The Last Witness

by W. E. B. Griffin

  He leaned two white plastic tubes that were four feet in length and six inches in diameter against the counter.

  “More blueprints?” she said.

  “And architectural renderings. My cross to bear, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I’m sure it is going to be even more beautiful when you’re finished.”

  Garvey—an architect who held degrees in art and in history, as well as a master’s in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business—had been hired as chief architect to ensure that the updating of Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral remained historically faithful. Built in the mid-1800s, its ceilings and walls were covered in massive murals that portrayed a dozen scenes from the Old and New Testaments. Saints Peter and Paul—on Kronprindsens Gade in Charlotte Amalie, at the foot of Frenchman Hill, not two hundred yards from the scenic harbor’s edge—served as the Virgin Islands seat of the Roman Catholic diocese.

  As with all his restorative work, this project had required a great deal of research, which entailed traveling to the Virgin Islands regularly. That of course had triggered the usual expected comments from family and friends about having to quote unquote work in the beautiful Caribbean.

  “Another lousy day in paradise, huh, John?”

  But that had not been the reality of the situation.

  He had, in fact, spent an inordinate amount of time in dark pockets of the buildings, examining construction methods—it originally had been built with stone quarried from the island, but over time new additions employed new methods—testing the load-bearing walls, even doing samplings of mortar to gauge the level of deterioration. Then there were the delicate murals themselves to consider.

  By the end of the day, he was simply exhausted and headed to the hotel, which in no time had begun to feel more or less like any other hotel—a bed, a bathroom, a TV, a dusty Bible in a side-table drawer.

  Instead of the sunny Caribbean it could just as well have been dreary Camden on the Delaware.

  He did try to get out, break up the pattern. And, over time, he had become friendly to varying degrees with the locals. Ones at the church, of course, but also ones frequenting local spots, like the SandBar Grill, which was the next block over from his small hotel.

  Two days earlier, as he had left the cathedral for the ten-block walk to his hotel, he heard his name called by a familiar voice.

  He turned to see Jack Todd approaching. Captain Jack was one of what the locals called a “continental,” someone from the States, visitors either with the means to stay in the islands for a long period or working at seasonal jobs.

  A backslapping friendly type, Todd—who Garvey guessed was probably forty but could have been younger; his deeply tanned skin had been severely damaged and aged by the sun—had said that he was from Texas and worked on charter sailboats. How often he sailed, Garvey couldn’t say. Captain Jack always seemed to be at the bar, in his usual shorts, T-shirt, and flip-flops, making friends and passing out business cards.

  “Hey, John!” he had said, patting him on the back. “Let me buy you a drink.”

  —

  Captain Jack grabbed two mugs of St. John’s Mango Pale Ale draft at the SandBar Grill’s bar and carried them to John Garvey. He was sitting at a corner table on the SandBar Grill’s patio. It had a view of the big harbor, the seaplane and helicopter ports, and the main airport itself.

  “And you leave again tomorrow?” Todd said, making it more a statement than a question.

  “That’s right. But I’ll be back. Like clockwork.”

  Todd nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

  What does he mean by that? Garvey thought.

  Todd then reached down and produced from the floor a dirty manila envelope. He held it out to him.

  “What’s this?” Garvey said, putting down his beer mug.

  “Open it,” Todd said coolly, motioning at it with his hand.

  Garvey carefully peeled back its flap. He reached in and removed a short stack of five-by-seven photographs. They were not on slick photo paper. Instead, they had been printed on a standard color printer on regular white paper, two images per page, and the page torn to separate the photos.

  “Sorry that the quality of the pictures is so crappy,” Todd said. “But you get the idea.”

  The top one, of John’s wife walking with their son in front of Saint Mary’s in Philadelphia, initially made him wonder if this had something to do with his work at the cathedral. Then the next photograph was of his wife entering their Victorian house in Northeast Philly. And he quickly flipped to the next, a shot of his son leaving school.

  “What the hell is this?” Garvey snapped.

  Captain Jack met his eyes.

  “They know all about your family. And their schedule. And your schedule.”

  John Garvey felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  “I don’t understand . . . and who the hell is ‘they’?”

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t want to work for them, either. But one thing led to another here and—”

  John Garvey, starting to stand, interrupted, “I don’t know where you got these, but—”

  “Sit down, John. There’s no way of getting out of this. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

  “Get out of what?” Garvey said, staring at Todd.

  “Sit.”

  As Garvey slipped back in his chair, he said, “This can’t have anything to do with the church?”

  Captain Jack laughed as he looked past Garvey, out to the sea. He took a chug of his beer, then looked back at Garvey.

  “Depends on what you worship, my friend. Look. It is very simple. They have a task for you to do. You’re a regular business traveler. There’s no customs to clear in Philly. You’ll zip right through, man. Piece of cake.”

  “What task?”

  “You do this, and nothing will happen to your family.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Garvey blurted. “Why are you threatening me?”

  Todd’s face turned very serious. “Look. You better learn to control your emotions. Not doing so could cause you to screw up, and that would be a very unfortunate thing for you, for your family.”

