Black Horizon

by James Grippando

  The young reporter on the scene was wearing a white hazmat suit and protective gloves, but somehow her hair and makeup still looked perfect. Jack turned up the volume for her report on “Keys outrage” over Washington’s inability to convince the Cuban government to allow U.S. vessels to enter Cuban waters so that American cleanup crews and technology could get to the spill at its source. “Until that happens,” she reported, “the United States has no way of knowing how much oil is actually gushing from the mile-deep well, no way of knowing if the proper emergency response is in place, no way of knowing how much longer the spigot will remain open . . .”

  Theo pushed himself up from the couch and headed to the door.

  “Where you going?” asked Jack.

  “Work,” said Theo. “I’m sure Rick can use an extra bartender at the café. Gonna be a lot of down and depressed citizens of the Conch Republic drowning their sorrows tonight. And with this much shit hitting the middle Keys, it’s obvious we ain’t leaving Key West anytime soon. I can use a little extra dough.”

  “Okay. Catch ya later.” Jack watched a little more news, channel surfing. His phone rang, and he checked the incoming number.

  Speaking of disasters, he thought, but he took the call.

  “Agent Linton, what can I do for you?”

  “We’re running out of time, Jack.”

  It sounded as if Linton was shouting via Bluetooth from the driver’s seat of his car. Jack would probably need to talk louder than normal to be heard, so he stepped outside to the front porch, where his voice wouldn’t carry all the way up to the rooftop widow’s walk of the old B&B.

  “Time for what?” asked Jack.

  “To rethink the direction of your lawsuit. I promised to give you until the end of the day to back off the sabotage angle. Guess what? It’s the end of the day. I wanted to take one last shot before I tell the U.S. Attorney that there’s no choice but for the government to intervene and ask the judge to put your case on hold.”

  “Intervene on what grounds?”

  “National security.”

  Jack walked to the porch bannister, looking out onto the street. “Oh, well, national security. Why didn’t you say that in the first place? I’m glad you brought it up, because that changes . . . not a damn thing.”

  “I had a feeling that would be your response.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “One more thing, Jack. We haven’t forgotten about that trip you and Theo Knight took to Cuba last week. Totally illegal. I understand that you’re of Cuban descent, but visiting relatives was not the purpose of your trip. And Theo Knight is just a blatant violation of the trade embargo. I didn’t bring this up before. That was out of professional courtesy to your wife, since she’s an FBI agent and all.”

  “Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

  “Thanking me would be premature. You see, Andie told me this morning that she wants you treated fairly as a victim of a kidnapping. But the way I deal with Jack Swyteck, attorney at law, is strictly up to me. So I’m taking her at her word. No more favors because you’re married to the FBI. You got it?”

  “Are you actually threatening to prosecute me for violating the embargo?”

  “We can start with prosecution. From there I was thinking that we might move on to suspension from the practice of law. Maybe disbarment.”

  “This is outrageous.”

  “Make no mistake, Jack. The investigation into sabotage on the Scarborough 8 is a matter of national security on the highest level. It’s absolutely critical that the criminal investigation proceed without interference and public distraction from your civil lawsuit. So here’s the deal: you can either find your way onto the bus, or you can be under it. Your choice. I’ll give you until tomorrow at noon. Have a good night.”

  The call ended with a click, which triggered a replay of Linton’s buzzwords, if only in Jack’s mind: national security.

  Jack was so angry he could barely think. He went back inside to watch the news, gathering images from every south Florida station. It was all about the local disaster. A few angry residents called it a national disgrace. Not a word about national security.

  Until he switched to cable news.

  Printed in bold letters in the banner at the bottom of the screen were the very same words that Agent Linton had just uttered in his threat, and they were even in quotation marks: “A MATTER OF NATIONAL SECURITY ON THE HIGHEST LEVEL.”

  Jack’s phone rang. It was Theo. He ignored the call and focused on the news coverage.

  “Shocking rhetoric out of Washington about the Cuban oil disaster,” the anchorman reported. “Minutes ago, thirteen congressional leaders gathered in the rotunda on Capitol Hill to condemn what they call an egregious breach of our national security.”

