Gauntlet (26 page)

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said in Urdu, hastening to open the door. There stood a 20-year-old Michael Buckingham, red faced and out of breath. Michael had held a junior CIA position at the time. He would soon leave the Embassy for field work, to return more than 20 years later as the station head.

“Michael, what’s up?” Richard had asked, watching a small rivulet of sweat crawl down Michael’s forehead.

“It’s bad, Richard. It’s... it’s very bad. Richard...”

“What Michael? You’re scaring me. What?” A small core of anxiety had formed in the pit of Richard’s stomach.

“There’s really no easy way to say this. It’s your folks. Your parents. Both dead. Both. Richard I’m so so sorry.”

The words had pounded into him like a sledgehammer on an anvil. “Michael. Both? You’re serious? How?”

“Car accident. Toward Peshawar. A huge transport truck drove right over their car. Driver was drunk.” The words tumbled out of Michael in a rush of sorrow. “Or stoned. They never had a chance. They died instantly. Richard, I am so sorry.”

“Where are they? Where are their bodies? Michael, take me to them. Now.” By this time the adrenalin had been pumping into Richard’s system, and his mouth was as dry as sandpaper. He’d thought that it had to be a mistake.

“Richard, you need to come with me to the Embassy. The station chief will handle it from there. Come on, please.” Michael had gently reached out to take Richard’s arm.

Senses numbed, Richard had followed the older man. They had reached the Embassy gates before he realized that he’d forgotten his shoes. Richard had been an only child. Now he was an orphan. The shock had pushed everything else from his mind.

Richard had continued to insist on seeing the bodies after he got to the Embassy. “Take me to them. I want to see them,” he said. “Show me the bodies.” Over the protestations of the station chief, he was taken to the basement morgue of Islamabad General Hospital.

“Look, Richard, you don’t have to do this,” the station chief had told him.

“I need to know that they’re dead, that there is no hope or possibility of them living. I need to know it. Let me see them,” Richard had told the older man. He was still in shock, and spoke with no emotion whatsoever.

The stainless steel drawers were pulled back, and Richard had come face to face with his parents — two wonderful, kind, and generous people, with whom he had eaten breakfast no more than four hours earlier.

The accident had been horrific. The truck had driven through the small Volvo his parents had been driving. Both his mother and father had sustained massive long bone fractures and internal injuries. Their heads had been crushed between thousands of pounds of tire and steel. Death had been instantaneous, but the results were ugly and disturbing. Try as he might, Richard had never been able to purge the image of his parents in death from his brain, even after almost 20 years had passed.

The days that followed the accident, the memorial services, the funeral, the interment, the wake, and everything else became a mind-numbing series of rituals, through which Richard had stumbled like a zombie.

It was at the wake that he met Zak Goldberg again. Zak, who was his age, had left the Islamabad station two years earlier when his parents were transferred stateside. Before that, Zak and Richard had been close friends, growing up together in a foreign country. They’d been close enough that Richard had treated Zak as a brother, and vice versa. When Zak left, Richard felt as though he’d lost his best friend and idol, and had been incredibly unhappy. They’d remained in close contact by telephone and letter, and Zak and his parents had returned to Islamabad as soon as they heard news of the crash.

“Come back with us to California,” Zak had said after the funeral. “You can move in with us. Mom and Dad said it would be fine.”

Richard had checked with Zak’s parents directly.

“Yes, of course you can move in with us. Your parents were our closest friends. We were shocked when we heard what happened. We’d love to have you,” they had responded.

It hadn’t taken Richard very long to weigh the pros and cons of the Goldberg’s offer. With his parents gone he was absolutely alone in the world. The prospect of having a family again, of being surrounded by people who cared for him, had seemed like a dream come true for the young man.

T
HAT WAS HOW Richard and Zak had moved from being good friends to actually being brothers. As he sat in the central ballroom of the American Embassy, those memories played painfully in Richard’s head. He was sitting on the edge of a couch, his hands covering his face, rocking slowly back and forth. Most people didn’t notice, given the impact of the statement the President was reading. Michael Buckingham did.

M
ARAK’S PRIVATE LINE RANG. He looked up and frowned. Almost no one had this number — not even his closest subordinates. It was a line that rang only in moments of great urgency. He cautiously picked it up. “Yes?”

“Marak, you fool, you crazy dumb camel-shit-for-brains fool! What in God’s name were you thinking?”

Marak recognized Yousseff’s voice. He couldn’t recall the last time that he’d heard his friend so upset.

“Yousseff, what is it?”

“You goddamn moron! Do you have any idea what you did with that body-in-front-of-the-Embassy stunt?” The anger was definitely there, and it was riding the edge of a knife.

