Allah's Scorpion (13 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

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APURTO DEVLÁN,
LIMÓN BAY HOLDING BASIN
Thirty minutes after they dropped their hook in the holding basin off Colón, a small ex–U.S. Coast Guard gig flying the Panama Canal Transit Authority pennant came alongside and tied up at the lowered boarding ladder. Immediately four men and two small dogs on leashes started up.
It was a few minutes after seven in the morning, and a soft warm breeze came from the southeast, bringing with it the pleasant, damp earthy odors of the rain forest that made the operation of the canal possible. The
Apurto Devlán
flew the tricolor Venezuelan flag from her stern, and the Panamanian courtesy flag and yellow quarantine pennant from her starboard spreader atop the superstructure.
Graham and his second officer, Mohammed Hijazi, watched from the port bridge wing as the boarding party was met by Ali Ramati, who was presenting himself as First Officer Vasquez.
“Why the dogs?” Hijazi asked.
“I expect they’re looking for explosives,” Graham said. Seeing the dogs and their handlers coming on deck, he’d had a momentary stab of fear that somehow this mission had been blown. But if that were the case, he reasoned, the ship would never have been allowed to come this far. They would have been stopped by a U.S. Navy warship while they were still well at sea.
Hijazi laughed disparagingly. “They should have brought trained fish.”
There was something about the two men with the dogs that was bothersome, however. They were taller than the other two, and they weren’t wearing uniforms, just dark jackets and dark baseball caps. One of them
turned and looked up. Graham involuntarily stepped back. Emblazoned on the front of his cap were the initials FBI.
Hijazi spotted the cap at the same time. “Is it a trap?” he asked, his hand going to the pistol beneath his light jacket.
Graham touched his elbow. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The Panamanians have probably asked the Americans for security help. They’re afraid for their canal.”
The four on deck headed aft to the superstructure.
“I’ll deal with the paperwork myself,” Graham said. “But the FBI agents will want to let their dogs sniff around the ship. I want you to personally escort them. Take them to the product tanks, anywhere they want to go except for my cabin. They won’t find anything.”
Hijazi was clearly nervous. “We’re not ready,” he said. “If something goes wrong now we won’t be able to destroy the ship.”
“Nothing will go wrong,” Graham said. A possibility existed, however slight, that the FBI did, in fact, suspect something, and were here to take a preliminary look. If it came to that he’d order the four men and their dogs killed. The ship could be prepared to explode within a half hour. Within that time the
Apurto Devlán
could be driven to the middle of the narrow entrance to the Gatun approaches. If she sank there, it could take months before the canal could be put back into operation.
His crew would die the martyrs’ deaths they wanted, so that their families would be paid fifty thousand in U.S. dollars, and he would make his escape using the Transit Authority boat.
But first things first. There was no need to shed blood.Yet.
“Have Ali show the transit people to my sea cabin,” Graham said. “And keep your head around those FBI agents.”
Hijazi nodded uncertainly. He went back into the deserted bridge and headed downstairs.
Graham took a moment longer to study the eighteen or twenty other ships in the holding basin. All of them were either Panamax oil tankers like the
Apurto Devlán
or container ships. No U.S. warships were anywhere in sight. Nor did anything seem out of order, although at the moment no ships were entering or leaving the cut to the locks.
He contemplated that single fact. Was it a momentary lull in traffic, or had the canal been closed in the face of a terror alert?
A single piece of evidence could never be the basis for a conclusion. Yet
something was happening. He could feel it in his bones. Ever since Perisher school he had learned to trust his instincts, and they were telling him loud and clear that someone was coming, sniffing down his trail, and he’d better be ready for them.
He walked back to his sea cabin directly behind the bridge. Leaving the door open, he sat down behind his small desk on which was stacked the crew’s passports. Since no one would be going ashore in Panama, health certificates would not have to be presented.
He got to his feet and smiled faintly as Ramati and two men came up the stairs and crossed to his cabin. One of them was in the dark blue uniform of the Panama Transit Authority, but the other much older and heavier man wore a dark business suit, white shirt, and conservative tie.
Ramati’s eyes were narrowed, his lips compressed, as if he was trying to warn Graham about something.
“Dobroyeh ootroh,”
Graham said, extending his hand to the uniformed officer.
Good morning.
“Good morning, Captain, I’m Pedro Ercilla, your canal boarding official,” he said, shaking hands. “And of course you must know Señor Almagro.”
Ramati’s eyebrows rose. He’d stepped aside and his right hand went into his jacket pocket.
“No, I’m afraid that I do not,” Graham said, shaking the man’s hand. “Should I?”