  Jack’s phone rang a second time. Theo again. Give it a rest, dude.

  “Speaking for the group,” the anchorman continued, “was senior senator from Utah Robert Orville. Here’s what he had to say.”

  The scene shifted to inside the Capitol, where a man stood before a bouquet of microphones, flanked by other men in suits. The clip picked up somewhere in the midst of his impassioned plea:

  “We are calling for a special investigative committee to convene immediately,” said the senator, “and to invoke all of its powers to get to the bottom of what caused this unspeakable disaster. Security on U.S. oil rigs is tighter than ever since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, making them difficult targets for terrorists. The same cannot be said of the Chinese oil rig in Cuban waters.”

  A reporter in the galley interrupted. “Senator, are you saying that the Scarborough 8 explosion was the work of terrorists, such as al-Qaeda?”

  “Nothing has been brought to my attention that would link this act to any specific terrorist group,” he said. “But it’s essential that this inquiry consider all possibilities. And I do mean all. For example, we do know that certain left-wing elements fully expected that offshore drilling would stop after the Deepwater Horizon. It has continued to grow, both in sensitive areas off the Florida coast and in the Arctic Sea above Alaska.”

  “Excuse me, Senator,” the reporter followed up. “Are you suggesting that the Cuban consortium’s oil rig was the target of antidrilling left-wing extremists who are trying to create negative sentiment against offshore oil production?”

  He raised his hands, as if to absolve himself. “I’m not making any accusations. Like I said, it’s important to consider all possible angles. Thank you very much,” he said as he stepped away from the podium.

  Jack could hardly believe what he was hearing. Two decades wasn’t really that long, but things that passed for reasoned political discussion in modern-day Washington would have been dismissed as lunacy when Jack’s father had run for governor. Linton’s words echoed in his mind:

  This is not about politics. It’s about national security.

  Jack accessed the Web on his iPhone and instantly put those words to the test. His suspicion was quickly borne out. A search of “Senator Robert Orville” and “Barton-Hammill” pulled up over five hundred hits. A political action committee funded by defense contractor Barton-Hammill was Senator Orville’s largest political donor.

  Surprise, surprise.

  Jack thought about calling his father for some political insights, but he resisted the impulse. Jack had made a promise to himself and to his stepmother after the trip to the emergency room, and he’d assiduously avoided putting any more stress on his old man. He made a quick call to Cassie in New York. She’d seen the same news from the Capitol, and she’d already made the same link between the senator and the defense contractor.

  “Remember what I told you,” said Cassie. “It has to be shown that it was an act of terrorism if Barton-Hammill is going to be protected from civil lawsuits.”

  “Senator Orville seems to be pushing toward environmental terrorism. Is that an ‘act of terrorism’ under the SAFETY Act?”

  “Absolutely. Terrorism is not limit
ed to religious radicals, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “So if Barton-Hammill’s technology was compromised by environmental terrorists, they would be shielded from liability to the same extent as they would if the terrorists were al-Qaeda or the Taliban, or whoever.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “So environmental terrorism is a twofer,” said Jack. “The senator discredits ‘left-wing radicals’ who oppose offshore drilling, and he protects Barton-Hammill, his biggest campaign donor, from any lawsuits.”

  “Only if we let him get away with it.”

  Theo rushed into the room, huffing and puffing. It looked as though he’d run all the way back from Rick’s Café, and the expression on his face said: “Urgent!”

  “Dude, why don’t you answer your phone?”

  Jack put Cassie on hold. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was important.”

  “I just got a call,” he said, catching his breath. “We definitely need to go back to Cuba.”

  “Theo, I told you—”

  “No, listen to me!” he said, his expression deadly serious. “The call. It was Josefina.”

  Chapter 42

  New York. The Big Apple could not have been more different from Big Palm Island, but Andie would have taken it as a solid second choice for her honeymoon. If Jack were there.

  “Canal Street, please,” she told the taxi driver.

