54
Philip Palumbo followed
a specific routine upon returning to the United States of America after a “hunting” trip abroad. Leaving the airport, he drove to his gym in Alexandria, Virginia. For two hours, he would ride a stationary bike, lift weights, and swim. Finally, when he’d sweated all the crappy food and dirt and noxious air out of his system, he would repair to the steam room where he’d get rid of the corruption. The lingering guilt that grew like a tumor in the dark of a man’s soul. He called it “going to confession.” Only then would he drive home and greet his wife and three children.
Today, however, he forgot all about purging his sins and pointed his car toward Langley, where he quickly found his way to the Central Intelligence Agency’s archives. Once there, he accessed a digitized file from the Latin America section detailing the company’s activities in El Salvador during the 1980s.
Inside it, he found a mission statement discussing the need to build democracy in the region as a bulwark against the communist Sandinista regime that had taken root in neighboring Nicaragua and was threatening the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador. Farther along, he found a mention of an Operation Mourning Dove, run out of the embassy in San Salvador beginning in the spring of 1984. The file listed the minutes on Mourning Dove as “Eyes Only,” and required a deputy director’s signature to access it. This was it. No other operation listed in the file was above Secret classification.
Palumbo flipped back to a list of agency personnel attached to the embassy at the time. He recognized the name of a colleague he worked with at the Counterterrorism Command Center: a lean, outgoing Irishman named Joe Leahy.
Palumbo found Leahy in a glassed-in office overlooking a cubicle farm on the operations deck of the CTCC. “Joe, got a sec?”
As usual, Leahy was dressed to the nines in a navy suit and polished brogues, hair slicked back like a Wall Street banker. Less could be done to disguise his nasal Philly twang. “What’s up?” he asked.
“I need to pick your brain about something that went on a long time ago. Got time for a cup of coffee?”
Palumbo led the way to the cafeteria and picked up the tab for two double lattes. They sat at a table in a back corner. “You were in El Salvador, right?”
“Back in the day,” said Leahy. “You were still banging freshmen at Yale.”
“Trying and failing was more like it,” said Palumbo. “What can you tell me about Mourning Dove.”
“There’s a name from the past. Why do you ask? You running an audit on that thing?”
Palumbo shook his head. “Nothing like that. Just background.”
“It was a long time ago. I was junior. GS-7. A punk.”
“It’s nothing like that, Joe. You’ve got my word. This stays between you and me.”
“Like Vegas. Right?”
“Yeah, like Vegas. Mourning Dove, Joe. Tell me about it.”
Leahy leaned forward and said, “It started as a training gig. A way to knock some of the recruits into shape. These were complete yokels. Half of ’em barely out of loincloths. We brought some Berets down from Bragg. Some firepower, too. The idea was to teach them basic soldiering. Help bolster democracy in the region. The usual bullshit.”
“I thought we had the School of the Americas at Benning for that?”
“Sure we do. But that’s official. This was sub rosa. Anyway,
el presidente
liked what we were doing, so he conscripted some of these units into his own private force. We did the dirty work. You’ve got to remember how it was back then, with Danny Ortega porkin’ Bianca Jagger, the Sandinistas firing up the region.
No más communista.
At least, that was the idea. It got out of hand almost from the beginning. There was nothing targeted about it. But it worked. Scared the shit out of everyone. By eighty-four, it was all done. The president won reelection. We packed up the bus and came home.”
“And what about the guys you trained? Any of them come home with you?”
“What do you mean, ‘come home’?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you found some men with skills and asked them back to work with the Company.”
Leahy’s easygoing tone vanished. “Now you’re getting out of your depth. These are dark waters you’re navigating.”
“Between you and me, Joe, a mick from Philly and a goombah from the south side of Beantown.”
Leahy laughed at this, but he didn’t say anything.
Palumbo went on. “The thing is, I think I came across one of them on my turf. Knocking out a couple of big-time operators, leaving all kinds of voodoo bullshit behind. Word is he coated his bullets in frog poison because he thought it prevented his victims’ souls from chasing him into the human world. You ever hear of that cockamamie shit?”
