'A' for Argonaut (23 page)

The first purchase order for twelve large “special” diamonds provided the breakthrough they needed. It had come to Bradford & Bailey of Boston, Harold Mantville’s store. Soon they discovered purchase orders from stores all over the world, thousands of orders for large D-Perfect blue diamonds, “Chrysanthemums.” They were giving them away. The pricing was uniform, one-thousand dollars a carat, retail, for each and every one. The orders exposed a trail from B&B to Dolitz. Sergei needed to find their distribution source if not their origin. It was obvious to the former Russian spy how dumping of such a vital financial pricing tool as diamonds could be used as a terrorizing weapon of economic mass destruction.

Before long, they had it. All the diamonds came through C. Tolkachevsky & Sons Diamonds N.V. in Antwerp. They discovered additional correspondence in a string of newsgroup messages about Dolitz, Inc. From Al the Jeweler’s Pal, an apparent wholesale dealer, on
talk.gems.misc
, Sergei learned that, “In the past few months, Dolitz has increased its diamond business from several millions of dollars per month to several hundreds of million.”

“Wait a minute,” The Bird said. “Lookit this shizat! Dolitz!”

“Bingo,” he chirped. The article was from “SA Gemscape,” an out-of-print trade journal published in Johannesburg. The Bird hit “PRINT.”

Sergei read:

“Thousands of soldiers and civilians have died in military battles fought in the region. Data reported by the European Union-funded International Peace Information Service indicates that diamonds-for-arms trading by one man, known to Interpol as the ‘Animal of Angola,’ Grigol Rakhmonov Boyko, with his firm, Strategic Solutions, Inc., has been responsible for much of what was behind the brutal conflict between Uganda and Rwanda. Boyko has collaborated with Khalil Nazzeem Ibrahim, a Lebanese who operates out of his restaurant on the Kampala Road in Uganda. One deal engineered by Strategic Solutions accounted for more than half of Uganda’s diamond exports to Antwerp in the past year.”

Sergei whistled in amazement.

“That’s not all. Check this out,” The Bird said. He showed Sergei a list from the Panamanian Department of Commerce.

“I don’t believe this!”

“Its fahkin’ unbe-e-e-lievable,” The Bird confirmed.

The report showed that Dolitz made frequent trips to the International Free Port of Colon. The Free Zone, a haven for money laundering, is known as a favored vacation spot for the Cali international drug cartel. Sergei suspected that Dolitz hadn’t gone there as a tourist to snorkel over the reefs off the beach at Maria Chiquita Turiscentro or to spot the harpy eagles.

The Bird transmitted up to the National Reconnaissance Office’s CHALET II satellite, and punched a series of codes that put him into the Dolitz financial records at First Stone Bank in Manhattan. He searched the records for anything that had anything to do with the Colon Free Zone.

His screen lit up with a list of receipts. He shouted.

“Keerist on a raft!”

“Amazing,” Sergei agreed.

“I didn’t think there was that much money in the world,” The Bird added.

The list on Sergei’s screen showed that Dolitz was shipping container-loads of U.S. money orders each month to the Hong Kong Private Bank of Panama. All the money orders were in the $7,000 to $10,000 range, within the $10,000 U.S. Cash Transaction Report limit.

“Money! Money sent around the world at the speed of an electron, snaking under laws that were designed to protect innocent people from drug dealers, terrorists, and child pornographers, bless their little black hearts.” Sergei punctuated the air with his forefinger. “The cartel is using Dolitz as a gigantic laundry to clean their dirty cash. He’s leveraging his diamond operation to convert massive lots of big, gem-quality diamonds into hundreds of millions in cold U.S. currency.”

“Where’s the money going from Panama?” Sergei pressed.

The Bird punched some more keys.

“You’re so fast. A goddamned genius!” Sergei said.

They cracked into the Dolitz primary account at First Stone Bank. Once deposited at the Hong Kong Bank of Panama, the deposit amounts were transferred to a string of private banks from the Cayman Islands to Gibraltar, Kabul, Islamabad, Kinshasa, Moscow, and back to a Dolitz account at Citibank in New York.

