by Jeff Buick
“How is he?” Eugene asked.
“He’s okay, Eugene, but he misses Colombia more than you could ever imagine. And he’s changed a lot, both physically and mentally. You wouldn’t recognize him if you walked past him on the street. He exercises every day, eats smart and doesn’t touch drugs. I think he drinks a bit, but not to excess. He’s lost a lot of the arrogance and ego. He’s even a little bit likeable.”
“But he still kills people,” Eugene said, thinking of Jorge Shweisser, the Zurich banker with no carotid artery.
“He’s a survivor, Eugene. And if and when you do find him, don’t expect him to welcome you with open arms.” Mario stood to indicate the meeting was over.
“Hardly,” Eugene said, also standing. “Thanks, Mario. I appreciate the help.”
“Not a problem. Just remember, no DEA on my doorstep.”
“Got it,” Eugene said. He watched Mario walk back along the same path by the river, and disappear around a corner. Eugene was now alone in Rochester with precious little information, and little time to make something out of it. One thing was certain, though. He was close to Pablo now.
Very close.
Chapter Thirty-nine
NSA was having a devil of a time with the encrypted files on Jorge Schweisser’s computer. The problem was that they couldn’t identify the language the data was written in. It wasn’t English, German, Swiss or any of the other modern languages that used the Roman alphabet. They tried the Cyrillic alphabet, but again nothing. Then Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese with no success.
Irwin Crandle set the fax from his contact at the National Security Agency on his desk and rubbed his eyes. He glanced at his watch. Eleven o’clock, Wednesday morning. Maxwell and Landry would be arriving in Pittsburgh right about now. The team was disintegrating: Eugene on the run, two agents in Pennsylvania and three of them still at EPIC. And time was running out. Saturday was less than seventy-two hours away, and they weren’t exactly knocking on Pablo’s door. He stopped rubbing his already-red eyes and swiveled around in his chair to face Bud Reid.
“What was in Shweisser’s apartment?” He was on a fishing expedition. “His selection of music, furniture, books, that sort of stuff.”
Reid leaned back in his chair, coffee in one hand, the other scratching his bald dome. “His furniture was leather, the kind with studs in the arms, and the tables were heavy wood with glass tops. He had mostly classical music. Bach, some Beethoven and an extensive collection of Chopin: mazurkas, sonatas and both concertos, if I remember correctly. Lots of books on art, especially the Impressionists. He had a few really good framed prints on the walls: Pissarro, Monet, Degas and Caillebotte. One entire row on his bookshelf was computer programming texts, a few hard covers on anatomy and some pulp fiction paperbacks. He had a lot of DVDs, all English…”
“Whoa,” Crandle said, stopping him in mid-sentence. “The books on anatomy. Were they written for the medical professional?”
Reid thought for a moment. “The one I glanced in was highly technical, if that’s what you mean. Written by doctors, for doctors.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Crandle said, grabbing the phone and dialing Hyram Ockey’s direct line at NSA. It rang twice, and the computer expert picked up. “Hyram, this is Crandle. That disk you’re working on, try Latin.”
His other incoming line started blinking. He cut the connection to NSA after he secured a promise from Hyram to run the programs with a Latin-based language and call the results back to EPIC immediately. He answered the other line. “Hi, Chris, what have you got?”
Chris Bisiker, the CIA agent Cathy Maxwell had brought in to check the Freeport connection, was on the line, long distance from the Bahamas. “Irwin, what’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” Crandle asked.
“Whoever owns this account has the branch manager in fear of his life. At first the guy refused to say a word, just told me to get out of his office.”
“But you persuaded him?”
“Subtly, yes. There’s a restaurant on the tip of the island where they throw food over the balcony to the sharks. I took him to lunch, and we sat at a table next to the railing.”
“The view must have been spectacular,” Crandle said, a smile creeping across his face as he envisioned Chris Bisiker casually telling the banker that he was going over the edge if he didn’t cough up some information.
