Chapter Forty-seven
Nadeem Chadi looked like she was about to keel over. She grabbed the door jamb and leaned against it, staring at Alexander Landry's credentials.
“What happened to my husband? He's been in an accident?”
“No, Mrs. Chadi. Nothing like that. We just want to know where he is.”
“He's in trouble?” she asked, pulling herself off the jamb, a stern look crossing her face. She smoothed her sari and said, “I told him he was probably doing something illegal. Nobody pays a taxi driver five hundred dollars a day to chauffer him around. People who want a car for the entire day rent one. But no, he insists that this is just a nice man with lots of money.”
“So he's taken a few days off to drive one person around Rochester. At five hundred a day?”
Nadeem Chadi bit the end of her tongue. “Did I say five hundred? Maybe that was high.”
“Mrs. Chadi, we're not from the IRS, and we don't care if your husband is pocketing some cash on the side. But if you don't cooperate, I can have the IRS here in under an hour. Now, where is your husband?”
“He said something about picking up his fare in Henrietta. They were going somewhere after dark. I don't know where.”
“Does he carry a cell phone?” Alexander asked.
“Usually. But it needed repairs, and when he got this job he decided he wouldn't need the phone for a day or two, and took it in to get fixed.”
“Well, he'll be on dispatch,” Cathy said, turning away and starting down the steps toward their rental car. “We can have the cab company call him and get his location.”
“That won't work,” Bulbinder's wife said, stopping both Alexander and Cathy in their tracks. “If he's not working he turns off the radio. The dispatch calls bother him.”
“All right,” Alexander said with resignation. “Thanks for your time.”
“One more thing,” Cathy said. “When do you expect him to get home?”
Mrs. Chadi shrugged. “I don't know. Tomorrow morning sometime.”
The two agents left the tiny bungalow and trudged back to their car. They drove to the local police station and asked the sergeant on duty to put out an APB for the taxi. They recited the plate and taxi numbers that the dispatcher had given them, thanked the officer for his cooperation and left after jotting down both their cell phone numbers. It was just a matter of time before one of the police cruisers spotted the cab and called it in.
“What now?” Alexander asked.
“We can canvass the motels and hotels in Henrietta,” Cathy said. “And when we get the call we'll decide what to do with Eugene Escobar.”
As they exited the restaurant, both Bill and Eugene noticed the police at the same time. Two officers were scrutinizing the cab, which was parked in the stall next to the handicapped parking, and they were jotting down the license plate number. Neither cop glanced up, and Eugene pulled the cab driver back into the restaurant.
“Am I in some sort of trouble?” Bill asked.
“No, but I might be. I'd better get out of here. Give me a couple of minutes and then go to your car. You've done nothing wrong.” Eugene counted out five hundred dollars and handed it across. To his surprise, the man didn't take it.
“I haven't earned the money,” he said. “But I can, if you want me to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I've got a brother who lives a couple of blocks from here. We could borrow one of his cars for the day.”
“You're sure?” Eugene asked. “You don't mind?”
“No, it's okay. Follow me. It's not far.” They left the diner through a side door and walked down the street at a brisk pace.
An hour later they were driving a four-door, dark blue Saturn with six thousand miles on the odometer. Eugene suggested they get out of Rochester, especially Henrietta, as quickly as possible. If the cops knew about the cab, they knew about the room at the Super 8. Eugene didn't care. The only items left in the room were his toiletries and a change of clothes, and he could pick up replacement items easily enough. He still had some cash left, although it was dwindling quickly.
He sat next to Bill as they drove toward FLCC. The EPIC team was in Rochesterâone or two of them, anywayâas he had known they would be. The cops weren't singling out parked taxi cabs and scrutinizing them without a reason. And that reason would be a request from the DEA or the CIA. Either organization had plenty of clout and would have the local cops jumping when they suggested a height. It was still midafternoon, and hours to go before meeting with Andrew and Ben. But without the information from the DMV database to cross-correlate against the hotel records, none of the names meant anything. What he needed was for one name to appear on both the hotel guest list and on the registration for a new Renault.
