The Ghost Shipment, page 23
Jay had driven with growing frustration past tourists on e-bikes, a woman walking a dog, a carpenter working a skill saw outside a garage being extended. He slowed at an intersection with a Little Library and Neighborhood Support sign, wondering if the readers realized they had an international drug trafficker for a neighbor. Jay had almost given up finding the limo when the road narrowed and he came across a high stone wall with razor wire, iron grill gate with keypad, camera, spotlight. A level of security over-the-top and out-of-place for rural New Zealand. The sign declaring Private Property, No Public Access was hardly necessary.
He’d reversed and parked under a large mahoe tree, then scrambled up the embankment to launch the drone. The large property, ringed entirely by an electrified fence, extended from Ridge Road down to the water’s edge, with stands of mature bush to the north and south. Jay recognized pohutukawa, cabbage trees, kauri, manuka. The main house was a multi-level affair set into the hillside, with a deck along the front and a sunken hot tub. There were several outbuildings, a large shipping container, tennis court, impressive orchard. When he lowered the drone to hover closer to the ground, the camera was good enough to pick up tui feeding on the juice of mandarins that had fallen to the ground – and the license plate of the limo parked beside a white Peugeot in the open garage under the house.
Jay pushed the throttle to gain altitude, flew the drone towards the water to look more closely at the place he’d identified as the most promising penetration point.
*****
The walls of the Coffee & Tea Lovers Café at Greenwoods Corner were crowded with teacups, coffee mugs, tea pots, coffee presses and machines, an aroma center, burlap bags stenciled with exotic names.
Bec had commandeered a table for six and, surrounded by yellow sticky notes, edited the footage of the Wiggs couple being picked up by the limo, dropped at the airport, finding the cocaine block inside the guidebook.
With a detailed storyboard in her mind, she knew instinctively which images and segments of video best conveyed the key messages, how to manage the transitions, and to keep the content compelling, viewers engaged.
She was trying to script a voice-over connecting Ped Garland’s twin sons to the Bali resorts, the property in Uluwatu where Jay found the lab, the limo companies in Denpasar and Auckland. The words weren’t flowing.
There had been plenty of free tables when Bec arrived, but the café was filling now with customers in puffer jackets and scarves. Rising volume from the chatter, and traffic through the open door, was becoming a distraction. When people began eyeing up the empty seats at her table and the sound system started playing I Want To Break Free, Bec took it as a cue.
She’d noticed a group of women having what looked like a business meeting through the window of another café across the road. Time to move.
*****
Jay had to backtrack half a mile along the road to a find a path down through the bush. He emerged onto a pebbly beach. The trunk of an ancient pohutukawa grew horizontally over the water. Seagulls wheeled above white-hulled boats moored in the channel. Half a dozen dinghies were stacked on their sterns against a rock wall. Jay chose the lightest, dragged it across the mud, rowed out around the headland.
He was aiming for an old man pine he’d noticed with branches hanging across the electrified fence at the north-eastern end of the property. Once ashore, he tightened the straps on his backpack, climbed the tree. The only limb reaching over the fence that would hold his weight was higher than he’d anticipated, so he cut a length of supplejack vine, tied it to the end of his rope.
He was confident he couldn’t be seen from the house, so shimmied quickly down, dropping the last eight feet to the ground.
A siren blared, followed by the baying of maddened dogs.
Jay looked around for an escape route. The vine was out of reach. The fence electrified. The dogs seconds away. Options limited. Chances of reaching the house under his own steam: zero.
There was a raised water tank with a rusted ladder about fifty feet away. He sprinted for it, reaching temporary safety just in time. As the Rottweilers salivated beneath him, he took the drone out of the backpack, set the mode to transmit, launched it to hover above the tank. He used tape to stick the settings in place and attach the controller to the side of the tank.
Then waited for his escort to arrive.
31. The red room
Ped splayed his hand over the soft leather where Patricia would normally be sitting.
