The Prince of Risk A Novel(111)
It was imperative to ping the phone.
Materiel provided a combined how-to manual and road map of international arms smuggling. There were names of dealers, ports of loading and unloading, false bills of lading, contacts at three U.S. ports of entry, including JFK, Philadelphia Port Authority, and Houston. The list of weapons purchased corresponded to a T with the armaments found at Windermere. Except for one difference: there was more than three times the amount.
Last, and to Alex’s mind most important, came Logistics. The stack held flight details to and from Namibia, then onward to Caracas via Angola (which she noted was a former Portuguese territory). There were names of contact people at each stop, including phone numbers and e-mail addresses. There were names of hotels, along with confirmation numbers and prepaid vouchers. Alex was especially interested in the hotel in Mexico City where two nights earlier twelve rooms had been reserved under the name Excelsior Holdings. There was the name of the transportation company contracted to pick up “a party of twenty-five” from Benito Juárez International Airport, including details of the arriving flight. There was even the name of one General Jaime Fortuno of the Mexican Federales, who had agreed to meet the passengers and ease their passage through immigration, along with the general’s banking details. A handwritten note on top of Fortuno’s file stated, “Paid $10,000 cash. 15 July.”
The funding, it seemed, was unlimited. But the trail ended there. There was no further mention of Excelsior or of the Bank of Vaduz. Nothing at all to lead them to Salt’s “old friend.”
Alex was frustrated. She had all the evidence any prosecutor would need to put away the bad guys for a hundred life sentences after the fact. But the trove of information brought her no closer to the essentials of the plot: where, when, how. Like all her fellow agents, she was conscious of the FBI’s less-than-stellar record at stopping acts of terror before they occurred. When she’d assumed command of CT-26, she’d sworn that she would be the one to spot the attack before, and not the one who responded after. Yet once again she, and by extension the Bureau, found herself facing a brick wall. She needed actionable intelligence to get her people in place to foil the attack.
“You missed these,” said Graves, dropping another stack of folders on the desk. “Fell behind the radiator.”
“What are they?”
“Something you’ll find interesting.”
Alex picked up the folder. “Arrivals/USA.” She looked at Graves. “Salt knew all along.”
She opened the folder and read. Three groups. The first entering through Matamoros. The second via an oil rig off the Gulf Coast. And the third through Canada. All under the guise of being corporate employees. All slated for arrival in the greater New York metropolitan area yesterday evening.
The Eagle Has Landed. Gott mitt uns.
But where were they staying? She shuffled through the papers looking for any mention of a safe house, a place where the group would hole up and get their bearings prior to the attack. There was nothing about Windermere or anywhere else. She took that to mean one thing: the operation had a contact already in place in America.
It was as she reread the papers that she caught the name. The address for the drop-off in Matamoros belonged to a large supermarket chain called Pecos. The oil rig was owned by Noble Energy. And the drop-off in Canada was at the Silicon Solutions plant in Kitchener-Waterloo.
Pecos. Noble Energy. Silicon Solutions.
Alex dropped the file onto the desk. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” asked Graves.
“He was right,” she said.
“Who?”
“Bobby.”
71
“Hello, Marv.”
Astor poked his head out of the elevator and peered around the landing. “Marv?”
He saw no one. For once, Shank wasn’t there to greet him.
Astor entered his office. The trading floor was surprisingly quiet. No one glanced up as he passed the desk. Even Longfellow and Goodchild had their faces buried in their computer screens. The calm disturbed him. It was like the silence before an execution. He reached his office and looked inside. No Shank there, either. Conference room one was packed with lawyers. They were sharply dressed, straight-backed, and disciplined to look at. He recognized Frank Arcano from Skadden, who would be leading the charge to grant him more time to meet the margin requirements. They were the good lawyers.
Conference room two was packed with more lawyers. They wore baggy suits and had their neckties undone and shaggy haircuts. He didn’t recognize any of them and he knew they hailed from the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the body that regulated foreign currency transactions. They were the bad lawyers.