Almagro smiled pleasantly. “Actually not,” he said. “I’m the GAC agent for our ships transiting the canal.” He turned to the CBO. “This is Captain Slavin’s first voyage with the company. But I’m sure that his name will be quite familiar to us very soon. Isn’t that so, Captain?”
“I’m sure of it,” Graham said. “May I assume that our transit paperwork is in order?”
“Yes, Captain,” the CBO replied.
“I have the crew’s passports—”
“Were there any crew replacements at Maracaibo?” Ercilla asked.
“Other than myself, no,” Graham said.
“Then I need only see your passport,” the CBO said.
“Of course,” Graham said. He got his passport from the top of the stack and handed it to the transit official. This would be the first real test of his disguise.
Ercilla glanced briefly at the photo, but then took out a small notebook and jotted down Graham’s name, place and date of birth, and the passport number. He handed the passport back. “Thank you,” he said.
“I came out because I wanted to meet you,” Almagro said. “But also to bring you good news. Instead of the usual forty-eight hours’ waiting time, you’ll actually be able to begin your transit at midnight. In less than eighteen hours.”
“That is good news,” Graham said. They could not retrieve the explosive charges, put them in place, and prepare the product tanks when it was light outside. The shortened waiting time would make a difficult job nearly impossible. But they would make do.
“You may expect your pilot at eleven,” Ercilla said. “Please have your ship and crew ready, we have a busy transit schedule this evening.”
“Of course,” Graham nodded pleasantly. But then he hardened his expression. “Now tell me why you brought two American FBI agents and their animals aboard this ship without my permission.” He turned to Almagro. “I do not like dogs. I have an allergy.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but you should have been informed before you left port,” the company agent apologized. “It’s new policy.”
“Since when?”
“It was instituted last week,” Ercilla said. “My government asked for help. In the present, shall we say, mood of certain international organizations, combined with the sensitivity of canal operations—”
Graham let surprise and relief show on his face. “They’re looking for explosives,” he said. “Well, very good. I’ll sleep better when they’re done.”
Ercilla smiled and nodded. “So will we, Captain. Believe me.”
“If a ship like mine were to suddenly explode in the middle of one of the locks it could conceivably close the canal for months,” Graham said.
“No, Captain Slavin,” the transit official said. “It would close the canal for years.”
“The effect on the world economy would be devastating,” Almagro added.
“I expect it would,” Graham agreed wholeheartedly. “Now, may I offer you gentlemen coffee or tea while we wait for the FBI to complete its inspection?”
 
 
CABIMAS
“I’m sorry, señor, but we have reached a dead end, as I warned you we would,” Juan Gallegos said. He poured another glass of wine and sat back.
It was just nightfall, and he and McGarvey were having an early supper at a small but fashionable
cafetería
on the waterfront, but well away from the commercial district. Traffic had not yet picked up for the evening, and from somewhere they could hear someone playing a guitar, the melody coming to them over a gentle breeze.
They were missing something, just out of reach at the back of McGarvey’s head. It had been a frustrating day of running down the shipping agents for each of the twenty-seven tankers that had left port in the past forty-eight hours, plus the eleven scheduled to depart in the next twenty-four hours, showing them Graham’s photograph, and trying to get them to look beyond the simple black-and-white image, and imagine that man in a disguise.
Next they had talked to all the hiring agencies to find out if someone might have been trying to recruit a crew. But no one had seen a man who even closely resembled Graham.
All this late afternoon they’d talked to the clerks in several hotels where Graham might have stayed: taxi drivers, on the remote chance that they might run into someone who’d had Graham as a fare; restaurant waiters who might have served him a meal; and with ferry operators who might have taken a man matching Graham’s description out to one of the ships. All without luck.
“Will you be returning to the States in the morning?” Gallegos asked. He was polite now that he had done what he could for the gringo and had been proven correct. “I can make sure that you get a first-class seat on the Miami flight. They’re usually full.”
A waiter came to clear away their plates. McGarvey had scarcely touched his
churrasco
steak that had been cut into thin
criollo
strips, marinated, and then grilled. “Is there something wrong with your food, señor?” the young
pock-faced man asked. His attitude was arrogant. He didn’t like North Americans.
McGarvey looked up out of his thoughts. “It was fine. I’m just not hungry.”
When the waiter was gone, Gallegos asked again if McGarvey would be leaving in the morning.
“We’re missing something,” McGarvey said. “Graham was in Maracaibo two days ago, and according to the whore he was coming here to meet his ship.”
“If you can believe her.”
