He completed the customs portion of the form, declaring no value, then completed the rest of the form and signed it. Then he took the note from his pocket and checked it one more time. It was obscure to the point of being bland, the length of a message from a Chinese fortune cookie. “Package arrived safely. All well this end. H.”
It was written in Herman’s scrawl with a pen on a piece of otherwise blank paper. He folded it up once more, put it in one of the open letter packs and sealed it. He slipped the waybill inside the plastic window on the outside of the envelope and got into a line behind two other guys. Herman folded his broad arms across his barrel chest and waited.
The trio, Paul, Harry, and Herman, had worked out the details over the kitchen table at Ives’s parents’ house the night the girl named Ben and her driver were killed. They kept his parents out of it, so they would know as little as possible, sent them to the other room where they could not hear. If questioned by authorities, they could honestly say they had no idea where their son was. Besides, the fewer people who knew, the better, less chance for a mistake.
The two lawyers took their lead from Herman as to the selected location. Given the history of narco-terror and the violence of the cartels, American tourists might shy away from Mexico. But as a place of refuge to hide out with Alex Ives until things cooled down, it was perfect. For Herman, it was like going home. He had connections and contacts in Mexico going back more than a decade, to the time when he worked corporate security and executive protection in Mexico City. It was where he first met Paul Madriani.
Herman called his contacts from a pay phone in a hotel not far from the Iveses’ home. His friends gave him the name of a small condo near the beach in Ixtapa. They had used it once or twice as a secure location for corporate executives when traveling on the coast. They gave Herman the address and told him to check it out online. Herman didn’t want to do that for obvious reasons. He trusted them. He discussed it with Paul and Harry, gave them the address in case of an emergency, and gave his friends in Mexico the green light to set it up.
Norman Ives came to the rescue to solve one of their problems, his son’s lack of a passport. Through his business, Norman had extensive connections with a number of air transport companies and private pilots. He was able to secure help from a small air freight company that owed him a favor.
Late that night, Herman took over and worked out the destination with the company and its pilot so that Norman Ives would not be involved in any of the details. The carrier agreed to fly Alex and Herman to a small dirt strip, thirty miles from Zihuatanejo on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, about an hour north of Acapulco by air. They filed no flight plan and avoided radar over the border by flying well out to sea before heading south down the Mexican coast. The landing strip sometimes used by drug dealers had no control tower, customs, or immigration. Herman had used the place years earlier in his prior employment, once when it was necessary to bring in a special cargo of American firearms needed for security.
Ixtapa was a small community just a couple of miles north of Zihuatanejo, its sister village. Both were perfect. Low-key tourist destinations nestled in the hills over the ocean where no one would ask any questions of two Americans relaxing on vacation.
The only real wrinkle was communications, how to stay in touch with the office and keep track of what was going on.
It was the mysterious manner in which people kept dying behind the wheel of their cars that gave Madriani and his friends pause. It had the distinct odor of high tech about it. Especially after witnessing the startled look on the face of the driver and the girl next to him as their vehicle launched them down the road toward eternity, their destiny at the gas station.
It wasn’t a far reach to imagine that whoever was doing this might have the technical savvy to invade the firm’s electronic communications, to say nothing of their cell phones. Hackers were doing it all the time. Most people didn’t care, but for those who did, recent developments in the news made it clear, you could no longer trust your cell phone or your computer when it came to personal or professional privacy. And they weren’t dealing here with mere matters of legal etiquette, feared breaches of the sacred seal of lawyer-client. Anyone probing these communications was probably looking to kill Alex and anyone else unlucky enough to be near him at that moment.
There was no sure way to protect against the penetration of communications and no time to look for encrypted phones. Even if they could find them, it was hard to know if they were equipped with the latest scrambling software.
The trio, Paul, Harry, and Herman, after thinking about it, decided that the best option was the one used by the Unabomber. He had managed to stay off the radar screen of the most technologically advanced government on earth for more than a decade-by going primitive. No computers, no telephones, no wires leading to his shack in the woods, not even electricity. They agreed not to use e-mails, the Internet, or phones, either cell or landlines, to communicate.
Any messages would go by snail mail or private delivery services, and even then they would not be delivered directly to the condo unit, unless it was an emergency. They would be collected by Herman, if sent by mail, at general delivery in the post office. If sent by private carrier he would pick them up at the carrier’s local office. It might take a few days longer to get there, but they believed that the risk of its being intercepted and read were far less. They would keep the content of any messages short and cryptic, giving away as little information as possible.
The clerk behind the counter took the envelope from Herman. He put it on the scale, checked the waybill, completed his portion of it, and then entered whatever information was needed into the company’s computer. This produced a stick-on barcode. He peeled the sticker from its backing, slapped it onto the envelope, handed Herman his copy of the waybill with its tracking number on it, and dropped the envelope into the mailbag for shipment to the airport with the next delivery.
Herman turned and headed for the door. He would hop in a cab and in a few minutes he would be back under the cabana with Ives, fondling a cold bottle of Dos Equis.
TWENTY
The headquarters of the Washington Gravesite are located on K Street in downtown D.C., just a few blocks from the White House. The offices are in a high-rise office building between a dairy trade association and a door with a brass plaque on it bearing the name of a lobbyist and his associates.
Inside the smoked glass doors of the Gravesite there is a front counter with a receptionist. Behind her in an open area the size of a basketball court is a small army of employees chipping away like inmates on a rock pile at the keyboards in front of them. Some of them are wearing headsets, talking on the phone as they type. The place has the appearance of a boiler room, no art or pictures on the wall, no indoor plants. Just steam coming out of the ears of the people working.
If the markets and their analysts are correct, the old world of newsprint is breathing its last, being replaced by flickering screens and stories that are updated by the second, faster than the human brain can absorb them.
Most of the people working here are young, in their twenties, burning with the fervor of a new generation of journalists. You can smell it in the air and see it on their faces. For them it’s the Wild West. They are finding their feet in a new industry. Hard news blog sites are cropping up on the Internet like iron printing presses and fixed type on the old frontier. Some of them have their own brand of journalism and their own rules. It’s a changing universe and one with a lot of downsides for the dinosaurs.