Death Ship
Page 16
Laila Farhami nodded. “That’s our guy. He’s had a deer-in-the-headlights look since he was turned over to us.”
“You have much experience with this sort of stuff?”
“What sort of stuff?”
“You know, enhanced interrogation methods.”
“You’ve got to stop listening to the media, Sherman. Did you load that DVD?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s ready to go. What are you—?”
“The cells are soundproof, right?”
“Correct.”
“And you can pipe sound into them?”
Sherman nodded.
“Okay. Punch up the video, but turn down the sound.”
Sherman did as Laila requested. A scene in a large, filthy room popped up on one of the consoles.
“Hey, I recognize that guy. He’s—”
“Hold your water, Sherman. We’re about to see if we can get the guy behind door number two to cooperate.”
Laila scrolled the DVD to the scene she wanted. She’d copied the torturous interrogation scenes from the movie Rendition onto the DVD. When she found the start point, she told Sherman to crank up the audio volume. The inside of the plane suddenly erupted with screams and shouts and curses that reverberated off the metal surfaces and sounded as though there were multiple persons being tortured. “Pipe sound into all the holding cells.”
Zaidi Shirazi had just nodded off when sounds from hell itself jolted him. Not a minute had passed before he’d soiled himself. He had just vomited when the door to his cell opened and slammed against the wall. Three booted figures rushed in, undid the manacles around his ankles and wrists, and handcuffed his arms behind his back. They put cuffs around his ankles and placed him on his back in the middle of floor. Then a young woman entered the cell. She looked like an angel. She appeared to be Iranian. But there was something about her smile that reminded him of a shaytanawa, a devil. Then the men stuffed a cloth in his mouth and put a hood over his head. The speed and violence of the men had been such that Zaidi couldn’t come up with the words to plead for his life. Now he jerked to the beat of his accelerated heart rate. He shook as though electricity raged through his body. He wanted to beg for mercy, to tell these people he would tell them anything and everything. But he couldn’t speak.
Then the woman said in Arabic, “Your friend in the next cell was quite cooperative. After a while, anyway. He told us quite a lot. But you never know whether you’ve been told the truth. Fortunately, we have five of you here. So, I will ask each of you the same questions. If you don’t answer my questions, or if I think you’ve lied to me, we will do to you what we did to your friend. Do you understand?”
Shirazi grunted several times.
“I will assume that was a yes.”
The gag was pulled from his mouth and the men hauled him off the floor. Two men held his arms in vice-like grips while another man placed an arm around his neck and pulled his head back. He could barely breathe.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked.
“Bart Franks,” Shirazi said before he realized what he’d done. He’d lied, and he knew that would anger the woman. The name had been drilled into his head in training. He was about to correct the error when the woman said in a voice so calm it scared him even more, “Replace the gag and bring in the electric generator.”
Zaidi had long since come to the conclusion he would not handle torture well. But, so far, these people hadn’t hurt him. Only made him uncomfortable. He summoned up an ounce of courage and told another lie. “No, no,” he shrieked. “My real name is Parviz Baluchi.”
“Iranian?”
“Yes.”
“What are the names of the men who were on the boat with you?” she asked in Farsi.
“Ali Kamenzadeh and Jahan Ferdousi,” he spouted, just as he’d been trained.
“So, you’re all from Iran?”
He hesitated, then said, “Yes. But our mothers were Americans our fathers met when they studied in the United States.”
“That’s why you all could pass for Westerners.”
“Yes.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Anne Parker.” As soon as he had spilled the name, he knew his mouth had turned down and he’d clenched his teeth. That was a mistake, he thought. That was his mother’s real name.
There was a long pause and then the woman said in a calm, low voice, “He’s lying. There’s something off with his answers. Hook him up. Let’s see how much pain he can take.”
Zaidi had calmed down a bit. He thought the woman had bought his last answers. Now his heart again pounded like a bass drum and sweat ran from every pore. He struggled against the men’s hands as they pinned him on the floor. Not being able to see made his fear rise to a higher level. Then he gasped when the woman said—again in that calm, low voice—“Pull off his pants and hook his genitals to the machine.”
“Please,” Zaidi screamed as he felt clips attached to his scrotum. “I’ve told you the truth,” he shouted. “What do you want me to say?”
“What was your mission?” the woman said.
“We were given the name of a boat to hijack. Our identification papers were in the names of the men who crewed that boat. We assumed their identities and—”
“How did you get the names of the crewmen on the boat?”
“I don’t know.”
“I asked you about your mission.”
“There were three teams that were to attack three different American ships anchored at Sigonella Naval Base.”
“Did you actually believe you would be able to get close enough to an American warship to do damage?”
“We were told the odds were good that at least one of our boats would slip through the American defenses.”
The woman laughed. “You would have been blown out of the water before you got within a few miles of an American warship. Every terrorist group in the world knows that much.”
