Which she’d expected. But it didn’t matter. She’d made him uncomfortable. That was all that mattered. She took out her phone and switched it to camera mode.
A few minutes later Rolls Royce Guy finished his dessert and asked his waiter for the check. Daria palmed her phone and approached his table just as he was signing a computer tablet.
She lightly touched his shoulder, bent down far enough into his personal space so that she knew he’d be rattled, so that he could feel her breath on his cheek, and said, “I’m certain we’ve met before. It was London, wasn’t it? The Grosvenor House?”
“I haven’t been to London in five years, Miss.” He smiled uneasily as he placed the computer tablet back on the table.
“If not London, then was it here?” In a low voice that she gauged was somewhere between seductive and pathetic, she said, “I wouldn’t forget a face like yours.”
Rolls Royce Guy stole a quick, embarrassed glance at her breasts and said, “Miss, ordinarily I’d love to talk, but the honest truth is that I am up to my eyeballs in work.”
57
In the glass-walled panoramic elevator that led down from the restaurant atop the Burj al Arab, Mark watched as Daria pushed a few buttons on her phone and then showed him the display.
“His check,” she said.
Mark squinted. “I can’t read anything.”
Daria cropped it so that only the relevant portion remained, and then she enlarged that section and clicked on a filter that sharpened all the lines in the image.
They were able to determine that Rolls Royce Guy had eaten a meal of assorted seafood canapés, followed by a Wagyu beef tenderloin. He’d indulged in one snifter of Lagavulin single-malt scotch, followed by a white chocolate mousse. The meal, with tip, had cost $227. At the bottom of the page was an indecipherable signature, beneath which it read:
Deluxe Suite, Room 302
Waltrop, Stewart R.
“Got him,” said Mark, thinking that he’d show up at Waltrop’s room later that night, flash his old CIA identification card and diplomatic passport, and start pressuring the guy.
Meanwhile, Daria was already Googling “Stewart Waltrop.”
The search didn’t return a single direct hit.
So she Googled “Waltrop” by itself and got over a million hits.
When she tried “S. Waltrop” five direct hits came back, but they were all obscure references to a German town.
“Try Stu Waltrop,” said Mark.
Thirteen direct hits popped up. Five had something to do with the German town. The rest were related to an executive vice president who worked in the business development unit of an Oklahoma-based company called Richter, Inc.
That Stu Waltrop had attended an oil services industry conference in Houston the previous April. And he’d been quoted in Oil and Gas Journal as being optimistic that Richter’s new line of roller-cone drill bits would soon turn a profit for the company. His e-mail was listed on a contact page associated with the company’s website.
Daria followed the links to Richter’s homepage. And it was there, at the top of the page, right under the flashy Richter banner, that Mark read the words Partners in Progress, followed by what he recognized as the logo for Holgan Industries.
“Well, would you look at that.” Holgan Industries was the largest oil services company in the world, he knew. An American firm, but headquartered in Dubai.
Daria’s eyes narrowed a bit.
She clicked on the Partners in Progress link and was taken to a page that explained that Richter, Inc. had recently become a valued member of the Holgan Industries family.
Since Holgan supplied tools and know-how to nations and companies that pumped oil out of the ground, it made sense to Mark that Holgan would be interested in a firm like Richter.
What didn’t make sense to him was the connection — if there was any — between Holgan and the Doha Group. They were both oil services companies, so they should have been competitors.
“Go to the SEC’s website. See if Holgan and the Doha Group have done any deals together.”
Daria followed the links until she got to a page that allowed her to search all of Holgan Industries’ filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. There were thousands. Starting with the most recent and working back, she searched each for the word Doha. It didn’t take long to get a hit.
It was in an end-of-year 10-K report, under a heading listed as Exhibit 21: Subsidiaries of the Registrant.
“Goddamn,” said Mark, as he squinted, trying to read the page that had loaded onto Daria’s phone. The Doha Group was near the top of a list of over fifty companies, all owned by Holgan Industries. “Holgan’s not just doing business with the Doha Group. They own them, just like they own Richter.”
It made Mark’s head spin to keep all the connections straight, but they were there. The uranium had been stolen from the Iranians and delivered to the MEK. The MEK had passed it on to the Doha Group. And the Doha Group was owned by Holgan Industries. Which made Holgan Industries, a huge American firm, the most likely recipient of the stolen uranium.
“Stu Waltrop, this is your lucky night,” said Mark.
“I’m not following.”
“We don’t need him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I already know who to go after next.”
58
The receptionist at Holgan Industries was a young blond woman with a Texas accent. She wore a pink blouse and matching pink lipstick. Mark’s question appeared to amuse her.
“And do you have an appointment?”
It was eight thirty in the morning. Mark hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before.
“I don’t.”
A pair of thick-necked guards — expats from Oman or Saudi Arabia, Mark guessed — exchanged a look. Wondering whether they had a crazy on their hands.
Holgan Industries had been founded half a century ago by Jimmy Holgan Sr., a former Eagle Scout and graduate of the US Naval Academy. But recently Jimmy Sr. had turned the day-to-day operations of the business over to his son, Jimmy Jr., who had promptly shifted Holgan’s headquarters from Houston to Dubai, to be closer to his customers.
And unless you were the head of a first-world nation, or a third-world despot with gobs of oil, you didn’t just breeze into Jimmy Jr.’s office.
“Then I’m afraid you won’t be able to see Mr. Holgan,” said the receptionist cheerfully.
“My name is Mark Sava. I’m with the CIA.” He produced his diplomatic passport and allowed her to examine it. “If you tell Mr. Holgan I’m here, I believe he’ll want to speak with me.”
“Mr. Holgan doesn’t speak to anybody without an appointment, sir. There are no exceptions.”
“I said he’ll want to speak with me.”
“And what, may I ask, is the nature of your business?”
“The nature of my business involves national security and it’s between Mr. Holgan and myself.”
She stared at him. Mark stared back.
Holgan Industries occupied the top twenty floors of the Iris Bay Tower, an enormous silver banana-shaped building that had sprung up on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai’s main thoroughfare. But there were no public elevators to Holgan’s upper floors. To even get near Jimmy Holgan Jr., Mark first had to make it past Holgan’s ground-floor lobby.
And what a lobby it was, Mark thought, looking over the marble floor mosaics and gleaming brass doors and brilliant light shafts set off at an angle as though the ceiling had been pierced like a pincushion. The place was cavernous and smelled of disinfectant.