“Drug money! Fuckin’ blood diamonds! They’re linked,” The Bird exclaimed.

“What’s next?” Sergei asked.

“An audit to Mack.”

Twenty-Six

New York City

B
ack in his New York hotel, Sergei’s audit confirmed Maran’s suspicion. The report was one more piece of the puzzle. Things were moving fast. As a result, Maran had set up a surveillance team in an empty seventh-floor office space across 47th Street from the Dolitz, Inc., building.

Cherokee Jordan, one of Maran’s former colleagues from SAWC, led the surveillance team. They had seen a strange delivery taking place on the Dolitz loading dock. A group of men, flanked by security guards armed with automatic rifles, packed a tractor-trailer with large canvas bags that looked like postal service office sacks.

If they are laundering money
, Maran thought
, they are doing it in unimaginable size.

He filled an L.L. Bean duffel bag, left his room at 2 A.M., caught a cab to Fifth and 46th and walked down Fifth to 47th, carrying the duffel over his shoulder. There in the front hallway and back alley of the Dolitz building, he set off a series of smoke bombs.

Before long, fire alarms began to wail from within the Dolitz building. Night workers poured into the street. Some of them ran to the street alarms at the corners of the surrounding streets. Maran took advantage of the confusion and slipped inside. By the time the four-alarm equipment arrived, all the buildings on the block had been cleared out. The skeleton night crew had fled the Dolitz building. Maran didn’t even have to pick the lock to the counting room. The money was still on the table. No one stayed around to burn to death when it looked like the building was about go up in flames. He found a series of pine plank counting tables. They were in such heavy use they were stained green from the ink of U.S. currency, cash being washed by the truckload.

Dolitz!

The operation and its implication was staggering.

Cabinda.

His steps back out were long and rapid. A crowd had gathered outside. He pushed and turned through them, forcing himself not to run. The last thing he wanted was to call attention. His watch crew was across the street, surveilling the Dolitz building. He had ordered them to keep well back from the windows and maintain tight security on the office’s front door. They may have been able to identify employees who could be clamped down on as critical sources of information. It was always possible to turn felons against their employers before they faced a judge and a long jail sentence. If that didn’t work, Cherokee Jordan had other options. He knew how to get what he needed.

Maran turned left onto East 46th. An alley down the street led into a rear entrance of the building across the street from Dolitz at 33 East 47th. He used the back. He didn’t want to be observed going into the building overlooking Dolitz. Inside, he brushed by a uniformed maintenance man and, rather than chance being trapped in the elevator, he climbed the cast-iron spiral staircase. On the second landing he thought he heard a noise.

Something. A faint rattle. Upstairs.

A flicker from the past. He glanced up.

God! Not now!

The light from the incandescent bulbs in the renovated gaslight fixtures blinded his eyes. His mind began to spin. At the second landing, his hands, shaking, grabbed the handrails.

Focus
.

Seven floors above, his surveillance team was gathering evidence on just what was happening inside of 33 East 47th.

The trial. My men. My name.
He blinked as it all flashed before him. Pain seared with more intensity than ever. Inside his head, voices screamed‌—‌guilt‌—‌betrayal.

Cabinda. Diamonds.

His bad leg almost collapsed under him
.

Impossible. How? Why?

It was coming together, filling him with fear. He stared down.

No, not him! Not again. The base of the stairwell. The Animal!

Maran tried to shake the vision away.

Reality! Take charge.

He had to get upstairs. The team would have answers. Instinct propelled him. He limped forward. Any new clues, he was certain now, would lead him back to Cabinda.

Answers!

He gripped the rail so hard that when he started to falter he feared his fingers would break. His bad leg throbbed as step by step he climbed.

A clear sound. Real. A groan. Upstairs. No more rattles.

