Black Horizon (32 page)

It was Andie’s job to test the FBI’s theory that Uighur militants were behind the Scarborough 8 disaster. After hearing Noori’s story of how he’d gotten from Xinjiang to Afghanistan to Guantánamo, she’d thought his accusations against the Chinese government were worth mentioning in her report.

“It’s at least plausible that the Chinese government is making the Uighurs their scapegoat in order to turn world opinion against them.”

“No way. Not possible.”

“Eye-roll alert,” said Andie. “You know I can’t take any man seriously who states his opinions as if they were fact.
No way. Not possible
.”

“Fair enough. This is somewhere between fact and opinion. It’s politics. The politics of petroleum.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

He seemed glad that she’d asked. “Who do you think is the world’s biggest consumer of Iranian oil?”

“We’re bringing Iran into this?”

“Just answer the question.”

“I’ll go out on a limb and say China.”

“Correct-o,” he said. “And with the United States calling for economic sanctions against Iran, how do you think the White House feels about China buying up all that Iranian oil?”

“Wild guess on my part, but I’ll say they’d like to see it dry up.”

“Correct-o, again. So here’s the deal. China—you reduce your consumption of Iranian oil. And if you do, look at what you get in return: all the oil you want from the Cuban basin, with no competition from U.S. oil companies.”

They stopped at the red light. A cyclist zoomed past them, making Andie glad she’d heeded the red light. “You’re saying that the White House keeps up the trade embargo against Cuba as part of a deal with the Chinese?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“What proof do you have of that?”

“None whatsoever. But how else do you explain the continuation of a fifty-year-old embargo that is a proven failure while the Chinese poke around for oil in our backyard?”

Andie had heard crazier things since the explosion of the Scarborough 8.

The traffic light changed, and they crossed at a tree-lined stretch of Second Avenue near Stuyvesant Square. The wind picked up as they turned north, and Andie noticed a hint of autumn color in the rustling leaves. “Can we be completely serious for a second?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“If Uighur militants did this, why haven’t they claimed responsibility? This was so spectacular that practically every terrorist organization on the planet has tried to pin its name on it.”

“Maybe they don’t want to turn public opinion against themselves.”

“If that’s the case, it makes no sense to blow up the rig at all. The Uighurs want independence from China. How does blowing up the Scarborough 8 advance their cause?”

“Maybe we need a better understanding of what their cause is.”

Andie stopped. Her partner took several more steps before realizing that he was walking without her. He circled back.

“What did I say?” he asked.

Andie’s thoughts were still jelling. “You had the same reaction I did: we need to understand the Uighurs’ cause better. But hearing you say it made my mind work in the opposite direction.”

“Gee, thanks. Nice to know that the chemistry we established on Wall Street is still alive and well.”

“Stay with me,” said Andie. “I think the explosion of the Scarborough 8 had nothing to do with the cause of Uighur militants, their desire for independence, or their grievances with the Chinese government.”

“Then why did they do it?”

Andie recalled the look in Noori’s eye as he told of being captured in the Afghan desert, flown to Gitmo, and held without evidence for seven years. “This wasn’t a terrorist act against a Chinese oil rig by a group of militants.”

“Then what was it?”

“It was one man’s personal act of retaliation and revenge against the United States for seven years of detention as an enemy combatant.”

Andie’s partner was silent. She resumed their walk, moving quickly against the chilly breeze, but she got less than half a block before stopping short.

“Another brainstorm?” he asked.

“No,” said Andie. “Something far more urgent.”

“What?”

“I need a bathroom.”

Chapter 51

J
ack and Theo reached Nassau by mid-morning.

Two seats on a Friday-night flight out of Key West were impossible to snag at the last minute, even without an oil spill, but Bianca’s boss had managed to get them out by boat. Plenty of wealthy yacht owners had relied on optimistic projections that the Gulf Stream would carry the spill away from the Keys, or that most of the oil would evaporate before making landfall. The procrastinators were now paying top dollar to get their boats out of the impact area. Bianca stayed behind to run the café. Jack and Theo played first mate to Rick on the overnight delivery of a seventy-foot Johnson, which around two a.m. became prime fodder for the worst of Theo’s bartender jokes. “Hey, Swyteck, how do I make my Johnson seventy feet long? Fold it in half.”
Ahr, ahr, ahr.
Anything to stay awake as they cut through the waves in the blackest of nights.

