Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (40 page)

Even being stuck out of the way of the main action, I was excited to be there. Once we pulled out of the harbor and got going, my heart was actually pounding. The night was dark away from the lights of Cambridge, and I pressed my face to the glass and looked out at the passing shoreline, glad I had brought my night-vision binoculars for later.

We sailed for about 30 minutes before slowing to a stop in the middle of the river and just sitting there, engine idling. I was afraid something was wrong with the ship. When a uniformed officer crossed through the small room I was in, I stopped him, and he told me we would be waiting here until we got word that it was time to close in on Manno Island.

We waited nearly an hour and a half. In that time, I occupied myself by devising different escape routes in my mind, should something go wrong. The longer we waited, the more I began to have second thoughts about being here at all. It was just a nagging feeling of doubt, but it had begun creeping up on me as we idled, and now it was growing stronger. This sense of foreboding wasn’t strong enough to make me pull out, but it was keeping me on my toes.

As I waited for something to happen, I realized the mood was different for me than when I was doing surveillance. This time, the knowledge that something big was going to happen—as opposed
to the thought that it
might
happen or
could
happen—nearly drove me crazy with anticipation.

Tonight, it was just a matter of time.

Finally, a little after 3
A.M.
, I could sense a difference in the atmosphere. Suddenly, people were milling about overhead, and there was a change in the pitch of the engine sounds. Soon we were on our way again. I wiped the window clear in front of me and held my goggles to my eyes, studying the dark, empty shoreline ahead.

About ten minutes later, we rounded the curve that brought us from the Choptank River out into the Intracoastal Waterway. The water was rougher here, though the boat absorbed most of the waves fairly well.

We moved as slowly as possible, hugging the far side of the channel. A larger ship eventually overtook us and passed us by. We rocked in its wake, and I thought of my terror the night before, clinging for dear life in the dinghy on the back of Russell Lynch’s boat. Tonight, Russell would be one of the ones arrested, his nefarious nighttime activities ceased permanently.

I was thinking of him, wondering what had driven him to take part in such a horrendous crime as human smuggling, when I saw the unmistakable silhouette of his boat up ahead. He was heading toward us, but as we drew nearer he veered off to our left, cutting in to the dock at Manno Island. Obviously, he wasn’t yet aware he was being observed or that he was going to be greeted at the island not just by the smugglers but by a cadre of INS agents as well.

I watched through my binoculars as his boat pulled into the dock at Manno. Even with my goggles, it was hard to see what was going on from such a distance, but it looked as though a big man, probably Hank, had come out on the dock to meet the boat and was tying it off. I could see Russell step onto the dock and have some sort of discussion with Hank. Suddenly, there was a flash of gunfire from the trees, and then the dock area was crawling with men dressed in black, sporting big guns and taking the operation under control. Hank and Russell stood with their hands up, and
they were soon joined by several other smugglers, hands also in the air.

Our boat went up to full speed then, straight for Manno Island. I had so many questions. I was relieved when I could hear pounding footsteps coming down the stairs, and soon Agent Litman appeared in the doorway of my little room. He was pressing the earpiece against his ear, listening intently and grimacing. Finally, he looked at me, shaking his head.

“Good news and bad news,” he said curtly. “The good news is, we’ve taken the island without any fatalities.”

“What’s the bad news?” I asked.

“The Tanigawa brothers aren’t anywhere to be found.”

Forty-Six

There had to be 20 people squeezed into a container that really wasn’t big enough for a fourth that many. I had been allowed on the island, though I was relegated to the sidelines, and I watched as the people filed off of Russell’s ship all in a row, hands clasped at the back of their necks, their bodies decimated, their eyes terrified. One or two looked as if they might drop dead of exhaustion or illness on the spot.

The agents were corralling them together in a group on the grass, and they huddled there looking scared and confused. I wished I spoke Chinese so that I could reassure them: You won’t be hurt here, you’re in America. You’re safe now.

But for how long, really, were they safe? In the car, Litman had told me that despite the arduous journey these people had taken to get here, they would not be allowed to stay in the United States unless they could prove that they would come under direct physical harm if returned to their country. Since most of them
were simply peasants who had come here to seek a better, more prosperous life, it was doubtful that any of them would be able to meet that criteria.

I sat on a log, exhaustion suddenly overtaking me as well. It had been such a busy, exciting night, but now the reality of the INS raid was setting in. Again, that strange sense of foreboding clouded my mind, but I brushed it aside and tried to concentrate on all that was happening around me.

Someone brought out some food for the immigrants—what looked like a case of bologna and some juice boxes—and they devoured it all as if they hadn’t eaten in days. I watched as agents with guns led Russell and then Hank, both handcuffed, on board a coast guard cutter, one of the several ships that now crowded the island. A few minutes later, three other prisoners were taken aboard, Japanese men who had been armed guards for the island.

I could only assume that Hank being carted away in handcuffs meant that he was still undercover, and that his identity would not be revealed in front of the other smugglers for his own safety. I wondered where they would all be taken, if I would be allowed to listen to any of the interrogations, and how I could possibly find out which one of them was responsible for Eddie Ray’s death.

Once the Chinese people had been fed and then led into the picking house en masse, I felt a little more free to move about. I had promised Tom I would follow all of the INS rules to the letter, and thus far I had done just that.