  Todd flipped back to the bottom photograph.

  Garvey saw that it was of a dark-haired boy about the age of his own blonde-headed son. He was floating facedown along a dirty, rocky riverbank.

  “It’s terrible when kids have accidents, no? And women, who we know can be careless, clumsy, and unfortunate things happen to them . . .”

  Garvey, despite the temperature in the high eighties, suddenly felt cold and clammy.

  “What is this . . . this task?”

  —

  John Garvey looked at his suitcase now sitting on the Toledo scale beside the desk agent’s computer terminal. The digital readout showed it weighed forty pounds, then forty-one, then settled on forty-two-five. Fifty pounds, Garvey knew, was the limit that the airline said a bag could weigh. Anything above that and he would have to pay a fee for the excess. He didn’t care about the money. He just did not want any extra attention paid to his suitcase—and its hidden contents.

  Thank God. I got lucky.

  I knew my room scale couldn’t be properly calibrated.

  He had spent a half hour in his hotel room working with the bathroom scale. He first stood on it, and the round gauge registered his weight as two hundred. He knew he actually weighed one-seventy-five, so he would have to keep the discrepancy in mind. He picked up his suitcase. When he stepped back on the scale, this time holding his suitcase, the scale’s circle gauge spun, then slowed and finally stopped on two-eighty. He then stepped off, opened the case, and took out enough slacks and shoes that he hoped would weigh ten pounds. And repeated that process three times before the scale registered two-sixty.
He had had to leave behind the extra clothes, in the closet, then called the manager from the airport, saying he’d forgotten them and would get them on his next trip.

  Now he looked at the suitcase and could visualize behind the black fabric the two thick bricks that were wrapped in plastic and gray duct tape. Together they weighed right at four and a half pounds.

  Two keys. Two thousand grams.

  “Four hundred grand on the street,” Captain Jack had said.

  Cut that once, eight hundred thousand bucks.

  And it’s never cut just once.

  “Don’t lose it. I hear people get killed in Philly for a pair of sneakers.”

  “My favorite is the Last Supper,” the desk agent then said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The mural of the Last Supper at the cathedral,” she said. “It’s my favorite.”

  He nodded as he thought, That’s fitting.

  Jesus’ last meal with his disciples before he was killed.

  This could very well be my version of it.

  The desk agent went on: “I heard that Peter and Paul was built to celebrate the end of slavery. Is that right? That’s what Market Square here was, the Caribbean’s largest slave auction.”

  End of slavery? There’s been no end! I’m being enslaved now.

  Okay. Try to act normal. Answer the damn question.

  “That’s All Saints you’re thinking of. The Cathedral Church of All Saints on Garden Street?”

  “Really?”

  Act normal . . .

  He nodded. “You’re certainly not the first. They’re pretty much from the same period. Construction started on All Saints about the time Saints Peter and Paul was completed. Back then, when merchant ships docked here to transport the mahogany and sugar products—sugar itself, and the molasses and rum made here from it—the ballast from the cargo holds would be left on the dock to make room. Those huge arched windows in All Saints are lined with those yellow bricks. That was the ship ballast.”

  And now it’s airplanes shipping bricks of coke.

  “Fascinating,” she said. “God bless you for your talent in preserving that important cathedral.”

  She handed him his ticket.

  “Well, I have you upgraded to first class, our compliments. We appreciate your regular business.”

  “Thank you. Very nice.”

  Great. Free booze. I can drink my last supper.

  “See you when you return, Mr. Garvey. Vaya con Dios.”

  —

  As John Garvey stood at the security checkpoint removing his wallet and all things metal from his person, he realized that he’d been wrong about the ridiculous ritual that was the Transportation Security Administration’s screening.

  It really can get worse than the government-sanctioned and taxpayer-funded public groping.

  You can be afraid of being arrested as a drug smuggler.

  He cleared security with no problem.

  He waited to catch the plastic bin containing his laptop before it came clunking down the rollers of the conveyor and banging to a stop. He glanced back at the unsecured area. A familiar-looking man caused him to do a double take.

  Captain Jack, in T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, was casually walking with a small crowd toward a sign reading PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, thumbing a message on a cell phone as he went.

  [TWO]

  Office of the General Manager

  Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment, Philadelphia

  Monday, November 17, 10:30 A.M.

  “Damn it! That is not what I asked for,” Nikoli Antonov snapped. He was on his phone as Dmitri Gurnov entered. “Call me back when you get it right.”

  He slammed the receiver into its base on his desk, then glared at Gurnov.

  “I really hope you have good news for me, Dmitri.”

  Unlike Gurnov’s distinct, hard, old-world Soviet features, the dashing thirty-seven-year-old Antonov looked very Western European. He was of medium build, had dark hair trimmed short, and wore an expensive, nicely cut two-piece suit with a tie-less crisp white dress shirt. While Antonov certainly could speak his native Russian fluently, his early years of attending boarding school in Helsinki had left him with no detectable Russian accent. He generally was soft-spoken—Gurnov knew that his outburst just now would never have happened in public—an appearance that conveniently masked the fact that Nikoli Antonov could be utterly ruthless.

