Without Jack Senior to talk to, the family just stood at his bedside and caught up. Jack hadn’t seen his big sister in months, and Katie and Kyle lamented that it had been ages since he’d visited them in the White House.
Jack caught his mom’s eye; he saw worry on her face, not just about her husband, but also about her son, as she wondered what he was involved in that had made him so remote recently. He did his best to reassure her with a hug, because there wasn’t much he could say.
As the conversation moved away from Jack Junior and on to other things, he stood over his father, looked at his bandages and his predicament, and wondered about the son of a bitch who had done this to him.
Everyone was pinning this on Santiago Maldonado, but if Jack had to bet right now, he’d say it was the president of Russia, perhaps using Maldonado as a proxy.
Just then his phone vibrated in his pants pocket. He excused himself and stepped out of the room into the hallway. Two Secret Service agents stood there by the door, and Jack knew they weren’t going anywhere, so he walked a few feet farther.
The caller ID let him know it was Chavez on the line.
“Hey, Ding.”
“Sorry. I know you are with your dad.”
“It’s okay.”
“How is he?”
“Tough.”
“Damn right he is.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Something’s weird, I’ll say that. We’ve been hunting for Riley all afternoon with no joy. Went to all his haunts. Finally, we turned to Gavin—we should have gone to him first, to tell you the truth. He traced the LoJack security feature on the guy’s BMW.”
“Smart.”
“Yeah. Turns out Riley drove to Teterboro Airport about two hours ago and parked his car in a long-term lot. We spent another half-hour trying to figure out the destinations of the aircraft leaving shortly after his arrival. There were about a half-dozen corporate planes that he could have been on, but we ruled out all but one by looking into the owners, the destinations, and then deciding neither Sharps nor Riley had any known dealings with them.”
“So . . . where do you think he went?”
“Jack . . . we think he went to Mexico City.”
Jack turned his head toward his father’s room. He watched through a glass partition as Sally lifted Katie up onto the edge of the bed. The little girl was fighting back tears as she leaned over and kissed her sleeping father.
Ryan’s voice dropped an octave. “What would he be doing down there?”
Ding said, “We don’t know, but we thought we’d go find out. He’s on a plane owned by a shell company set up at an Antiguan bank. Gavin researched the CIA’s Intelink-TS database for financial forensics, and it led him to Grupo Pacífico. It’s an oil, gas, and mineral company owned by a Mexican billionaire named Óscar Roblas de Mota. Grupo Pacífico isn’t an overt client of Duke Sharps’s, but Sam’s facial-recognition work in front of Sharps’s Upper West Side digs turned up a pair of Grupo Pacífico execs paying old Duke a visit.”
“I’ll be damned,” Ryan said. He didn’t know what it meant. That there could be any connection to Riley’s trip and the assassination attempt was still too much of a stretch to seriously contemplate. But the fact that Riley was heading to Mexico City the day of the attack, and the day after committing a brazen murder in New York, seemed particularly troublesome to say the least.
Ding said, “We’re heading down tonight. Not even sure how we’ll track him once we’re there, but we’ve got a couple ideas. Clark says stay where you are if you need to be with your dad, but if you are able to get away—”
Ryan was already moving. “I’ll be at the airport in an hour.”
Ding said, “Roger that. Tell your old man we’re thinking of him.”
65
Edward Riley flew from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey direct to Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport in the back of an Embraer Phenom 300 corporate jet owned by one of Óscar Roblas’s shell companies. He landed just after three a.m. and was driven by a hired car to a hotel in the posh Polanco neighborhood of the city.
He’d worked on his plan for most of the flight, so he caught a few hours’ sleep in the early morning, and then, just after nine a.m., he was visited by an RGB agent named Kim who explained that he himself had just arrived from Havana the evening before. Kim had been the one in contact with Zarif, and he came over to Mexico once it was clear Zarif was attempting to blackmail North Korea for $2 million.
Riley thought the sum to be relatively small, but he understood why Zarif chose this amount. The bomb maker wouldn’t have easy access to banks, so the cash had to be carried, and two million U.S. dollars was about the largest amount easily transported by a single person. He could have carried a lot more in euros, but either Zarif did not know this or else he felt dollars would be more useful here in the Western Hemisphere.
Kim had spoken to Zarif just before arriving at Riley’s hotel. The Iranian had demanded to work with a middleman, someone who was not Asian, someone who spoke English. He’d explained that this person would make the transfer at eight p.m. that evening at the Cinépolis movie theater in Toluca.
Riley would be this man.
It had already been decided by North Korea that there would be no blackmail money paid to Zarif. Having him alive and able to reveal details of Operation Fire Axe was not a suitable option, so Kim had made no attempt to collect the funds.
Riley agreed with their assessment in general, although Roblas’s people had given him the phone number of a local banker he could call at any hour if he needed cash to buy back evidence. Even though Riley knew Óscar Roblas could have easily come up with the money to buy the man’s silence, there could be no guarantees Zarif wouldn’t just reveal his knowledge about the North Koreans’ involvement in the attack anyway.