Still, that didn’t mean I couldn’t explore a bit. Out of curiosity I strolled the small compound, peeking in the windows of the various buildings. First was the picking house at the end of the walkway, just as Murdock had described it. Inside, I could see the immigrants being lined up in rows between long, narrow tables. Apparently, the ones who had arrived last night were also still here and were being herded into the picking house from the dormitory next door.

I moved beyond those two buildings to the third structure, which was set back into the woods a bit. It looked like a small home, a quaint place with a broad, dark wood porch and attractive
double doors. The Tanigawas must have lived there, though where they were now was apparently anybody’s guess.

The house was wide open, well lit, and swarming with agents. The mood inside was one of angry frustration. Agents were going through drawers, cabinets, closets—and carting off boxes of papers, confiscating bullets and machine gun casings, cursing at each other and the situation.

“Heads will roll for this,” one agent yelled, brushing past me as he stormed out the door.

I followed him, wondering how the Tanigawas had known not to be here tonight. Obviously, there was a leak somewhere in this carefully orchestrated operation. I thought of how Agent Litman kept referring to “leaks from inside our own agency.” I wondered who the mole was and how long they had been working both sides of the operation.

I had just returned to the dock area when I heard someone calling my name.

“Callie! Callie Webber!”

I looked up to see a woman walking toward me, dressed in the dark clothes and heavy boots of the other agents. When she reached me, she took me by the elbow and began to lead me up the ramp of the same ship where they had taken Hank and Russell and the other prisoners.

“You’ll have to come this way, ma’am,” the woman said, even as she practically dragged me up the ramp. I hurried along with her, nearly tripping over the lip of the doorway at the top.

“What’s this about?” I asked.

She didn’t reply but instead led me down a narrow hall and into a small room lined with metal benches. She indicated that I should sit, so I did and waited to hear what she had to say.

“Am I to understand,” she said, “that you are a private citizen and not an employee of the Department of Immigration and Naturalization or of the Department of Justice?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Can you tell me please by whose authority you were brought here on this mission tonight?”

I took a deep breath, heart pounding. I didn’t know by whose authority I was here. “Someone who knew someone” was all I could think of—but how could I tell her that?

“Agent Litman is my liason,” I said, sitting up straight, trying to look dignified. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“Just a minute.”

The woman turned on her heel, crossed the hall, and banged once on a metal door. It swung open to reveal another agent.

“I need to see Litman,” she said.

“He’s translating for the prisoners,” the other fellow replied. “What do you want?”

“I need more information about this woman who was allowed to come along on the raid tonight.”

She gestured toward me, and the other fellow leaned forward to peek in at me.

“What about her?”

“We had a leak,” the woman said. “I need to understand why a civilian was allowed—”

She was interrupted by the man, who spoke in hushed tones, saying something about “the AG’s office.” In turn, they each looked at me and whispered some more. Then she stepped back into my room.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” she said gruffly. “Don’t move a muscle.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stomped away and I sat there, feeling suddenly sick in the pit of my stomach. Obviously, my being here was causing a big ruckus that would eventually have some sort of an impact on Tom. He had gotten me on this trip by calling in a favor, so if my presence here made for complications, it could only look bad on both Tom and whoever it was who pulled the strings that had gotten me here. I realized now I should’ve just stayed home.

I reached into my pocket for my phone, thinking I needed to contact Tom and warn him things hadn’t exactly gone off without
a hitch. Calculating the time difference, I decided that he was well on his way to Singapore now, probably somewhere out over the Pacific. Though I couldn’t call him on the airplane, I could at least leave a warning message on his voice mail. Before I could even dial, however, I saw the screen was showing five missed calls.

They had told me to turn my phone off while on the tugboat, and since then I had forgotten about it. I pressed the button to bring up the numbers of the missed calls, wondering who had been trying to reach me so late at night.

I looked at the number—the same number for each of the missed calls—and realized it was the code for Cleveland, Ohio.

“Gordo,” I whispered, quickly pressing the buttons that would allow me to return his calls. Despite the uncomfortable churning in my stomach, my hope was that he was calling to tell me of some new development in the investigation. Perhaps, I thought, even though I had told him to stop poking around, he had persisted and somehow managed to learn some of the missing elements to this equation, such as the connection between these two investigations, or perhaps even the name of the donor broker himself. I put the phone to my ear and heard a busy signal, so I hung up and decided to try again in a few minutes.

I sat on the metal bench, shifting to find a more comfortable position before finally giving up. There was no comfortable way to sit there. I turned my attention instead to the room across the hall. The agent had left the door slightly ajar, and I could hear sounds of the interrogation taking place. Someone was questioning the armed guards, and Litman was acting as the translator.

“How long have you known Kenji and Shin Tanigawa?” a man asked.

“Tanigawa Kenji to Tanigawa Shin wo itsukara shitte irunda?”
Litman repeated in Japanese.

“Roku nen desu,”
one of the prisoners replied. I translated in my own head, six years.

“Six years,” Litman repeated.

“How long have you been working out of this island?” the man asked.

“Donokurai kono shima de hataraite irunda
?” Litman said.

“Daitai jyuuhaci kagetsu desu.” Approximately eighteen months,
I thought, trying again.

“About eighteen months,” Litman translated.

For being so rusty, I thought I was doing pretty well.

Turning my attention to the phone, I pressed the redial button, and this time I was able to get through. Much to my surprise, instead of Gordo, a woman answered.