After landing in Jacksonville, he paid cash for a one-day car rental, then found a motor court off Highway 17, where he parked in the back and registered under a fake name. He quickly scanned the cable news, but there still wasn’t a word about Pam, and he began to wonder if maybe Bo had been misinformed. It wouldn’t be the first time a hot rumor had proven false at Gitmo.
A fast-food dinner of burritos and soda left him feeling bloated, so he slouched on the bed watching baseball until he fell asleep with the TV on, awakening with a start when a late-night show blared on at 1 a.m.
He slept in the next morning, relieved not to be facing any meetings or deadlines. Endler’s people were probably frantic by now. Or had they expected this of him? A harmless disappearing act before he turned up back at Gitmo. The sensation of having slipped through the cracks was familiar, like comfortable old clothes, and throughout the day he found himself thinking of Maine, and of his father. Had he, too, had frantic moments of worry once Falk had disappeared? Only when he was sober enough. Maybe he had accepted his son’s vanishing act as inevitable.
In late afternoon he placed a call on a pay phone to a buddy at the Bureau, Cal Perkins, an expert in money laundering. At the sound of the beep, he began his message, only to have Cal pick up.
“You’re working on a Sunday?”
“Speak for yourself, Falk. This must be urgent.”
“Not really. Just wanted to pick your brain on something. The names of a couple of banks. As long as you’re not too busy.”
“You know how Sundays are. The place is like a morgue. Just catching up on some paperwork. What are the names?”
“The first is Peruvian, Conquistador Nacional. The second—surprise, surprise—is in the Caymans, First Bank of Georgetown. Ring any bells?”
Cal chuckled.
“I’ll say. Both of them were big DEA targets a while back. Conduits for the Peruvian cartels, and if I remember correctly they were able to place an undercover agent inside Conquistador. Accumulated enough dirt to convince the bank’s board that they would be thrilled to cooperate.”
“When was this?”
“Five, six years ago. I’d have to check. Why the interest? Their names come up in one of your interrogations?”
“Should they have?”
“Well, drug money wasn’t their only sideline. They also handled accounts funneling U.S. donations to some of the less savory Middle Eastern charities. Conquistador had some of the first overseas assets frozen in the wake of 9/11, mostly because of what this insider had picked up.”
“Did DEA share much of what they got?”
“So they told us. The Agency probably got more, but you know how that goes. In any event, we got enough to keep a couple grand juries busy. The one in Chicago’s still at it, last I heard.”
“Who was the insider?”
“Good question. A well-kept secret at the time, but the name is bound to be floating around by now. Want me to see what I can find out?”
“That would be great.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Professional curiosity.”
Perkins chuckled. Most people he knew at the Bureau were used to the way Falk liked to operate, even if some didn’t care for his style. Perkins, fortunately, never minded as long as Falk was willing to return the favor.
“I’ll get back to you. But it’s kind of funny you should call. There’s been some curiosity about you lately. You’re not at Gitmo right now, are you?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“Can’t say.”
“You don’t have to. The number showing is from Florida. Jacksonville?”
“A pay phone by the highway.”
“Ah. A man on the move.”
“Weekend getaway. Believe me, you’d understand if you’d ever spent more than a couple of weeks at Gitmo.”
“So I’ve heard from Whitaker. Says if he doesn’t make it out of there in a month he’ll be an alcoholic.”
“Him and plenty of others. So what have you heard about me?”
“Oh, the usual. Doesn’t play well with others. Not a team player.”
“Seriously?”
“I wouldn’t sweat it. It’s coming from the outside, and around here that’s a badge of honor, given the run-ins we’ve had down there.”
“Yeah, well. If you hear anything more specific, do me a favor and shoot me an e-mail. And send me that insider’s name if you get it. Careful, though. Our data lines are supposed to be secure, but you never know.”
“Gotcha. Typical DOD.”
Falk drove to the Hertz office early the next day to pick up his bag and briefcase. Then he went straight to the naval air station, even though the flight wasn’t until midday, figuring he might as well get the check-in and security searches over with. Besides, if Endler’s people were really still looking for him, they would have reestablished contact at the Hertz office, so there was no point to any further wandering. Even so, he saw no evidence of a tail.
The surprise came at the check-in counter, when he handed over his ticket and was told, “You’re in luck. Some families canceled this morning, so you ought to make it on standby. Otherwise you’d have been waiting until at least Thursday.”
“What do you mean? I was confirmed.”
“Until you canceled. What happened, change your mind again?”
“Canceled when?”
The man tapped a few keys.
“Yesterday, according to what’s on the screen.”
Falk leaned across the counter, craning his neck while the guy swiveled the monitor so he could see.
“See, here’s the cancellation code.”
“But I never called in.”
“Maybe it was your CO.”
“I’m not military.”
“Your boss, then. Could have been a computer glitch, for all I know. Wouldn’t be the first time. Either way, you ought to make it now. We’ve had ten cancellations already and will probably get more after the latest weather report.”
“What’s the forecast?”
The clerk gave him a look as if to ask if he had been living in a cave.
