Black Horizon (16 page)

Jack was getting seriously worried.

He heard the door open at the top of the stairway. The mechanical voice of Siri told him what to do: “Face the wall.”

Jack turned his back to the stairs and waited, listening to the approaching footsteps. Jack couldn’t see him, but he sensed his captor was right behind him.

“Where is Theo?” Jack asked, more a demand than a question.

The man laid a paper bag on the floor in front of Jack. Jack heard the click of typing on his smartphone, and then the mechanical response: “Don’t worry about your friend.”

Jack was trying to figure out the smartphone technology. He assumed it was some kind of medical app for mutes. “There’s no reason to hurt him,” said Jack.

His captor stepped closer, still standing behind him, his shadow hovering over Jack. The mechanical response followed: “Shut up, before I stick another needle in your ass.”

It was the most bizarre thing Jack had ever heard through Siri.

The man reached over him, and Jack feared another syringe was coming. But he was just reaching for the paper bag. As he reached, the man’s sleeve rode up over his wrist, exposing an eye—a tattoo above the right thumb. Jack averted his gaze so as not to convey that he’d taken note of it.

The eye disappeared into the paper bag, and the man handed Jack a sandwich. The chains around his wrists had only enough slack for him to rise up on his elbows to eat. It was his first meal in captivity, and it was edible only because Jack was starving. The minced meat was unidentifiable. Maybe pork.

His captor typed another message, then played it on his phone: “I’ll be back for your next bathroom break. If all goes according to plan, it might be your last.”

The two very different interpretations of those words were not lost on Jack. He chewed slowly, not sure which meaning to take, as his captor turned and walked away.

Chapter 25

A
ndie’s White House meeting was in the West Wing. It was relatively quiet at nine o’clock on a Sunday night, especially with the president and his family staying at Camp David for the weekend. A stoic Marine in dress uniform escorted Andie to the office of the chief of staff. Andie had never met Jim Murphy before, but he was that rare breed inside the Beltway whose forte was cutting government waste. The president often alluded to the fact that it was a young Jim Murphy who had rooted out the five-hundred-dollar hammers in the Pentagon budget while at the Government Accounting Office.

The other man in the chief of staff’s office was family. Harry Swyteck rose and embraced his daughter-in-law.

“Everything is going to be okay,” he told her.

Harry Swyteck was Florida’s most distinguished senior statesman. After two terms as governor of the fifth most populous state in the nation, he’d received serious consideration as a vice-presidential candidate. He got out the vote, even if he wasn’t on the ballot, and he continued to have strong White House connections. Tonight, he needed them more than ever.

Andie took a step back, looking him squarely in the eye. “What is the ‘family emergency’?”

“Jack has been kidnapped. But he is going to be okay.”

Andie had delivered such news to the families of victims, and her own reaction on the receiving end was no different from what she had seen in others: little else registered after the word
kidnapped
, and promises that “everything is going to be okay” counted for very little.

The white-haired chief of staff stepped out from behind his desk and offered similar words of concern and support. At his direction, they moved to a small seating area by the window, Andie and Harry on the camelback couch, and the chief of staff facing them in a striped armchair. Harry did most of the talking for the next five minutes, explaining the “family emergency.”

“Right after lunch today Theo showed up at my house. He said he and Jack were kidnapped in Havana.”

“Jack went to Cuba?”

“Yes. Anyway, on Saturday night they were sleeping at an apartment in central Havana.”

“An apartment? Who does Jack know with an apartment in Havana?”

“Theo said the young woman who lived there was named Vivien. He didn’t know her last name.”

“Doesn’t know her name?”

“She was a friend of another woman named Josefina. Anyway, Theo says that the four of them had a few beers at the apartment and—”

“Stop!” said Andie. “Jack I trust. Theo, uh-uh. Are you about to tell me that Theo got my husband kidnapped by a couple of hookers in Havana?”

“No, no!” said Harry, suddenly aware of how this must have sounded. “That’s not where this is going at all. This was investigative work for the lawsuit Jack filed against the oil consortium.”