Leahy was shaking his head, the memories practically flashing in his eye.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Joe?”
“That’s Black Bag stuff you’re talking about,” said Leahy. “If you know what’s good for that lovely wife and those brats you got at home, you’ll drop it.”
Palumbo was as arrogant as the next agent. The warning only served to spur him on. “The guys he killed were involved in the plot with Walid Gassan. They were going to take down an airliner. It was a sophisticated job. We’re talking about a drone that does four hundred miles per hour loaded with twenty keys of Semtex. That’s a cruise missile, the way I see it. No way some Bojinka motherfucker’s able to pull this one off.”
“Sounds like the guy’s doing the right thing.”
“No doubt about it.”
“So if it isn’t the ragheads, who exactly do you think is behind it?” asked Leahy.
“I’m not saying. But I have an idea. I mean, how many people are there at the end of the day with those kind of resources?”
“You think it’s state sponsored.”
“Oh, yeah.” Palumbo tapped the table with his knuckles. “But this info stays between you and me.”
Leahy flicked his hands above his chest, a pantomime of making the holy cross.
“There was something strange about those files,” Palumbo continued. “It’s what I needed to talk to you about. You see, the name of the agent in charge of the operation was missing. It looked like it had been cut out before they digitized it. Tell me, Joe, which one of our guys was calling the shots for Mourning Dove?”
Leahy stared at Palumbo for a moment, then stood from the table. As he passed, he bent and whispered two words in his ear. “The Admiral.”
Palumbo remained in his chair until Leahy had left the cafeteria.
“The Admiral” was James Lafever. The deputy director of operations.
55
“Seventy-two hours,”
said von Daniken, taking off his coat and throwing it over the back of his chair. “That’s how long we’ve got. Ransom’s our man. There’s no doubt about it. He’s done this kind of thing before. He blows things up. He did it in Beirut and Kosovo and Darfur. He kills people and he’s good at it.”
The task force had taken up residence in the “morgue,” a soulless conference room located in the basement of Fedpol headquarters. Five desks had been arranged in a semicircle. Computers, telephones, and copy machines had been brought down. It was a nerve center in search of a body. At the moment, only Seiler and Hardenberg were present. The sight of the unmanned desks in the cavernous room did not lift his spirits.
“Slow down, Marcus,” said Max Seiler. “What do you mean, ‘seventy-two hours’?”
Von Daniken took a chair and related his findings to the two men. “He gets the hell out of the country immediately following the act,” he said after detailing Ransom’s crimes. “Apparently, our Dr. Ransom is all set to head off to Pakistan Sunday evening. He may pretend he doesn’t know the transfer is coming, but he knows alright. His men probably killed the poor bastard over there whose place he’s supposed to take. We need to locate Ransom and we need to do it now. What do we have on the van, anyway? Someone must have seen it.”
“Someone,” meaning a surveillance camera somewhere in Europe between Dublin and Dubrovnik.
“Not a trace,” said Hardenberg. “Myer’s over at ISIS seeing if he can blow some fire up their asses.”
“Two million cameras and all of them are blind. What are the odds on that?” Disgusted, von Daniken shook his head.
Just then, the door opened and Kurt Myer shambled in, pulling the belt of his trousers over his ample belly.
“There you are,” said von Daniken. “We’ve just been talking about you. What did you find?”
Myer looked around at the anxious faces. He could tell that something had changed, but he wasn’t sure what. He held up a sheaf of photographs. “Leipzig, ten days ago. It was taken near Bayerischer Platz adjacent to the train station. We’ve got the van.”
“Thank God!” said von Daniken as he stood and examined the photo.
With remarkable clarity, the picture showed a white VW van with Swiss plates driven by a bearded man with wire rim glasses. “Gassan’s at the wheel. Once I had the plate numbers, I was able to run an advanced search. I got a hit in Zurich seven days ago.” Another picture handed round. “This time Blitz is at the wheel.”