“Tropical Storm Clifford. Nothing major, but it’s headed toward eastern Cuba. Landfall in a day or two.”
“Great.”
“That’s what everybody’s saying. Look on the bright side. It got you on board.”
The flight indeed had plenty of empty seats, but you never would have known a storm was approaching from the weather at Gitmo when they landed. Same blue sky and crystalline green water, with every brown hill still crying out for rain. It was also dead calm, and Falk gasped for air as he descended the blazing metal steps to the tarmac.
Bo was waiting in the shadow of the hangar. Better than a troop of MPs, Falk supposed, but he had been hoping against hope to see Pam. Bo now had a tan, Falk noticed, and wore a flowered shirt that would have gone well with a piña colada.
“Well, if it isn’t Tommy Bahama.”
“Hey, you’re the one who went MIA in South Florida. What were you doing all that time, beachcombing with Paco? I had to put up with whining all day yesterday from that kid Morrow. Said you left them in the dust. I think they finally got the message you didn’t want to see them when the guy from Hertz showed up at the parking deck.”
Falk chuckled, and so did Bo, who didn’t seem to care any more for Morrow than Falk had.
They went around the corner to where the dogs had just finished sniffing the luggage. Falk, his heart climbing toward his throat, leaned toward Bo to whisper, “Anything new on Pam?”
Bo just shook his head, the smile gone, then glanced around.
“We can talk more about that later.”
Everyone chattered about the approach of Clifford as they waited for the ferry. Falk noticed a new sign with the task force logo posted at the dock: “In Partnership for Excellence.” Another morale booster from General Trabert.
It was noisy on board, even against the sound of t
he engines, with people crowding the rail and kids squealing in games of tag across the swaying deck. Everyone seemed almost giddy at the prospect of riding out a storm. The swells coming in from the sea were larger than usual.
“They don’t expect it to reach hurricane status,” Bo said, looking out at the water. “Top winds now are only fifty.”
“You’d never say ‘only fifty’ if you’d ever been out in a gale. Rough stuff.”
“Looks like you always made it back in one piece.”
“Sheer luck. So where can we talk? Another sail?”
“Not enough time. I was thinking we’d drive to Windmill. Finally have that walk on the beach.”
When the ferry reached Fisherman Point, Bo pulled out a set of keys for Falk’s car.
“Commandeered your vehicle in your absence,” he said with a grin. “Hope you don’t mind.”
“Long as I don’t have to fight you for it now.”
“Hey, what’s yours is yours.”
Presumably he’d gotten the extra set of keys from the rental office on the base. Only Bo could have talked his way into a deal like that. He had left the windows rolled up, and it was broiling inside. Falk thought he picked up a whiff of Pam’s perfume, which produced a stab of nostalgia until he began wondering how fresh the sample might be. But this old car had been picking up smells for more than a decade. At times he still detected the greasy whiff of old French fries and spilled beer, so why not perfume from less than five days ago?
“Tell me about Pam,” Falk asked as soon as they were under way. “What happened while I was gone?”
“She hasn’t been charged. That’s the good news. They questioned her for about a day and let her go. Then last night they put her back under house arrest.”
“What the hell’s that all about?”
“You, apparently. Whoever’s behind this wants to keep the two of you from comparing notes. Either that or they’re worried you’ll be angry with her, so they’re doing it for her protection.”
“Angry with her?”
Bo shrugged his shoulders.
“Think about it. Maybe she’s been saying things you wouldn’t want her to. Telling tales. Anything she knows that you wouldn’t want repeated?”
“Nothing that would be anybody’s business here.”
Then he remembered the rumor from breakfast, the one about the ex-Marine. Now that he knew a Cuban had once worked with Adnan, he could begin to fathom how the story might have spread. Office gossip from Havana making its way to a field man in Yemen. Pam had agreed to keep what she heard under wraps, but maybe it had come out under pressure.
“Looks like you thought of something.”
“Nothing concrete. What are you hearing?”
“You’ll have to ask Fowler. They don’t tell me specifics.”
“Is that who questioned her?”
“Him. A few others.”
“And you’ve heard nothing about it?”
“No specifics. But the general implication is that you’d better watch your step. Hardly surprising, given what’s been going on around here.”
“More arrests?”
Falk was trying to keep his tone light, but his stomach felt like lead. Would Pam do that to him? Would he have done it to her, if the roles were reversed? Who knew what you might say when they had enough leverage, plus all the time in the world? And down here they would have both, the same way it worked with the detainees.
“Are you listening or what?” Bo must have been going on for a few seconds now.
“Sorry. What were you saying?”
“I said the word is that more arrests are coming by the end of the week. No names, but as many as a dozen people are under suspicion.”
“A dozen? Where the hell is this coming from?”
“Where isn’t it? It’s all anybody’s talking about. That and goddamned Clifford. Everybody has a favorite theory, and everybody’s got a scapegoat. You should have stayed at JAX, buddy.”
“Somebody wanted me to.” He told Bo about the canceled reservation.
“Fowler or Trabert would be my guess. Guess they didn’t want to be too obvious, or they’d have just nixed you altogether. Trabert can do that, you know.”