“I’ve seen the news reports,” said Andie.

“Then you know that the oil companies say that Jack’s client wasn’t married to the Cuban oil worker who was killed in the explosion. Jack was in Havana trying to prove them wrong. He and Theo rented an apartment, totally on the up and up.”

Andie needed to catch her breath. “That’s much better than what it was starting to sound like, but you do understand that the kidnapping is not our only problem here?”

“What do you mean?” said Harry.

The chief of staff interjected. “I think what Andie is alluding to is that at some point we will have to deal with the fact that if Jack was doing investigative work in Cuba, that’s a violation of the trade embargo, even if Jack is of Cuban descent.”

“Which is a minor problem compared to the kidnapping,” said Andie.

“Hell, yes, it’s minor,” said Harry, obviously annoyed.

“Harry, listen to what I’m saying,” said Andie. “I’m sure what you meant to say is that Jack was in Cuba visiting relatives. When you speak to anyone in law enforcement about the kidnapping, I know you will make that clear. Nothing more needs to be said about this issue. Then we can focus all our energy on getting Jack back safely, which is what we all want.”

Harry paused, digesting her advice. “Understood,” he said.

The chief of staff steered him back to the immediate problem. “Harry, tell her about the note.”

“Right,” said Harry. “The kidnapper broke into the apartment, drugged them, and took them back to a basement somewhere in Havana. When he released Theo this morning, he gave him a ransom note and told him to deliver it to me. The note is in Jack’s handwriting.”

“A common practice,” said Andie. “Proof to the family that the victim is still alive. Was it checked for prints?”

“Yes, I called the FBI immediately. Jack’s prints were on it. Others couldn’t be identified.”

“Okay, good that the FBI is on it. But did the note have any kind of warning not to contact law enforcement?”

“Quite the opposite,” said Harry. “That’s why I’m here tonight.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The ransom note lays out just one condition for Jack’s release: if I deliver the note to the White House, Jack will be released, unharmed. The note even specifies the proof of delivery: an independent news organization must run a photograph of me meeting with the White House chief of staff.”

Andie considered it. “It’s actually not uncommon for kidnappers to ask to speak to the president or to have a message delivered to the White House. Usually it’s an act of desperation, or someone with a screw loose. Or both.”

“This may be different,” said Harry. “The kidnapper knows that Jack is the son of a former governor with political connections. Since the note mentions the White House chief of staff by name, he probably got Jack to tell him who my closest personal contact is in the White House. Jim and I go back twenty-five years.”

Murphy said, “I lean toward Andie’s first impression. I think it’s a nut-job.”

“What does he want the White House to do?” asked Andie.

“Pay him money.”

“But the note says he will release Jack if Harry delivers the note to the White House. So pay him money for what?”

Harry and the chief exchanged glances, and Harry answered. “He claims to know the ‘real story’ behind the Cuban oil spill. Obviously he thinks that’s the kind of information that the White House would be willing to pay for.”

“Obviously he doesn’t know my reputation for fiscal responsibility,” said Murphy.

“Jim’s the kind of guy who once saw a GAO pen on the counter at a bank and brought it back,” Harry said for Andie’s benefit.

“Can I see the note?” asked Andie.

The chief of staff rose and retrieved the copy from his desk. Andie read it carefully, in its entirety, focusing in particular on the final two lines:

Scarborough 8 was sabotage. I know who did it.

Pay my price and you will know too.

The note had no signature, at least not in the conventional sense. Instead there was a number sequence:
3/6/11/17/9/42.

“What do the numbers mean?” asked Andie.

“We don’t know,” said Harry.

“Is anyone looking into it?”

“Yes, of course,” said the chief of staff. “But getting back to your original point about a nut-job, the numbers could be utterly meaningless.”

“Meaningless? Really?”

“Granted, I’m not one to dismiss numbers easily,” said Murphy. “Heck, I can’t even walk into a White House banquet without trying to guess exactly how many people are in the room. But I call it as I see it.”

Harry took a deep breath. “Jim, with all due respect, I think you’re too quick to dismiss this as the work of a lunatic.”