“Where exactly was the camera located?” asked von Daniken.
“On the corner of Badenerstrasse and Hardplatz.”
“That’s near where Lammers’s company is located, isn’t it?”
“Not far,” said Myer. “A couple kilometers away. Look at the rear window. There’s something very big inside the van. We analyzed the photos and came to the conclusion they’re large steel boxes.”
“The drone?”
“No idea. But whatever it is, it’s big and it’s heavy. Look at how low the chassis is riding on the suspension. Compare this picture to the others. We’re estimating that in the second photo the van’s carrying a load of at least six hundred kilos.” Myer chose another photograph from his pile and handed it around. “The last one we got was in Lugano on Saturday.”
Lugano, just thirty kilometers away from Ascona, where Blitz lived. Von Daniken had been right about the paint chips he’d found at Blitz’s house. The van had been parked in the garage. “So Gassan picks up the explosives in Leipzig, turns them over to Blitz along with the van, then he hightails it to Sweden. Blitz takes the van to Zurich and picks up the drone from Lammers’s factory.” He studied the pictures a moment longer. “Is that it?”
“That’s all we’ve got on the white van.”
Von Daniken shot Myer a glance. “What do you mean on the
white
van? Is there another one you haven’t told me about?”
“He’s driving a black van now. He painted it.”
“How do you know?”
“We don’t know where he got the white van originally, but we do know that the plates it carried were stolen from an identical van in Schaffhausen. Most people don’t bother reporting this kind of thing to the police. They think it’s a prank and report the loss to the motor vehicles department. Gassan and his buddies think they’re smart doing this. But we’re smarter. I guessed if they stole one set of license plates, they might have stolen another. I drilled down and checked for any reports of missing or stolen license plates. The owner of a black VW van in Lausanne reported his plates were missing two weeks ago. Not the van, mind you, just the plates. I ran the numbers through ISIS. Look what I found.”
Myer passed around the last photograph. An 8 x 10 of a black Volkswagen van moving at speed through an intersection. In the background were a billboard advertising Lindt chocolate and the sign of a well-known furniture retailer.
“The photo was taken yesterday at five p.m. on the outskirts of Zurich.”
“But how can we be certain it’s the same van?”
“Compare the front bumpers of the two vans. Both have a noticeable dent beneath the headlight. And both have a pine-tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. One might be a coincidence. But both? Never.”
“Call the city police,” said von Daniken. “Have them put out a warrant for the van. Run a check on every picture of every vehicle taken in the eastern half of the country over the last twenty-four hours.”
“You got it.”
Von Daniken brought the picture closer. “Who’s that driving? It couldn’t be Blitz. He was dead by then.” He showed the photograph to Myer, who frowned and put on a pair of bifocals. “Something’s off here. He doesn’t look normal.”
“Let’s get the photo to the crime lab. They can blow up the picture and send it to Interpol to run through their facial recognition software.”
Myer shambled out of the room.
Von Daniken spun in his chair and directed his attention toward the two men still in the room. “So much for the eastern front. Any progress in the west?”
It was Klaus Hardenberg’s turn to talk. Hardenberg, the pudgy, whey-faced investigator who’d abandoned a lucrative career with an international accounting firm in Zurich for the rough-and-tumble pastures of law enforcement.
“Blitz did his banking at the Banca Popolare del Ticino. We got the bank’s name from Eurocard, which identified it as the bank of record for Blitz’s account. The average monthly balance on the account was twelve thousand francs. As for payments, it’s mostly the usual. Household items. Credit card bills. Gas. Electric. The man took a weekly cash withdrawal of five hundred francs, always from the same automatic teller in Ascona. All in all, a modest lifestyle for a man driving a luxury automobile and living in a multimillion-franc villa.”
“Unless the villa isn’t his,” said von Daniken.