“It crossed my mind. So am I one of the dozen?”
“Like I said, no names. But it’s apparently not a good time to know Arabic.”
Another strike against both him and Pam. There was an awkward pause, then Falk posed the question that had been prowling the back of his mind since they got in the car.
“So did you see her while she was out? Pam, I mean.”
“Just once.” Bo kept his eyes on the road.
“And?”
“And what? I got the impression she doesn’t like me. So it’s not like she told me a hell of a lot. Mostly we talked about you.”
“Anything you can share?”
“Look, Falk.” Bo slowed down, turning to speak. “I’ll level with you. She’s up against the wall. Whatever it is she knows about you, she’s either already told them or will before it’s over.”
“And you know this how?”
He accelerated, turning his attention back to the road.
“Because that’s the kind of person she is. A careerist.”
“Like us, you mean. Or like you, anyway.”
“No. Like every other woman in the military who wants to climb the chain of command. The only way they can make the grade is by showing they’re even tougher and more willing to take one for the team than the boys are, even if it means burning their friends. Not fair, but that’s the way it’s set up, and she knows it.”
“So you think she’d give me up for another stripe. Assuming there’s anything to give up, which there isn’t.”
“Forget the stripe. She’s just trying to survive. Get out of here in one piece before Fowler tears her career limb from limb. Between her closeness to Boustani and now to you she’s practically radioactive by current standards. Don’t ask me what it is about you that makes the needle jump—our little arrangement aside, of course—but you’ve apparently earned a prominent spot on Fowler’s latest little flowchart of Gitmo conspiracies. And if Pam can sketch in a few more arrows for him, she’ll do it. So don’t mourn her loss, that’s all I’m saying. You two would have been finished when this gig was over anyway.”
Would they? Maybe Bo was just jealous. Either way, now Falk was pissed off.
“Hey, just because a woman doesn’t fall for you doesn’t mean she’s bad news for every other male.”
Bo grinned sardonically.
“I hope you’re right. But keep it in mind. No need to go to the wall for her if she’s the one who’s placed you there. That’s all I’m saying.”
“In your opinion.”
“Yes. In my humble opinion.”
THEY WERE QUIET for the next quarter mile, then pulled up to the checkpoint leading to Camp Delta. The sentry leaned in the window to see their papers.
Having been away for a few days, Falk discovered that he again had a fresh eye for the sights here. It hadn’t occurred to him until now how much a military operation—even one that only builds a prison—puts its mark on a landscape. He couldn’t help but notice the sandbagged positions dug along the dune line near the beach. The ground had been slashed open for fencing and bunkers. On the camel hump of a mountain in the near distance to the east he saw a Cuban watchtower in plain view. Perhaps someone up there was following their progress at this very moment. Up to the right, on a rocky cactus hillside looming over the barracks of Camp America, military patrols had painted their unit numbers and other graffiti, their dubious reward for having completed a climb to the top, often out of boredom.
Finally they arrived at the beach and parked on the shoulder. No one was on the strand or in the picnic area, but Bo didn’t get to the heart of the matter until they were down by the ocean, where every word would be swallowed up by the sound of the pounding surf.
“So I’m assuming you didn’t spend
the entire two days with Paco.”
“We had about an hour together, tops.”
“Where’d you finally meet up? Endler’s people lost you at the People Mover.”
“Thought so. They took me to Miami Beach. Some marina at the south end. He was waiting on a borrowed boat with a fake registration number.”
“Sounds like he thought of everything.”
“I was impressed. We took a little cruise across the bay. Dropped me about four blocks from the car.”
“Which you then left behind, you sneak. So what did he want?”
“He gave me an assignment. One he didn’t believe in, mostly because he was convinced I was blown. I didn’t bother to tell him he was right. But he passed it along anyway. It’s funny, I got the idea he wanted our side to know. Either way it was a damned weird request.”
“Which was?”
“To take out Adnan al-Hamdi. My Adnan. The one who is now in Camp Echo. The Cubans want him either silenced or shipped home. Anything to keep more Americans from getting a crack at him.”
Falk figured he should also tell Bo about Adnan’s “great gift” of the name “Hussay,” or, as he now understood it, José. But he bit his tongue without being certain of why. This was a dangerous place for loose information, even among friends, as Pam’s arrest had already showed him. He would hold on to what he could until he learned more.
“That’s pretty amazing,” Bo said. “They sound desperate.”
“That’s what I said, and he agreed. And it gets better. He told me some off-the-books theory of his about a Cuban op in the Middle East who’s gone AWOL.”
Bo raised his eyebrows.
“He laid it out for you like that?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re right. They do want us to know, as long as it’s the right people.”
“And who would the ‘right people’ be?”
“Endler and me, of course.” Bo grinned.
“How does any of this tie in with all the arrests?”
“I’m not convinced it does. Maybe they’re just a smoke screen.”
“Pretty damned destructive for a smoke screen.”
“All the more reason I need you to go back inside the wire and get those interrogation schedules for me. When this team departs, I’ll have to go with them, and I’m running out of time.”
The Prisoner of Guantanamo Page 24
