, and writers. More recent gentrification had priced many of the free spirits out of the market, but it was hard not to feel the draw of the new cafés, bars, and boutiques. One shop, in particular, caught her eye. Dinosaur Hill.
Girlfriends had warned her not to venture into the baby stores until the third month, that anything could happen early in a pregnancy, and that it was wise to be patient and not open the door to added heartbreak. But there she was, a mother-to-be, with thoughts of Operation Black Horizon and fossilized dinosaurs—petroleum—almost perpetually on her mind. How could she not go inside? The woman who greeted her at the door was part artist, part salesperson, and eager to help.
“Looking for anything in particular?” she asked.
“Something for my baby,” said Andie. “I’m planning ahead.”
The saleswoman pointed out enough handmade wonderments and toys to make Andie think about having more than one child—colorful blocks, hand puppets from Burma, kaleidoscopes, marionettes from around the world, stained-glass fairies, wooden dollhouses. It was fun, but out of nowhere Andie needed to run to the bathroom. The saleswoman pointed her to the back of the store. Andie was back shortly.
“False alarm,” said Andie.
“How far along are you?”
She turned sideways and pulled back her coat. “Seven weeks. Can you tell?”
“Not yet. But get used to the bathroom urges.”
Andie browsed and ended up buying a fluffy pink rabbit, which came with a verbal assurance that she could bring it back for a blue one if baby Viola turned out to be a Victor. She tucked it into her fake designer handbag and walked another two blocks. New boyfriend Dennis was waiting at the subway entrance on the corner.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Which you’re not allowed to point out, since we’re dating this time, not married.”
He smiled, as did Andie. Dennis was actually Special Agent Michael Brunelli of the New York field office, and the last time they’d worked together was during the Wall Street meltdown. They’d posed as husband and wife, a joint mission to prove that “too big to fail” didn’t mean “too big to jail.” It had been Andie’s job to tap the most lucrative sources of information about banking fraud: the wives and girlfriends of investment bankers.
“You hungry?” asked Andie. “There’s a Ukrainian restaurant on Second Avenue I’ve been wanting to try.”
“Ukrainian?
” he said, making a face. “Damn. They told me I had to let you eat whatever you wanted to eat, but this may require combat pay.”
Andie led the way, their small talk a comfortable continuation of the banter that had carried them through the Wall Street investigation, which had dragged on for weeks. His undercover experience was extensive, mostly organized-crime investigations, and Andie actually enjoyed listening to his stories. And if his principal role in Operation Black Horizon was to match up, muscle for muscle, against Noori, the Bureau couldn’t have made a better choice.
“I read your Spice Market report,” he said. “Most of it made sense.”
“Most of it?”
He picked up their pace, gaining some separation from the group of college students behind them. “Are you actually buying the idea that the Chinese government blew up its own rig?”