Eugene pulled out the list Ben had given him last night, and scanned it again for the eighth time. Nothing. Not one of the names was familiar, and there were no easy-to-spot aliases. He'd read that most people chose an alias with the same initials as his or her real name. But there wasn't even one guest with the initials PE.
Bill steered into Naples, a hamlet at the southernmost tip of Canandaigua Lake, and parked the car. They walked the streets, looking through the shops, killing time. It seemed so strange to Eugene that with so little time left to track down Pablo, he was walking aimlessly down the main street of a tiny community, looking through crafts stores. One of them, alive with replicas of brewery paraphernalia from the days when over fifty breweries operated out of Syracuse, had a table in the rear with a computer connected to the Internet. Eugene bought a coffee and thirty minutes on the machine. He accessed the DEA homepage, at
www.dea.gov
, and scrolled down to the Wall of Honor. One click took him into the list of DEA agents and staff killed accidentally or in the line of duty. He found the file on Fernando Garcia, and read the script.
Garcia was stationed in Bogotá in February of 1993, assigned to the logistics sector, a specialist in aviation routes in and out of Colombia. In late February, Agent Garcia was transferred to MedellÃn, taken off the desk and put to work in the field. He scouted airfields and labs by helicopter with technical assistance from Centra Spike. Few details were given of his exact function while in the field, and the communiqué ended by stating that Agent Garcia had been shot while conducting a raid on a suspected laboratory. The article failed to mention which drug lord owned the lab or who Garcia was working with when he died. Eugene printed the page, folded it and stuck it in his back pocket. It was food for thought. He signed off the computer, and checked his time to ensure he hadn't gone over his half hour.
As he left the shop, he realized that he had only one avenue of attack on the go, and that if the foray into the DMV database didn't yield something conclusive tonight, he was sunk. As the afternoon dragged on and evening arrived, his mood grew more somber. After supper, he picked up some information that gave him a shred of hope. He purchased a pie for the boys to eat, when the woman manning the till asked them where they were from.
“Venezuela,” Eugene said, not seeing any reason to be dishonest. “It's lovely there in the spring, just as it is here,” he added.
“This is nothing,” she responded cheerfully. “You should see it in the summer. Absolutely stunning. In fact, Canandaigua is Iroquois for “the Chosen Place.”
Eugene wondered if the name had influenced Pablo's decision to live there.
And with that small shot of encouragement came hope.
Chapter Forty-eight
“He's closing in on you,” the voice said. “And he's showing no sign of slowing down.”
Pablo didn't respond for a few seconds, then asked, “Where is Eugene now?”
“Last we heard from him he was in Henrietta, a suburb of Rochester, earlier today. But we haven't managed to get our hands on him. The police found the cab, abandoned, but no driver. Eugene's no fool.”
“No, Eugene is no fool. Has he managed to uncover your identity yet?”
“No. I don't think so. And I'm not worried. He's concentrating on finding you, not me.”
“He may surprise you,” Pablo said.
“Any surprise like that will result in him dying very quickly,” the voice had turned icy.
“I'm beginning to prefer that my cousin live through this. But if the situation gets out of hand, either you or I may have to kill him.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I'm ready to move if I have to. Javier's deadline is approaching quickly, and if he follows through with his threat and kills Julie and Shiara, Eugene will be heading straight to El Salvador to kill Rastano. So I may not have to do anything. It's all a matter of timing now.”
“You think Javier Rastano will kill the women?”
“I know he will. If Eugene can't uncover me in the next forty hours or so, his family is going to be a lot smaller.”
“All right. I've got to go. Just be warned, he's getting close.”
“I can take care of myself,” Pablo said viciously, and hung up the phone.
He appreciated being kept abreast of the situation, but he didn't need to be told the same thing more than once. The Crown Royal bottle on the bar was almost empty, and he poured the final couple of ounces in a glass and added ice. He sipped the drink, thinking about Eugene. He hardly knew him. The man had avoided him, and never asked for anything. Unlike many of his other relatives. He had never met Julie or Eugene's daughter, but he suspected they were good people. Sometimes good people died. It was a fact of life.
