Greed: A Detective John Lynch Thriller (18 page)

Fenn sighed. “One thing I’ve learned through all this, I can’t help what people think. And some of the shit I’ve done? People are going to think some bad stuff. I’m a changed man, Detective. You believe, you don’t, nothing I can do about that.”

“You don’t really know much about Hardin, do you?” said Bernstein.

“Just that he was Jerry Mooney’s fixer over in Darfur,” said Fenn.

“Before that, he was in the Marines for two tours, including Gulf War I, scout sniper. Know about scout snipers?” Bernstein asked.

“What we hear, the French Foreign Legion after that,” added Lynch. “Those are some bad-ass boys, too. And we know this. Guy named Stein got shot at Chicago Stadium the other night. Hardin’s the last guy we know who saw Stein alive. We also know two of Corsco’s soldiers picked up Hardin. They were armed, he wasn’t. He killed one of them with a ballpoint pen. He disarmed the other guy and bounced rocks off him for a while before that guy got shot. Gotta figure he knew who they were working for before he was done. So this Hardin? He gets the same ideas about you that I got, it may not matter much if he’s right.”

Fenn’s head down again. “You reap what you sow. Still learning that, Detective.” He looked up again. “Is there anything else?”

“Not for now,” Lynch said. “Just hope if I come back here it isn’t to look at your corpse.”

After the cops left the trailer, Fenn got up, walked to the fridge, and pulled out another water bottle, the one he kept full of Ketel One. Hands shaking a little as he sat back down on his couch, he took off the top. Jesus. That fucker Hardin.

CHAPTER 35

 

Alex Hickman dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin that felt like it had twice the thread count of his shirts – and he spent a lot on his shirts. He always felt a little like a hick with Lafitpour. Couldn’t figure why, except that Lafitpour had more money than God.

“Wonderful meal, Bahram. Unusual. Never had anything like that before,” said Hickman. Some kind of chicken thing, cherries in it, some kind of spice that Hickman couldn’t place. Good, but a little odd. Hickman was more a T-bone and martini guy.

“Albaloo polow,” said Lafitpour. “My granddaughter is learning some of the recipes of my youth. A touch heavy on the saffron, but she is learning.”

The other guy, Munroe, tossed his napkin on the table, leaned back in his chair. “Well, she’s getting it down, Bahram. Pretty sure the Shah served this once at a little shindig I was at in ’78, and it was just as good this time.”

“She did well,” said Hickman. “How is Hilary?” He’d heard rumors, maybe a suicide attempt, some kind of health crisis. She had been in and out of the dining room of Lafitpour’s condo, serving the meal, clearing the plates. Hickman found that a little odd, given the size of the staff Lafitpour had. She used to be a fixture on the Chicago party scene, little Paris Hilton streak in her. Then this incident, whatever it was, maybe a year back. And now here she was, serving dinner.

“Thank you for asking, Alex,” answered Lafitpour without answering. Hickman knew better than to press. You could talk to Lafitpour all day, leave not knowing what month it was.

Lafitpour raised his voice slightly, said something in Persian. Hilary brought in a new bottle of wine, poured a sample for her grandfather, waited for his nod, then poured a glass for Hickman and Lafitpour before retreating to the kitchen.

“Shiraz,” said Lafitpour. “I am partial to this vintner.”

“It’s very good,” said Hickman.

“Shiraz is named for the Persian city, did you know?”

“No.”

“We have been making wine in Persia for more than seven thousand years,” said Lafitpour.

“Probably not so much anymore,” said Hickman. “I mean with the Ayatollahs and all.”

Lafitpour’s eyes flashed a little, just a hint. “One of the benefits of a culture seventy centuries old is the ability to take the long view. You Americans, always so impatient. These Arabs and their religion, probably visions Mohammad had in a fever after catching a disease from sleeping with his camels. Look at them. More than a century of oil wealth now for these ridiculous herdsman, and they have done nothing. Their countries make no products, develop no technologies, contribute no knowledge. They can’t even run their own oil fields. They have to pay foreigners to do it for them. All they have done is build palaces to hold their egos and use their religion to make slaves of their women. Take their oil away, they will be back living in tents and fighting over their patches of sand in a decade.”

Hickman let that ride, took in the view of the lakefront, sweeping south toward the Loop. Lafitpour had the top two floors in one of the best addresses on Lake Shore Drive. Hickman knew he was here for a reason, and that Lafitpour would get to it when he got to it.