At a cruising speed of twenty-two knots, it was about a twelve-hour trip to Nassau. Jack and Theo split the last eight hours into four-hour shifts, so they were reasonably rested and ready to go upon docking. Rick, the all-night captain, stayed on the boat to sleep.

A Bahamian immigration officer cleared them at the marina.

“Purpose of your visit, gentlemen?” he asked.

Jack paused.
To find out who blew up the Scarborough 8?
“A little business, a little pleasure,” Jack said.

“Enjoy your stay.”

The final leg of the journey was a ten-minute cab ride to the north end of the island. The driver dropped them on Marlborough Street, where they found themselves standing on a sunbaked sidewalk in front of a strip mall.

“Not what I expected,” said Theo.

The bank with the impressive name—New Providence Bank and Trust Company—was little more than a storefront window tucked between a manicurist salon and a convenience store. Jack double-checked the address, but they were definitely in the right place. Seeing it, however, made Jack understand why he had been told to “keep the FBI out of this.” It had all the markings of a bank that could shut down its Bahamian operations overnight and flee to the Cayman Islands at the first sign of law enforcement.

“Banks run the gamut in the Caribbean,” said Jack. “From the big boys, like BNP Paribas, to . . . well, this.”

Jack was no expert on offshore havens, but he had as much experience with Bahamian banks as any Miami criminal defense lawyer. While the Bahamas had shown enough cooperation with international tax regulators to improve their official status to “gray” in the eyes of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, bank secrecy continued to be a pillar of the Bahamian financial-services sector. There were more than four hundred bank and trust companies within the eighty square miles of New Providence alone. It didn’t take a team of OECD officials to see that this particular hovel in a Nassau strip mall was among the island’s darker shades of gray.

Jack and Theo walked past the manicure salon, the noxious chemical odor worse than oil-spill dispersants, and entered the bank. Inside were none of the usual trappings of private wealth management—no leather couches, expensive artwork, or rich wood paneling. The walls were basic beige, with commercial carpeting and simple furnishings to match. Two women were busy at computer terminals, separated by a simple workstation divider. In a separate office in the back, behind a glass wall, a Bahamian man dressed in casual slacks and a short-sleeve dress shirt was seated behind a metal desk, talking on the telephone.

One of the women rose to greet them. “Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes, I’m here to access a safe-deposit box,” said Jack.

She glanced at Theo, than back at Jack. “We allow only one customer at a time in our secured area. Will that be you?”

“Yes. It is box A-36.”

“May I see your passport, please?”

“I was told to ask for Mr. Jeffries,” said Jack.

“He’s a bit tied up at the moment. If I could have your passport, I’ll get his attention without delay.”

Jack handed it over, and she went to Jeffries’ office. The next sixty seconds were tense, as Jack realized that the phone call from Josefina might well have been a runaround.

“What if your name’s not on the access list?” asked Theo.

“Then we burned through seven hundred gallons of fuel for nothing.”

“Well, not for nothing,” said Theo. “They have casinos here. And a totally awesome waterslide.”

Jack might normally have rolled his eyes and ignored Theo, but the waterslide made him think of his expectant wife and smile. “You could be one cool Uncle Theo.”

The woman returned with Jack’s passport and, to his relief, a pleasant smile. “Come with me, please,” she said.

She escorted Jack to a locked door and, with nine beeps of the key pad, entered the passcode. The door opened to a small room. The only furniture was a small table and one chair. While the front area had borne little resemblance to a bank, the walls in this secured room had a thicker, more substantial appearance. The steel door looked bulletproof. She told Jack to wait at the table, and she entered another room that was behind a second locked steel door. Two minutes later, she reappeared with a metal box—safe-deposit box number A-36.

