Targets of Opportunity (42 page)

Mrs. Amendola stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “Out of the ordinary? Yes, you can certainly say that. In all the years we’ve been married Peter’s never disappeared before.”

The three of them were standing in the middle of the room, and it was apparent no one was in the mood to sit.

“Have you noticed anything unusual lately? Has he been under a strain of any kind? Trouble at work? Difficulty at home?”

“You mean, have Peter and I been having marital problems, is that what you’re asking?” Her voice grew louder now. “Are you asking if I think he just up and ran off on me?”

Sandor decided it was easier to interrogate a terrorist than to question an angry housewife. “Actually, no ma’am,” he responded quietly. “I’m asking if you’ve seen anything in your husband’s general behavior that you regard as unusual. Has he mentioned problems at the refinery? Has he been short-tempered? Anything at all like that.”

His calm demeanor helped to defuse her mounting anger. She stared at him, as if suddenly comprehending that she was speaking to a federal agent, not a marriage counselor. “Is Peter in some kind of trouble?”

“To be honest, we’re not sure,” he admitted, “but if he is, and if we’re going to be able to help him, we need a starting place.”

“We have two children,” she told them. “Our son has special needs.” When Sandor gave an inquiring look, she said, “He’s mildly autistic and he has serious respiratory issues. Peter is a devoted father. He comes home from work and spends as much time with him as he can.”

Banahan, who had been silent up to now, said, “Then it’s fair to say you have no explanation why your husband wouldn’t have at least called you these past two days.”

“None,” she replied dully, her anger receding into the sad realization of that fact.

“We understand you’ve tried his cell phone a number of times.”

“Of course. Many times. And I’ve tried texts. And e-mails.” Then, as if remembering something, she hesitated, then said, “Peter hasn’t been sleeping very well lately.” Her reluctance in making the statement was obvious, as if she was somehow betraying a secret she and her husband shared.

“How do you mean?” Sandor asked. “Like tossing and turning?”

“He would get out of bed and go downstairs. Sometimes he didn’t know I was awake, but it’s been happening a lot, especially this past week.”

Banahan asked whether she and her husband had discussed what was bothering him, but she shook her head.

Must be a close couple, Sandor noted, then asked, “Where downstairs?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said he would go downstairs. Where would he go? Was there someplace specific or would he just walk around the house?”

She winced, telling Sandor that he was treading on their private life again. It was exactly where he wanted to be. He abandoned his pose as an understanding officer and fixed her with the intense look of a man who knew how to get answers when he needed them.

“Where did he go, Mrs. Amendola?”

She paused for a moment, then said, “Peter has a little office area, in the basement. He would go there.”

“Show us,” Sandor said, more by way of an order than a request.

She led them down a narrow flight of stairs to the finished basement and pointed to the corner.

Sandor made a cursory examination of the desk and the area around it. There was a small filing cabinet to the left and he had Banahan begin a search. Then Sandor started opening the desk drawers and riffling through the papers.

“I’m not so sure you should be …,” Kate Amendola began to say, but Sandor shot her a look that told her she had best shut the hell up for the moment.

The drawer on the upper left was locked. “You have a key for this?” he asked.

She shook her head.

Sandor found a letter opener and pried it open.

There did not seem to be anything of interest in there, so Sandor got down and began looking into the knee well and underneath the desk. Then he rose and began yanking the drawers all the way out and stacking them on the floor, one atop the other.

“Bingo,” he said. Banahan turned around to see Sandor pulling a metal strongbox from the back of the top drawer cavity.

Sandor stood and placed it on the desktop. “You ever see this before?” he asked the woman.

“No,” she said, but the look on her face told them she was lying.

He flipped the top open and the three of them stared at several stacks of hundred-dollar bills, a manila folder, and a small white envelope with the word “Kate” written on the front.

Sandor studied the woman’s look of complete astonishment. “You’ve seen the box before, haven’t you?”

She nodded slowly.

“But you never knew what was in it, did you?”