He shook his head at Eugene's tenacity. He had progressed much further in the hunt than anyone had expected, had succeeded where law agencies, armed with the latest technology and specially trained agents, had failed. Not that anyone had been seriously hunting him since December of 1993, but in the two years prior to his apparent death even Centra Spike couldn't catch him. And that was partially thanks to the informant he had just spoken with. What a relationship. Fourteen years and counting. It had been exceptionally useful then, and was proving equally valuable now. And this allegiance to him was based on one small favor. Amazing.
He punched the intercom, and a few moments later Miguel entered the room. He had aged since the days when he worked as one of the guards at Nápoles, but his allegiance was without question, just as it had been the day he took Eugene into the jungle on the dirt bikes. Miguel reached the desk, and waited.
“I want you to run into town and get a few things. If we have to leave I want at least a couple of bottles of Crown Royal.” He pointed to the empty bottle. “And that was the last one.” Pablo handed Miguel a handwritten list. “Get the stuff on this list and pack it in the Lincoln.”
Miguel checked his watch. “Too late to go today. The shops will be closed. I'll have to go tomorrow.”
“Not a problem.”
Miguel pocketed the list, and asked, “Anything else?”
“Back up the computers tonight. Get all the current bank balances and make sure you have all the account numbers and transit codes. I don't want to be scrambling if we have to leave quickly.”
Miguel nodded and left. Pablo glanced at the empty whiskey bottle, and wished it were full. Then he shook his head at the futility of wishing for things. It was always a waste of time. Reality always told another story. He wondered briefly if Eugene was wishing for things right now; his wife back in his arms, his daughter safely at his side.
“Just wishes, Eugene, that's all they are,” he said quietly, to no one.
Chapter Forty-nine
The Learjet touched down in Rochester at just before midnight Thursday. Cathy Maxwell and Alexander Landry were on the tarmac to meet Crandle and the rest of the team. They rode together in a rented Infiniti Q45 SUV, their scant luggage thrown in through the back hatch.
“What have you got?” Crandle asked, as Landry steered the vehicle off the access road and onto the expressway.
“Nothing new. We've asked the local cops to watch the cab driver's house in case he comes home. But his wife says he's gone until tomorrow morning, at the earliest.”
“But you've got the cab,” Crandle said. “They don't have wheels.”
“Maybe they jacked a car.” Landry entered the fast lane and accelerated to eighty miles an hour.
“Maybe this cab driver has relatives or friends with a car,” Crandle said. “Have you checked out the people he knows who live near where the cab was found?”
“No,”
“Do it,” Crandle snapped. “They had to get their hands on another vehicle somewhere. I want to know what they're driving.”
“Okay. We'll get on it right away.”
Crandle stared out the window at the passing scenery. Gas stations with neon signs that cut through the blackness popped up at irregular intervals along the road. An occasional late-night restaurant awash in light flashed by. But most of the buildings were dark and shuttered for the night. Rochester, New York. In a million years, who would have dreamed that Pablo Escobar would live in such a cold climate. Perhaps that was just another of the drug lord's crafty moves that always kept him several steps ahead of his pursuers.
“Tomorrow is Friday,” Crandle said, breaking the silence. “Our last full day to find Eugene and Pablo. After that, the wife and kid die, and everything changes. One day, people. That's it. Let's be at our best tomorrow.”
Chapter Fifty
The Saturn glided into Sarah Quigley's driveway at six minutes before two. The adjacent properties were dark, and no dogs barked as the four men piled out of the car and made their way to the house. Andrew had the key in his hand and had opened the door by the time Eugene and Bill reached it. They entered and made their way to the rear of the house to the computer. Ben fired up the machine. The other three sat, and waited.
“Okay,” Ben said, inserting a CD and watching as the hacking program loaded onto the hard drive. “You want me to find all the Renaults registered between November fifteenth and December fifteenth last year. Right?”
“Right,” Eugene said, shoulder-surfing.
Numbers were scrolling down the screen and Ben explained. “My program is breaking down the secondary firewall. It shouldn't take too long.”
“Excellent,” Eugene said.
A few minutes passed, and then the screen flashed and the logo for the New York State DMV appeared. “I'm in,” Ben said, keying in the request for Renaults registered inside the time frame Eugene had given him. He got nine hits on the request.