  The rocky phone conversation with Jack had left a sickening feeling inside her, and it had nothing to do with the pregnancy—or maybe it had everything to do with it. These clashes were inevitable. An undercover FBI agent married to the son of a former governor—a lawyer who’d defended the worst of the worst on death row, didn’t trust the government, and couldn’t seem to keep his cases out of the media. Some might thrive on the conflict and say, “It must be karma,” but Andie didn’t. Jack didn’t either. She saw no solution. Maybe Jack was banking on the erroneous assumption on his part that Andie would pop out a baby, chuck her career, and become a stay-at-home mom. Sort of the special appendix that appeared only in the man’s version of What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

  Not gonna happen.

  “Where on Canal Street, lady?”

  “Anywhere between Mercer and Broadway is fine.”

  The driver smiled in the rearview mirror. “Gonna buy a new handbag, I bet. Gucci? Louis Vuitton?”

  “Maybe,” said Andie.

  The driver seemed determined to strike up a conversation. “Just this morning I picked up a woman from California who got herself a Chanel bag for twenty bucks. So she bought another one for her sister. Finally she buys two more for her mother and her girlfriend, and the guy throws in a Hermès scarf for nothing. Incredible deal.”

  “Yes, it is,” said Andie. Unless you’re Chanel, Hermès, or Louis Vuitton.

  Andie had seen the statistics as part of her undercover training. Counterfeit goods accounted for 7 percent of total world trade. Canal Street was like a New York outlet for the uncontested leader in knockoffs, China, which racked up $24 billion in sales annually. In a good year, Andie’s counterparts over in Customs seized maybe $250 million in counterfeit goods. Originally, Andie had been led to believe that the goal of the operation was to slow down the counterfeiting pipeline. As it turned out, Operation Black Horizon had only one very specific connection to fake merchandise.

  His name was Dawut Noori.

  “Here you are, lady,” the driver said as they pulled up to the curb. “Eleven-fifty.”

  Andie dug the cash from her purse—a fake Prada, which was part of an ensemble that included Moss Lipow sunglasses and a classic Salvatore Ferragamo trench with three-quarter sleeves, all knockoffs. Tethering her to reality, a bottle of prenatal vitamins was right beside her wallet. The mere thought of folic acid used to worsen her morning sickness. Day three with no nausea, and she was counting her blessings.

  She thanked the cabbie and got out on Canal Street. Literally, on the street; the sidewalk was too congested. Vendor after vendor displayed counterfeit merchandise on blankets, and hovering tourists were all too eager to buy it.

  “Handbags,” a man said coolly.

  “Rolex, Cartier,” said another.

  “Heat!” someone shouted. In an instant, the handbags and watches were swallowed up by the blankets. A couple of beat cops from the Fifth Precinct passed, and the peddlers stood by their bundles of concealed merchandise, no sweat. It was just another round of cat and mouse in the NYPD Canal Street initiative, the mice fully aware that no one got busted for mere possession of such small quantities, and that 85 percent of vendors stupid enough to be caught in the act of selling got off on a misdemeanor anyway.

  Andie kept walking. Sidewalk hustlers were small players, and she was after bigger fish. On the other side of Broadway, where the lines blurred between Chinatown and Little Italy, she found an electronics store called N.Y.C. Gadets. Legend had it that it was supposed to be “N.Y.C. Gadgets,” but the sign maker had misspelled it, and the name stuck.

  To call the storefront window a “display” would have done violence to the term. It was little more than a repository for overflowing inventory, cameras stacked on top of computers on top of cell phones. The clutter continued inside the store, which was packed with electronics, every brand and product imaginable. Shelves were crammed, and narrow aisles were made even narrower by countless boxes of flat-screen televisions lined up on the floor, one after the other. Six months hence, it would have been impossible for a much more pregnant Andie to turn sideways anywhere in the store.