She looked up at him. “I swear, I never did. I didn’t even know where he kept it.”

Sandor fixed her with a hard stare, then opened the envelope and read the letter.

Amendola told her everything, making it clear he finally realized that he had put himself and his family in serious danger. Assuming her husband was still alive, Kate Amendola might yet be used as a target or even as a hostage, and so Sandor figured taking her into protective custody would be a hedge against further distractions. He pulled out his phone and called Ronny Young to arrange for the Amendola children to be taken out of school and also brought to the plant for safekeeping. “Here,” he said, handing her the cell, “tell this man where he can pick up your children. Then get dressed, you’re coming with us.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

WASHINGTON, D.C.

B
YRNES CALLED A
meeting of the counterterrorism task force in Washington that had been assembled to deal with the Baytown threat. They met at the Pentagon, convening in a steel-encased room on the second floor where signals could neither be transmitted nor received except on secure lines. Eavesdropping from inside or outside the building was impossible.

The gathering was attended by representatives from the FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Department of Defense, and the White House. They ringed the large conference table, studying the reports that had been compiled to date. The team had pieced together the information Jordan Sandor had gathered from Hwang, the investigation in St. Barths, the sketchy intelligence provided to Deputy Director Byrnes from Ahmad Jaber, and now the papers left behind by Peter Amendola.

They believed they were finally in possession of a general concept of what they were about to confront.

The North Koreans had apparently made a deal with Venezuela to provide weapons technology in exchange for a guaranteed supply of oil at a below-market price. The lack of fuel was choking Kim’s economy, making the arrangement irresistible for the DPRK. The regime in Caracas would more than cover its losses on the cut-rate sales to North Korea from the benefits it would derive in destroying America’s largest refinery—not only causing political and economic panic in the West, but also creating an immediate inflation in the price of processed crude.

The attack on Baytown was being spearheaded by Rafael Cabello, known in the intelligence community as Adina. He also appeared to be responsible for the assault on Fort Oscar and, in all likelihood, the downing of the passenger flight outside St. Maarten. The logical conclusion was that the destruction of the communications center in Gustavia was intended to weaken the ability of Washington to monitor Adina’s intended movements in the Caribbean. This in turn suggested that the assault would be coming by water, rather than land or air. Perhaps the explosion of the jetliner was geared to draw more attention to the skies than the sea, and in the double-think world of espionage there were those who subscribed to every imaginable variation on those themes. In the meantime, Hurricane Charlene had increased in speed and intensity and was only twenty-four hours away from striking the Gulf Coast with its full force, complicating their defensive strategies.

Having agreed on this analysis, the brain trust in Washington was convinced that they would be able to prevent the attack and were already congratulating each other on averting yet another terrorist threat to the United States. Despite interagency rivalries, there were even some outside the CIA who had to admit Sandor had done one hell of a job.

Sandor, however, was not so sure.

————

Sandor and Banahan had returned to the Baytown refinery with Peter Amendola’s strongbox, his wife in tow.

“You got the kids?” Sandor asked.

“They’re on the way,” Ronny Young told him when they met in Janssen’s office.

“Good. Make sure they’re not scared to death by this whole thing, okay? My guess is they’re going to have enough to deal with over the next few days.”

Young nodded.

“And how’s my friend Hea doing?”

“At the moment,” Young said, “my constant companion.” He gave a nod to the right. “She’s in an office down the hall. She’s fine.”

They sorted through the contents of Amendola’s manila folder, which provided a fair summary of the information for which he had traded his soul. In his note to his wife he did not specifically admit his treachery, but he asked her forgiveness and understanding.

And yet, Sandor thought, and yet.

He asked Janssen to vet the information Amendola had sold, and to confirm just how much damage the release of the data might cause. Then he headed for the privacy of a small, empty office where he called Byrnes. The DD left the task force meeting to take the call.

“You got the fax of the Amendola file?”

“We did. Good work on that.”