“Wonderful. Anyway, about halfway through our main course the guy decides to tell me what’s going on. It seems that the money in the account has ties to Colombia.”
“Why do you say that?” Crandle asked, gripping the phone hard.
“This manager has been at the Freeport branch for years. When the account was first opened, he had a visit from none other than Carlos Lehder.”
“What?” Crandle said, sitting upright in his chair. “Lehder himself was in the bank?”
“Yeah. Lehder opened a different account, but he made it perfectly clear that if any questions were raised about either of the two new accounts the manager’s family would disappear. The manager cooked the books, then sent the doctored ledgers to the head office in Canada and made the deposits look like clean money. Lehder’s account has languished since he was imprisoned in the U.S., but the other account has remained quite active. Irwin, this looks like money from the old days when the Medellín and Cali cartels were operating.” He was silent for a few moments, but Crandle didn’t respond, and he continued. “I got a printout of the deposits and withdrawals over the past few years. I’ll fax it to you.”
“Please do.” Crandle gave Bisiker the dedicated fax number that would direct the document to their small command center. “Thanks a million, Chris. I appreciate it.”
“All right. But this little jaunt had better not count against my holidays.”
“I’ll talk to someone over at Langley,” Crandle said, and hung up.
Eduardo Garcia and Bud Reid were watching him, having caught the name Carlos Lehder. Crandle sipped his coffee, and shrugged. “Bisiker might be on to something. He’s sending a fax through. We’ll see.”
The Learjet was given priority in the landing queue, and once they were on the ground in Pittsburgh, Alexander Landry and Cathy Maxwell headed directly for the main terminal, creds in hand. Their plan was to hit the regional airlines first and then the taxi and limo services. Eugene had to leave the airport somehow. They hit pay dirt at the seventh counter, U.S. Airways, a local airline with its head office on Commerce Drive in Pittsburgh.
“One of our gate agents scanned his passport when he boarded,” the counter person said, looking at her screen. “He flew to Rochester on our early morning flight. It departed Pittsburgh at six-seventeen and arrived in Rochester at seven-ten.”
“That’s quick,” Cathy said.
The woman smiled. “We use a Boeing 737 for that flight, even though it’s only about two hundred miles. It’s really popular with business people who want to be in Rochester for an eight o’clock meeting at Eastman Kodak or Xerox. Bausch and Lomb has its head office in Rochester as well. It’s a great route for our airline.”
“Thanks,” Landry said. They returned to the Learjet, asked the pilot to file a flight plan for Rochester, then called Crandle at EPIC to give him the news.
“What the hell is he doing in Rochester?” Crandle asked.
“Meeting Mario Correa, I bet,” Landry replied.
“Well, it’s better than New York City. What’s Rochester’s population, maybe a quarter million? Not a bad size center for a search.”
“We’ll find him,” Landry said. They finished the conversation. Landry hung up just as the Learjet 45 got clearance from the tower. He paced the cabin, his six-four frame hunched over, pausing occasionally to drink some fruit juice and munch on the muffins laid out in the front refreshment center. They were less than twelve hours behind Eugene Escobar; his trail would still be warm. The airport staff would probably have gone through a shift change, and they would have to wait until the
evening to show Eugene’s picture around and see if anyone recognized him. But in the interim, they would work the taxi and car rental companies to see if he was careless enough to rent a car under his own name, or take a cab to some strange destination. Most of the business travelers arriving in Rochester on the early flight would be downtown fares. He and Maxwell would look for something out of the ordinary. Then the hotels and motels, bars and restaurants, nightclubs and dives until they found Eugene and followed him to Pablo. At least, that was the plan.
Crandle’s jet cruised at almost six hundred miles an hour at 33,000 feet, and soon Rochester came into view out the starboard windows. Somewhere in that maze of buildings and houses was Eugene Escobar—their key to Pablo.
Find Eugene. And then they would find Pablo.
And this time, they would end the job properly.