So the solution was simple: Zarif had to die.
But Riley knew this wasn’t a situation where they could just shoot him dead on the street. The man had allegedly created a video detailing North Korea’s involvement in the assassination attempt, and Zarif would have to be a complete and utter fool to arrive at the location for the exchange without leaving an ace in the hole. No, the bomb maker would have secured a copy of that video with someone, or he would have mailed it to an address, or saved it on a computer that was not on his person.
Riley needed to know what Zarif had done to ensure his safety, and there was only one way to get that information.
The Englishman pictured a long and uncomfortable night of brutal torture.
He needed a secure location to do this, and his Polanco hotel room would hardly suffice for what he had in mind. He told Roblas’s banker he needed only ten thousand dollars, and he expected to return that to him when the operation was complete, but what he needed more was a location somewhere in the area where he would not be disturbed for twenty-four to forty-eight hours. The banker put him on hold for several minutes, presumably to contact either Roblas or someone below him, and then he returned to the line with an address. He said it was a private villa in Cuernavaca, a city in the mountains an hour south of the capital. The banker promised Riley no one would bother him there.
Next came a discussion between Kim and Riley about how to get their hands on Adel Zarif. Riley had transported cash for blackmail payments before in his career. He knew one million U.S. dollars, if acquired in hundred-dollar bills, would easily fit into an average-sized school backpack. He went to a nearby department store and purchased two dark backpacks, then stepped into a used-book store and bought enough cheap paperback novels to fill the packs.
Once he had his decoys, he and Kim drove together to Toluca, where they reconnoitered the movie theater and the streets around it. It was just after three p.m., so he knew Zarif would probably not be in the area, but Riley wanted to figure out why he had decided on this location for the drop.
Once they circled the block a couple of times, he had his answer.
He explained his conclusion to Kim. “There are a lot of ways out of that cineplex. Each of the six screens has its own fire escape, and there is a main entrance and a back way out of the lobby. He’s worried about a double cross. We need all the exits covered.”
“How do you propose we do that? There are two of us, and you will be inside.”
Riley said, “I can hire a team of local muscle, but that’s going to take more time than we have.”
Kim understood this would be his responsibility. “I can get RGB men here from Mexico City.”
“No. If Zarif sees Asians, he’ll run.”
Kim thought for a moment more. “I have a better idea. Let me make a call.”
In the late afternoon, ten operatives of Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence arrived in two Jeep Cherokees. The North Koreans had good working relations with the Cubans, and the DI men had a large operation here in Mexico. Kim had to go all the way up to General Ri to secure this in extremis operational partnership, but Riley liked the arrangement. Zarif was an Iranian with no experience in the Spanish-speaking world, so Riley felt certain a crew of Cubans on the streets around here would not raise alarms the way North Koreans would.
The Cubans were all armed, and though they weren’t from the Toluca area, they at least knew how to blend in here in Mexico.
They didn’t know about the North Koreans’ responsibility in the attack on the U.S. President; as far as they knew, they were simply helping their communist friends catch a kidnapper during a ransom exchange and hold him until he revealed the location of his victim.
—
At eight p.m. Riley walked through the theater entrance with one backpack over his shoulder and the other in his hand. He bought a ticket to the first movie advertised on the marquee above the cashier’s head, and he stood at the concession stand, as ordered by Zarif, for five minutes. He assumed this was so that Zarif, who was somewhere here in the large multiplex, could identify him.
After his five-minute wait, Riley entered the theater where his film would be playing, and he walked up the stairs and found a seat in the top row.
Almost immediately the lights lowered, and soon after that Riley saw a lone man climbing the stairs toward him.
Zarif sat down and looked at him strangely. Riley replied, “You said you didn’t want to see any North Koreans, and you wanted someone who spoke English.”
The Iranian nodded. “I thought you would be Mexican. Who are you?”
“I am a business associate. Nothing more. There was a misunderstanding yesterday, and it’s my hope I can put it right.” He patted the two backpacks stacked on the chair next to him.
“Let’s see the money.”
Riley reached into his shirt and pulled out the bound stack of one hundred hundred-dollar bills. He tossed it into Zarif’s lap nonchalantly, like there was a hell of a lot more where that came from.
“Ten thousand. The rest is here.” He patted the bags.
Zarif looked it over and stuck it into his pocket. “Hand it over to me.”
“No. I want the phone first, and any other recordings you made.” Zarif handed it over and Riley looked to find the video the man had made. It was there, so he slipped the phone into his pocket.
Then Riley leaned close. “We need to know you didn’t do anything else with that video.”
“There is one more copy in a safe place. When I get the money and get away, I will call you and—”
He stopped talking because Riley was shaking his head back and forth. “That’s not on, mate. Tell you what. You keep the ten thousand. I’ll keep this one-point-nine-nine mil. When you are ready to give me what I want, everything, then give me a call.” He smiled. “Buy yourself a phone with what I gave you.”