  The man behind the counter was on the telephone, yelling so loudly that Andie wondered if he actually needed a phone. He spoke entirely in Chinese, except for the occasional English language reference to “N.Y.C. Gadets,” which made the nonsensical name even more absurd. Andie browsed in the camera section until his call ended. She approached and handed him a business card that bore her undercover name.

  “I have a six o’clock appointment with Long Wu,” she said.

  “I get him,” he said in a heavy Chinese accent. “One minute. Maybe two. Call it one and one half.” Wuh ahn wuh hoff. He laughed at his own joke and walked away, taking Andie’s card with him.

  Andie waited at the counter. A minute later, two young women emerged from the back room with their newly acquired knockoffs wrapped in green plastic garbage bags. They at least had to get out of the store before bragging to the world about trademark infringement. The funny man who liked fractions signaled to her from the rear of the store.

  “Come, come,” he said.

  Andie went, stepping carefully around the clutter of merchandise on the floor, the aisle getting ever narrower toward the back. The man pulled away the curtain and directed her inside. It was the same passageway that the previous buyers had used, but ingress and egress were no longer just a matter of passing through a curtain. Andie wasn’t posing as the occasional buyer. She was pretending to purchase in bulk—a mass shipment direct from Guangdong. Precautions were necessary for such transactions. The funny man pulled a secure metal door shut, and Andie heard it lock from the outside.

  It was enough to make even a seasoned undercover agent a teeny bit nervous.

  The backroom was like a warehouse. The ceiling had been removed, along with the floor above it, so that what had once been a cramped storage area with a separate apartment above was now a single two-story room. Electronics and appliances were nowhere to be found, which explained the overflow of legitimate merchandise—“gadets”—in the storefront window. Floor-to-ceiling pallets were laden with every conceivable form of fake designer clothing, accessories, and other merchandise. It almost made Andie wish that her assignment had something to do with knockoffs.

  Stay focused.

  A side door opened. An old man entered and locked the door behind him. A younger and much bigger man—more brawn than Theo—was at his side. A trained bodyguard was part of a dealer’s “necessary precautions” in bulk transactions.

  Th
e old man and his bodyguard walked slowly toward Andie, their footfalls barely making a sound on the concrete floor, then stopped. The old man bowed. The bodyguard didn’t acknowledge her in any way. Andie, nonetheless, returned the old man’s greeting.

  “My apologies for Dawut Noori,” the dealer said.

  Dawut Noori. The bodyguard’s face, more Central Asian than Chinese, had matched that in the photograph in the FBI dossier. Now Andie had a name to go with it. She was standing three feet away from the man who was the central target of Operation Black Horizon.

  “Does he speak English?” asked Andie, even though the intelligence report had already told her that he did.

  “Yes, yes. But don’t take rudeness personal. He very, very angry young man.”

  “It’s okay,” said Andie.

  “He no bow, he no smile, he no talk to nobody.”

  “It’s really okay,” said Andie, casting a quick glance in Noori’s direction.

  He’ll talk. The angry young man will definitely talk to me.

  Chapter 43

  Jack called Agent Linton and told him that Theo had spoken to Josefina.

  “I want to take Mr. Knight’s statement,” said Linton.

  “I’ll meet you at the satellite office at seven o’clock,” said Jack. “And bring an assistant U.S. attorney with you—someone who has the wisdom to appreciate the level of cooperation Theo and I have demonstrated and the authority to drop all charges for the alleged violation of the trade embargo. See ya.”

  Jack hung up before Linton could cry foul. Jack didn’t enjoy playing games, but it was the FBI that had made their relationship all about self-interest and negotiation.

  “Let’s go,” he told Theo.

  The Key West satellite for the FBI’s Miami Division was on Simonton Street, just a short walk from Jack’s B&B. Jack and Theo arrived a few minutes early. Linton did not keep them waiting. He escorted them back to a conference room. Jack immediately recognized the government lawyer waiting at the table. Sylvia Gonzalez was not an AUSA. She was from the Justice Department’s National Security Division in Washington. Some years earlier, Jack had gone head-to-head with her while representing one of the detainees at Guantánamo Naval Base. There was history between them. Ugly history.