Chapter Forty
Eugene steered clear of the major hotels and checked into a Super 8 south of Rochester on Lehigh Station Road in Henrietta. He knew that someone from Crandle’s team would already be en route to Rochester, courtesy of the gate attendant who scanned his passport. But he had no intention of letting them find him easily. He was where they thought he was—but he didn’t have to be visible. He placed a five hundred-dollar cash deposit on the counter, and the Super 8 accepted it. His cab driver, whose name was Bulbinder, had agreed to book off the next three days at a flat rate of five hundred dollars a day, payable each evening at five.
He had a regular driver, a safe hotel room and cash. Now all he had to do was use his brain to figure out where his cousin was living. Common sense told him that the Clarion Hotel Riverside would never divulge information about a guest—unless the request was accompanied by a federal subpoena. So walking up to the front counter and asking for a list of guests who had stayed in the hotel back in mid-November of the previous year would be pretty stupid. The only other way Eugene could think of to get the information was to access the hotel’s computer files. And that was something about which he had no experience or expertise. He had one other avenue of inquiry, but that also required hacking into a database. Mario had sold Pablo a Renault and delivered it around the beginning of December. The DMV would have records of the car being registered.
He wandered over to the window and glanced out into the parking lot. Bulbinder saw him, smiled and waved. Eugene waved back and let the curtain fall in place. At least his coming to Rochester had made one person happy. Sunday was Bulbinder’s oldest son’s birthday, and the money was going toward his college fund. It wasn’t anything world-shattering, but somehow that made Eugene feel good; a tiny sliver of the drug money Rastano had given him was going to a good cause. He put one foot slowly ahead of the other until he reached the bed, and flopped down. He needed to channel his efforts, now more than ever. But he was awash in listlessness, winds calm, sails sagging. He closed his eyes, and Julie’s smiling and beautiful face filled the darkness.
“God, don’t take her from me,” he whispered. He could feel tears gathering, but he refused to open his eyes and release them. “It’s all in your hands, Eugene.” Then he realized he had the answer to what he needed, elusive, but close at hand. Something someone had said recently. But what?
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The gate attendant at the airport? The hotel desk clerk? Bulbinder? He stopped at the taxi driver, his mind churning as it regurgitated every word the cab driver had said since they met. Then it hit him. The money was for his son’s college fund. He sat bolt upright, breathing shallow and fast. That was it. Hacking into the hotel and DMV computers. Who knew computers better than college students enrolled in computer sciences courses? He leaped up, slipped on his shoes and bolted from the room, locking the door behind him.
At the cab, he asked the driver, “Bulbinder, you said your son is taking computer science courses?”
“Yes. But please call me Bill. Everyone does. It sounds more American than Bulbinder.”
“Sure,” Eugene said. “Bill it is. Where does he go to college?”
“At Finger Lakes Community College.”
“Is it close by?” Eugene asked.
“It’s just south of here on Canandaigua Lake.”
“Drive,” Eugene said, jumping into the backseat. “I’ll explain on the way.”
As they drove through Henrietta, Eugene explained to Bill what he needed and a little bit about why he needed it. At first the cabbie was unsure; it would mean asking his son to take a risk. But he decided to let his son make the decision. He drove, quiet now, his mind on what Eugene had proposed.
To Eugene, the landscape held a stark beauty. Not the lush beauty of his homeland, but the outline of naked deciduous trees against virgin countryside was breathtaking. The rolling, grass-covered hills were just greening up, and the scent of spring was heavy in the air. They passed quaint villages of traditional two-story clapboard homes. American flags flapped lazily in the afternoon breeze on front lawns and outside single-story municipal buildings. This was John Mellencamp’s America, Eugene thought, “Pink Houses” running through his mind.
They reached Canandaigua, the town named after the lake, and continued south until Bill turned onto a well- paved access road bordered with barren trees. The road wove through a few acres of intermittent meadows and forests, until suddenly breaking out into the Finger Lakes Community College campus. They headed toward a central four-story building.