“My thoughts exactly.” Hardenberg smiled thinly. “The first thing that caught my eye was a wire transfer that hit the account a week ago for exactly one hundred thousand francs. The note on the payment instructions read, ‘Gift to P.J.’ The next day, Blitz withdrew the entire amount in cash over the counter at his branch in Lugano. All on the up-and-up. He called ahead, spoke personally with the bank manager and explained that it was the down payment for a boat he was building in Antibes.”
“Did anyone find the money at his home?”
“I checked with Lieutenant Conti. Nothing turned up.”
“Who transferred the hundred k to Blitz?”
“Ah,” said Hardenberg. “Here’s where things get interesting. The money came from a numbered account at the Royal Trust and Credit Bank of the Bahamas. Freetown branch.”
“Never heard of it,” said von Daniken, whose experience had brought him into contact with most meaningful financial institutions under the sun.
“It’s a small bank with just under a billion in assets. It doesn’t keep a brick-and-mortar space. It’s a paper entity. If you’ll permit me, though, I’d like to stop with Blitz for a moment and move on to Lammers.”
There were nods all around. Hardenberg fortified himself by guzzling a half a can of Red Bull and lighting a Gauloise.
“As I was saying, our attention now falls on Theo Lammers,” Hardenberg went on. “His business was on the up-and-up. All accounts are at USB, which is a first-rate shop. I ran his numbers. Nine months ago, he received a two-million-franc wire transfer from none other than the Royal Trust and Credit of the Bahamas.”
“Two million from the same bank?” Von Daniken slid to the edge of his seat. “If it came from the same people who wired Blitz the hundred thousand francs, we’ll know precisely who’s financing this racket. What was the money for?”
“I took the liberty of calling Michaela Menz at Robotica. The funds hit the receivables account. That meant the two million francs was for work completed. The problem was that there was no invoice number attached to the transfer. She doesn’t know what the money was for.”
Myer looked at von Daniken. “It was for the drone.”
Von Daniken nodded. Now they were getting somewhere. “Did the money come from the same account number at the Royal Trust and Credit?”
Hardenberg shook his head. “That would’ve made our lives too simple. It came from an unrelated numbered account. At least, unrelated on the surface. The chance that Blitz and Lammers are doing business with the same hole-in-the-wall in the Bahamas is a million to one. I relayed these feelings to Mr. Davis Brunswick, the bank’s chief executive. He was not forthcoming. At first, I tried charm. Then I told him that unless he gave me some information on who the accounts belong to, he would find his bank on the weekly black list circulated to over three thousand institutions across Switzerland and shared with every law enforcement agency in the Western world.”
“Did it work?”
Hardenberg shrugged. “Of course not,” he admitted. “Everyone’s a tough guy these days. I had to revert to plan B. Happily, I’d done a little homework on Mr. Brunswick before our conversation. I’d discovered that he maintained several personal accounts in our country to the tune of some twenty-six million francs. I gave him my word that unless he coughed up information on who was behind these accounts—and any others that might be related to them—I would personally see to it that every last franc of his money would be frozen for the rest of his natural life.”
“And?”
“Mr. Brunswick sang like a baby. Both numbered accounts were set up by a fiduciary firm that’s a subsidiary of the Tingeli Bank. It’s the same firm that executed the purchase of the Villa Principessa on behalf of the Netherlands Antilles holding company.”
“How did you discover that Brunswick had accounts in our country?” asked von Daniken.
Hardenberg grimaced and shook his very large, very round, and very bald head. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
The men allowed themselves a brief laugh.
Seiler cleared his throat. “As I recall, Marcus, you know Tobi Tingeli personally.”
It was von Daniken’s turn to grimace. “Tobi and I served together on the Holocaust Commission.”
“Do you think he might be amenable to doing you a favor?”
“Tobi? He doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
“But you are going to ask him?” Seiler persisted.
Von Daniken thought of Tobias “Tobi” Tingeli IV and the skeletons hanging in the man’s closet. Tingeli was rich, vain, pompous, and worse. In a sense, Marcus von Daniken had been waiting for this day for ten long years.
The thought of exacting his revenge gave him no pleasure. “Yes, Max,” he said softly. “I’m going to ask him.”