Hickman had done Yale Law, a couple years with Justice in DC, State’s Attorney in New York, a few years in the FBI. Now he was the new US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Hickman understood the game. It was all about name recognition. High-profile cases, that was his ticket, and he intended to ride that ticket all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue. All he needed was something national; international even better. So when Lafitpour called, he was all ears.

Munroe turned toward Hickman. “When you got your invite, I assume you checked me out?”

Hickman had checked with his sources in Justice, at the Bureau, even some of the guys from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York. This Munroe, everybody knew him but nobody was quite sure whose org chart he was on. A player, though, and at the big boy table. Outside the lines maybe, but everybody said his word was good. Hickman nodded. “Bio’s a little fuzzy around the edges maybe, but word is you’re a player.”

“Good,” said Munroe. “Saves me some song and dance time. Here’s the thing. Bahram got approached on something that’s turned out to have some real interesting connections. You heard about the Stein murder, right?”

“Sure,” said Hickman. “You got an in for me on that, I’m all ears.”

“Alex,” said Lafitpour. “Have you heard the name Nicholas Hardin?”

Hickman shook his head.

Munroe filled Hickman in on Hardin, the noise that had filtered in around the Stein killing, the mob killings, and now this Hernandez business.

“Sounds like this Hardin is having a bad week,” said Hickman.

“That’s what the police know, and the DEA,” said Munroe. “Here’s something they don’t know. This other man, the second shooter? His name is Husam al Din.”

“And?”

“That translates to the Sword of Faith,” said Lafitpour. “He is very skilled. Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, they’ve all used him. But he is run out of MOIS in Tehran now.”

“Khamenei’s got a pet shooter running around the US?”

Lafitpour took a sip of his wine. Paused a moment. “It is more complicated than that. Al Qaeda has money, billions from Bin Laden alone. But it is impossible for them to move it in traditional fashions.”

“Sure,” said Hickman. “After 9/11, we froze any account anywhere that even had their scent on it.”

“Diamonds are one of their options,” Munroe said. “They’re small, they’re valuable, and they’re easy to move.” Munroe filled Hickman in on the diamond trade, the Lebanese connection, the ties to Al Qaeda and to Iran.

“And Hardin stole some of their diamonds?” Hickman asked.

“Not just some,” said Munroe. “Look, Mossad has been watching the Al Qaeda diamond play for a while. Stein was working with Mossad. Used his network to suck the Al Qaeda couriers into bogus brokers, and then the couriers would get whacked and Mossad would take their stones. So Al Qaeda stopped taking delivery for several months until it was sure it had arranged a safe exchange. This shipment that Hardin hijacked? It was worth north of $100 million.”

Hickman let out a low whistle. “No wonder he’s attracted so much attention.”

“Yes,” said Lafitpour. “The gravity of mammon.”

“But still,” Hickman said, “if we can catch this al Din, then we can tie him to Tehran, right? We’ve got an Iranian operative killing US citizens on US soil.”

“We’ve got more than that,” said Munroe. “This Hardin, he’s got a history with the Hernandez Cartel. They know he’s on the ground here, and they’re looking for him, too.”

“I’m not following here. What’s that got to do with the diamonds or this al Din?”

Munroe took a slow pull at his wine, sat back, smiled a little. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? From a certain perspective, what we have here is a major Al Qaeda financing operation, the Hernandez Cartel sniffing around it and Tehran’s top trigger man riding shotgun on the deal.”

Munroe paused, took a sip of wine, settled further back in his chair. “You’ve got some idea of what I do, right? Wanna know the three things that keep me up nights? First, has some fundamentalist Islamic yahoo finally gotten enough scratch together to do something really bad, and I don’t mean knock down a couple buildings with airplanes. I mean make a mushroom cloud someplace. Second, what’s Tehran going to do once they have the bomb, because they’re going to, sooner or later? And, third, how do we keep Mexico from turning into a narco state? There are a couple hundred other things I worry about, if you want the full list, but those are the top three. Now, if we control the narrative on this cluster fuck, then what we have is the cartel, Al Qaeda, and Tehran all in bed together engaged in a terrorist conspiracy that includes killing US citizens on US soil. We have an Iran problem, we have an Al Qaeda problem, and we have a Mexico problem. We play this right, we get out in front of all three of them.”