Zaidi wondered about the truthfulness of the woman’s statement. She made sense. If that was the case, why had he and the others been sent to Sicily? But she interrupted his musing.
“What other attacks are planned?”
Zaidi violently shook his head. “I have no idea. I only knew about our mission.”
The woman went silent for a second, then asked, “Tell me where you grew up in Iran.”
Zaidi gulped. When he tried to talk, to recite his cover story, his voice cracked. He attempted to speak again but couldn’t get words out.
One of the men in the room said, “Let’s give him a hotshot. Maybe that will give him his voice.”
“Sounds good to me,” the woman said.
Zaidi tried to speak again but he suddenly felt dizzy and then all went black.
Laila shook her head. “What happened?”
“Jeez,” one of the men said. “Look at him. There’s bile running out of his mouth.”
“Has he fainted?” Laila asked.
“I don’t think so. We’d better get the doctor in here. I think he’s stroked out.”
CHAPTER 45
Laila interviewed each of the other terrorists and got no cooperation from any of them. The others wouldn’t even give up their Persian names. When she asked who they worked for, most of them just laughed or stared. When she threatened them with torture, they laughed again. One of them even said, “Your country will put you in prison if you mistreat me.” They were hard and fast true believers who were upset about their failure to achieve martyrdom. She sent the audio and video of the interrogations to Langley over a secure connection and then called Raymond Gallegos. After she briefed him about the interrogation results, he instructed her to return to Berlin.
“Is my cover intact regarding my supposed trip to Los Angeles?” she asked.
“Everything’s taken care of.”
“Okay, Ray. How do I return to Berlin?”
“Admiral Johnson has a plane on call to take you to Berlin that will land there at the same time as
the commercial flight you supposedly took. If anyone tries to verify your trip details, they’ll find nothing suspicious.”
“So, I’ll be back at Gerhardt Anlageberatungs tomorrow?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“What I’ve done here the past couple days on Sicily has been more like what I anticipated I’d do when I signed on with the Company.”
“Hang in there, Laila. You’ve only scratched the surface at GA. Your discovery of the company’s relationship with Saber Commodities was a big step in the right direction.”
“It’s been two years, boss.”
“I know, Laila. But we’re close to breaking this thing. I can feel it. Do you have anything you have to clear up there in Italy before you fly out?”
“I called Dr. Salvatore Innocenti, the Medical Examiner here, to see if he got the results of the DNA tests. I had to leave a message.”
“Do you think they’re Iranians?”
Laila wanted to say she was certain, but something gnawed at the back of her brain. “They might be. But it’s difficult to tell. They have Western features and their English is awfully good. No accent at all.”
“Anything else?”
“Uh. No, I guess nothing else.”
“What is it, Laila?”
“Something bothers me about the terrorists. They were told they would do extreme damage to one or more of our ships at Sigonella. But you know as well as I do, they never would have gotten close enough to one of our warships to do harm. And whoever these guys work for would have to know that as well.”
When Ray didn’t answer, she continued. “Do you think this mission off Sicily might have been a diversionary attack?”
“Hell of a diversion,” Ray said. “If they’re willing to sacrifice nine operatives on a diversion, the main attack must involve one hell of a big bang.”
Laila landed in Berlin at 3 a.m. She took a taxi from Berlin Tegel Airport directly to her office. After her absence, she guessed there would be a pile of work there and she thought she might as well tackle it before the phones started ringing. Besides, she was too wired to sleep.
She checked trades executed during her absence. Usually, she managed a couple hundred large trades daily. She was shocked to find there had been over five hundred per day while she was away. And the average size of the trades was much larger than usual. Laila quickly scanned the trade confirmations and tried to discern a pattern. Her first run-through showed a wide range of investments, but two themes were present: There were at least fifty daily trades that shorted both insurance and reinsurance company stocks; and there were significant long trades in U.S. defense company stocks.
She had already noticed increased activity in reinsurance company stocks back on June 21, before she left for Sicily. Trading activity since then had exploded.
Laila grabbed a legal pad and a pen and jotted down across the top of the paper Insurance, Reinsurance, and Defense. Under each title she listed the individual companies whose stock had been traded.
They were mostly huge global firms Laila was familiar with. But she did not recognize some of the insurance company names. She Googled each of them and discovered they were more regional in scope, with clients concentrated in Southern Europe, including Italy, Greece, Turkey, and the Balkans. Only one of the companies insured risks in all of those geographic areas. Some wrote policies in one or more of the countries. But all of them did business in Greece and Italy.
She murmured aloud, “Now this is different.”
CHAPTER 46
It was a few minutes after noon when Warren Thurston parked at the windowless rear of a diner on the western edge of the District. He left the car and walked around to the front. Inside the entry, he went to the pay phone there and called a number.
“Go,” a man answered.
Thurston took a few seconds to calm his breathing. Finally, he said, “It’s Falcon.”
“It’s been a long time. Maybe seven years. What do you need?”
“I need to get someone out of my hair.”
“How soon?”
