ELEVEN
MARACAIBO
Gallegos wasn’t at the restaurant in the Hotel El Paseo when McGarvey showed up, nor was the maître d’ inclined to help out even when McGarvey flashed a one-hundred-dollar bill in front of him. There was nothing left for him but to return to the del Lago, and see if Gallegos had come back yet.
He stopped at the noisy lobby bar, got a couple bottles of Red Stripe beer, and brought them upstairs in his own room. He took off his jacket, laid his pistol on the desk, opened one of the beers, and telephoned Gallegos, but there was no answer. Next, he telephoned Otto Rencke on the secure satellite phone.
“Oh wow, Mac,” Otto answered on the first ring. He’d been expecting McGarvey’s call. “Have you come up with anything?”
“He’s here all right, or at least he was as of two days ago.”
It was coming up on ten in the evening, and a deep-throated ship’s whistle sounded somewhere out on the lake, but very close. It reminded McGarvey of how much he didn’t know about Graham, and the situation here and over in Cabimas, and the fact that Graham had a two-day head start.
“All the normal al-Quaida Web sites have gone real quiet in the past twenty-four hours,” Otto said. “Just the usual CDLR shit out of London, and the IALHP in Prague. But it’s just background noise.” The CDLR or Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, and the IALHP or the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Places, had stepped up their fundraising activities ever since 9/11 had galvanized the Muslim world. Even the elections in Afghanistan and Iraq hadn’t stopped the influx of money to bin Laden—much of it from Saudi Arabia, but incredibly a lot of it from the United States.
“How about Louise?” Louise Horn was Otto’s wife. She ran the National Security Agency’s Satellite Photo Interpretation shop over at Fort Meade.
“Nada, kimo sabe,” Otto said. He sounded tired and a little depressed. “If they’re not talking on their Web sites or by phone, they have to be communicating via courier, but our Jupiter constellation is picking up almost nothing in infrared.”
The National Reconnaissance Office’s Jupiter satellite system had originally been put up to watch the India-Pakistan nuclear situation. But since 9/ 11 it had been pressed into service to also watch the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan where bin Laden was supposed to be hiding.
“Maybe they don’t need to talk to each other,” McGarvey said. “The mission has started and they’re keeping their heads down until it happens.”
“That’s the conclusion we came to,” Otto said. “But what have you come up with? Has Graham been trying to recruit a crew?”
“Apparently not,” McGarvey said. “Or at least not here in Maracaibo. But he made a big impression on one of the whores. When I showed her Graham’s picture she went ballistic. Claims he told her that he’d come down here to pick up a ship in Cabimas.”
“Shit,” Otto said. “What is Juan saying?”
“He’s at a meeting with the local chief of police. He promised to try for an APB, but the mood down here isn’t very good. In fact, if Graham did come down here to recruit a crew the government would probably help him. But Gallegos doesn’t think hijacking a ship is possible. He told me that Vensport security is tight.”
“Yeah, right,” Otto said. “And I’ve got some water-view property three hundred miles east of here I want to sell you. But he didn’t fly to Venezuela for his health. If he’s not recruiting a crew then he has to be hijacking a ship, no matter what Juan thinks.”
“That’s what I figured. I’m going to try to get to Cabimas tonight, but in the meantime I want you to find out what ships have sailed in the past forty-eight hours and their destinations.”
“I’ll get on it right away, Mac,” Otto said. “But why would a guy like Graham blab his guts out to a whore? Seems kinda sloppy to me.”
“He might have figured that someone was right behind him and he threw up a smokescreen. Make us think he was going to Cabimas when in fact he was staying right here. Or maybe he’s arrogant, and thinks he’s bulletproof.”
“Or maybe he’s nuts,” Otto said. “He was kicked out of the navy for some reason. Could be anything.”
“Do you have anything new on him?”
“Nothing other than the Interpol package that you’ve seen. But a friend at MI6 has promised to send over his Royal Navy personnel file. I should have it by morning. If I don’t, I’ll hack their mainframe and get it.”
