Minute Zero (13 page)

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Saturday, 7:08 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Y
ou’re here on the weekend again, S-Man?”

Sunday looked up from his computer terminal to find his colleague leering over the cubicle’s half wall. Glen held a Styrofoam coffee cup in one hand and a donut in the other. His hair was standing up on one side as if he had just rolled out of bed. “You need to get a life, Sunday.”

“Aaay. That’s what my girlfriend says.”

“You’ve got a girlfriend?” Glen chuckled, taking a shark bite out of the donut, leaving a thin mustache of powdered sugar on his upper lip.

Sunday frowned. “You’re here on Saturday morning, too, Glen.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Sunday brushed his top lip with his hand. The other man tentatively copied Sunday, then glanced down at the powder on his fingers, shrugged, and wiped it on his jeans. “Seriously, Sunday, what’s going on? What’re you doin’ here?”

“Zimbabwe. It’s election day.”

“Oh, shit. That’s right! That old fucker Tino’s still holding on, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“I remember running tracers on that man’s accounts, like, a decade ago. Maybe longer. You sure Tino’s really still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe they are just propping him up. Like Castro. Or
Weekend at Bernie’s
.”

“He’s alive.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and it will all blow up this weekend. Yep. Maybe this is the weekend Tino finally kicks it. Boy, that would be something, eh, Sunday?”

Sunday didn’t respond and turned back to his desk. After a few seconds Sunday looked up again and Glen was still there, still leering, still grinning.

Sunday exhaled. “What, Glen, are
you
here working on?”

“Somali pirates,” he said firing finger guns at the ceiling. “They seized another Korean container ship last night.”

“You don’t say,” Sunday said.

“Yup, that’s the third grab-and-go this month. I can’t say any more. So, Sunday, who’s this girlfriend of yours?”

Sunday ignored the question and turned his attention back to his computer.

“Okay, S-Man, I can take a hint. I’ve got pirates to catch anyway. We can talk about your girlfriend later.”

Sunday grunted as he logged into the network and clicked through several security screens to access a database. With a few keystrokes he pulled up all financial transactions in or out of Zimbabwean banks for the past month. Long endless lists scrolled on his screen. He opened a data filter and set the size minimum at $1 million. The list shrunk from millions of transactions to a few hundred. One immediately stuck out as larger than all the rest.

Oct07 $150,000,000 ZimBank (HRE) 1015655 ABC from HSBC (IOM) 786252 XXX

That’s today
,
Sunday thought. Who is transferring $150 million into a volatile country
on election day
? He opened another screen and logged into another CIA database. He typed in the receiving account information, and the screen reported:

ZimBank Account 1015655

African Ballistics Corporation (ABC)

500 Fidel Castro Avenue, Harare, Zimbabwe

Authorized Holder: Simba Chimurenga

“Aaay!” Sunday said aloud. “Christmas for the general. Who is Santa Claus?” he mumbled to himself. He entered the sender account data and received:

HSBC Account 786252

Anonymous(XXX)

Prevost Avenue, Douglas, Isle of Man

Authorized Holder: Name Withheld

Sunday scratched his head. He picked up the phone. “I’ve got an anonymous bank account linked to a suspicious transaction I need network mapped. I’m sending over the account information now.” A few moments later his screen popped.

HSBC 786252, Anonymous (XXX), Isle of Man, Name Withheld

AsiaOne Bank 786252, XTC Trading Co, Mauritius, Name Withheld

Barclays 786252, Orca Financial, Jersey, M.O. Smith

HSBC 786252, RDVC, Bangkok, Thailand, Max O’Malley

Max O’Malley?
Sunday pushed his chair back away from his desk. The same person who had tried to mine uranium at Kanyemba and failed was now bankrolling Simba Chimurenga? And presumably these were campaign funds for President Tinotenda. Elections always brought out dirty money, he thought. But what is an American mining investor living in Bangkok doing in . . . Zimbabwe? It made no sense.

And who was funding the opposition? Sunday returned to the database and searched for any accounts associated with Gugu Mutonga or the Democracy Union of Zimbabwe, but came up empty. He cleared the $1 million minimum filter and searched again. The page began to fill.

