[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (35 page)

Junior ordered a Guinness and settled in. He considered slipping an audio bug under the counter along the wall behind Magoo, but the place was so noisy it was unlikely it would pick up much. He decided it wasn’t worth the risk of calling attention to himself.

Magoo drank slowly—Scotch neat. He swirled the glass between every sip, as if he were trying to blend various ingredients. A half hour later, he still had half the drink left. He swirled one more time, took the tiniest taste, then got up to leave. Junior threw a twenty on the bar for his half-finished beer, and ran out in time to see Magoo getting into a cab.

One thing you have to know about New York: there is never, ever a cab when you want it. And yet Murphy had so far arranged for two at precisely the worst times for my boy.

But this time, Murph was generous—a truck pulled out ahead of the cab down the street. As the cabbie blasted his horn, Junior snuck up behind it, slipped the spare GPS broadcaster unit on the back fender, and continued walking.

Naturally, there were no cabs nearby. Junior stood at the intersection of Thirty-sixth and Sixth with his hand up, until a black livery car pulled over.

“Where you goin’?” asked the man at the wheel. He was a white guy with a Bronx accent so thick you could roll spaghetti around it.

“Downtown,” said Junior, simply guessing. The iPhone locator app showed Magoo’s cab was stuck in traffic only two blocks away, still on Thirty-sixth.

“Forty bucks,” said the driver. By that point, Junior had already opened the back door. He reached forward and dropped three twenties on the passenger side of the Lincoln’s split bench at the front.

“Where downtown, bub?” said the driver.

“Jeez, you know. I forget.” Junior glanced at the iPhone. Traffic was moving again; the cab was headed for the FDR Drive. “Head over to the FDR.”

“Where is it we’re going?” asked the driver. He had a definite edge in his voice.

Junior dropped three more twenties on the seat. “I’ll tell you when I’m sure. I’m getting some new texts here. We’re not doing anything illegal.”

“You got that right.”

Thirty minutes and six more twenties later, the limo driver pulled up in front of Terminal Building One at John F. Kennedy Airport.

“You shoulda tol’ me ya was goin’ to da airport in da first place, ’stead of makin’ a game out of it,” said the driver. “Woulda saved ya some dough.”

“I like to play games,” said Junior, hopping out of the car.

Magoo had a ten-minute head start. The security line was long, but not quite long enough: he was nowhere to be found.

Junior took out his sat phone and called Shunt.

“I need a reservation on a plane that leaves from Terminal One at Kennedy soon,” he told him. “I need to get past security and check the gates out.”

“Terminal One?”

Junior started reading off the names of the airlines that used the terminal. “Aer Lingus, Alitalia, Delta…”

“Man, I hate Delta. They always lose my luggage.”

“I just need to get past security and check out the gates.”

“I’m on it.”

Five minutes later, Junior flashed his iPhone for the TSA people, who blinked at it then walked him through a machine to examine his privates. Not finding anything beyond the normal equipment, they released him and his shoes into the bowels of the terminal.

He checked every gate, and finally succeeded in spotting Magoo as he boarded an Alitalia flight for Milan. Judging from the line, he was toward the back of the plane, in coach. Good to see our government employees economizing.

“He’s not listed on the passenger manifest,” Shunt reported as Junior watched them check through the last passenger.

“Get me a ticket,” Junior told him.

“Plane’s booked. Even first class.”

“Get me something that I can use to get on board,” Junior said. “Then I’ll find out what seat he’s in, and we can get his ID.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just get me past the attendant. I know you can do it.”

“You’re going to fly to Milan? Dick’ll have a fit.”

“Just get me a ticket. Dupe somebody’s. Upload it now.”

Junior ran to the gate, waving his phone at the attendant who was just about to shut the door to the boarding tunnel.

“I just made it,” he said, trying to push past.

“Wait, sir. I have to scan your phone.”

“Here, here,” said Junior, shoving it toward her face. Then he started away.

“I need to
scan
it.”

“I can’t miss this plane.”

“You’re not going to miss it,” she insisted. “It won’t leave the gate for another ten minutes, at least.”

