Black Horizon (Jack Swyteck Novel)

by Grippando, James

  “So we meet again,” said Jack.

  “I promised that we would,” said Gonzalez.

  Jack’s Gitmo case was both unusual and tragic. His client, a nineteen-year-old American of Somali descent, stood accused of murdering a teenage girl in Miami. His defense was his alibi: Jack’s client couldn’t possibly have killed the girl because, at the time of the murder, he was en route to Guantánamo, held by the CIA at an undisclosed “black site,” and the subject of “heightened interrogation” for suspected terrorist activities. There was just one problem: the U.S. government refused to acknowledge the very existence of the alleged “black site.” It had been Gonzalez’s job to make sure the CIA kept its secrets, even if it meant depriving Jack’s client of an alibi in a capital case.

  Round One with Gonzalez had been Jack’s introduction to courtroom warfare over matters of “national security.”

  “What brings you to Key West?” asked Jack.

  “I just got here,” she said. “I’m presenting the Justice Department’s argument to stay your lawsuit until the conclusion of the FBI investigation into sabotage on the Scarborough 8.”

  “That’s the national-security issue I explained to you,” said Linton.

  “Which is a reach,” said Jack, “especially in front of a state court judge in Key West, Florida.”

  “That’s for Judge Carlyle to decide,” said Gonzalez.

  “When?” asked Jack.

  “As soon as we can schedule a hearing. You’ll be the first to know. For now, let’s talk about Josefina Fuentes. What is Mr. Knight proffering?”

  “The number she called from and everything she told him, which may help you identify the man who attacked my client, put Josefina’s blood on the mirror, kidnapped me, and claims to know who sabotaged the Scarborough 8.”

  “You should be eager to share that information with law enforcement.”

  “Unfortunately, Theo can’t share any of it without at least a tacit admission that he traveled to Cuba in violation of the embargo. So we need immunity.”

  “I’ll give it to him,” said Gonzalez. “But not you.”

  Theo jumped in. “Then no deal.”

  “We’ll take it,” said Jack.

  “No way, Jack.”

  Jack ignored him and went to his iPhone. “Sylvia, I’m e-mailing you a draft immunity letter right now. It’s pretty standard. Take a minute, review it, and send a reply e-mail confirming our deal. Theo and I will be right back.”

  Jack pulled Theo away from the table and took him into the hallway. Theo spoke before Jack could say a word.

  “They want to prosecute both of us,” said Theo. “I’m not doing a deal that doesn’t include you.”

  “Don’t worry about me. You’re a slam-dunk conviction under the embargo, since you’re not of Cuban descent. I am. To convict me of a crime they have to prove I didn’t visit relatives. What are they going to do? Track down the whole Cuban side of my family and interview them? They have no case against me. Take the deal and tell them what Josefina said.”

  Theo considered it, then acquiesced. “All right, if you say so.”

  “I say so.”

  Jack’s phone chimed with an e-mail alert. Gonzalez confirmed their immunity deal for Theo. Jack and Theo went back into the room and returned to the table. Gonzalez began the questioning with some preliminaries. Theo gave her all the details, including the incoming number. Linton made a quick call to the tech division to get them on it while Gonzalez continued the interview.

  “Mr. Knight, how do you know it was actually Josefina who called?”

  “I was pretty sure from the sound of her voice, but I still asked, ‘How do I know it’s you?’ She said, ‘ ’Cuz it is me. Burnt Sugar.’ ”

  “Burnt Sugar?”

  “When I was in Cuba I told her that her boxing name should be ‘Burnt Sugar.’ ”

  “I like it,” said Jack.

  Gonzalez continued. “You’re saying that only Josefina would remember that conversation?”

  “Yeah,” said Theo. “It was just the two of us. We went out to buy beer.”

  Gonzalez nodded, seemingly satisfied. “Tell me all you remember about the call.”

  “I knew about the blood on Bianca’s mirror, so the first thing I asked was if she was okay. She said she was fine.”

  “Was she attacked?”

  “She said she couldn’t answer any questions. She was calling to give me a message.”

  “What’s the message?”

  Jack intervened. “Think carefully, Theo. Be as precise as you can.”

  Theo worked through it in his head, then answered. “She said to tell Jack that the exchange will go through her.”

  Gonzalez looked puzzled. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what I asked,” said Theo. “She had no idea.”

  “What else did she say?”

  Theo shrugged. “Nothing. She hung up.”

  Gonzalez shot an angry look at Jack. “I gave Mr. Knight immunity for that? How does any of this advance the FBI’s sabotage investigation?”

  “It’s the missing piece,” said Jack. “We have a guy who claims to know who sabotaged the Scarborough 8, and he wants to be paid for his information. But he never specified how the money is going to be delivered, or how he is going to tell us what he knows. Now you know: he’s using Josefina.”

  “Are you saying she’s working with him?”

  “No,” said Jack. “He’s using her. The exchange of money for information is being done through someone he controls.”

  “How do you know he controls her?”

  “I don’t mean to tell the FBI how to do its job, but the blood on Bianca’s mirror is probably Exhibit A.”