He was riding solo in the back of an SUV, cruising along Constitution Avenue, the Lincoln Memorial to the right. Honest Abe. Another lawyer-turned-President. Ditto more than half of those to have held the office.
They glided through 17th Street on a green, then stopped to let a couple of pedestrians cross in the shadow of the Washington Monument. John and Jane Doe. Would they bother voting in a few hours? Or were they residents of one of the pro-Hunter neighborhoods who would get a text alert warning of a security issue at their local voting center?
Ped gazed to his left, over the expanse of lawn to the White House. It was so close. He visualized the Oval Office, Situation Room, the Red Room he’d turn back into a music space for the baby grand, as in the days of Honest Abe and Unconditional Surrender Grant. He wondered what nickname he’d be given. Hard to beat Straight Up. He’d speak to Jin about how to engineer it.
Patricia had refused to accompany him to the function, but she’d come round. First Lady would be too much to resist.
Ped was more concerned about Carl, who he now realized was gone for good. The muck slingers and Dems would be hunting him, smelling blood, but they’d never find him. Carlos Jiménez would have dumped the name Tyler, and would surface some time some place with a new face, new name, new past – just as he did when he gave witness protection the slip and showed up in the visitors’ room at Hays State six months into Garland’s stint inside. As planned.
They turned right onto Pennsylvania Ave. Up ahead was the Capitol, where Ped would deliver his State of the Union address in January.
His phone beeped. It was Rodrigo. They’d caught the New Zealander Duggan. Bullard would be stopped soon after landing at Reagan National.
The SUV had reached First Street, was passing the Supreme Court building. Further along the road Ped could see the media spotlights set up outside the club – venue for the election-eve dinner with the party hierarchy and captains of industry.
Lights flashed, questions flew the instant his foot hit the red carpet, but the candidate was guided safely through the bedlam. The Republican establishment was closing ranks around their man.
*****
One hundred dollars each had been enough to convince the four women using the meeting room of Café Kãkãriki to conclude their business and turn the space over to Bec. The soundproof room helped her regain focus, make progress, until her phone interrupted her thoughts.
Country code 46. Sweden.
In female Swenglish, with Jay pronounced Yay and three sounding like tree, the SwordPhish said he’d picked up Mike’s post about the Montoya twins and decided to dig deeper. He’d managed to hack into Garland’s public donation website, found regular transfers of large sums of money from an account he’d traced to Rodrigo Montoya in Bali.
‘They then used bypass software to move the money in small quantities into the accounts of hundreds of thousands of voters in different states – almost certainly without their knowledge – then into Garland’s campaign account.’
The SwordPhish had also found evidence of payments to three accounts in Canada he thought might be of interest. Fifty thousand dollars to Chase Morton, Garland’s old cellmate now living in Alberta; twenty thousand to the anesthesiologist at the abortion clinic in Calgary who identified Kate Hunter from her high school yearbook, eight thousand to a graphics company in Montreal for the design of the NuNu branding.
Bec wasn’t sure how much of this would, or should, make it to the final video package, but realized its value for follow-ups.
‘Can you send me any visual proof of this stuff?’
‘Will screenshots do?’
‘Sure.’
The new information, added to the deadline pressure, sent Aristotle pivoting from yellow to orange in the phrases she’d highlighted on scraps of paper purloined from the printer, sticky notes she’d plastered to the wall, in the funky plates and matching aprons of the waitresses through the glass wall dividing the meeting room from the rest of the café.
And in the shirt of a man knocking on the glass door at the same time an email arrived from Mike, who had just landed in DC. She ignored the shirt, who was tapping his watch, and opened Mike’s attachments. There was edited footage of his interview with Danilo Rojas and clips from the gunfight outside Cali Airport, as well as voiceover text summarizing the discoveries from Colombia.
The knocking on the glass became more insistent. The shirt had been joined by two others.
Bec yanked the door open.
‘Can’t you see I’m busy, you imbeciles. What the fricken hell do you want?’