“What preparations is CTC making to secure the refinery?”

Byrnes described in general terms the measures being taken by the joint counterterrorism team, and Sandor listened without interruption. “You’re uncharacteristically quiet,” Byrnes observed when he was finished.

“I’m not sure I buy it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean it’s been too easy. Like we’ve been following the breadcrumbs they’ve dropped along the path. I’m not sure I buy it,” he repeated. “Take Amendola, for instance. The guy disappears, the wife hasn’t heard a word, no one has seen him, so we’ve got to believe they removed him, right?”

“I’m listening.”

“Why kill him now? They’ve obviously been paying him, he apparently gave them the information they wanted. Why not just let him go home?”

“I would answer with the obvious,” Byrnes replied. “He might have a change of heart, maybe he was ready to blow the whistle on them.”

“True, but factor into the equation that he hasn’t done that up to now. Why would he suddenly expose himself to a long prison term? An attack of conscience? Not likely. The note to his wife shows he came to realize that these people mean business. They know where he lives, where his family lives. It sounds to me like a man who was afraid, not a guy who was going to turn on them.”

“So what’re you saying?”

“I’m not sure, but let’s think it through. By making him disappear it became a certainty that within a day or two people would be looking for him. Questions would be asked. The cash might even turn up. Or he might have left something behind, one of those ‘Open in the event someone blows my brains out’ notes.”

“Which he did.”

“Not exactly, but pretty close. It was enough to make it clear he was no Boy Scout, and that someone was obviously paying him a lot of green for information on the refinery’s security systems.”

“And you think the fact that it all came to light was intentional.”

“I think, as Sun Tzu taught us, you must never underestimate your enemy. These terrorists are animals, but they’re savagely clever animals. They wouldn’t take Amendola down without purpose. Or without considering the consequences.”

Byrnes mulled it over. “So, if they left Amendola alive…”

“They would have actually bought more time,” Sandor finished the thought. “They could have even held him, let him call his wife to say he had to go out of town for two days. She would have been angry, but she wouldn’t have started calling around to report him missing.”

“I suppose not.”

“Add this to what that dying terrorist told Lieutenant Vauchon that night at Fort Oscar. Not to mention the airliner they took out in St. Maarten. And what about the story our friend Jaber is spinning, letting the line out a little at a time?”

“Jaber,” Byrnes repeated.

“It’s all too pat for my taste.”

“Which leaves us where?”

“We’ve got to continue making preparations for Baytown.” Sandor drew a deep breath. “But it also leaves us looking for their secondary target.”

Byrnes was quiet for a moment. “I see your point. That would be a typical Adina ploy.”

“Exactly. Misdirection.”

“And what about Jaber?”

“I think it may be time to grant his wish and cut him loose. He wants to see the missus so badly, let him go.”

“He’s a political detainee, Sandor.”

“He’s a murderer, and he’s counting on Uncle Sam’s generous nature to protect him. Don’t be fooled by his polished act. He’s a terrorist, sir, remember that.”

Byrnes was in no mood to debate ethics with Sandor, who was colorblind when it came to discerning shades of gray. “Tell me what the hell you’re doing with the girl.”

“What girl?”

“You can’t jeopardize the lives of our men.”

“As if I ever would,” Sandor bristled. “Look sir, Hwang may be up to his neck in something that could cost the lives of thousands of people, so you know damn well that we’re not dealing him away until we clean this up. You also know I’m totally loyal to my men, but for now no one is going anywhere.”

For once Byrnes backed off. “All right,” he said, “but you better be ready with an explanation…”

“I am, believe me.”

“You mean that article in the paper?”

“That’s part of it. The more public this becomes, the more likely Kim will deal for Hwang alone. He couldn’t lose face by admitting he wanted this girl as part of the trade.”

“So that’s why you threatened the reporter?”

Sandor did not answer. “Baytown is on high alert. Tell them in D.C. they need to start thinking about a secondary target, sir. That’s what I’ll be doing down here.”