“Print them, please,” Eugene said anxiously. He watched as the paper rolled out of the LaserJet, then picked it up and glanced down the list. He didn't immediately recognize any of the names. He took the list from the hotel registry and compared it to the DMV list. Checking the two against each other took almost a half hour, and when he was done he sat back with a discouraged look on his face. “No matches.”
No one spoke for a minute. Finally Eugene said, “Ben, could you try to get into one more database?”
“Depends. Which one?” “DEA.”
Ben grinned. “You've got to be shitting me. The Drug Enforcement Agency?”
“That's the one.”
“That's a far cry from the DMV, Eugene,” he said. “Those guys play hardball.”
“Trust me, I know how they operate. I need one file. Just one.”
Ben was uncertain. “I don't know, Eugene. I've got a cloaking program with me, but their firewalls and software are going to be state-of-the-art. We could get pinged.”
“What?”
“Pinged. They could trace our hack back to this system.”
“That's a chance I'm willing to take. And I'll put my money where my mouth is. Five thousand dollars. I'll have to get the money from the bank tomorrow, but my word is good.”
Ben perked up. “Five thousand dollars.” He glanced at Andrew and Bill. “How would we split it?”
“Five hundred each for your dad and me, the other four thousand in your pocket?” Andrew offered, and Bill nodded.
“Done,” Ben said. “What file do you need?”
“I want to find out what really happened to an agent named Fernando Garcia. It's in the DEA database somewhere.”
“If it's there, I'll find it,” Ben said. “This may take a while, gentlemen. Please, make yourselves at home.”
Eugene wandered around the house. After about fifteen minutes, a thought struck him and he searched out the master bedroom. A single lady in a large house on a dark cul-de-sac may keep a gun close to where she sleeps. He tried the night tables, under her pillow, the closet, the bureau drawers and her en suite bath. Nothing. He stood in the darkness, staring at the bed. It was a four-poster, high off the floor, with a thick mattress and box spring. He lifted the mattress and slid his arm between it and the box spring. His hand felt cold metal, and he pulled out a Glock pistol. Good old Sarah Quigley. He checked the breach, which was empty, and the clip, which was full. He made sure the safety was on, then tucked the gun in his pants, against the small of his back. He returned to the computer room to find Ben navigating his way through DEA personnel records.
“I've found two files on Fernando Garcia,” he said, handing Eugene a couple of printed pages, “but I don't think I've got what you want yet.”
Eugene read the material and shook his head. “No. There's more in the system somewhere. These are his personnel file and the press release on his death.”
“I've got another hit,” Ben said, “but I can't find the file. It's hidden, way back in the computer's hard drive. Someone went to a lot of effort to protect this file.”
“Can you get it?” Eugene asked.
Ben gave him an admonishing glance. “Of course I can get it. It takes time and patience to cut through all the layers of security. Time and patience.”
“Great,” Eugene said. “The two things I don't have.”
Ben glanced at him through his hair. “I'm doing the best I can, Eugene. This is the DEA, not the Girl Scouts. And whoever buried this file knew what they were doing.”
Eugene walked to the living room and sat in the darkness, feeling time slip by. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into an hour. He fought sleep, thinking of his wife and daughter, imagining them safe at home in Playa El Tirano. Nice thoughts, but not reality.
Eugene heard Ben calling his name and hurried to the computer room. Ben had a file up on the screen and was reading the text. “It's a field report from May 1993, of a raid on some cocaine laboratory. That's when this Fernando Garcia fellow was killed.” He hit the print button, and the LaserJet spit out two pages. Eugene read the hard copy twice and sat on a chair beside Ben. The content was unbelievable. Intelligence reports prior to the raid had indicated Mario Rastano was the intended target, and that he would be at the lab. But the actual report, filed by the second agent, who was only identified by a code word, told a different story. Rastano was nowhere to be seen, he reported, but there was significant resistance and during the melée Fernando Garcia was fatally wounded. He died at the scene.
“Does this read like I think it does?” he asked the college student.
Ben nodded. “The autopsy showed that it was the second agent's gun that fired the bullet that killed Garcia. It doesn't come right out and say for sure it was friendly fire, but the report sure implies it.”