Marak thought fast. “It was Ghullam who put it there, actually. But I thought it was a poetic touch, Yousseff. A nice way to let those Yankee bastards know not to mess around in our territory.”

“Nice way my ass,” retorted Yousseff. “I told you to extract whatever information you could, and dump the body in some canyon. Instead you drop it in front of the American Embassy?”

“Yeah. What’s the big concern? The Pashtun will love it.”

“She is a sleeping tiger, America is!” snapped Yousseff. “And you have just awakened her. Do not ever underestimate the power of the enemy, you dumb ox. And do not ever disobey an order from me again. Not ever! I am repeating what I said 35 years ago. Do not forget that day, Marak.”

“I am sorry, Yousseff. I over reached.”

“Yes you did, Marak. Yes you did. And in doing so, you may have jeopardized the whole mission.”

“Yes, Yousseff. I am sorry. But in my defense, I did direct the attention of the Americans away from Karachi Star Line.”

“Just for awhile, Marak. Just for awhile. They’ll be back.”

Yousseff hung up the phone and gazed long and hard at the blue of the Arabian Sea, thinking furiously.

I
NDY HAD CHEATED DEATH, yet again. Leon had let him live. He had biked furiously back to the gates of the park and climbed back into the bus, with a stoned Dennis Lestage none the wiser about his tourist’s extracurricular activities. On the way back to the bus, Indy had phoned Catherine and arranged to meet with her before making the long trip back to Vancouver. Now he was relating his experiences to her over yet another cup of coffee.

“It was his eyes, Cath. Utterly cold. Deadly eyes. Lizard eyes. I’ve seen that before. He’d have pulled the trigger if I hadn’t done the moron-tourist thing,” he told her.

“What are you going to do with this?” asked Catherine, nudging the camera. “How far ahead are you, anyway?”

“In my mind, he’s clearly within the reasonable doubt test,” responded Indy, referring to the Canadian standard required for proving a criminal charge before a jury. “In fact, I am absolutely, drop-dead sure about this,” he continued. “Before I came here I had our commercial crime people attempt to trace the ownership of a number of these smurfing accounts. While it wasn’t easy to do, because they were owned by other numbered companies, Leon’s name did appear here and there. I think that there’s a strong possibility that these boys are running drugs across the border into Montana in a big way. There’s just too much money in that account. Especially for losers like these. I’ve now had the opportunity to meet three members of the Lestage/Hallett gang. Two are dumb as a bag full of hammers. The third, Leon, is a cold-blooded killer, who I’ll wager has murdered more than a couple of people over the years.”

“Fine, Indy. You’ve shown that they’re not Boy Scouts. We kind of knew that already. But how does it play out in court? You’re sure. But now you need to prove it. You need to establish the method. You need to show the mechanism of the crime. So far, we’ve got a lot of petty crimes, and maybe even money laundering. But you need to show that a massive drug importing/exporting operation is actually taking place. How do you do that?” Catherine asked.

“Look,” he said, watching the sun slip behind the mountains. “Leon is sitting right on the border of Montana. He’s found a way to get large quantities of drugs over it, somehow. I know it. He’s found a way past the satellites and the video cameras and the sensors and whatever else the Americans have on the border.” He was shoving his coffee mug back and forth, sloshing coffee over the rim in his excitement.

Catherine watched him with a smile on her face. She could practically see the wheels turning. “So what’s the next move, Indy?”

“I’m not sure. I’m going to think about it. I’m going to talk to Hagen. I’m also going to analyze the photographs I took, pixel by pixel. There may be something there that I’m missing. We’ve got a pretty decent digital lab back at headquarters. I’m sure we’ll be able to get something. Anything.”

E
VENTUALLY, Indy bade Catherine goodbye, and headed west on the long trip back to Vancouver. En route, with more than eight hours to do nothing but think and drive, he worked himself into a fine lather. He began to ruminate about the idiocy of it all. He was fed up. Fed up with Ottawa bureaucrats. Fed up with cabinet subcommittees. Fed up with dopers pointing guns in his face. Fed up with judges releasing hardened criminals back onto the streets, instead of putting them in prison where they belonged. “It’s only marijuana, my boy. What’s the big deal? This is British Columbia in the Twenty-First Century. Wake up. Get a life.” That’s what they told him. And he should have done just that, he thought sometimes. With his knowledge, built up over decades of police work, decades of breaking rings of smugglers, cultivators, importers, exporters, retailers, and manufacturers, he’d be able to make a fortune overnight. And instead here he was, with a cramped little bullshit office on Heather Street in Vancouver, driving an aging Chevy pickup truck, with most of his meager salary going to his living expenses. What the hell was the point, anyway? One awesome play, and he would have it all. He had the means and the knowledge. It wouldn’t even have to be a Hail Mary.