“The computer sciences department is on the third floor,” Bill said. “Ben, that’s my son’s name, is a teaching assistant in one of the labs. I’ll get him for you.” He parked the car, got out and headed up the stairs to the main door.
Eugene got out of the cab and leaned against it. He watched Bill walk quickly into the building and disappear through the glass doors. Several minutes later, he reappeared, with two young men in their early twenties. One was dark skinned, athletic looking, with neatly trimmed hair, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. The other looked Scandinavian, with blond hair and a wiry frame, wearing khakis and a polo shirt. Bill introduced them. Ben and Andrew. Ben shook Eugene’s hand. Andrew just nodded.
“As your dad’s just told you, I need someone good with computers, Ben,” Eugene said. “It would be a paying job, only a day or two, but good dollars.”
Ben leaned on the car and asked, “What sort of work?”
“Getting information that I can’t get.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “And that information would be in someone else’s computer?”
“Yes.”
“That might be illegal, Eugene.”
“It might be. But I’ve got a very good reason for why I need it.”
“I know. Dad filled me in. Sorry about your wife and daughter.”
“Thanks. So I need someone who can hack into two secure sites: a hotel in Rochester and the DMV.”
“What do you need from the databases?” Andrew asked, finally breaking his silence.
“I need a list of the hotel guests who stayed at the Clarion Hotel Riverside last November, and a list of the Renaults registered by the local DMV last December. I need to know who registered it and where that person lives.”
“That’s totally illegal,” Ben said, and looked at his father.
Bill shrugged. “I wouldn’t have asked you if Eugene’s wife and daughter weren’t in danger. He doesn’t want classified missile technology. It’s routine stuff. He just wants to save his family.”
“Okay, okay. I’m cool with that, Dad,” He turned to Eugene. “I brought Andrew with me because he and I are buddies. If we do this, we do it together. You okay with that?” Eugene nodded, and Ben continued, “I need a clean computer and a location the police can never trace back to me.”
Andrew piped up. “Old lady Quigley’s place in Seneca Falls. She’s got a revved-up Pentium system with high-speed Internet access. She’s taking a sabbatical from teaching this semester. She’s in New York City until the end of the month.”
“How do we get in?”
�
��That’s easy,” Andrew said. “I’ve got a key. I’m watering her plants while she’s gone.”
“Just for the record,” Ben said, “how much did you say this job paid?”
Eugene quickly calculated what was left of the six thousand dollars after he paid Bill. “A thousand dollars,” he said.
“Okay,” Ben said, shaking Eugene’s hand. “You just hired yourself a couple of hackers.”
Chapter Forty-one
Senator Irwin Crandle sat in an uncomfortable office chair reading the e-mail for the second time. Unbelievable was the only word he could think of to describe what he was reading.
The decrypted files from Jorge Shweisser’s computer were a daily diary that dated back to the year the numbered account was opened. Shweisser had suspected something illegal from the start and kept a detailed record of the early transactions, both deposits and withdrawals. He had also keyed in his personal feelings, in Latin, stored them on the disk, and then encrypted them. Crandle figured him to be somewhere between cautious and paranoid. But the amazing thing about Shweisser’s personal take on the situation was that his ramblings were basically correct.
Shweisser mentioned Pablo Escobar’s name no less than twenty-three times. Shweisser was being paid to ensure that the account remained in good standing and that no one in the bank hierarchy questioned where the money was coming from. In one paragraph he noted that he was being paid by “an unknown Colombian,” but in the very next entry he admitted he suspected the Colombian to be Pablo Escobar. But the really shocking thing about the use of Pablo’s name was that it didn’t stop after December 2, 1993. Shweisser was never fooled by the apparent death of the Colombian drug lord.
Crandle finished reading the contents of the disk and leaned back in the chair. Shweisser could have sold his suspicions on the open market for countless millions of dollars. But then he would have been a target for Escobar’s sicarios and his life would have been shorter than the already abbreviated version.