“Graham might have lied to her, but she was telling the truth. Still it doesn’t matter. If he came to Venezuela to board a ship he could have done it just as easily from Maracaibo as here.”
“Easier,” Gallegos said. “There’re more water taxis out of Maracaibo than here.”
“Why did he come here?”
Gallegos shook his head, frustrated. “It’s a moot point. If he wasn’t here to raise a crew, and if he didn’t bring men with him, how could he expect to hijack one of our ships? One man alone could not do it.You can see that, can’t you?”
McGarvey nodded. “Maybe he wasn’t planning on hijacking a ship.”
Gallegos threw up his hands. “What are you talking about now?”
All at once it came to McGarvey. He motioned their waiter for the check. “Graham came here because he was after a specific ship. One that was being assigned a new officer, probably the captain.”
“If he stayed at a hotel his passport would have been checked.”
“He probably killed the captain, got rid of the body, and either switched photos in the passport or altered his appearance.” The waiter brought the bill and McGarvey laid down a twenty, which more than covered it and a good tip. “If a new captain was here to meet his ship, where would he stay?”
“The Internacional,” Gallegos said. “But we were there this afternoon.”
“We only talked to the desk clerk,” McGarvey said. “This time we’re going to talk to the rest of the staff, starting with the bell captain. Someone may have carried the real captain’s bags into the hotel, and Graham’s bags back out. Room service may have brought him a meal. The chambermaid cleaning his room may have seen him. Someone might have noticed something.”
The hotel was less than a block away. They drove over and parked under the canopy in front of the main entrance. “Leave it here, we’ll be just a minute,” Gallegos told the valet.
Inside, they approached the bell station where a young, good-looking man in the blue uniform of a bell captain was reading a newspaper. He looked up with interest, folded the newspaper, and put it away. “Good evening,” he said. “Are you gentlemen checking in?”
“Buenas noches,”
McGarvey said. He handed the bell captain Graham’s photograph with a twenty-dollar bill. “Have you seen this man?”
Sudden understanding dawned on the bell captain’s face. “You were here this afternoon, speaking with Mr. Angarita,” he said. He pocketed the money. He looked at the photo and shook his head. “I’m sorry, this man is unfamiliar to me. But if you would care to leave the photo I can ask my staff.”
“That would be helpful,” Gallegos said.
“Do many ship’s officers stay here at the hotel?” McGarvey asked.
“Of course,” the bell captain said. “Often.”
“Any in the past two days?”
The bell captain nodded.
“Sí.”
“A captain or a senior officer, maybe?” McGarvey asked. “Someone who stayed the night, and then left for his ship in the morning?”
The bell captain thought for a moment, and then nodded. “There was one.”
“But not this man,” McGarvey said. “Not even a man who might have looked like him, even faintly. Perhaps his shoulders. Maybe his eyes, or the way he walked. Or his manner: pleasant, indifferent, arrogant.”
The bell captain studied the photo again.
“Perhaps there was something different about him,” McGarvey pressed. “Maybe when he checked in he was relaxed, but when he left he was in a hurry, maybe anxious.”
“The Russian captain,” the bell captain said hesitantly. “Something was odd about him, I think.”
McGarvey kept a poker face. He shrugged. “Odd?” he asked. “What do you mean?”
“He was a GAC guest of the hotel two days ago. Stayed only the night. In the morning the Vensport ferry service took him out to his ship by helicopter.”
“Continue,” McGarvey prompted.
“I personally handle most of our VIP guests, so I took his bags up to his suite when he arrived. He tried to tip me, but Mr. Angarita who’d come up with him explained that GAC would take care of everything.”
“Is that common practice?”
“Yes, sir,” the bell captain said. “But Captain Slavin seemed a little embarrassed.”
“So?”
The bell captain looked at the photo again. “In the morning, Manuel took his bags to the helipad on the roof. He said that the captain tipped him and insisted he take it. It was odd, after his embarrassment the evening before.”
“Do you know the name of the ship?” McGarvey asked.
“No, but I can find out,” the bell captain said. He turned to his computer behind the desk and brought up the hotel folio for Slavin’s stay, which included the destination and charge for the helicopter ferry service. “It’s the
Apurto Devlán,
” he said, looking up. “But Captain Slavin, or whoever he is, will be back.”
“How do you know that?” Gallegos asked, in English for McGarvey’s benefit.
“He checked a large aluminum trunk with us,” the bell captain said.
“Where is it?” McGarvey demanded.
“Right here, in guest storage,” the bell captain said. He opened a door to a small room behind his bell station. Various boxes and pieces of tagged luggage were stacked on metal shelves. An aluminum trunk about the size of a footlocker sat in a corner.