Oct07 $9872 ZimBank (HRE) 6764882 DUZ from SunBank (JHB) 786252 BST

Oct06 $9994 ZimBank (HRE) 6764882 DUZ from SunBank (JHB) 786252 BST

Oct05 $9765 ZimBank (HRE) 6764882 DUZ from SunBank (JHB) 786252 BST

Oct04 $9902 ZimBank (HRE) 6764882 DUZ from SunBank (JHB) 786252 BST

Oct03 $9881 ZimBank (HRE) 6764882 DUZ from SunBank (JHB) 786252 BST

Sunday scratched his head again. One transaction every day from the same account in Johannesburg to the same account in Harare. DUZ was Gugu Mutonga’s party. But what was BST? And why were the amounts so random? And so small?

“Glen!” Sunday yelled.

“You need girlfriend advice over there, S-Man?”

“You’ve worked on underground money transfers in Somalia, right?”

“Yeah, they’re called
hawala
. They’re a way for people working overseas to send money home to relatives. But the terrorists started using them to move money, so we’ve mostly shut all the
hawala
down.”

“I’ve got repeat transactions, one per day, every day, from one account to another. What would that tell you?”

“A hair under ten thousand dollars, right?”

“Exactly,” Sunday said.

“And slightly different totals each day, right?”

“Yes! How did you guess?”

“Classic under-the-radar strategy.” Glen attacked another donut. Talking with his mouth full, he explained, “Most of the financial tracking software defaults to flag all transactions above $10K. If you were trying to mask money transfers, you’d keep it under that level.”

“But why alter the amounts?”

“Precise repeats typically get flagged, too.”

“I see.”

“Whoever is transferring that money doesn’t want the bank to notice,” Glen said.

“Or the Zimbabwean intelligence services?”

“Or us,” Glen said, wiping his hands on his jeans as he wandered away.

Sunday pulled up the website for SunBank in South Africa, clicked on
CLIENT LOGIN
, typed in the BST account number, and then ran a PIN search algorithm. After a few seconds he was in. He moved through the system and found account details:

SunBank Account 786252

Black Star Trust (BST)

Millennium Tower, Sandton, Johannesburg

Authorized Trustees: Lucky Magombe

Who in the world is Lucky Magombe?
he thought.

Sunday opened a separate screen and searched for Lucky Magombe in the agency’s profile database. All that came up was a simple biography about a Zimbabwean stock trader who’d moved his business to South Africa. No known criminal record. No known political affiliations. Sunday pushed his chair back and exhaled loudly. He rolled his head in a circle, cracking his neck.

Winston Tinotenda versus Gugu Mutonga? Or is it Max O’Malley versus Lucky Magombe?

Johannesburg, South Africa
Saturday, 1:15 p.m. Central Africa Time

S
itting in his corner office at the headquarters of Black Star Capital, Lucky Magombe studied the blinking screens. One screen displayed a long list of district names with rolling columns of numbers as the votes came in. The other showed a map of his home country, Zimbabwe, broken down by individual voting constituency. The data on the first screen fed into an algorithm projecting final outcome probabilities on the second screen. These calculations were converted into a color-coding for each district on the map. Lucky had written the code himself.

So far, there was little to report. Several obvious strongholds glowed green for Winston Tinotenda and red for Gugu Mutonga. But, only a few hours into voting, most of the map’s zones remained black. Too early to predict the result with any confidence.

Lucky zoomed in on the map for his home area, in the far north of the country, just near the town of Kanyemba. It, too, was black. He overlaid the map with satellite imagery and zoomed in to the center of Kanyemba. He began at the old mine compound, the easiest landmark to find from space. He could clearly spot the straight lines of the roads and rectangular shapes of the compound’s now-derelict buildings. He followed with his finger the winding snake of a river flowing east. Several miles downstream, the river merged with a small creek to form a familiar triangle. This was the site of the village where he’d grown up. Lucky Magombe, sitting on the fourteenth floor of an air-conditioned office in Johannesburg, was staring at a photo of his home.

Except nothing was there. Just trees and dark red earth. There was in fact no sign at all there had ever been a village on that spot. Lucky’s stomach ached as he zoomed in closer to scour for any sign of a house, a well, anything.
Nothing.