Zarif tried to stop him, but Riley stood. He left the theater via the main entrance. As soon as he did so, he called Kim. “I expect he’ll be running out one of the back exits.”
“The Cubans are ready.”
—
Adel Zarif left the theater where he met with Riley and walked into one of the other theaters in the cineplex, heading for the fire escape. He was confused and scared now. The exchange looked like it was going to go off without a hitch, but suddenly the Englishman just got up and left.
It was only at the moment when he pushed through the fire exit that he realized it had all been a trick. There was no more money, because the entire meet was simply to make sure that he was there in the theater.
He saw two young men in leather jackets standing in the alley, just feet away from the exit. They looked Mexican to him, like everyone else he’d seen on the street around the theater, so he was not alarmed at first. But as he passed under a streetlamp and continued down the street, he saw their long shadows following him.
A black Jeep Cherokee came from the other direction in the alley, then pulled to a stop right next to him. Zarif turned to take off in a run, but now there were four men around him; they tackled him to the ground on the sidewalk and they dragged him into the Jeep.
A pillowcase was put over his head and his arms were pinned behind his back and secured with electrical tape.
He thought he heard a conversation in Spanish, and then a man speaking English with a British accent, clearly the same man as in the theater. “Where did you send the file?”
“I uploaded it.”
“That’s a bloody lie, mate. I checked your phone. You didn’t e-mail it or text it to anyone but our mutual friend in Havana.”
“I used a cable, I uploaded it on a computer.”
“What computer?”
Zarif hesitated. “Just give me the money and I’ll tell you.”
“There is no more money. There is only the chance to save your life, and that is fading away like the money did. Talk!”
Zarif thought over his options, and there were none. He could tell them, and they would surely kill him because he had no more leverage. Or he could not tell them, and they would torture him. Eventually he would die, or he would talk and then he would die.
From somewhere in the vehicle a fist was thrown and it connected with his jaw. The Englishman screamed: “Where is the bloody recording?”
Zarif decided his only chance was to stall and hope Allah saved him.
He spat blood out of his mouth; it wet the inside of the pillowcase.
And then he said, “Allahu akbar.”
“Oh, bloody hell. Take him to the villa. We’re in for a long night.”
66
The operators of The Campus had been on Riley’s trail for an entire twenty-four hours. They landed in Mexico City at six-fifteen in the morning, and the Gulfstream purposefully taxied to the same fixed-base operator that Riley’s Embraer jet had used a few hours before. Ding Chavez spoke with the manager on duty and asked about the earlier aircraft. The man wasn’t terribly forthcoming at first, but after a pair of hundred-dollar bills changed hands, he seemed to remember some details about the Embraer. From this Ding ascertained the name of the limousine company that had picked up the one passenger on board. A call to this service brought out the same driver—precious few limousines ran between three and seven a.m., after all—and a ride into the city led to a friendly chat that was made more friendly with two more Ben Franklins, and just like that, Chavez was taken to the same Polanco hotel where the Englishman had been dropped earlier in the morning.
By ten a.m. the entire Campus team was in position around the hotel. Caruso and Ryan were on rented motorcycles, Clark and Driscoll drove in a nondescript 2010 Dodge Durango, and Chavez had access to a rented C-Class Mercedes that he’d parked with the valet. The men were spread out, but wired together via earpieces. Chavez remained in the lobby; he wore a business suit and he sipped coffee while reading El Día, the local newspaper.
There were a lot of
Asians in the building—the hotel was popular with foreign businessmen—so a call from Clark for everyone to keep their eyes open for possible North Korean Riley accomplices turned up nothing conclusive.
Finally, Riley himself came out of the elevator at noon with a fit-looking Asian whom Chavez immediately pegged as RGB. The RGB man picked up a Lexus SUV from the valet stand, and both men climbed in and headed off.
For the next hour the five Americans leapfrogged in a four-vehicle mobile surveillance, tracking Riley and his colleague all the way to Toluca, an hour west of the city. They watched the men circle a theater very slowly, and then drive to a café, where they spent an hour talking on their phones. Soon after this Riley did some shopping at a department store and then a bookstore, where he purchased a curiously large number of paperbacks.
In the early evening the Lexus pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center, and soon a pair of black Jeep Cherokees stopped next to it. By now the Campus men had dispersed themselves hundreds of yards away to stay out of sight. Dom and Jack were parked on an overpass, Chavez was in his Mercedes in an adjacent parking lot, and Driscoll and Clark stood in the atrium of an office building across the street. They were far from their targets, but they all had binos or other optics and could see the team of ten Hispanic-looking males meeting with the Englishman and the North Korean.
As Riley and the Asian conferred around the vehicles with the new arrivals, Chavez called Clark on the net. “John, you’ve been around the longest. Any guesses at all as to what’s going on?”
“Nothing good. That’s a dozen men in total. I see sidearms printing under their jackets. The new arrivals all seem to be taking orders from Riley. Meeting in a parking lot like this . . . looks like a pre-operation briefing. I’d say something’s about to go down.”