Black Horizon (27 page)

“Remember what I told you,” said Cassie. “It has to be shown that it was an act of terrorism if Barton-Hammill is going to be protected from civil lawsuits.”

“Senator Orville seems to be pushing toward environmental terrorism. Is that an ‘act of terrorism’ under the SAFETY Act?”

“Absolutely. Terrorism is not limited to religious radicals, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“So if Barton-Hammill’s technology was compromised by environmental terrorists, they would be shielded from liability to the same extent as they would if the terrorists were al-Qaeda or the Taliban, or whoever.”

“That’s exactly right.”

“So environmental terrorism is a twofer,” said Jack. “The senator discredits ‘left-wing radicals’ who oppose offshore drilling,
and
he protects Barton-Hammill, his biggest campaign donor, from any lawsuits.”

“Only if we let him get away with it.”

Theo rushed into the room, huffing and puffing. It looked as though he’d run all the way back from Rick’s Café, and the expression on his face said:
“Urgent!”

“Dude, why don’t you answer your phone?”

Jack put Cassie on hold. “Sorry. I didn’t know it was important.”

“I just got a call,” he said, catching his breath. “We definitely need to go back to Cuba.”

“Theo, I told you—”

“No, listen to me!” he said, his expression deadly serious. “The call. It was Josefina.”

Chapter 42

N
ew York. The Big Apple could not have been more different from Big Palm Island, but Andie would have taken it as a solid second choice for her honeymoon. If Jack were there.

“Canal Street, please,” she told the taxi driver.

The rocky phone conversation with Jack had left a sickening feeling inside her, and it had nothing to do with the pregnancy—or maybe it had everything to do with it. These clashes were inevitable. An undercover FBI agent married to the son of a former governor—a lawyer who’d defended the worst of the worst on death row, didn’t trust the government, and couldn’t seem to keep his cases out of the media. Some might thrive on the conflict and say, “It must be karma,” but Andie didn’t. Jack didn’t either. She saw no solution. Maybe Jack was banking on the erroneous assumption on his part that Andie would pop out a baby, chuck her career, and become a stay-at-home mom. Sort of the special appendix that appeared only in the man’s version of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

Not gonna happen.

“Where on Canal Street, lady?”

“Anywhere between Mercer and Broadway is fine.”

The driver smiled in the rearview mirror. “Gonna buy a new handbag, I bet. Gucci? Louis Vuitton?”

“Maybe,” said Andie.

The driver seemed determined to strike up a conversation. “Just this morning I picked up a woman from California who got herself a Chanel bag for twenty bucks. So she bought another one for her sister. Finally she buys two more for her mother and her girlfriend, and the guy throws in a Hermès scarf for nothing. Incredible deal.”

“Yes, it is,” said Andie.
Unless you’re Chanel, Hermès, or Louis Vuitton.

Andie had seen the statistics as part of her undercover training. Counterfeit goods accounted for 7 percent of total world trade. Canal Street was like a New York outlet for the uncontested leader in knockoffs, China, which racked up $24 billion in sales annually. In a good year, Andie’s counterparts over in Customs seized maybe $250 million in counterfeit goods. Originally, Andie had been led to believe that the goal of the operation was to slow down the counterfeiting pipeline. As it turned out, Operation Black Horizon had only one very specific connection to fake merchandise.

His name was Dawut Noori.

“Here you are, lady,” the driver said as they pulled up to the curb. “Eleven-fifty.”

Andie dug the cash from her purse—a fake Prada, which was part of an ensemble that included Moss Lipow sunglasses and a classic Salvatore Ferragamo trench with three-quarter sleeves, all knockoffs. Tethering her to reality, a bottle of prenatal vitamins was right beside her wallet. The mere thought of folic acid used to worsen her morning sickness. Day three with no nausea, and she was counting her blessings.

She thanked the cabbie and got out on Canal Street. Literally, on the street; the sidewalk was too congested. Vendor after vendor displayed counterfeit merchandise on blankets, and hovering tourists were all too eager to buy it.

“Handbags,” a man said coolly.

“Rolex, Cartier,” said another.

