But what snagged my full attention-what reached out, grabbed me by the neck, and shook me-was the subtitle in small but bold letters:
Is al-Qaeda broke?
“Holy shit,” I said aloud.
I suddenly knew who Robledo’s clients were, knew why an undercover agent had duped him into investing $2 billion through Gerry Collins, knew why Treasury had ignored Evan’s thirty-eight red flags and allowed Cushman to collapse, knew what BAQ meant. I knew everything.
Most of all, I knew that I was running out of time.
I tucked away my BlackBerry and hurried out the door, apologizing to Barber on my way, though surely he didn’t deserve one. There was an express elevator from the executive suite, so I didn’t bother stopping for my overcoat. In less than sixty seconds I was in the ground-floor lobby, pushing through the revolving doors at the bank’s main entrance. The sidewalk on Seventh Avenue was bustling with nine-to-fivers headed for the subway, eager to start their weekend. The zoo’s white van was at the curb, where we had agreed last night that Connie would meet me, and I jumped into the passenger seat.
“We need to go to Lemuel Shattuck right now. It’s an emergency.”
“Is Dad okay?”
“A doctor called saying that I needed to get there as soon as possible, that there’s something Dad wants to tell me.”
“Oh, my God, he’s dying.”
I hated to see such pain in her expression, but we had to move. I took my BlackBerry from my pocket and removed the battery.
“What are you doing?
“The spyware in here could have GPS tracking. Taking out the battery disables it.”
“If there’s spyware on that phone, they already know you’re headed to the hospital.”
“Call me paranoid, but I don’t want the guy who killed Evan Hunt knowing exactly where I am on the road between here and Boston.”
“Okay, but if it’s a tracking chip, it has its own power source. Removing the main battery won’t disable it.”
I figured a scoutmaster would know. I rolled down the window and tossed the phone into the street. A passing bus ground it into the pavement.
“That will,” I said.
“If you were a scout, I’d pull your world conservation badge.”
“Drive, Connie.”
53
T hat Friday, just after dark, Mongoose’s flight touched down at Westchester County Airport, a two-runway operation that served one of the largest fleets of corporate jets in America. The other passengers on board worked for the same hedge fund in Greenwich, just across the Connecticut state line in affluent Fairfield County. Mongoose didn’t know them, didn’t care why they were flying back from Ciudad del Este before dawn, and hadn’t said a word to them since takeoff. Commercial nonstops from Ciudad del Este to New York were nonexistent. With $2 billion in the pipeline, Mongoose had jumped all over the open seat on a chartered Gulfstream jet, even if the car ride from White Plains to Midtown was over an hour.
“Your luggage will be on the tarmac,” said the flight attendant.
“Got none,” said Mongoose. No bags would naturally prompt a few questions at customs, but that was easier than trying to explain traces of blood, bone, and soft tissue on a commando wire saw.
The “enhanced interrogation” of Manu Robledo had taken about two hours. Using the nylon rope from his tool kit, Mongoose had completely immobilized his prey, flat on his back, in the bathtub. Robledo’s arms were up over his head, his wrists tied to the plumbing fixtures. The assistance rail on the wall at the other end of the tub was strong enough to secure his feet, shoes off. The drain could handle any amount of blood, but just to make sure that Robledo didn’t bleed out too soon, Mongoose had fastened a tourniquet around both wrists. Then he’d gone to work.
The left thumb had been first. Ignoring the muffled pleas for mercy, Mongoose had wrapped the wire around the base and pulled in rhythmic fashion: left, right, left right. All Robledo could do was grab the wire, but the result had been a severed index finger along with the severed thumb. As a general proposition, a wire saw took anything that got in its way-and Robledo’s right thumb was next. Had it not been for the gag in his mouth, Robledo’s screams would have awakened the entire hotel. But he was powerless to resist, save for the futile grasp of the wire saw, and the result was the same: simultaneous severance of his thumb and index finger. Mongoose had paused to allow Robledo to get a full grasp of his condition, making sure that Robledo watched as, one by one, he’d flushed the digits down the toilet. Then he’d tied another tourniquet to Robledo’s ankle. The big toe would have been too predictable. He wrapped the wire saw around the middle of the foot, through the center of the arch, pulling it tight. From the look in Robledo’s eyes, he’d begun to feel the pain even before the wire had torn into his skin. An opportunity had presented itself. Before starting the back-and-forth, Mongoose had looked Robledo in the eye and said, “I’m going to give you the chance to tell me everything. Do you want that chance?”
Robledo had nodded eagerly.
Talk, talk, talk. The starting point had been the Church of Peace and Prosperity International, which Robledo explained was a front for a data-mining operation that would identify and then recruit angry young Islamic extremists who were already in the United States and who could be persuaded to blow themselves up in shopping centers. There was nothing that Robledo would not have told him. At some point, however, the risk of someone hearing his screams was too great. Not that anyone in Ciudad del Este would bother to call the police, not that the police couldn’t be bought off even if they came. As it was, Robledo had even confessed to participation in the worst terrorist attack ever against an Israeli diplomatic mission, the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992. False confessions were a definite hazard of wire saw interrogation. But it was a fact that no one had ever been prosecuted for the murder of twenty-nine and wounding of dozens more, many of them schoolchildren, in that bombing.
You never know.
Mongoose was through airport customs and immigration before six o’clock. He was walking toward the taxi stand when his cell phone rang. It was Barber.
“Joey baby, how are you?”
“I told you to stop calling me that. Listen to me.”
Mongoose waved off a taxi and stood at the curb as Barber filled in the details of his meeting with Patrick Lloyd. The fact that Tony Mandretti had called for his son, had something to tell him from his deathbed, was of special interest.
“What are you afraid of, Joey? That Daddy is going tell his little boy about the crooked man who lives in a crooked house and runs a crooked bank?”
“No, asshole.”
“Oh, I know,” Mongoose said, his voice laden with even more sarcasm. “You’re afraid Mandretti’s going to tell his son that he didn’t kill Gerry Collins, and that our own government paid him to confess.”
“I know you believe that, but it’s simply not true.”
“Bullshit. You don’t have to know everything about Operation BAQ to understand that it couldn’t work unless Robledo was on the outside leading his investors down the road we’d paved for them.”
“You believe that. Mandretti believes it. Patrick Lloyd will believe it once he hears it from his father. I’m telling you that it is absolutely not true, but somebody planted that seed, and this is going to be a classic case of ‘perception is reality’ if I don’t crush this right now.”