There was no computer security system in the world that Rencke couldn’t break if he put his considerable talents to the job. But for him hacking wasn’t just getting into a system and raiding its files. It was getting in and out without being detected.
Three years ago, when McGarvey was still the DCI, he’d invited the top computer experts from all fifteen U.S. intelligence services, plus the top U.S. law enforcement agencies and a dozen key U.S. corporations such as Boeing that did considerable classified business with the government, to a one-day seminar at CIA headquarters. Rencke had come up with a foolproof way of hacking into the latest Quantum effects encryption algorithms, and McGarvey felt that the CIA ought to issue a warning.
One hundred and fifteen enthused computer division supervisors had entered the first-floor briefing auditorium at nine in the morning, and by four that afternoon only a handful of them went away with any understanding of what Otto had told them. The rest of what Otto called the geek squad left Langley wondering if perhaps they should change professions.
“For the moment at least I’ve got to go with the Cabimas lead, it’s the only thing I have, unless you come up with something new from his navy file,” McGarvey said.
“He had a four-day head start,” Otto said. “Why’d he blow two days of it staying there in Maracaibo to piss off a whore?”
Another possibility suddenly came to McGarvey. On the way in from the airport Gallegos had given him some background on Maracaibo. It was Venezuela’s second-largest city with a metro-area population of more than one million. “What’s the population of Cabimas?”
“Just a sec,” Otto said. A moment later he came back. “A hundred twenty thou.”
“Anonymity,” McGarvey said. “Maracaibo is ten times the size of Cabimas. He got down here too early, and it’s easier to hide out in a big city than in a small town.”
“He was waiting for something,” Otto said. “A ship.”
“A specific ship,” McGarvey said.
“I’m on it,” Otto said. “Give me an hour and I’ll have the name and crew complements of every ship out of Cabimas in the past forty-eight hours.”
“They’ll have a specific target, and whatever it is, it will be big.”
“He’s most likely after an oil tanker, which would probably head for the California refineries. If they blew it up at the unloading dock, it could hurt us pretty badly. The gas shortages would all but cripple us until a new refinery came on line. And that could be years.”
“You’d better give the Bureau a heads-up.”
“We’re supposed to go through Don Hamel’s office—” Otto said, but McGarvey cut him off.
“Say hello to Fred Rudolph for me,” McGarvey said. Rudolph had risen to head the FBI’s Counter-Terrorism Division. He was the one man over at the J. Edgar Hoover Building for whom McGarvey had total trust and respect.
“Will do,” Otto said. “I’ll get back to you within the hour.”
“Do that,” McGarvey said. He telephoned the front desk and asked that Gallegos call as soon as he arrived.
“Señor Gallegos has just walked in the door,” the front desk clerk said. “Un momento.”
Gallegos came on a house phone in the lobby. “He refused, and I can’t blame him. Graham has broken no Venezuelan laws.”
“Never mind that,” McGarvey said. “How far is it to Cabimas?”
“Forty-five minutes,” Gallegos said. “Is that where he went?”
“I think so. I’ll meet you out front, we’ll drive down there now.”
&nb
sp; “What have you learned?” the intelligence officer asked, his tone guarded.
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
“First thing in the morning,” Gallegos said. “We won’t do any good down there this time of night.”
McGarvey figured the man was right, but it was frustrating to spend the night doing nothing. “I think he’s here to hijack one of your ships.”
“Impossible,” Gallegos said. “I’ve already told you that Vensport security is airtight.”
“There’s no such thing,” McGarvey said. “But I’ll have the names of some possibilities for you within the hour. You can at least alert security down there to be on the lookout.”
“Look, Señor McGarvey, this is Venezuela. My service has agreed to offer you whatever help it can. But believe me when I tell you that our shipping security is the best in the world. It has to be, because oil is our lifeblood. If anything were to happen to that industry we would be in more trouble than you can imagine. Do you understand this?”