“Just press the button by the door when you’re finished,” she said, and then she left Jack alone. He stared down at the box.

With good reason, Jack had decided to heed Josefina’s instructions and keep the FBI out of this. Nonetheless, he approached the opening of the box like a CSI detective. He’d brought latex gloves with him (with the oil cleanup, they were everywhere in Key West). Jack saw no security camera in the room, and a bank such as this did not earn its clientele by spying on them, so he pulled on the gloves without concern of being watched. He slid the metal top off the box and peered inside. He saw only papers. Actually, there was just one paper, which he removed.

It was a computer-generated bank record for the New Providence Bank and Trust Company, but not from this branch. It was a Parliament Street address, in the heart of Nassau’s financial district. The only entry on the record was a cash deposit of fifty thousand dollars. The date of the deposit was the fifth of September, which hardly seemed like coincidence.

Three weeks before the Scarborough 8 disaster.

Jack checked the “Account Holder” line. It read: “NR050527.” It was a numbered account.

No surprise.

Jack photographed the bank record with his iPhone, sealed the paper in a plastic bag, and tucked it into his coat pocket. He closed the box and pushed the call button for the bank employee. She came quickly, returned the box to its sleeve in the other room, and then let him out. Jack thanked her and headed straight for the exit, eager to get away cleanly and quickly with the bank record. Theo followed him out the door and down the sidewalk.

“Well?” asked Theo.

They were still walking as Jack showed him the photo of the bank record on his phone. Theo studied it.

“Fifty thousand dollars?” he said, so surprised that he stopped walking. “Somebody blew up an oil rig for a measly fifty thousand dollars?”

They were a half block away from the bank, just beyond the odor of the manicure salon. “The amount of this deposit isn’t important,” said Jack. “For all we know, there are five hundred accounts like this all over the Caribbean.”

“That would be . . .” Theo gave up on the math, too many zeroes to carry. “A shitload of money.”

“The key is to find out who the account holder is. All we have is a number.”

“I guess that’s what Josefina meant when she said the first piece is free. We get the deposit record.”

“But we don’t get the name of the account holder.”

Theo glanced toward the bank. “Why don’t we go back and ask?”

Jack scoffed. “Offshore banks don’t just give out that information because you ask.”

“Maybe this one does.”

“Trust me. They don’t.”

“You don’t know till you try.”

“It’s a stupid idea. Forget it.”

Theo nodded, but it was an acknowledgment of their disagreement, not acquiescence. “I’m gonna take a shot.”

“You don’t understand, Theo. Bank secrecy is the law in this country. You’re asking them to commit a crime.”

“I’m not putting a gun to their head.”

“No, but if they get the impression that you’re making a veiled threat or even hinting at a bribe, that would be real trouble.”

“I’ll ask
nicely
.”

Jack laid his hand over his coat pocket, referencing the bank record. “The smart move is to take this and get it checked for fingerprints. I don’t see any upside to going back inside the bank and asking questions that we shouldn’t be asking.”

“Then you wait here.”

Theo started down the sidewalk. Jack went after him. “Theo, don’t go back in that bank.”

Theo didn’t answer.

“Theo,
don’t
.”

Theo yanked open the door and stopped. “Dude, it’s totally okay. Just admit it. You brought me on this trip for the same reason you married Andie Henning: there needs to be at least one set of balls in the equation.”

“What?”

“Now, let me do my job.” The door closed and Theo disappeared inside.

“Damn it
,
”
Jack said under his breath. He waited outside for a minute, but the waft of chemicals from the busy salon next door was making him dizzy. Or maybe it was the thought of Theo inside the bank, winging it. Jack didn’t want any part of a half-baked plan, but he didn’t want Theo in charge, either.

One set of balls?

He sucked it up, went inside, and found Theo speaking to the manager in the office behind the glass wall.

“Good timing,” said Theo. “Jack, this is Mr. Leonard Jeffries.”

Jack shook his hand. “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Jeffries. I apologize for any inconvenience.”