  Behind him, a quad of twenty-inch flat-screens was mounted on the wall. They showed real-time images from closed-circuit cameras around the casino complex, every ten seconds cycling to a different camera view, including one that Gurnov saw was of him just now entering Antonov’s office. Gurnov saw himself looking at his cell phone—on which he’d been reading the text message “Mule headed uphill,” which Julio had forwarded from the cartel’s guy in Saint Thomas—then sliding the phone into his pocket.

  There of course were at least ten times that number, and much larger screens, in the casino’s security office. But Antonov believed that keeping a finger on the pulse of the complex lessened the chance of surprises. He also knew it did not hurt for those working for him—including his security men, who often were among the first to be offered bribes to look the other way—to know that the boss himself could be watching over their shoulder at any time.

  “Well, I don’t have any bad news, Nick.”

  None that I’m going to tell you.

  Starting with me having to fix what Ricky screwed up.

  And another is you not knowing that my mule just made his flight.

  You’ve never warmed up to my idea of using nonprofessionals to move product.

  Antonov grunted. “Good enough, I guess.”

  The phone on the desk began trilling softly. Antonov’s dark eyes darted to it, and when he saw its touchscreen display, he punched the speakerphone button.

  “Jorge, my friend!” Antonov said, his tone now cheerful. “Good timing. I have Dmitri with me in my office.”

  “Hey, Jorge,” Gurnov called out.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” Jorge Perez said. “How are you?”

  “You tell us,” Antonov said. “How did it go? I got your message, but Dmitri hasn’t heard. You can give us both the details.”

  “In a word,” he said, his self-assured tone bordering on arrogant, “successful.”

  “Details?” Antonov repeated.

  There was a pause, then Perez said, “Well, the bad news is that we won the Poker Run. Worse, we did it with a damn royal flush.” He chuckled. “Where do you want your Mustang convertible delivered?”

  “Why is that bad news?” Antonov said casually.

  “Because everyone was joking that the whole thing had to be rigged, what with a casino’s boat winning the hand and all. If I’d thought that was going to happen, I would have played badly on purpose. But you know that I like to win.”

  “Bad news? I’d say it’s exactly the opposite,” Antonov said. “The press release will spin it ‘Lucky Stars Casino Shows We’re All Winners.’ Or something like that. And we give the car to charity.”

  “Now, that’s a good idea,” Perez said.

  Antonov looked to Gurnov, who nodded as expected.

  “How did the transfer go?” Antonov went on.

  “Surprisingly well. I told you that Miguel Treto was good. He’s never let me down, even when it’s gotten hairy with the damn Communists messing with him and that cargo ship.”

  “For example?”

  “Like the bastards refusing to accept shipments, just flat out making him haul it back to Miami, or squeezing him for a bribe. He said he had the feeling that they were going to do that this time, especially when they arrived late in the day, after dark. He sweated that big-time, because he knew it would have messed up the rendezvous timing. But Treto’s a pr
o—made it go off without a problem.”

  “What about the product?” Gurnov put in.

  Perez played dumb. “The girls or the—”

  “Both,” Gurnov snapped.

  “It all came through fine. We put the girls on the Citation with Bobby Garcia. He dropped two of them in New Orleans. I talked to him after they landed in Dallas.”

  “And the other product?”

  “Carlos is headed your way with the coke. Twenty keys.”

  Gurnov had a mental image of Perez’s short cousin.

  And mine will be here faster, and without having to drive past all those cops sitting on the side of I-95, just waiting for another smuggler to profile.

  Then bust the midget—after confiscating the coke.

  “What if some cop pulls him over for DWM?” Gurnov said, then glanced at Antonov.

  “Driving While Mexican,” Gurnov added.

  Antonov shook his head.

  Perez snapped: “He’s an American citizen, you know. He will be fine. He’s made the run plenty of times. There’s ten keys in each car, and they’re running an hour apart.”

  Antonov was quiet for a moment, then, out of the blue, he said casually, “What about that boatload of Cubans? The ones that crashed the boat ashore?”

  What is that about? Gurnov thought, surprised.

  Perez was silent for a long moment, then he said, his voice not quite so self-assured, “That went as planned, too, Nick. They were Cubans taking advantage of the wet-foot, dry-foot policy.”

  “And you weren’t taking advantage of our plans? At ten grand a head?”

  There was stone silence. Then Perez said, “Yeah, we got paid. But Miguel Treto has done that for me at least twenty, thirty times now. It’s why it all went so smoothly with your stuff. A diversion.”

  “But I didn’t know about the plan,” Antonov said evenly, as he looked to Gurnov.

  Gurnov raised his eyebrows.

  Perez said, “I didn’t—”

  “If you’re going to take chances,” Antonov said, his voice rising, “you take them on your own.”

  Perez was silent for a moment.

  “Nick, I thought it would be the perfect diversion. And it turned out to be that. Every cop in South Florida showed up when that sheriff boat called for backup to stop them from getting to shore.”