“If Graham’s not after a crew, he came to hijack a ship.”
“Sí, you’ve already said that.”
“He evidently figured out a way to do it, otherwise he would not have wasted his time coming here.”
“Then he’s in for a surprise, because his picture has been sent to Vensport Security.”
“When?”
“This morning,” Gallegos said. “Get some sleep. We will drive to Cabimas after breakfast, and you will see.”
The call from Otto came a few minutes after eleven. In the past forty-eight hours, twenty-seven ships had departed the various oil-loading facilities along the lake, bound for ports from Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, and Montevideo in the south, to St. Croix and New York in the north, and seven transiting the Panama Canal for ports in the Pacific, three of which were in California. Another eleven ships were due to head out over the next twenty-four hours, six of which were bound for U.S. ports.
“There’s been no trouble reported from any of the ships already at sea,” Otto said. “And the Vensport Lake Terminal Security net has been quiet. If Graham went to Cabimas he’s kept his head down.”
“Fax the list to the hotel,” McGarvey said.
“No need, Mac. While we were talking I downloaded the entire list to your sat phone. Just key your address book.”
“Good,” McGarvey said. “In the meantime give Homeland Security the heads-up on all the U.S. ports on the list. My bet would be the California refineries.”
“Me too, I think,” Otto said, somewhat distantly. “But we’ve got a little time. The Apurto Devlán, which is the first ship on the list, isn’t due at Long Beach for another ten days.”
“Keep me informed, Otto,” McGarvey said.
“Will do.”
TWELVE
APURTO DEVLÁN, LIMÓN BAY HOLDING BASIN
Thirty minutes after they dropped their hook in the holding basin off Colón, a small ex–U.S. Coast Guard gig flying the Panama Canal Transit Authority pennant came alongside and tied up at the lowered boarding ladder. Immediately four men and two small dogs on leashes started up.
It was a few minutes after seven in the morning, and a soft warm breeze came from the southeast, bringing with it the pleasant, damp earthy odors of the rain forest that made the operation of the canal possible. The Apurto Devlán flew the tricolor Venezuelan flag from her stern, and the Panamanian courtesy flag and yellow quarantine pennant from her starboard spreader atop the superstructure.
Graham and his second officer, Mohammed Hijazi, watched from the port bridge wing as the boarding party was met by Ali Ramati, who was presenting himself as First Officer Vasquez.
“Why the dogs?” Hijazi asked.
“I expect they’re looking for explosives,” Graham said. Seeing the dogs and their handlers coming on deck, he’d had a momentary stab of fear that somehow this mission had been blown. But if that were the case, he reasoned, the ship would never have been allowed to come this far. They would have been stopped by a U.S. Navy warship while they were still well at sea.
Hijazi laughed disparagingly. “They should have brought trained fish.”
There was something about the two men with the dogs that was bothersome, however. They were taller than the other two, and they weren’t wearing uniforms, just dark jackets and dark baseball caps. One of them turned and looked up. Graham involuntarily stepped back. Emblazoned on the front of his cap were the initials FBI.
Hijazi spotted the cap at the same time. “Is it a trap?” he asked, his hand going to the pistol beneath his light jacket.
Graham touched his elbow. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The Panamanians have probably asked the Americans for security help. They’re afraid for their canal.”
The four on deck headed aft to the superstructure.
“I’ll deal with the paperwork myself,” Graham said. “But the FBI agents will want to let their dogs sniff around the ship. I want you to personally escort them. Take them to the product tanks, anywhere they want to go except for my cabin. They won’t find anything.”
Hijazi was clearly nervous. “We’re not ready,” he said. “If something goes wrong now we won’t be able to destroy the ship.”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Graham said. A possibility existed, however slight, that the FBI did, in fact, suspect something, and were here to take a preliminary look. If it came to that he’d order the four men and their dogs killed. The ship could be prepared to explode within a half hour. Within that time the Apurto Devlán could be driven to the middle of the narrow entrance to the Gatun approaches. If she sank there, it could take months before the canal could be put back into operation.