But no, he argued against himself. He couldn’t abandon everything he’d worked for all his life, just because he knew how to use a back door or two. He spent hours going back and forth on the issue, weighing the pros and cons of everything in his life. By the time he got back to town, he was so frustrated that, even after an all-night drive, he drove right past his tiny apartment and went straight to his office. He walked in, dropped his bag on the floor, and called Hagen.

“Can you help me, Stan?” he asked. “We’ve got a laundering account for sure. The Halletts and Lestages are smurfing one hell of a lot of cash. It’s got to be coming from cross-border sales of BC Bud, and maybe even heroin. Probably cocaine coming back the other way.”

Indy spent some time laying out the background for the FBI agent. He told him about Benny Hallett’s tale of woe, the new Dodge, the destruction of the same, the bullet to his knee, and the visit to the hospital. He described the trip to the Akamina-Kishinina, the location of Dennis or Leon Lestage’s home, and Leon’s likely connection to the Vancouver chapter of the Hell’s Angels. He explained how he’d obtained the subpoena, issued on the strength of an affidavit that was sitting on the outside edge of legality, the bank account that had come to light, and the large transfers to an offshore bank, identity unknown.

“You’ve got something there, alright,” said Hagen. “This may not be small-time stuff after all. How can I help?”

“You guys should be able to get the details of that offshore account for me. It may be an accumulation account. The transactions there could be very revealing.”

“Sure, we can do that, Indy. With the new Patriot Act, and a few other things, I should be able to get the information for you.”

“Let’s do it. What do you need from me?”

“Are you able to swear an affidavit that it’s your honestly held belief that the account is being used to launder drug revenues?” asked Hagen.

“You bet I can, Stan,” Indy answered. “I can get that sworn, if I can find a lawyer around here, and send it to you within an hour. I’ll get right on it.”

Indy quickly set out to repeat his labors of a few days before. He laid out in neat numbered paragraphs the extent of his knowledge relating to the apparent drug activities of the Halletts and Lestages. He attached the Scotia Bank ledger as an exhibit, collared a lawyer, had the affidavit sworn, and immediately faxed it to Hagen.

That accomplished, Indy headed to the video lab with his digital camera. He downloaded the contents and started flipping through the images, magnifying here, adding light or contrast there, looking for anything. He hardly noticed the small TV in a corner of the lab, tuned in to CNN, where a reporter was discussing the growing Semtex scandal in the context of the hideous murder of one Zak Goldberg.

I
NDY SAT BACK, thinking. He had all 37 photos displayed as thumbnails on the large screen where he was working. He’d reviewed each image a dozen times, magnifying them again and again, changing the contrasts, and using software developed by the FBI, and licensed to the RCMP, to increase the resolution of obscure details. A number of them showed a trail and tire marks heading further south, to some destination behind the mobile home. On one he could see an old sign, tilted, sitting in the underbrush beside the trail. There were words on it, but they were partially obscured by weeds, willows, and shadows.

Indy didn’t have the computer expertise required to manipulate the images as much as he needed. But the Heather Street compound also served as a resource center for organizing evidence and documents in major crime cases. Video analysis had become a staple for police work. There were a number of technicians working at the complex, and it didn’t take Indy long to bring one in. He was somewhat frustrated about asking for help from someone who looked to be half his age, but shrugged it off. Computers and digital evidence were a young man’s game, and he was willing to do whatever it took to nail this case.

Indy had the young tech isolate the sign on the photograph, rotate it, enlarge it, and add some highlighting... then tweak it some more. “e...A...vil” was all they could make out.

“Let’s get rid of the shadows from the underbrush and interpolate the pixels,” suggested the technician. “That might help some.”

“Whatever you suggest,” said Indy, unsure of what that even meant.

The youth’s fingers raced over the keyboard, the mouse traced the shadows on the screen, and, like magic, the underbrush shadows disappeared. They both sat back and observed the result.

“Not much difference,” said Indy.

“We need more contrast. There is a phrase there, I can see it. We just need to sharpen the edges. We can change the fractal coefficient. I’m sure we can bring out whatever’s there.” A few more keystrokes and mouse clicks. More of the sign became apparent. “..ev..l’s..A.vil” was the message.

“We can get more. The image on the sign clearly contains letters. Everything’s linear. We can do a bicubic linear interpolation based on the differential color components of the missing letters. I’m positive we can get it, Indy.”

“Yes. Bicubics. Of course. Should have thought of it myself,” Indy mumbled in response.

More keystrokes. More mouse clicks. “There,” said the tech finally.