“I’m not trying to minimize the danger to your son,” he said. “My point is that anyone who sends a letter like this to the White House has zero credibility in my eyes. The minute the Scarborough 8 went up in flames, the crazies started coming out of the woodwork. Two days ago we got a letter saying that the Cuban government will allow the United States to assist in the cleanup only if Bill Gates wires a hundred million dollars to a Swiss bank account and the Castro brothers are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It was ‘signed,’” he said, making air quotes, “by Fidel Castro.”

“That’s not the same thing,” said Harry.

“I don’t see any difference.”

“Andie, what do you think?” asked Harry.

Andie paused, thinking. Rather than discredit the kidnapper, the note’s reference to sabotage actually enhanced his credibility, at least in Andie’s eyes. Her entire undercover operation was premised on the theory that the cause of the explosion and spill was sabotage. It was possible that the kidnapper was a nut-job—but only if he had made one very lucky guess about causation. Unfortunately, she was sworn to secrecy about Operation Black Horizon, and it didn’t matter that she was sitting in the White House with the chief of staff and her father-in-law.

“Mr. Murphy, may I use your phone?”

“Of course.”

“Who you calling?” asked Harry.

“Headquarters,” said Andie. “I need permission to tell you what I think.”

Chapter 26

M
onday morning brought cloudless blue skies. From a window seat at twenty-two thousand feet, Jack had an unimpeded view of the black stain on the Florida Straits.

Jack’s kidnapper had held true to his word. A White House–issued photograph of Harry Swyteck in the West Wing with the president’s chief of staff had done the trick. Within hours, it was all over the World Wide Web. The only news story running with the photograph was of a former governor conveying to the administration his “grave concerns” about the oil spill’s potential impact on his beloved state. Jack wasn’t sure if it was the FBI or the White House that wanted to keep his kidnapping out of the media. Either way, the photograph was enough to satisfy Jack’s captor that the ransom note had been delivered.

It’s heading straight for the Keys.

Jack could not turn his gaze away from the window. While in Cuba, even before the kidnapping, Jack had lost track of the spill’s movement. The last reliable reports Jack had seen were Thursday’s OAS projections, which three days later were coming true: The spill was on a northeasterly track, with Florida directly in its sights. Key West, it seemed, might actually dodge the bullet. But to Jack’s untrained eye, it looked as though the upper Keys and the southeast coast of mainland Florida needed to prepare for the unthinkable. Viewed from an airplane, the problem was obvious. The front line of U.S. containment efforts began at the outer reach of Cuban waters. By that point the disaster had already fanned out from the source and spread across the surface in a black cone of unmanageable breadth. The early warnings of the experts that Jack had watched on television from his honeymoon suite at Big Palm Island were coming true. Chemical dispersants were less effective on oil after it was a full day or more from the source of the spill. Treatment within hours, near the faucet, was crucial to the relief effort.

Sabotage.
The word had been echoing in Jack’s brain ever since his kidnapper had forced him to write his own ransom note:
Scarborough 8 was sabotage.
Jack had come face-to-face with evil before, from convicted killers on death row to accused terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, but it was hard for him to construct even a loose psychological profile of the beast behind this work.

“It’s all a big conspiracy, you know,” said the old man seated next to him.

“Excuse me?” said Jack.

He gestured toward the window. “The spill. It’s a White House conspiracy with Big Oil.”

Jack should have simply nodded and turned away, but the old man seemed so sincere that Jack stayed with the conversation. “Why do you say that?”

“Just look at the facts. We have a president who took millions of dollars in campaign contributions from Big Oil. The oil companies are all licking their chops to drill for oil in Cuban waters, but the president can’t get Congress to end the trade embargo without his entire party committing political suicide in Florida. Along comes a convenient oil disaster that the White House can point to and say, ‘See, if we allowed U.S. oil companies to drill in Cuba, we wouldn’t be at the mercy of the Cuban government and a consortium of Chinese, Russians, and Venezuelans.’ Smells like a conspiracy to me.”