“Evacuate the hotel,” McGarvey ordered.
“What—?” the bell captain sputtered.
“I wouldn’t put it past Graham to leave a little surprise for us,” McGarvey told Gallegos. “If he thought someone might be on his trail it would cover his tracks.”
Gallegos showed the bell captain his CID credentials, and said something to him in rapid-fire Spanish, but the young man backed up and shook his head.
“Get a bomb squad over here on the double,” McGarvey said. He walked back to the main entrance, where he’d spotted a fire alarm. He broke the glass with the little hinged hammer and pulled the lever. Alarms began to blare all through the hotel.
 
 
McGarvey and Gallegos stood outside under the canopy, while the police held the majority of the hotel guests and staff behind barriers half a block away. Police units, fire trucks, and ambulances were parked all over the place, their emergency lights flashing. A military bomb disposal squad had been choppered across the lake from Maracaibo within twenty minutes of Gallego’s call to the Zulia State barracks. They’d been inside for nearly a half hour, before the supervisor emerged from the lobby. His Lexan face shield was in the raised position.
He came over to where McGarvey and Gallegos were waiting. His complexion under the harsh entry lights was pale, and his face was shiny with sweat. He looked as if he was about to be sick.
He said something in Spanish to Gallegos, who shot back a rapid-fire response. The bomb disposal supervisor glanced at McGarvey, nodded, and headed across to his truck.
“I think it was Graham,” Gallegos told McGarvey. “The body of a man, who will probably turn out to be the Russian ship captain, was stuffed into the aluminum trunk.”
The news was more frustrating than surprising to McGarvey. “Was anything else packed with the body?”
“We won’t know until the medical examiner gets here,” Gallegos said. “But you were right all along. I’m sure that my government will ask your navy for help. If some maniac has actually gotten control of one of our tankers there’s no telling what will happen.”
“We’re already on it,” McGarvey told him. “The target’s probably one of our oil refineries in California, which means we have time to do something.”
“How can I help?” Gallegos asked earnestly. He’d been wrong, but he was sharp enough not to hold any grudges.
“I’m probably going to need some fast transportation out of here,” McGarvey said.
“I’ll have Air Force on standby for you. Whatever you need.” McGarvey walked a few feet away and made a sat phone call to Rencke, who was still at Langley. “It’s the
Apurto Devlán.
Graham probably killed the captain ashore here in Cabimas and took his identity. What can you tell me about the ship?”
“She’s a Panamax oil carrier, nine hundred feet on the waterline, beam of one hundred and ten feet.Twelve separate tanks, carrying fifty-thousand-plus tons of light sweet crude.”
“What about the crew?”
“Normal complement of a master and twenty-three officers and crew, but she’s been running shorthanded. Nineteen and the captain.”
McGarvey put himself in Graham’s shoes. He’d apparently come up with enough information about the ship and her officers to feel confident that he could get away with posing as the captain. Once aboard, and at sea, he would have to eliminate the entire crew and probably stop at some rendezvous point to pick up their replacements.
“Where’s the ship right now?”
“I’m just bringing it up now,” Otto said. He sounded excited.
McGarvey could see him in his pigsty of an office; empty classified files, NRO satellite photos, top secret Company memos, and empty Twinkie wrappers would be scattered all over the floor, on the desk and chairs, while Otto, probably dressed in ragged jeans and a dirty sweatshirt, would be working a half-dozen computer monitors and keyboards like a concert organist manipulating several registers.
“Oh wow, Mac, she’s in the Limón holding basin,” Otto said. “Scheduled to start her transit in a few hours. Midnight.”
“Have the canal authorities already cleared her?” McGarvey asked.
“Yes, but she’ll stay anchored until the pilot comes aboard,” Otto said. “But I just had another thought. What if Graham isn’t targeting the Long Beach refineries? What if he’s after the canal?”
McGarvey had kicked the same idea around in his head all afternoon as they’d worked their way through the shipping and hiring agencies. The only mistakes that Graham had made were telling the whore he was meeting a ship and then making her mad enough to remember him out of all her johns. He was professional enough to have eluded capture for the past several years even though he was a hunted man worldwide, which meant he had a very definite plan, one which he believed would not fail. He would be professional enough to realize that time was against him. The moment he’d killed the Russian captain, the countdown had begun. Sooner or later the body that he’d stuffed in the footlocker would be discovered; sooner or later someone would come looking for him.
Once the
Apurto Devlán
cleared the Panama Canal it would take nearly
ten days to reach California.
Too many bad things could happen in such a long time.

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