“That's what I'm getting out of it,” Eugene agreed. “No wonder someone wanted this buried.” He was pensive for a minute, then added, “Why didn't they just erase the file?”
Ben shook his head. “They couldn't. The file is permanently protected with an anti-erase code in its header. It's impossible to erase it, but hidden well enough, it's almost as good.”
“Almost,” Eugene said. “But you found it.”
“I am good,” Ben smiled as he said it. “Do you know the
narco
they mention in the file, this Rastano guy?”
Eugene's face hardened. “Oh, yeah, I know the guy. Mario Rastano. His son is holding my wife and daughter in El Salvador. This is all starting to add up.”
“But they don't mention the other agent by name, just a code word.
Dragonfly.
”
Eugene was trying to piece things together. Whoever went into that lab with Fernando Garcia was already on Mario Rastano's payroll. The advance reports were probably correct; Rastano was most likely at the lab when the raid went down. The two agents busted in, and while Garcia was in the process of arresting Rastano, the second agent shot him. Rastano escaped, but had the dirt on the agent. But there was no name associated, just the code word
Dragonfly.
He needed that name.
“Ben, scan the DEA database and see what you find under Dragonfly. I need to know who it is.”
The student bent over the keyboard and keyed furiously. Occasionally, he would stop and load another of his hacking or cloaking programs, designed to open doors while keeping the intruder invisible to the DEA security programs. At every turn, he carefully noted the path he was weaving through the database so they could find their way back, if necessary. It took over an hour before he got a hit.
“Eugene,” he said excitedly. “I've got something.”
Eugene stared at the screen over Ben's shoulder.
“Give me one second, I just need to open the file.” He keyed in a couple more commands, and then a personnel file appeared for a split second. It vanished, and the screen went blank. “Oh, shit,” Ben said, his voice scared. “Oh, Christ. We've got problems.”
“What?” Eugene asked, as Bill and Andrew spilled in from the living room. “What's wrong?”
“We've been traced. They've got us. That file had some sort of a protection program written inside it, if the person accessing it didn't use a password. We never entered the password. And I'll guarantee it traced us and fed our location back to the DEA command center. They know we're here. It's just a matter of time before someone's at the front door.”
“Shut it down,” Eugene said. “Wipe your fingerprints off the keyboard, the monitor and the door handles. Then let's get the hell out of here.”
“I touched lots of stuff in here,” Andrew said, panicked.
Ben nodded. “Me too.” He had the presence of mind to note the final path to the personnel file on a slip of paper, and hand the paper to Eugene.
“Doesn't matter. The team that will respond to this is going to be small. One of them won't want anyone else to know what's going on. Trust me. Wipe your prints off the obvious stuff, and let's go. We drive the speed limit and don't panic and we're okay.” Three pairs of eyes stared at him in the darkness. “Trust me, guys. There will never be a report filed on this.”
They cleaned up, locked the house and piled into the Saturn. The street was deserted, and they didn't pass a car on the main road leading back to FLCC. Everyone was far more relaxed when they finally pulled up in front of the dorm.
“Not a word,” Eugene said. “Not a word to anyone.” He looked at Ben and Andrew. “I owe you that money, Ben, and I'll get it to you. Trust me. The only way I won't be back is if I don't live through this.”
“You're involved in some serious shit, Eugene,” Andrew said. He stuck out his hand. “Good luck.”
“I hope you make it, man,” Ben said, also shaking Eugene's hand. “And I'm not just saying that because you owe me money.”
Eugene laughed. It felt good. “Thanks,” he said.
Bill pulled the car away from the curb, and drove slowly down the twisting road. “Where to?” he asked.
Eugene glanced at his watch. Four-ten in the morning. “Just find a parking lot with a few cars, Bill. We'll catch a few Z's in the car, if that's okay with you.”
“Fine with me,” Bill said. “I hope you got something useful out of that, because it was kind of scary having to run out of the house like that.”
“Yeah,” Eugene said. “Yeah, Bill, I got something very useful from our night out. Very useful indeed.” The personnel file for the agent codenamed Dragonfly had only been on the screen for a split second, but it was long enough for Eugene to recognize the face. A face he had gotten to know very well over the past few days.
He had failed to find a link to Pablo, but he now knew who the informant was.