“Yeah, boss.”
“Tell us why.” This from Granger.
“I already-”
“Tell us again.”
“I can do some good, I think-”
“You’re doing good right where you are. Plus, we don’t run the risk of burning you-of getting a former President’s son killed. You’re a face, Jack.”
“An average face. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been recognized in the last two years. Out of sight, out of mind. John and I have had this conversation already, okay? I don’t have any grand visions about fieldwork.”
Hendley looked to Clark, who spread his hands. “Either he’s a good actor or that’s the truth.”
Jack smiled. “Hey, worst case, I see how the other half lives and it makes me a better analyst, right? It’s a win-win.”
“Okay, you’re on the team. Mind your manners, though. No jabbing folks with needles this time around, understood?”
Jack nodded. “Understood.”
“John, where are you with Driscoll?”
“Talked to him this morning, put out some feelers. I think it’s sunk in that CID wants his head. He’s taking it in stride-better than most would be. He likes the work. I think if he had a chance to get out from under and still have his hand in the pot, he’d be interested. Any luck on your end?”
“I think we might have enough horsepower to get the AG to back down but not enough to keep Driscoll in uniform. When you get back from Chicago, go pitch him.”
Clark nodded.
“Call them back in, Sam.”
As Chavez and the Carusos reentered, Brian said, “Hey, since we’re finally getting proactive about this shit… The URC had that Dirar mutt killed for a good reason. Any more thoughts on us going to Tripoli and shaking the tree?”
“What do you expect to fall out?” Granger asked.
Dominic answered this one. “Either Dirar got whacked by the URC directly, or they had an affiliate do it. Either way, we find who did it and we’ve got another piece of the puzzle-maybe a peek at communication protocols, funding routes… Who knows?”
Hendley nodded. “Draw your documents and get Travel working on itineraries. We’ll see if you can scare up a contact in Tripoli-somebody at the embassy who doesn’t mind having a hats-off chat. Also see if we can get Brian and Dominic a briefing-Jack, maybe that new deal you and Gavin have been working on?”
“Can do, boss.”
Hendley stood up and looked around the table. “Okay, gents, do your thing. We need a corner, something we can peel back and turn into leverage.”
Each man would need a motel room of his own, Hadi knew, all within an hour’s driving distance of the facility and none lavish enough that a ten- to fourteen-day stay would arouse curiosity. Foreigners coming to a new country looking for work didn’t have enough money for fancy accommodations, and while it might make sense for friends to stay together on such a trip, four Arabic-looking males staying in one place together might pique the interest of local law enforcement.
There were plenty of two-star motels in São Paulo; Hadi wasn’t worried about finding those, but this was his first foray into fieldwork and he wanted to leave nothing to chance-just as they’d left nothing to chance with their cover stories.
Each of them had studied or knew enough about the industry that their arrival and subsequent job inquiries would draw little attention, at least for the short time they planned to be in the country. Brazil’s new boon had seen an influx of workers, many of them from the Middle East and tired of being paid poverty-level wages for exhausting and dangerous work. No, Hadi thought, as long as they did nothing to distinguish themselves, four more Arabs going about the business of finding work would not be noticed.
The difficult part would be reconnaissance. There were many miles of track and hundreds of cars to survey; there were schedules and routes to double- and triple-check; topography and infrastructure to study. The facility itself, while far from impregnable, did have its own security force, and Ibriham’s preparatory research had suggested that the facility routinely conducted drills that involved both the military and the police, each of which maintained a quick-reaction force. Of course, such forces would be useful only up to a point. If he and the others planned well and remained steadfast under Allah’s guiding hand, nothing could stop them.
59
STEVE HAD PASSED the most recent test with flying colors, Allison decided. She had at the last minute canceled their rendezvous in Reno, claiming that her boss had asked her to take his place at a pharmaceutical-rep conference in Sacramento. The conference was real enough, as were her business cards and the drug samples and the literature she carried in her leather briefcase whenever they met for sex, but that’s as far as it went. She liked him well enough, but in her business, such things were gauged on a sliding scale. Steve wasn’t repulsive, or abusive, so that put him nearer to the upper end of the scale. Not that that would have mattered to her performance, but it certainly made their meetings tolerable.
As predicted, Steve had been upset and disappointed at her last-minute cancellation, and just as predictably, he’d immediately offered a solution: He would take time off from work and fly to Sacramento for the weekend so they could spend time together. She could attend the conference during the day, and they would have the nights to themselves. Allison showed the appropriate level of surprise and gratitude at his suggestion, and promised to make their first weekend getaway something to remember. At some point during the weekend, she would set the hook a little deeper, coyly suggesting that he introduce her to his family. Perhaps she might even arrange for him to catch her tearing up, after which she would confess that she was somewhat taken aback by the “special connection” she felt with him.
As she’d known from the beginning, the tricky part would be the pitch. Her “handler”-a Russian term she had never liked-the man with the fire-scarred hands, had proposed an angle she thought was worth exploring, but it would involve exposing herself with an unbackstopped story that Steve could check into, if so inclined. Then again, if by the time she made the pitch Steve wasn’t completely under her thumb, she would back off and try another tack. Steve wasn’t stupid, but when it came to matters of the heart, men were just as irrational, if not more so, than women. Sex, for all its power, was simply a stepping-stone, and if she judged her mark correctly, she was but a few stones away from the prize.
The question that Allison didn’t let herself wonder too much about was the nature of the information her employer was seeking. Why in the world, she wondered, did they care about groundwater in the middle of a desert?
As Panamax “box ships” went, the Losan was small, a “twelve abreast” 2,700 TEU-twenty-foot equivalent units-vessel measuring 542 feet, whose capacity had long since been surpassed by Post Panamax descendants, but Tarquay Industries of Smithfield, Virginia, was less interested in modernity than it was in cutting its losses.
Of the 120 five-hundred-gallon propane tanks it had sold to the government of Senegal, forty-six had proved defective, having slipped through quality control with improperly welded lifting lugs. By itself this was not an insurmountable problem, one that Tarquay had offered to fix at no cost and on-site, but an examination by both Senegalese government inspectors and Tarquay’s lead engineer in Dakar had revealed that the welds had compromised the shell integrity; none of the tanks could have withstood the mandated 250-pounds-per-square-inch pressure capacity.
As this was Tarquay’s initial contract with Senegal and in fact its first overseas deal, a quick refund was issued, along with an official apology from the board of directors, and replacement tanks were dispatched immediately. In Dakar, the defective tanks were listed on the bill of entry with the code R3001c-“Re-exportation of quality-rejected non-petroleum products following storage warehousing”-then transported to a government customs warehouse in Port Sud and offloaded in a vacant weed-filled lot surrounded by a four-foot-high hurricane fence.