Cherokee was up there. His friend was rough as gravel but smooth as eggnog and could be just as sweet when the situation called for it. Give him a human intel target, no matter what the field, he could be relied on to find and download sources with access to the answers: the perfect spy, multi-talented. Maran trusted the man’s judgment. With the 35mm infrared surveillance camera he had brought in, Cherokee even at night could distinguish the color in a goldfinch’s eye at 700 yards. It was trained on the Dolitz building.

On the seventh floor landing, the scene struck Maran in the face like swarm of riled hornets. He rushed forward, his blood pounding, and cleared his head with the urgency that confronted him. He withdrew the H&K compact from his shoulder holster, cocked the slide, barreled through the splintered wound in the door to the rented office, swept by reality into the past once again. The walls on the 47th Street side were pocked with bullet holes, lines from automatic fire. The eggshell paint was spattered with blood. The blotches misspelled out a macabre omen:

AVENEG TH GEMSA ARGNAUT

On the floor, two of his team’s bodies lay, contorted, their heads a blackish crimson mess, mutilated by bullets. Cherokee lay in a pool at the base of a window at the end of a crimson trail. Both his hands gripped what remained of one of the surveillance cameras. He had used it to rattle out an alarm before he clawed his way to the window. It was a miracle he was able to move, a testament to his will to live, his training as a SAW. A bullet had entered the side of his forehead, removed a piece of his skull. His breathing was hoarse, labored like a broken auto ignition.

Maran bent to grip his hand, his thumb on Cherokee’s pulse.

“Cherokee. It’s Maran. I’m here.”

His friend sputtered, gurgled, whispered just loud enough that to be understood.

“Ah, ahh. No, no‌—‌no use‌—‌broke door‌—‌battering ram‌—‌stood‌—‌ doorway‌—‌firing‌—‌”

“Cherokee, Cherokee.”

“‌—‌Gave each of us a burst‌—‌ran. Cowards. Gettem Mack.” The plea burst from inside his chest; a thick gob came up with the words. He convulsed, grabbed his throat with his hands. His body shot off the floor; he collapsed and went silent, his chest still as stone.

Maran gagged. The nightmare repeated.

Alone.

Shaken but composed, he
took the “F” Train on the Metro to 2nd Avenue and walked down East Houston to Ludlow, passed up on breakfast at Katz’s Deli, remembering, in a brief respite from his grief, the last time he ate there and got sick to his stomach after washing down a huge tongue and corned beef sandwich with a Mack Maran Mocktail of iced coffee and OJ: “Stirred and shaken, please.” Sometimes he could be a real asshole. He knew it, though, and it never ceased to make him smile. Besides, he made up for it. He was a big tipper. But that was then, a lifetime ago. Now his resolve to track these fiends down bored into his mind. Back in his hotel room, he picked up the phone to make a call. Cole Martin assured him that his friends would stick by him.

“
You know who they are
,” Martin said. “
Men to whom you’ve proven yourself throughout your career.
”

Maran wanted to believe.

But can I? Can I even trust Martin‌—‌or Luster?

Were they friend or foe? His faith in the U.S. military code had been shattered.

There was nothing more he could do right now so he collapsed on his bed and fell into a fitful sleep. When first light dawned it was 4:45. He was up and resolved to get right back into his normal routine, slipped into a sweat suit and sneakers, took a long, loping run, ignoring his limp, then went back to knock out his daily 200 push-ups and 100 sit-ups. He threw in a bunch of toe-touchers, added some jumping jacks and side-twisters, shit-showered-and-shaved, and was up and out. It was religion. He might not have been his superior officers’ model of conformity, but nothing changed his routine. Arriving early as usual, he took a seat on the 7 A.M. Delta shuttle from LaGuardia to Washington. As much as Martin had helped, Maran’s grief was beyond healing. One thing could ease the pain and one thing alone. Nothing would derail his mission. As the fire of hatred grew, it tempered his resolve. Whoever they were, he had smoked them out.

He had to get to Vienna, Virginia, to see Martin’s friend, Jack Connell at FINCEN, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.