  The prosecutor and FBI agent huddled on their side of the table, exchanging whispers in private. They seemed to be in agreement on their plan of action.

  “Mr. Knight, you’re free to go,” said Gonzalez. “Mr. Swyteck, it is the government’s position that this phone call from Josefina Fuentes underscores the need to put your lawsuit on hold until the FBI completes its criminal investigation into sabotage on the Scarborough 8. Will you agree to that?”

  “If you can demonstrate in court that a genuine national security issue is involved, I’ll accept the judge’s decision to stay Bianca’s case. But I won’t agree to anything just because you invoke the words national security.”

  Gonzalez tucked her notes into her briefcase. “Then we’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

  Jack rose and shook her hand. “Yes, you will.”

  Chapter 44

  Andie got a hotel room for the night in lower Manhattan. She had authorization to stay in New York another two days. And thanks to her trip to Canal Street, she had enough designer handbags, even if they were fakes, to be named an honorary Kardashian.

  A deal with Long Wu for a container shipment of counterfeit goods was a long way from consummated. The next step in the charade was for Andie to send samples of “N.Y.C. Gadets” merchandise back to her people to assess the quality of the knockoffs. But that was all a sideshow to the real goals of Operation Black Horizon. It mattered only that she had made contact with Long Wu’s bodyguard, and that another meeting was scheduled for Friday.

  Phase I of her assignment—find Dawut Noori—was officially completed. The dossier had identified his last known contacts in eastern Virginia and the D.C. area. The FBI knew he was involved in counterfeits, and that the road would eventually lead to New York, but Andie’s work in Virginia had streamlined the search to Long Wu on Canal Street.

  At nine p.m., Andie checked in with her handler for Phase II of the assignment.

  “Nice work,” Agent Wolfe told her.

  Wolfe wasn’t even his real name. Unlike her handler in Virginia for Phase I, Andie had never met her Phase II handler in New York. It was that kind of operation.

  “Intelligence was spot-on about Noori,” said Andie. “Even Long Wu says he’s an angry young man.”

  “
With good reason,” said Wolfe.

  “Is that a tease?” asked Andie. “Or have I earned need-to-know status?”

  “You’ve earned it,” said Wolfe.

  Andie was gathering intelligence piecemeal. She knew from Phase I that Noori was a Uighur, part of the Muslim population in a western region of China known as Xinjiang. Most of his family was from Kashgar, a historic village along the centuries-old Silk Road.

  “Noori spent seven years as a detainee in Guantánamo. One of seventeen Uighurs rounded up in Afghanistan in 2002.”

  “I’m embarrassed,” said Andie. “Not a single person I talked to mentioned that.”

  “Nothing for you to be embarrassed about. It was the CIA who lost track of him. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to mention his time at Gitmo. No one knows.”

  “Psychologically scarred? He just doesn’t talk about it?”

  “It’s more practical than that. The Uighurs were among the first detainees that the federal courts ordered us to release. They couldn’t be sent back to China, because of the way the Chinese government has cracked down on the Uighurs. No town in America was waiting with open arms to welcome former enemy combatants, and we had a devil of a time finding a place for them to relocate. When we did manage to place them, it was in their own self-interest not to mention the fact that they were Guantánamo detainees. Some of them have adjusted quite well. Others . . .”

  “Are very angry young men,” said Andie, “like Noori.”

  “Angry is an understatement.”

  “What’s next?”

  “Pressure on the subject. Beijing has informed the White House that they believe the Scarborough 8 explosion is the work of Uighur terrorists. Noori is chief among them. It’s payback for seven years of detention and interrogation. ”

  The news didn’t surprise Andie. Even though she was being fed information on a “need to know” basis, her “need to find out” personality had deduced as much.

  “Something strikes me as odd about that,” said Andie. “Probably a hundred terrorist organizations have tried to bolster their status by claiming to be the brains and the muscle behind the Scarborough 8 disaster.”

  “All of them bogus, of course.”

  “Which makes my point,” said Andie. “The Uighur militants are not among those taking credit. Why would any terrorist organization plan and pull off something of this magnitude and not claim responsibility?”

  “That’s an excellent question.”

  “Is that your way of saying you don’t have an answer?”

  “That’s my way of saying that it’s your job to find out. Welcome to Phase II of Operation Black Horizon, Agent Henning. Call me in twenty-four hours.”

  Andie put her phone away and sat on the bed, which was covered with handbags from Canal Street. She grabbed one and held it close to her stomach.

  “Viola,” she said, making her wish aloud. “Mommy has a very hard job, so don’t you dare embarrass me.”

  She closed her eyes and pressed the handbag even tighter against her. “Promise me that this is the closest you ever get to a knockoff Tory Burch.”

  Chapter 45

  Jack was in court on Friday morning. Cassie was at his side, his new co-counsel.