Junior held the phone steady just long enough for her to position her scanner, then he turned and raced down the tunnel. The woman yelled after him that the machine hadn’t accepted the scan, but he already had a good enough lead that he reached the cabin door before she could alert the attendants. He hustled in, moving quickly through first class—no Magoo—then into the back, moving all the way to row forty before spotting Magoo in a middle seat.

Obviously the CIA operative hadn’t pulled any strings for that seat.

“Excuse me, sir,” said one of the stewardesses. She had an Italian accent and very shapely legs that were highlighted by a tight miniskirt.

“Yes?” answered Junior, having trouble putting his tongue back into his mouth.

“Where is your seat? The captain needs you to sit so we can back from the terminal.”

“Uh—”

He glanced at the phone. “Seat, uh, 12B.”

“Sir, you’re up in business class.” She gave him a smile Mona Lisa would have killed for.

“Is that where you are?” Junior asked.

“We service the entire airplane.”

“I’m looking forward to that.”

Of course, there was someone already in seat 12B. By now the gate clerk had come aboard, and a discussion on how the computer could possibly have made this mix-up had begun.

Before seeing the stewardess—Gina—Junior had planned to simply step out and settle for some sort of refund. Now he wasn’t so sure. The seat was occupied by a man in his mid-fifties, who had a wedding ring and a serious paunch.

Clearly, Junior deserved the seat more.

“I really do have to get to Milan,” he said.

“We can offer one of you a voucher for another free trip,” suggested the gate attendant, who was now under pressure to remove one of the passengers or the plane would miss its departure slot.

“That’s hardly compensation,” said the other man indignantly. “And I’m not giving up my seat for anyone.”

“Maybe I could stand.”

Junior glanced at Gina. She gave him a disapproving look.

“Just kidding,” he said quickly.

“How about first class on the next flight out, a voucher for two more flights, and a thousand-euro voucher,” said the gate attendant.

“I’ll take it,” said Junior, looking at Gina. “As long as I get your cell number.”

Whatever else you can say about him, he’s a chip off the old Rogue.

(III)

Veep returned to his office and went about his daily routine. Magoo flew to Italy. Junior—with the phone number and the promise of dinner at a time and place to be decided—went back and reported to Danny.

Shunt and his team went back to trying to piece together different information, starting with the alias that our CIA friend had used to get a ticket. That led them to the credit card he had used to buy the tickets—a card issued by Veep’s bank to a Terrence Jonlable of Jersey City.

Was the agency using the bank to construct phony identities for its officers and agents?
37

The agency did use a lot of banks, and had various means of camouflaging its officers’ identities and hiding its intentions. Fake credit cards are one—but generally the addresses aren’t fake as well, since the bills have to go somewhere and eventually be paid. The address in Terrence Jonlable’s records was well out in the Hudson River. Yet the account was current.

If the airline computer was to be believed, Magoo had landed in New York barely an hour before the meeting. So he’d come here pretty much only for that meeting. It wasn’t out of line for a CIA officer, even one of Magoo’s stature, to fly undercover on a commercial airline. Or to have a meeting with an official of a bank narco-terrorists had used. But why all the secrecy?

Maybe Veep thought the terrorists were following him. Somebody
was
following him, after all: us.

Still.

“Stay on Veep,” I told Danny when he reported what had happened. “Get more people if you need them.”

“Will do.”

*   *   *

I was in Washington, D.C., when I took Danny’s call, engaged in one of my favorite pastimes—nodding thankfully at people as they sent over drinks from the bar. I was attending a conference on international security, and was taking a little walk to get ready for my keynote address on Afghanistan. Inside, coffee was just being delivered to the tables after dessert. The warm-up speaker was doing his best to encourage everyone to take the high-test; those sipping decaf were dropping like flies as he droned on. A mid-level muckety-muck at Foggy Bottom, he was speaking about how far the Afghan army had come, painting President Hamid Karzai as George Washington in a kaftan.