If only he had a satellite photo from before his village was completely erased. When the young lawyer Gugu Mutonga took the village’s case to court and then all the way to the United Nations. The government denied a village had ever existed there. There was no proof of a village, so there was no atrocity. No records, no photographs, no witnesses, no bodies ever found.

Of course, everyone knew the truth about Operation Motowetsurohuro, the Great Rabbit Fire. Everyone knew that three villages and their nine hundred residents had lived there for years in peace. And now they did not. Everyone knew about the army and the attack helicopters. And everyone knew the message of Motowetsurohuro:
Silence.

Lucky also knew that as long as there was proof a village had once been, then the fight for justice would not be over. He knew there was proof that those people lived, that his mother existed. That proof was
him
.

As Lucky stared at the place that denied he was a real person, he wrestled with what to do next. He closed the screen with the satellite map and turned back to the voting tabulations. Satisfied, he picked up his phone and called a number inside Zimbabwe.

A deep voice answered, “Hello.”

“Is this the Canterbury Cricket Club?” asked Lucky.

“Is this Cannonball?”

“Yebo.”

“Your membership has been prepared. Are you now ready to play?”

“Is the cricket team there?”

“Yes, everything is in place. The target is in our sights. We are only waiting for your approval.”

Lucky longed for revenge. He wanted to taste blood. He wanted to pull the trigger on those who had destroyed his village and killed his mother. But Lucky thought of the woman who had carried him on her back, taught him to read, had made him who he was. He decided she would not want retaliation. She would want
justice
.

Harare, Zimbabwe
Saturday, 1:30 p.m. Central Africa Time

W
hat exactly are we looking for, Isabella?”

Special Agent Isabella Espinosa and Colonel David “Bull” Durham slumped down in the front seat of the battered Mitsubishi Pajero SUV with standard local license plates. They had a clear sight line on the front gate but were parked a safe distance from the villa of former Ethiopian President General Solomon Zagwe. The whitewashed wall of the compound was decorated with flowering vines and the lawn was neatly trimmed.

“Anything,” she replied. “Luggage in the driveway. Any signs of flight preparation.”

“It doesn’t look like the house of a monster.”

“Don’t be fooled. Zagwe is a war criminal. Thirty years ago he launched the Red Fear. He ordered the massacre of thousands of civilians. And then he starved another half million innocents. He’s a certified mass murderer.”

“Sounds like Saddam Hussein.”

“In a way. Zagwe tried to appear to the world like a gentleman. But underneath, to his own people, he was a total psychopath.”

“Yep, that was Saddam.”

“You served in Iraq?”

“Yes, ma’am. Three tours. You should’ve seen the palaces. Makes Zagwe’s villa look like an ice-fishing shack.”

“Ice fishing?”

“Minnesota. Born and raised,” Bull said.

“Los Angeles,” Isabella replied.

They both turned their attention back to the front gate.

“So if Zagwe’s been in exile here for so many years, why now, Isabella?”

“This is probably our best chance to get him. If Tinotenda loses today, Zagwe will have to make a run for it. If he gets to North Korea or Russia, we’ll never be able to extradite him. I’ve got to grab him in the chaos after Tino falls.”

“Why don’t we grab him right now?”

“Believe me, I’d love to,” she said. “But we’ve got no authority here. If we handcuff and hood him, the Zimbabweans would never let us leave the country. They’d probably arrest us.”

Durham scowled.

“That’s why it was fortunate Dr. Ryker invited me along,” Isabella said.

“What’s Judd’s interest in your case?”

“I don’t know, actually,” she paused. “I guess he just understood that my best window of opportunity will be in the minutes after Tino is down.”

“Right.”

“Judd agreed that if we wait, even for an hour, it could be too late.”

“Minute Zero,” said Durham. “Yeah, he told me all about it.”

Isabella was about to respond, when there was sudden activity at the front gate. The two ducked down farther. Durham carefully raised his binoculars while Isabella watched through a camera with a long-range zoom.

“Is that him? Is that Zagwe?” asked Durham, watching a tall thin man exit the gate.

“Yes!” she said, snapping away with the camera. Zagwe was wearing a light gray suit, far too big for his skinny frame. Aviator sunglasses shielded his eyes. “I’m going to follow him. You stay here and watch the house.”