  The notice of the emergency hearing had come late Thursday evening. Cassie arrived in Key West before midnight, flown in by private jet on her law firm’s dime. At the government’s request, the hearing was in Judge Carlyle’s chambers, closed to the public. Not even Bianca was allowed to attend, and the client representatives from the oil consortium were likewise excluded. It was strictly “attorneys only.” Three different teams of lawyers were seated at a rectangular table that extended forward from the front edge of Judge Carlyle’s oversized antique desk. Jack and Cassie were seated on one of the long sides of the table, to the judge’s left; Luis Candela and his team were on the other, to the judge’s right; and in the middle, directly facing the judge, were Sylvia Gonzalez and another Justice Department lawyer from the National Security Division on behalf of the government. Bianca’s wrongful death lawsuit had taken on a whole new look since the Freddy Foman circus and the sea of lawyers pressing property claims against the oil consortium. Such were the restrictions of “national security.”

  “So here we all are,” said Judge Carlyle, rocking back in her leather chair. “From oil disaster one week, to national security the next. Just another day in the life of a Key West trial judge. I should have listened to my husband. What lawyer in her right mind comes out of retirement to do this?”

  Gonzalez spoke first. “Your Honor, the Justice Department would not have proceeded on an emergency basis if it were not truly a matter of national security.”

  “If it is a matter of national security, why aren’t you in federal court in Washington, D.C.?”

  “This is not technically a national security motion under the Patriot Act. We are seeking relief under this court’s inherent authority to control its own docket.”

  “Your Honor, if I could translate,” said Jack. “The government can’t meet the requirements under federal law. Instead, the plan is to shout ‘national security’ loud enough and often enough to bamboozle a state court judge into making a mistake, knowing that the judge’s chambers are so close to the disaster that she can practically smell the oil.”

  The judge almost smiled. “I’m not sure I agree with everything Mr. Swyteck just said, but it does seem odd. Anyway, I’ve read the government’s papers and understand fully what you are asking me to do. You want Mr. Swyteck’s case shut down until the completion of a criminal investigation into possible sabotage. What’s less clear to me is the basis for the government’s assertion that this implicates national security interests.”

  “In a nutshell, here’s the situation,” said Gonzalez. “First, we have an anonymous but credible source who claims that the Scarborough 8 was sabotaged, and he also claims to be able to tell us who did it.”

  “How do you know he’s credible?”

  “The computerized security system failed on the rig immediately prior to the explosion. He was able to provide to us in writing the exact sequence of that alarm malfunction.”

  Jack spoke up. “That’s accurate, Your Honor. The sequence was spelled out in a note that he forced me to write.”

  “Which leads to my second point,” said Gonzalez. “Not only is he credible, but he’s dangerous. He kidnapped Mr. Swyteck in Havana and forced him to write the note I just described. He attacked Bianca Lopez. He smeared the blood of Josefina Fuentes on a bathroom mirror.”

  The judge glanced at Jack. “Any disagreement so far, Mr. Swyteck?”

  “That’s accurate as well,” said Jack.

  “Third,” said Gonzalez. “This dangerous man is now in active negotiation with the government as to how he will furnish his information about the sabotage and how he expects to be paid. Through a phone call last night, it was made clear that the point person in this exchange will be Josefina Fuentes. That name should be familiar to the court, since she is the Cuban woman referenced in the love letters from Rafael Lopez.”

  The judge leaned back in her chair, thinking. “All very interesting, Ms. Gonzalez. But not every active criminal investigation presents a national security interest.”

  Gonzalez removed several thin file folders from her briefcase. “Your Honor, I have for the court’s consideration an affidavit from Vernon Daniels, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Daniels is the associate executive assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch in Washington, D.C., where he oversees the Counterterrorism Division.”

  “Associate executive assistant—good grief, when there are that many adjectives in a job description, I know you should be in a Washington courtroom.”

  Bamboozle, thought Jack. Wake up and smell the oil, Judge.

  “Let’s see the affidavit,” said the judge.

  Gonzalez rose, handed the judge a copy, and shared courtesy copies with the other lawyers. Jack opened the file and flipped
through the affidavit quickly. Aside from the introductory paragraphs that set forth the background and qualifications of the witness, the entire substance of the affidavit was blacked out.

  “Judge, my copy is completely redacted,” said Jack.

  “So is mine,” said the consortium lawyer.

  “As is mine,” the judge said. “Ms. Gonzalez, is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, Your Honor. As I said, this is a matter of national security and—”

  “And what?” the judge said. “The court is supposed to take your word for it? Did you think you were just going to walk into my chambers and have me rubber-stamp your assertion of national security based on an affidavit that I can’t even read?”

  “Well, Your Honor, we had hoped that—”

  “Hope what?” the judge said. “That I had a golf game scheduled for nine-thirty and would give you anything you wanted just to get out of here on time? I laughed off Mr. Swyteck’s remark about bamboozling the Key West judge, but I’m beginning to think he’s exactly right. This is ridiculous.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

  “You should be. I need an unredacted version of this affidavit, nothing blacked out.”

  “I will check with the National Security Division, Your Honor. That may be possible.”

  “May be? You’d better make it happen, if the government wants any relief from this court.”

  “Understood,” said Gonzalez. “However, we would request that the full affidavit be for the court’s eyes only.”

  “I object,” said Jack. “How can I respond if I can’t see the affidavit?”

  “Mr. Swyteck has a point,” the judge said.

  “But that’s just not acceptable,” she said, which was exactly the wrong thing to say.