Hickman sat back, digesting that for a minute. “Are we maybe missing the bigger issue here? We’ve got Al Qaeda looking to put better than $100 million in operating capital in play all at once. Shouldn’t we be asking why? We’ve got a major potential terrorist operation, maybe in Chicago, given that al Din keeps hanging around, and you want to muddy the water with some ginned-up cartel connection?” said Hickman. “I’m all for playing hardball, but not if it means we’re giving this al Din guy a chance to make the Loop glow in the dark. Don’t we need to focus on him?”

Munroe shook his head. “Al Din wouldn’t be hanging around if he had an op ready to run. He’d pull the trigger and blow town. That means he needs the diamonds to make it go. Hardin bounced their shipment before it got a hundred miles, and every time al Din turns up, he’s sniffing around after Hardin. Al Din isn’t here to pull the trigger on 9/11 the sequel. He’s here to pull the trigger on Hardin and get the rocks back. We stop that, we stop whatever plot they were going to use the stones to finance.”

Hickman thought. Made sense, and this cartel/Al Qaeda/Iran thing, it could work, seen in the right light. “This Mexico to Tehran by way of West Africa thing, there anything to it?”

Munroe shrugged. “Is there? Dunno. I doubt it. Could there be? Sure. Hey, you wanna make the world safe for democracy, you gotta break a few eggs. I’m in the egg-breaking business, and I’m inviting you into the kitchen. I just gotta know if you can stand the heat.”

It was Hickman’s turn to take a drink. The man was asking if he wanted to plunk his chips down at the big-boy table. If he did, he’d either come out flush or busted. Hickman thought about Munroe’s scenario for a moment, and Munroe’s track record. From what he’d heard, Munroe had been pulling this type of shit for something like forty years without ever once popping up on anybody’s radar. If you’re going to go all in, those are the type of odds you want on your side. Thing worked out, he’d be looking at lots of the right kind of face time in all of the right kind of places. And Illinois had a Senate seat opening up.

“What’s my role?” Hickman asked.

“Stage manager,” said Munroe. “Hardin’s meeting with Lafitpour tomorrow night. Once we’ve got him in the bag and we feed him his lines, then we go public. We need somebody on the scene who knows the local players and can herd the cats. What I hear, that’s you. You need to picture the end game here, the press conference. Somebody’s gonna be the face behind the podium when we break the biggest War on Terror story since 9/11. Except this time, instead of shaking our fists in the rubble, we’re taking a victory lap and waving around some big-name scalps. You want in, then the face behind the podium is yours.”

Hickman pushed his chips into the pot.

“OK, I’m in,” Hickman said. “But I’m not just your pretty face. You want me to manage things, fine. But we have to do this right. You need to get an official skin on this ASAP. The snatch tomorrow? That’s got to be on the record. Get your intel boys to dummy up whatever you need, but I need it tonight. I’ll need a warrant, then I’ve got to brief the FBI and DEA, get them both on board to make the grab. For those guys, credit comes down to who makes the bust, so we want everybody covered in glory, make sure we don’t have any inter-agency sniping later if somebody gets jealous. If you freeze them out on grabbing Hardin, then he’s not their bust and they have no reason to play ball if anything unravels. Put their faces on the arrest, then they’ve got a dog in the fight and they’ll back your play.”

Risky, Munroe thought. Too many people inside the tent too early. But Hickman was right. Give the Feds credit for Hardin’s scalp, then they’ll help Munroe make it fit on any head he wants.

“Done,” Munroe said. “I’m going to put you in touch with Langley, they’ll get somebody official out to sit in on your briefings tomorrow, somebody who knows the game plan. Bahram, do you have your story together on the money?”

“Broad strokes, but they will hold up. All I have to do is point the FBI forensic accounting people in the appropriate direction. Once you tell them Hernandez and Al Qaeda are cooperating on finance, they’ll find plenty of overlap between their organizations. With the volume of cash Hernandez has to move on a daily basis, and assuming he prefers to do so through banking channels that are not focused on collecting personal data and transmitting it to taxing authorities, then he and Al Qaeda will inevitably be moving money through the same institutions. Switzerland perhaps, the Caymans, the Channel Islands, some of the new players in the South Pacific, Vanuatu and the like. The FBI will find the overlap.”