Walking back into the room, I could tell this was going to be another one of those occasions where I’d be as popular as a skunk at a church picnic. I was tempted to start my speech with the words “Horse swaggle.” But being a very moderate and temperate man, I began with the much calmer and more deliberate “Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit.”

That pretty much summed up what I thought and probably would have been sufficient for most of the people in the room, but I had been paid for fifty full minutes. I therefore felt obliged to continue, fleshing out my observations with facts that ought to have been self-evident to anyone with a sixth-grade reading level, which admittedly doesn’t include 80 percent of civil servants.

“Karzai needs us but hates us,” I said. “He needs us to fund his government, and to use as a whipping boy when things go wrong, which they do practically every day over there. Bucks and blame—that’s our role.”

I saw a few of the older men reach to protect their wallets.

“The administration has a plan to completely withdraw and let the Afghans protect the country,” I continued. “That will work about as well as letting a three-year-old drive the family SUV on the Autobahn.”

I suggested that we would have to keep special operations troops in the country for quite a while. Though we might
say
they were operating with the locals, the truth is they wouldn’t. They didn’t want the locals to interfere, and didn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut. For their part, the local troops would be happy to stay out of the way—they didn’t want to die. Roughly the same thing had happened in Iraq.

All in all, it was one of the more obvious speeches I’ve given on Afghanistan in the past decade. Outside the Beltway, people would have been throwing shoes at me, ordering me to tell them something new.

But here in Washington, D.C., the land where common sense goes to die, you would have thought that I told a kindergarten class that there is no Santa Claus. I did receive a healthy round of applause—from the waitstaff. On the bright side, there were no questions in the session that followed. And while no one sent over any more free drinks, no one waylaid me at the door with their latest get-rich-quick scheme either.

Get-
them
-rich, of course.

I was halfway to my car when my cell phone rang. It was Shunt, who made an offer I couldn’t refuse:

“Wanna buy some Viagra cheap?”

We exchanged a few jokes about who was the one really lacking in that department—for a nerd, he can give as good as he gets. Then he got serious.

“You know that factory you and Junior visited in Bangladesh?” asked Shunt.

“Sure. The agency closed it down two weeks ago.”

“Not really. The Indians stopped a boat off their western coastline yesterday with freshly made prescription pills from the same place.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“Oh, well, you see, the Interpol computer network uses this security protocol that was written in the 1980s and—”

“Tell me about the drugs, Shunt. Skip how you got into the computer systems.”

“But that’s the fun part.”

The drugs had been field tested for their ingredients. According to Shunt, the Interpol lab that analyzed them found the same impurities in them that were in the capsules confiscated in our haul. The impurities were like fingerprints. They were unique to the factory where they were made.

“Is it possible that these were already in transit?” I asked.

“Maybe, but I had accounted for all of the earlier shipments. The ship had sailed from Lahore. The drugs were in a container, which I tracked to a place about thirty miles north. My guess is that they moved the factory.”

“You sure you have the right truck?”

“The people that own the tractor unit that drove the container to the shipyard are the same people who own the ones that drove yours,” said Shunt. “And, uh, I backtracked some of their payments, all electronic transfers. That wasn’t easy. You know the W32.Mubla worm? You might have known it as Fus.worm. Well, I took that idea—”

“Give me the results.”

“The account that paid the transport company is held at Veep’s bank.”

“Tell me something I couldn’t guess.”

“I took the lab report and used those impurities to do a simple search against police records,” said Shunt. “And I think some of the drugs are being sold in the U.S.”

*   *   *

Ten hours later, I turned my rented BMW past a graffiti-strewn two-story building at the edge of Liberty City, Miami, heading toward the back lot of a large apartment building a block away.

Liberty City is named after what’s touted as the first federal housing project in the South, Liberty Square. Erected in 1933 in hopes of relieving overcrowded and hell-like conditions in nearby Overtown, the area did well after the Depression and World War II, when it hosted a growing black middle class. But that changed in the 1960s, and while there have been various efforts to clean up the place and even some progress, it’s still not the first place you would want to look for housing. My white face was surely the only one around for blocks, especially at that hour of night.