‘This room lady. We’ve had it booked for a week.’
‘Well go find someplace else. I’m in the middle of something.’
Bec slammed the door in their faces, turned the lever to lock it, returned to the table.
She loaded Mike’s video clips into the appropriate places in the sequence, incorporated his text into the master script, making one or two edits. She then recorded the missing voiceover sections, thankful for the room’s soundproofing. The businessmen at the door were getting agitated, had been joined by three or four other customers.
Bec gave them a filthy look, then noticed an icon pulsing on her desktop. She’d been so consumed by the main story she’d missed notification that the drone had been activated.
She double-clicked the icon. The image screen was blank, but she could see from the progress bar along the bottom there were just under two minutes of footage. She dragged the dot back all the way left, hit the play arrow.
It took her a few moments to orient her view to the drone, hovering above the ground. Jay was perched on a ladder on the side of some sort of tank, two ferocious dogs snapping at his feet. He had his arms folded, like he was bored. A man entered the frame, pointing a rifle towards Jay. He said something Bec couldn’t pick up over the barking of the dogs, then turned, aimed the rifle up at... Bec... the camera... the drone. His arm and shoulder jerked. The screen went black.
*****
Mike walked into the arrival hall at Reagan National on high alert, scanning the crowd for potential threats, faces out of place. Every casual glance felt like surveillance, until his eyes locked on Neil Scott. Would have been hard to miss him in the black suit and bow tie standing beside a chauffeur holding a suit bag.
He looked as if he’d aged five years since their meeting back in New York, when Mike had interviewed his son’s three surfing buddies.
They shook hands.
‘Thanks for meeting me, Mr. Scott.’
‘Please, call me Neil. We haven’t got much time. You’ll need to change into these. I hope they fit.’
Mike relieved the chauffeur of the suit bag and went to the restroom. It was the first time he’d worn a tux. The guy in the mirror scrubbed up surprisingly well for someone who’d hardly slept in forty-eight hours.
Their ride was a glistening black Cadillac Escalade with all the bells and whistles. They took the George Washington Memorial, turning off the parkway to take the 395 across the Potomac. Mike was showing Mr. Scott the edited Danilo interview on his laptop when a motorcycle screamed up alongside them.
Mike swiveled just in time to see the pillion passenger yank a semi-automatic from his jacket and unleash directly at him. A staccato of bullets pummeled the window, but didn’t break the glass. Before Mike knew what was happening, tires were screeching as the driver swerved across the path of the motorcyclist. There was a thump. Mike looked back to see the bike smashing into the side of the bridge, the rider and pillion cartwheeling over the railing.
‘Nice driving Don. You OK, Mike?’
‘What the... how did...?’
‘Bullet-resistant glass. You kind of need the protection in my line of work.’
‘Holy fuck. Seriously?’
Mike’s heart was racing as they left the bridge and swung right, between the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and a sign saying Report Disabled Vehicles. He was about to make a wisecrack, when he heard another motorcycle revving from behind.
He picked up his phone just in time to film the second volley of gunfire. The result was the same, except this time the bike ploughed through road cones, depositing the riders in a pile of gravel.
The driver looked at his passengers through the rearview mirror.
‘Do we continue to the club, sir?’
Mr. Scott turned to Mike.
‘Your call Mr. Bullard.’
Mike exhaled.
‘My vote’s yes. Let’s confront this sucker.’
*****
The drone footage of Jay being captured – or worse – had catapulted Bec to the fringes of red. The appearance of Detective Robinson on the other side of the glass carried her over the precipice.
The video package was almost complete, but Aristotle was sneering at her feeble efforts like a red editor’s pencil slashing through the candy apple lightshades, the burgundy doors of the stationery cupboard, the scarlet headscarf of the manager approaching the door with a set of keys.
Bec detonated, sending the chair crashing into the wall. She yanked open the stationery cupboard, her eyes seizing on a container of glue. She grabbed it, dashed for the door, arriving just before Robinson and the manager. She snapped off the lid and used both hands to squeeze the clear liquid all over the lock mechanism.
