“You look beautiful,” he said.
She smiled. Then, it seemed, she couldn’t help but reply with “And you look thoughtful.”
“Nothing that can’t wait for a bit. Thom! Time for dinner! Could we get the wine open, please and thank you?”
His eyes drifted back to Sachs. He really did like that dress.
Wednesday, March 17
V
Brillianteering
Chapter 68
As placid as ever, the Mexican attorney Antonio Carreras-López tugged at his vest and looked over at his client, sitting opposite him.
Eduardo Capilla—El Halcón, the Hawk—was the least avian-looking criminal who ever existed. (A more appropriate nickname for him would be La Tortuga.) Fat, balding, squint-eyed, with a broad, upturned nose. Still, he was one of the most dangerous men on earth. His hands and feet were shackled, and those shackles affixed to steel rings in the floor.
The interview room was in the federal courthouse for the Eastern District of New York, Cadman Plaza. The building was modern and stylish and only a little scuffed. Plenty of suspects from mean streets had passed through here but, as their offenses were federal, they tended to scrub up better than their counterparts in state court.
Both men here were in suits—even the defendant, as was customary, since a prisoner in a jumpsuit might prejudice the jury to think guilt and taint the Sixth Amendment’s right to a fair and impartial trial.
The U.S. Constitution, the Mexican lawyer had reflected on occasion, was just so quaint, so charming…
Outside the room were two guards—both dedicated to making sure El Halcón didn’t fly the coop, a witticism that Carreras-López couldn’t resist.
Carreras-López’s pen made whispering noises on the yellow pad before him. One would think that the notes he was jotting had to do with the appalling information that federal prosecutor Henry Bishop had just presented: that a new analysis of the evidence had proven, to a certainty, that his client was not hiding in the bathroom at the time of the shoot-out but was, in fact, armed and firing at the police.
That son of a bitch, Lincoln Rhyme, had set him up.
This was, of course, an irony in itself, because Carreras-López had himself contacted Rhyme with the express purpose of setting him up. The lawyer had come up with the absurd argument about tainted evidence solely to give himself a chance to meet Rhyme and look into to his eyes. Carreras-López was a master of assessing men, and could tell in an instant if Rhyme suspected the plot had nothing to do with any diamond lodes in Brooklyn, but was about something else altogether, directly involving El Halcón. But no, the criminalist might be brilliant at analyzing fingerprints and trace evidence, but he was completely oblivious about what was really going on.
Which was that within the hour, El Halcón would be free. The plan to break him out of the courthouse here and spirit him away to a compound in Venezuela was proceeding perfectly.
There is a rumor that there is no extradition treaty between the United States and that troubled South American nation. That’s not correct. The 1922 treaty between the two nations remains in effect, though the extraditable offenses are a bit bizarre—bigamy, for instance. There are rules about shipping fugitive murderers and drug dealers back to the U.S. but, of course, they are enforced only if the foreign authorities want to enforce them. And, depending on where the decimal point falls, the Venezuelans’ motivation for enforcement can be a bit limp.
The escape plan had been long in the making—from the moment El Halcón had been taken into custody after the shoot-out at the warehouse on Long Island.
Carreras-López had known that a legal defense wouldn’t work—El Halcón had in fact grabbed the pistol of the warehouse manager, Chris Cody’s, and shot Barry Sales, the cop on the tactical team. Escape was the only option. He’d called a troubleshooter whom the cartels in Mexico sometimes used, a man in Geneva, Switzerland, named Fran?ois Letemps. Carreras-López had paid a million-dollar deposit against a three-million-dollar fee for Letemps to break the man out of custody.
Letemps had suggested staging the escape in some locale other than New York, which he viewed as problematic. But, no, that wouldn’t work. There could be no change of venue; the Eastern District of New York had sole jurisdiction. And once he was convicted, as surely he would be, he would be in high-security lockdown until he was transferred by a government plane to the infamous Colorado super prison, from which escape was not possible.
No, New York was the only option. And since the federal courthouse in Brooklyn was the most vulnerable spot in the system, Letemps set to work on a plan to orchestrate a mass evacuation of the courthouse when El Halcón was present. In the chaos, it should be possible to take control of his armored transport van and escape.
But simply calling in a bomb threat, for instance, would have been far too suspicious and brought even more law enforcement down on El Halcón, Letemps reasoned.
He therefore decided to create a potentially deadly gas leak in the courthouse for reasons that appeared to have nothing to do with any escape attempt. Specifically, Letemps’s plan provided, a mercenary—hired to sabotage geothermal drilling nearby—would set gas bombs in the neighborhood.
Letemps had arranged for a shipment of diamond-rich kimberlite to be delivered to New York from Botswana. Carreras-López had some of his men, who’d accompanied him from Mexico, strew these rocks around the geothermal site and the waste dump where debris from the site was taken. One of the men also took some kimberlite to a famous diamond cutter—Jatin Patel—who had it analyzed and found that it was indeed diamond-rich stone. Whatever Patel thought of the stone was irrelevant. The plot merely depended on getting the kimberlite to him.
Letemps himself pretended to be the contractor representing New World Mining in Guatemala, which was not involved in any way. He hired Andrew Krueger to plant the bombs and kill Patel and the assayer Weintraub. Then that mad Russian had showed up, worried about the diamond find too, but in the end none of that mattered. The important thing was that the police were convinced there was a series of gas line devices planted throughout Brooklyn, near the courthouse.
Any other gas leaks would immediately be attributed to Krueger and his attempts to sabotage the drilling.
Poor Andrew Krueger—he was merely an oblivious pawn; he believed that he’d been hired by the Guatemalan mining company and had no idea that he’d been set up. And set up to fail: A key part of the plan was making sure the police figured out the diamond lode sabotage plot.
Lincoln Rhyme had, unwittingly, accommodated in this regard.
With a frown of concentration, Carreras-López jotted more notes on the pad before him. He shook his head, crossed off one entry. Added another. This was an important document: a grocery list for a dinner party he was planning to cook in Mexico City tomorrow night. His wife did not enjoy the kitchen; he did.
Chicken, poblano peppers, crème fra?che, cilantro, white Burgundy wine (Chablis?).
Now, as El Halcón pretended to read some court documents and fantasized about a?ejo tequila, the building shook with a faint tremor.
This was the result of a C4 charge planted not by Krueger but by one of Carreras-López’s men at the geothermal site. This IED was not on a timer but had been detonated by radio signal, as the explosion had to coincide with El Halcón’s presence in the courthouse.
The guards in the hallway outside looked briefly at each other, then returned to staring at nothing.
Carreras-López’s mobile gave a brief tone. He looked at the text.
Your aunt has been discharged from hospital.