“Heat!” someone shouted. In an instant, the handbags and watches were swallowed up by the blankets. A couple of beat cops from the Fifth Precinct passed, and the peddlers stood by their bundles of concealed merchandise, no sweat. It was just another round of cat and mouse in the NYPD Canal Street initiative, the mice fully aware that no one got busted for mere possession of such small quantities, and that 85 percent of vendors stupid enough to be caught in the act of selling got off on a misdemeanor anyway.

Andie kept walking. Sidewalk hustlers were small players, and she was after bigger fish. On the other side of Broadway, where the lines blurred between Chinatown and Little Italy, she found an electronics store called N.Y.C. Gadets. Legend had it that it was supposed to be “N.Y.C. Gadgets,” but the sign maker had misspelled it, and the name stuck.

To call the storefront window a “display” would have done violence to the term. It was little more than a repository for overflowing inventory, cameras stacked on top of computers on top of cell phones. The clutter continued inside the store, which was packed with electronics, every brand and product imaginable. Shelves were crammed, and narrow aisles were made even narrower by countless boxes of flat-screen televisions lined up on the floor, one after the other. Six months hence, it would have been impossible for a much more pregnant Andie to turn sideways anywhere in the store.

The man behind the counter was on the telephone, yelling so loudly that Andie wondered if he actually needed a phone. He spoke entirely in Chinese, except for the occasional English language reference to “N.Y.C. Gadets,” which made the nonsensical name even more absurd. Andie browsed in the camera section until his call ended. She approached and handed him a business card that bore her undercover name.

“I have a six o’clock appointment with Long Wu,” she said.

“I get him,” he said in a heavy Chinese accent. “One minute. Maybe two. Call it one and one half.”
Wuh ahn wuh hoff.
He laughed at his own joke and walked away, taking Andie’s card with him.

Andie waited at the counter. A minute later, two young women emerged from the back room with their newly acquired knockoffs wrapped in green plastic garbage bags. They at least had to get out of the store before bragging to the world about trademark infringement. The funny man who liked fractions signaled to her from the rear of the store.

“Come, come,” he said.

Andie went, stepping carefully around the clutter of merchandise on the floor, the aisle getting ever narrower toward the back. The man pulled away the curtain and directed her inside. It was the same passageway that the previous buyers had used, but ingress and egress were no longer just a matter of passing through a curtain. Andie wasn’t posing as the occasional buyer. She was pretending to purchase in bulk—a mass shipment direct from Guangdong. Precautions were necessary for such transactions. The funny man pulled a secure metal door shut, and Andie heard it lock from the outside.

It was enough to make even a seasoned undercover agent a teeny bit nervous.

The backroom was like a warehouse. The ceiling had been removed, along with the floor above it, so that what had once been a cramped storage area with a separate apartment above was now a single two-story room. Electronics and appliances were nowhere to be found, which explained the overflow of legitimate merchandise—“gadets”—in the storefront window. Floor-to-ceiling pallets were laden with every conceivable form of fake designer clothing, accessories, and other merchandise. It almost made Andie wish that her assignment had something to do with knockoffs.

Stay focused.

A side door opened. An old man entered and locked the door behind him. A younger and much bigger man—more brawn than Theo—was at his side. A trained bodyguard was part of a dealer’s “necessary precautions” in bulk transactions.

The old man and his bodyguard walked slowly toward Andie, their footfalls barely making a sound on the concrete floor, then stopped. The old man bowed. The bodyguard didn’t acknowledge her in any way. Andie, nonetheless, returned the old man’s greeting.

“My apologies for Dawut Noori,” the dealer said.

Dawut Noori.
The bodyguard’s face, more Central Asian than Chinese, had matched that in the photograph in the FBI dossier. Now Andie had a name to go with it. She was standing three feet away from the man who was the central target of Operation Black Horizon.

“Does he speak English?” asked Andie, even though the intelligence report had already told her that he did.

“Yes, yes. But don’t take rudeness personal. He very, very angry young man.”

“It’s okay,” said Andie.

“He no bow, he no smile, he no talk to nobody.”

“It’s really okay,” said Andie, casting a quick glance in Noori’s direction.

He’ll talk. The angry young man will definitely talk to me.