“You’re a magician,” breathed Indy. He leaned forward, getting closer to the screen for a better view. “Save that image. We need to figure out what it means,” he said, gazing at the words “Devil’s Anvil” on the screen.

“Let’s Google it,” suggested the tech.

“Sure,” said Indy, happy to be letting the young man do so much of his work for him.

Nothing much came of that. “Devil’s Anvil” was apparently a psychedelic hard rock New York garage band of the ’60s. Well, Leon could conceivably be a fan, thought Indy. There were also “anvil devils,” something used by boot companies. Other than that, there were no hits of significance. Perhaps a motorcycle gang? A warning? A joke?

“Y’know what it sounds like, Indy?” the tech finally asked.

“What?”

“It sounds like an old mine. If I were a geologist, and I had developed a mining property somewhere, a name like ’Devil’s Anvil’ would be pretty cool. You know, deep in the earth and all that.”

“You know, that twigs a chord,” said Indy. “I did some reading on the Akamina before heading out there. Got some stuff off the net. The region is pretty rich in coal deposits. That whole area is littered with abandoned mines. The only reason they didn’t become commercially viable was that rail transportation was never implemented in the area. Large coal deposits were subsequently discovered in the Kootenay Valley, and that’s where the spur lines stopped. The area south of Fernie never became a possibility because of it. But in the 1920s no one knew that’s how it would turn out. Think I’ll look into it a little more.”

Indy rose from his chair, grabbing the pad on which he’d been taking notes.

“Where are you going?” asked the tech.

“Off to Victoria. The BC Ministry of Mines is headquartered there. They’ll have maps, plans, memos, and what have you. If anyone has information about a mine on the border south of Fernie, it’ll be that office.”

With that, Indy turned and was gone.

A
T THAT MOMENT, a couple time zones to the east, Turbee was fleeing from the TTIC control room, rushing past the heavy security on the main floor, pushing his way out onto the street. Dan’s words stung his face like wasps, attacking his body with the poison of adders. “You’re history. There’s the door. Fuck off. Pack your bags. Get out. Get out. Fuck off. There’s the door, pack your bags, get out, get out, fuck off...” The venomous phrases circled around his autistic brain in infinite echoing loops, the volume ever increasing. “Fuck off. Pack. History. Out. Out. OUT!”

Turbee raced down the street, heading east along Pennsylvania Avenue. He ran for several blocks, until his underused lungs started to ache. His eyes lost their focus, and cars and buildings swirled around him. “Out, out, out. Fuck off. Pack. History. Out!” The comments of his First Grade class joined the chorus chiming in his brain. “Loon. Moron. Idiot. Retard.” He couldn’t control the sound in his head, which was starting to disintegrate like a Hendrix guitar note. “Stupid, stupid, STUPID!” His heart was racing and sweat was pouring out of his pores. His anxiety reached a fevered pitch, and the feeling was becoming as audible as a highly pitched warbling electronic yowl.

The voice of Kathy, his tutor from Fourth to Tenth Grade, gradually emerged from the confusion of images, sounds, and memories. Kathy, who had replaced the mother that he had lost to parties, alcohol, and strange men. “Don’t ever forget this, Hamilton,” Kathy had told him once. “If this ever happens again, breathe slowly and deeply. Stop moving. Close your eyes. Think back to this moment and remember my voice. Slow your breathing. Shut out the noise and the lights, and stay calm. Breathe, Hambee. Breathe slowly... breathe... breathe...”

He opened his eyes, and felt the howling concerto of Dan Alexanders begin to fade out. His panic dropped somewhat, and he started walking again. His brain switched to autopilot, and for awhile he distracted himself by mentally solving five-dimensional Fourier transform equations.

He wandered about in this fugue state for most of the day, stopping at the occasional corner store to purchase chocolate and root beer, two of his comfort foods. He was now completely lost, but didn’t care. When he became weary he simply sat down on a curb or nearby bench. The entire day slid past while Turbee wandered the city aimlessly.

T
HE
HARAMOSH STAR
rounded the northern tip of Sumatra silently, with Lhok Alurayeun to the north, and Banda Aceh to the south. It was three in the afternoon, and a hot tropical sun was beating down on the ship. The waters were calm. Vince had slowed the ship to a pace of ten knots, and was alertly watching both the radar and sonar screens. The Straight of Malacca was one of the most crowded marine traffic lanes on the planet. Any eastbound vessel from Africa, the Suez Canal, the Middle East, Pakistan, or India went through these waters. Furthermore, the great earthquake of 2004, and the tsunami that followed, had been severe enough to alter the course of the shallow channel. The old channel maps were no longer accurate, and in the year following the great earthquake many vessels had run aground in places where the maps showed that there should have been sufficient depth. Vince was determined to avoid this fate.