“A-S-A-P.”
“Name?”
“Jack Cole.”
The man laughed, which sounded to Thurston more like a rheumatic rumble. There was certainly no humor in it. He blew out a loud breath that whistled over the phone line. “You gotta be shittin’ me?”
Thurston responded, “I can find someone else if this is too much for you to handle.”
The man cleared his throat, which sounded like a growl. This only made him sound predatory, more intimidating. Thurston thought he might have pushed back too hard. A chill ran down his spine and sweat bathed his forehead.
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” the guy said. “Half wired now; half when the job is done.”
Carlo Marchetti looked at his cell phone as though it was an alien device. Since he’d last heard from Falcon, his hair had gone from black to salt and pepper, his stomach was noticeably larger, and his skin even sallower. But nothing had changed about his lack of compassion or about his coal-black eyes. Dead eyes. Other than those eyes, he knew he looked like anyone’s grandfather. Especially with Pooh, his white miniature poodle, cradled in his arms. He thought about the job Falcon had just given him. It would be the most dangerous assignment he’d ever accepted. But it was lucrative. Maybe it was time to retire.
Marchetti whistled for his dog to come over. When she did, he picked her up and left the bench in Banneker Park. He loved coming here with Pooh. The dog chased pigeons while Marchetti looked out at the Potomac River.
“Let’s go home, baby,” he told Pooh as he stroked the dog’s back. “Daddy’s got work to do.”
Laila Farhami’s tired eyes burned. She rubbed her face and then rapidly blinked in an attempt to lubricate her eyes. But as soon as she looked back at her computer screen, they seemed to go dry as a desert.
She looked at the bottom of the screen and saw it was already 6:20 p.m. She’d been rooted in place at her desk since four that morning. Laila struggled to her feet and stretched her back and shoulders. After she switched off her desk lamp and computer, she walked out of the Gerhardt Anlageberatungs building to a delikatessen on Altonaer Strasse. While she waited for her takeout order, she stepped outside and went to a currency exchange business two doors down. She entered a telephone booth in the lobby and dialed the number for her CIA handler, Walter Zeller.
“This is Laila Farhami. I’m checking on my camera. Have the repairs been completed?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Farhami, but we still need a part.”
“When do you expect it to arrive?”
“Early next week. I apologize for the delay. But Japanese parts are often difficult to find for older cameras.”
“I was hoping to have it tonight.”
Laila returned to the delikatessen, picked up her order, walked to her apartment building, and climbed to her floor. She opened her door, flipped the light switch, and moved inside. Walter Zeller sat at the breakfast nook table, beer bottle in hand. She moved to the stereo, inserted a disk, and cranked up the volume. Then she moved to the table, pulled a chair next to Zeller, and whispered, “There’s something going on, but I can’t figure out what it is. I reported to you four days ago that there had been increased trading activity in insurance company stocks. While I was out of town, activity skyrocketed. Gerhardt Anlageberatungs executed billions of Dollars and Euros in trades in dozens of companies. They shorted insurance companies and went long on American defense manufacturers and contractors.”
“On behalf of all of their clients?”
“Yes, but the vast majority of the trades were on behalf of Saber Commodities.”
“Have you discovered the ownership behind Saber Commodities?”
“No. I tried to trace the trade orders backwards but I always get blocked at a site in Hong Kong. Trades are apparently laundered through multiple filters.”
“What about money transfers?”
“The same thing.”
“There’s something else that’s screwy. Usually trades are in giant international companies. But this time, the trades are also in smaller national and regional insurance companies.”
“Any common denominators?”
“One. Every regional company whose stock was shorted insures properties in Greece and Italy.”
“Hmm. Do all the large insurance and reinsurance companies also cover Greece and Italy?”
“In some cases. But they tend to concentrate on the larger European markets, like France, Germany, England. The smaller markets like Greece and Italy are generally covered by local firms, like the ones I found on the trade confirmations.”
“Why the defense companies?” Zeller asked.
“That surprised me, too. I can come up with only one reason.”
Zeller stared at Laila.
“The defense stock trades were all long, which tells me those companies are about to realize windfalls. After 9-11, defense stocks rose while most other industries dropped.”
“And what would cause that?”
Laila shrugged. “All out war.” She paused and then added, “And, or a cataclysmic event that destroyed military infrastructure and assets that would have to be replaced.”
CHAPTER 47
Rear Admiral Alan Bowden, a fifty-year-old, tall, lean, bushy-eye browed, red-faced man, had been in the U.S. Navy for twenty-six years. His promotion to two-star rank and transfer to the command of Task Force 60 was more than he’d ever wished for when he graduated from Navy R.O.T.C. at the University of Pennsylvania. He now commanded two aircraft carriers, four cruisers, five destroyers, and one hundred and thirty-three aircraft. He was responsible for the lives of fourteen thousand nine hundred and eight men and women. Over twelve thousand of those men and women were stationed aboard the two carriers alone.