She marched back to the table, turning her back on the throng behind the glass, which had had doubled in size and anger.
Her phone sounded. Country code 64. She hit Accept.
‘I’m not sure I can take any more at the moment.’
‘Am I speaking to Rebecca Corelli?’
It couldn’t be the SwordPhish. There was a hint of Latin America in the voice.
‘Yes. What do you want? I’m kind of busy at...’
‘My name is Rodrigo Montoya.’
Bec was too stunned to speak.
‘I have a message from your boyfriend. Publish one word of what you have, you will never see him again.’
The call ended.
Her phone chimed.
A message this time, with photo attached.
A macabre throwback to the days of the ISIS beheadings.
The image showed Jay kneeling on a concrete floor, gagged, hands behind his back. Standing over him was a man in a black balaclava holding a large machete.
The only difference was the logo on the wall behind Jay’s head. The black and white Arabic scrawl of the Islamic State had been replaced by the black and yellow circle of the Kaluraha gang.
*****
Jay heard the siren just before Montoya’s brother entered the cellar.
‘Los tombos?’
The brothers had been talking mostly in English. Every now and then, Spanish words slipped into their conversations. Jay figured tombos was a Colombian phrase for police.
Not that Mauricio appeared concerned.
‘Just the one patrol car.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Webcam. Above the Little Library.’
‘Why now? How did they...?’
‘The gunshot. You shouldn’t have taken down that drone Rodrigo. People don’t fire guns around here. One of the neighbors must have reported the shot.’
A bell sounded.
‘That’ll be the cops at the gate.’
‘What’s the plan?’
‘Relax. I’ll let them in. Tell them I was shooting a possum. The animals are public enemy number one with all the greenies. I’ve got a license for the rifle. It was on private property. Won’t be a problem.’
‘What if they search the place?’
Mauricio tilted his head toward Jay. ‘Take him through to the vault, just in case.’
Jay was pulled to his feet, frog-marched up the stairs into the kitchen. Latin jazz music he’d been hearing dimly from the cellar spilled from a speaker beside the range hood. Rodrigo slid open the door to a walk-in pantry, reached under a shelf to push a button behind the toaster. The back wall of the pantry, stocked with cans of mango and guava and packets of achiote seeds, swung silently inwards.
Once through, Rodrigo pushed another button. The wall swung back into place.
They were in a white-tiled air-conditioned room Jay figured must be set into the hillside. Two walls were lined with glass-fronted commercial refrigerators, their shelves stacked with sealed bags of cocaine. The back wall resembled the lab in Uluwatu. A measuring scale, powder trays, rolls of latex, mixing blade, cartons of gloves and face masks. Shelves loaded with Bali guidebooks. And a wall-mounted screen, split to show live video from other rooms in the house, the gate, front door.
Mauricio was showing the two uniformed cops through the living room like a real estate agent.
There was no camera in the vault. Jay realized the jazz music had disappeared. The walls must be sound-proofed. Ideal place for an execution.
His eyes settled on the red-handled blade on one of the powder trays. He’d sensed a subtle change in Rodrigo’s demeanor since the cops showed up. The bravado he’d flaunted after finding Jay up the water tank had slackened, ever so slightly.
‘On your knees, over there with your back to the table.’
Jay guessed the cord binding his hands was going to be secured to the table leg, which was bolted to the floor. His window of opportunity was closing.
As he bent to kneel, the two cops appeared on the screen showing the front door. Mauricio had obviously convinced them they’d wasted their time. Rodrigo exhaled audibly. His grip on Jay’s arm relaxed a fraction.
Jay shifted his weight to his right foot and mushroomed up from the crouch, jerking his shoulder into Rodrigo’s chin, then spun to this right and drove his elbow into the arm holding the gun. It flew across the room, smashing through the door of one of the refrigerators.
