Need You Now

53

T hat Friday, just after dark, Mongoose’s flight touched down at Westchester County Airport, a two-runway operation that served one of the largest fleets of corporate jets in America. The other passengers on board worked for the same hedge fund in Greenwich, just across the Connecticut state line in affluent Fairfield County. Mongoose didn’t know them, didn’t care why they were flying back from Ciudad del Este before dawn, and hadn’t said a word to them since takeoff. Commercial nonstops from Ciudad del Este to New York were nonexistent. With $2 billion in the pipeline, Mongoose had jumped all over the open seat on a chartered Gulfstream jet, even if the car ride from White Plains to Midtown was over an hour.

“Your luggage will be on the tarmac,” said the flight attendant.

“Got none,” said Mongoose. No bags would naturally prompt a few questions at customs, but that was easier than trying to explain traces of blood, bone, and soft tissue on a commando wire saw.

The “enhanced interrogation” of Manu Robledo had taken about two hours. Using the nylon rope from his tool kit, Mongoose had completely immobilized his prey, flat on his back, in the bathtub. Robledo’s arms were up over his head, his wrists tied to the plumbing fixtures. The assistance rail on the wall at the other end of the tub was strong enough to secure his feet, shoes off. The drain could handle any amount of blood, but just to make sure that Robledo didn’t bleed out too soon, Mongoose had fastened a tourniquet around both wrists. Then he’d gone to work.

The left thumb had been first. Ignoring the muffled pleas for mercy, Mongoose had wrapped the wire around the base and pulled in rhythmic fashion: left, right, left right. All Robledo could do was grab the wire, but the result had been a severed index finger along with the severed thumb. As a general proposition, a wire saw took anything that got in its way-and Robledo’s right thumb was next. Had it not been for the gag in his mouth, Robledo’s screams would have awakened the entire hotel. But he was powerless to resist, save for the futile grasp of the wire saw, and the result was the same: simultaneous severance of his thumb and index finger. Mongoose had paused to allow Robledo to get a full grasp of his condition, making sure that Robledo watched as, one by one, he’d flushed the digits down the toilet. Then he’d tied another tourniquet to Robledo’s ankle. The big toe would have been too predictable. He wrapped the wire saw around the middle of the foot, through the center of the arch, pulling it tight. From the look in Robledo’s eyes, he’d begun to feel the pain even before the wire had torn into his skin. An opportunity had presented itself. Before starting the back-and-forth, Mongoose had looked Robledo in the eye and said, “I’m going to give you the chance to tell me everything. Do you want that chance?”

Robledo had nodded eagerly.

Talk, talk, talk. The starting point had been the Church of Peace and Prosperity International, which Robledo explained was a front for a data-mining operation that would identify and then recruit angry young Islamic extremists who were already in the United States and who could be persuaded to blow themselves up in shopping centers. There was nothing that Robledo would not have told him. At some point, however, the risk of someone hearing his screams was too great. Not that anyone in Ciudad del Este would bother to call the police, not that the police couldn’t be bought off even if they came. As it was, Robledo had even confessed to participation in the worst terrorist attack ever against an Israeli diplomatic mission, the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992. False confessions were a definite hazard of wire saw interrogation. But it was a fact that no one had ever been prosecuted for the murder of twenty-nine and wounding of dozens more, many of them schoolchildren, in that bombing.

You never know.

Mongoose was through airport customs and immigration before six o’clock. He was walking toward the taxi stand when his cell phone rang. It was Barber.

“Joey baby, how are you?”

“I told you to stop calling me that. Listen to me.”

Mongoose waved off a taxi and stood at the curb as Barber filled in the details of his meeting with Patrick Lloyd. The fact that Tony Mandretti had called for his son, had something to tell him from his deathbed, was of special interest.

“What are you afraid of, Joey? That Daddy is going tell his little boy about the crooked man who lives in a crooked house and runs a crooked bank?”

“No, asshole.”

“Oh, I know,” Mongoose said, his voice laden with even more sarcasm. “You’re afraid Mandretti’s going to tell his son that he didn’t kill Gerry Collins, and that our own government paid him to confess.”

“I know you believe that, but it’s simply not true.”

“Bullshit. You don’t have to know everything about Operation BAQ to understand that it couldn’t work unless Robledo was on the outside leading his investors down the road we’d paved for them.”

“You believe that. Mandretti believes it. Patrick Lloyd will believe it once he hears it from his father. I’m telling you that it is absolutely not true, but somebody planted that seed, and this is going to be a classic case of ‘perception is reality’ if I don’t crush this right now.”

Mongoose said, “It’s just not clear to me why this is my problem to fix.”

“Try this on for size: you won’t see ten cents of the recovered money if this father-son reunion blows the lid off Operation BAQ. You got nothing on me if that secret gets out.”

Mongoose considered it. “Funny how life works, isn’t it? I remember sitting in your study not too many hours ago, offering you a partnership.”

“Don’t go there.”

“Our interests actually seem to align here, partner.”

“Brilliant. Just don’t call me your partner.”

“That’s fine, Little Joe. Where is Lloyd now?”

“He and his sister are driving to Boston.”

“I’ll head them off.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“You and I may be forced to sleep together, but I am not going to roll over and put myself in the position of having to explain the sudden disappearance of two young and perfectly healthy people like Patrick and his sister. Work from the other end: silence the sixty-year-old man who’s already on his deathbed.”

“That actually makes sense,” said Mongoose, “but I’m not sure there’s time.”

“Use the corporate helicopter. It will have you in Boston at least two hours before Patrick and his sister can drive there.”

“It’s not just a race between Patrick Lloyd and me. We’re talking about the hospital’s prison unit. The place is on high alert since that phony priest got through security.”

“Yeah, and I wonder who the phony priest was,” Barber said.

“Never mind that,” said Mongoose. “You said special arrangements were made for Patrick to be at his father’s bedside. The question is, how do I get at his bedside?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that,” said Barber.

Mongoose smiled. “Still have friends in high places, eh, Joey?”

“Just get on the helicopter,” said Barber. “I said I’d take care of it.”

“One more thing,” said Mongoose, his tone very serious. “I understand that whomever you hired to take out Evan Hunt also took his computer with the encrypted Treasury memo.”

“I didn’t hire-”

“Spare me the lame denial,” said Mongoose. “I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter what you did with that computer, my safety valve is in place. Every day, your memo on Operation BAQ is automatically reset to go straight to the media at midnight, unless I manually deprogram the e-mail blast. The day I die is the day that memo launches. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” said Barber.

“Good,” said Mongoose. “Make sure it’s crystal clear to your friends in high places.”