Chapter 43

J
ack called Agent Linton and told him that Theo had spoken to Josefina.

“I want to take Mr. Knight’s statement,” said Linton.

“I’ll meet you at the satellite office at seven o’clock,” said Jack. “And bring an assistant U.S. attorney with you—someone who has the wisdom to appreciate the level of cooperation Theo and I have demonstrated and the authority to drop all charges for the alleged violation of the trade embargo. See ya.”

Jack hung up before Linton could cry foul. Jack didn’t enjoy playing games, but it was the FBI that had made their relationship all about self-interest and negotiation.

“Let’s go,” he told Theo.

The Key West satellite for the FBI’s Miami Division was on Simonton Street, just a short walk from Jack’s B&B. Jack and Theo arrived a few minutes early. Linton did not keep them waiting. He escorted them back to a conference room. Jack immediately recognized the government lawyer waiting at the table. Sylvia Gonzalez was not an AUSA. She was from the Justice Department’s National Security Division in Washington. Some years earlier, Jack had gone head-to-head with her while representing one of the detainees at Guantánamo Naval Base. There was history between them. Ugly history.

“So we meet again,” said Jack.

“I promised that we would,” said Gonzalez.

Jack’s Gitmo case was both unusual and tragic. His client, a nineteen-year-old American of Somali descent, stood accused of murdering a teenage girl in Miami. His defense was his alibi: Jack’s client couldn’t possibly have killed the girl because, at the time of the murder, he was en route to Guantánamo, held by the CIA at an undisclosed “black site,” and the subject of “heightened interrogation” for suspected terrorist activities. There was just one problem: the U.S. government refused to acknowledge the very existence of the alleged “black site.” It had been Gonzalez’s job to make sure the CIA kept its secrets, even if it meant depriving Jack’s client of an alibi in a capital case.

Round One with Gonzalez had been Jack’s introduction to courtroom warfare over matters of “national security.”

“What brings you to Key West?” asked Jack.

“I just got here,” she said. “I’m presenting the Justice Department’s argument to stay your lawsuit until the conclusion of the FBI investigation into sabotage on the Scarborough 8.”

“That’s the national-security issue I explained to you,” said Linton.

“Which is a reach,” said Jack, “especially in front of a state court judge in Key West, Florida.”

“That’s for Judge Carlyle to decide,” said Gonzalez.

“When?” asked Jack.

“As soon as we can schedule a hearing. You’ll be the first to know. For now, let’s talk about Josefina Fuentes. What is Mr. Knight proffering?”

“The number she called from and everything she told him, which may help you identify the man who attacked my client, put Josefina’s blood on the mirror, kidnapped me, and claims to know who sabotaged the Scarborough 8.”

“You should be eager to share that information with law enforcement.”

“Unfortunately, Theo can’t share any of it without at least a tacit admission that he traveled to Cuba in violation of the embargo. So we need immunity.”

“I’ll give it to him,” said Gonzalez. “But not you.”

Theo jumped in. “Then no deal.”

“We’ll take it,” said Jack.

“No way, Jack.”

Jack ignored him and went to his iPhone. “Sylvia, I’m e-mailing you a draft immunity letter right now. It’s pretty standard. Take a minute, review it, and send a reply e-mail confirming our deal. Theo and I will be right back.”

Jack pulled Theo away from the table and took him into the hallway. Theo spoke before Jack could say a word.

“They want to prosecute both of us,” said Theo. “I’m not doing a deal that doesn’t include you.”

“Don’t worry about me. You’re a slam-dunk conviction under the embargo, since you’re not of Cuban descent. I am. To convict me of a crime they have to prove I didn’t visit relatives. What are they going to do? Track down the whole Cuban side of my family and interview them? They have no case against me. Take the deal and tell them what Josefina said.”

Theo considered it, then acquiesced. “All right, if you say so.”

“I say so.”

Jack’s phone chimed with an e-mail alert. Gonzalez confirmed their immunity deal for Theo. Jack and Theo went back into the room and returned to the table. Gonzalez began the questioning with some preliminaries. Theo gave her all the details, including the incoming number. Linton made a quick call to the tech division to get them on it while Gonzalez continued the interview.