His crew would die the martyrs’ deaths they wanted, so that their families would be paid fifty thousand in U.S. dollars, and he would make his escape using the Transit Authority boat.
But first things first. There was no need to shed blood.Yet.
“Have Ali show the transit people to my sea cabin,” Graham said. “And keep your head around those FBI agents.”
Hijazi nodded uncertainly. He went back into the deserted bridge and headed downstairs.
Graham took a moment longer to study the eighteen or twenty other ships in the holding basin. All of them were either Panamax oil tankers like the Apurto Devlán or container ships. No U.S. warships were anywhere in sight. Nor did anything seem out of order, although at the moment no ships were entering or leaving the cut to the locks.
He contemplated that single fact. Was it a momentary lull in traffic, or had the canal been closed in the face of a terror alert?
A single piece of evidence could never be the basis for a conclusion. Yet something was happening. He could feel it in his bones. Ever since Perisher school he had learned to trust his instincts, and they were telling him loud and clear that someone was coming, sniffing down his trail, and he’d better be ready for them.
He walked back to his sea cabin directly behind the bridge. Leaving the door open, he sat down behind his small desk on which was stacked the crew’s passports. Since no one would be going ashore in Panama, health certificates would not have to be presented.
He got to his feet and smiled faintly as Ramati and two men came up the stairs and crossed to his cabin. One of them was in the dark blue uniform of the Panama Transit Authority, but the other much older and heavier man wore a dark business suit, white shirt, and conservative tie.
Ramati’s eyes were narrowed, his lips compressed, as if he was trying to warn Graham about something.
“Dobroyeh ootroh,” Graham said, extending his hand to the uniformed officer. Good morning.
“Good morning, Captain, I’m Pedro Ercilla, your canal boarding official,” he said, shaking hands. “And of course you must know Señor Almagro.”
Ramati’s eyebrows rose. He’d stepped aside and his right hand went into his jacket pocket.
“No, I’m afraid that I do not,” Graham said, shaking the man’s hand. “Should I?”
Almagro s
miled pleasantly. “Actually not,” he said. “I’m the GAC agent for our ships transiting the canal.” He turned to the CBO. “This is Captain Slavin’s first voyage with the company. But I’m sure that his name will be quite familiar to us very soon. Isn’t that so, Captain?”
“I’m sure of it,” Graham said. “May I assume that our transit paperwork is in order?”
“Yes, Captain,” the CBO replied.
“I have the crew’s passports—”
“Were there any crew replacements at Maracaibo?” Ercilla asked.
“Other than myself, no,” Graham said.
“Then I need only see your passport,” the CBO said.
“Of course,” Graham said. He got his passport from the top of the stack and handed it to the transit official. This would be the first real test of his disguise.
Ercilla glanced briefly at the photo, but then took out a small notebook and jotted down Graham’s name, place and date of birth, and the passport number. He handed the passport back. “Thank you,” he said.
“I came out because I wanted to meet you,” Almagro said. “But also to bring you good news. Instead of the usual forty-eight hours’ waiting time, you’ll actually be able to begin your transit at midnight. In less than eighteen hours.”
“That is good news,” Graham said. They could not retrieve the explosive charges, put them in place, and prepare the product tanks when it was light outside. The shortened waiting time would make a difficult job nearly impossible. But they would make do.
“You may expect your pilot at eleven,” Ercilla said. “Please have your ship and crew ready, we have a busy transit schedule this evening.”
“Of course,” Graham nodded pleasantly. But then he hardened his expression. “Now tell me why you brought two American FBI agents and their animals aboard this ship without my permission.” He turned to Almagro. “I do not like dogs. I have an allergy.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but you should have been informed before you left port,” the company agent apologized. “It’s new policy.”
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