“I’ll do it,” offered Durham. “You’re a civilian.”

“Negative. This is my case. I’m going.”

“I see that,” he replied. “But you’ve got no experience tailing bad guys. I do. And if something goes wrong, better it falls on me than you. We need you to keep the case moving forward.”

“It’s my case,” she insisted.

“You just said Zagwe was a mass murderer.
A psychopath.
”

Isabella dropped her head in concession and Durham slipped out of the vehicle and into the street.

The residential avenues of the lush Gun Hill neighborhood were mostly empty. Bull, a huge bald American in a golf shirt and jeans, stood out, so he kept a healthy distance. Zagwe marched forward at a steady clip, puffing impatiently on a long cigarette.

Durham cut across an empty field, walking diagonally through a patch of burned grasses. The smell of the embers filled Bull’s nose, mixing with the sweet fragrance of the jacaranda trees.

The general stopped at a small corner kiosk. Durham hid behind a thick baobab tree. He watched Zagwe make small talk with the proprietor and then hand him a paper bill in exchange for a pack of cigarettes.
Just out for smokes,
thought Durham.

But rather than return to the villa, Zagwe continued his journey away from the house. He followed a path along the outer edge of another compound, closely hugging the concrete wall. When he came to the end of the block, Zagwe checked over both shoulders before disappearing around the corner.

Bull waited behind the tree for a few moments, then continued his pursuit.

As he peered around the corner of the wall,
whack!
His ears rang and a sharp pain pierced his skull. Durham stumbled back, holding his head. Zagwe hit him again in the face with something sharp. Bull’s head snapped back and blood oozed from a gash on his cheek. In the face of a surprise attack, Durham’s instinct was to lunge forward, using his weight against the lighter man. He rushed the general, driving him back into the concrete wall. Zagwe yelled in pain as Bull released a forceful punch into the general’s stomach. Bull stepped back to regain his balance and cocked his fist for another blow when he saw a 9mm Makarov pistol in Zagwe’s hand.

Durham stepped back again and raised his hands.

“Who the fuck are you?” demanded Zagwe. He was waving the pistol back and forth and trying to catch his breath.

“I’m no one,” said Durham.

“You’re American. Why are you following me?”

“I’m not following anyone.
You
attacked
me
.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You are the guy who just hit me in the face.”

“Do you know what happened to the last American who was caught following me?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” replied Bull. “I don’t know who you are.”

“I had him thrown off a bridge.”

“I don’t know.”

“I killed that Yankee like a dog,” said Zagwe, narrowing his eyes and raising the pistol to Bull’s head.

“I don’t know—”

“Just like I’m going to kill you—” Which was when Isabella Espinosa’s fist collided with the side of Zagwe’s head. The gun fired, the bullet sparking as it ricocheted off the concrete wall. Zagwe turned toward his new attacker just as Isabella unleashed another punch to the base of his nose, which exploded in blood. Zagwe howled and covered his face, blood seeping through his fingers. Isabella spun and delivered a roundhouse kick to his midsection. Zagwe spilled backward onto the dust, his hand releasing the gun as he hit the ground. Durham grabbed the pistol. “Let’s go!” he shouted, and the two Americans turned and fled at full speed.

As they ran between two houses, Durham flung the gun over a compound wall.
“Go, go, go!”
he barked.

Once they reached the Mitsubishi, Durham started up the vehicle and drove slowly out of the neighborhood.

“What happened back there?” Isabella demanded, still fighting to catch her breath.

“He got me.”

“I thought you were a professional tracker? A Green Beret!”

“I messed up.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Thanks for saving me back there.”

“
Mierda
, Bull,” she hissed, shaking her head.

“I’ll bet it felt pretty good to unload on that guy?” asked Durham with a grin.

“It’s my case, Bull.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Now he knows we are onto him. He’s going to be even more careful.”

“I know. I fucked up. You saved me. We’ll still get him.”

“
My
case. . . .”

They drove in silence, making several U-turns to check for surveillance. When Bull was confident no one was following them, they headed back to the embassy. As they pulled up to the security barrier and waited for the car to be inspected, Isabella said, “Yes.”

“Yes what?” Bull asked.

“Yes. It felt pretty good to unload on that
cabrón
.”