Jessica pulled up to the driveway of the vacation house and parked. The afternoon sun was beating down and a light breeze off the ocean filled her nose with the smells of the sea. She looked down at her phone again and pressed a number.
“Hi, sweets,” was the cheery answer.
“You sound happy, Judd,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t I? I’m sitting in my office, under fluorescent lights, reading stacks of useless government documents. I’m chasing shadows while my wife and kids are enjoying the beach. What’s not to love?”
“I’ve been doing a little work, too.”
“I thought you were going to relax,” Judd scolded.
“I’ve got something for you.”
“You do?”
“You don’t sound surprised,” she said.
“No comment. What’ve you found?”
“The missing boat . . . the fishing boat that the Cubans seized . . .”
“Yeah, I know,” Judd said, looking down at a photo of The Big Pig and his meager files on each of the four missing Americans.
“I’ve got a name for you: Richard Green.”
Judd looked down at the files for Dennis Dobson, Brinkley Barrymore, Crawford Jackson, and Alejandro Cabrera. “Never heard of him. Who’s he?”
“He looks after the boat. Part-time.”
“How’d you get his name? Are you down in the Keys?”
Jessica hesitated. Lie Number Five? “No,” she said. What’s five lies versus four? “No, I got it from . . . a colleague. Don’t ask me more.”
“Okay . . . maintenance guy in the marina.” Judd scrawled down the name. “Does he know anything?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s all?”
“I don’t have anything else on Green. I just think it might be relevant.”
“Okay, thanks, sweets. I’ll look into it, but you should go back to the kids. You’re supposed to be on vacation.”
“I have one more name for you. Does Ruben Sandoval ring a bell?”
Judd heard the name and repeated it to himself. “Ruben Sandoval . . . Sandoval . . . sounds familiar . . .” Then he remembered the name from an intelligence horse trade with his British contact the previous week. “I think Ruben Sandoval is some kind of businessman. And a political fund-raiser in Florida. He’s supposed to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Egypt,” Judd said.
“Egypt?”
“If I’m remembering correctly, yes,” Judd said.
“How do you know that?” she asked.
Judd recalled that Serena had gotten Ruben Sandoval’s name from one of her friends who worked on the State Department’s seventh floor. Judd had then given that name to a British Foreign Office official in London in exchange for inside information he had needed in Zimbabwe. “Eh, I don’t remember,” he mumbled. “Probably just State Department chatter.”
Jessica frowned. “But Egypt? That’s odd.”
“Sure is,” Judd said. “What’s our future Ambassador to Egypt got to do with the missing boat?”
“Richard Green works for Ruben Sandoval.”
“Okay . . . So this Green, who we know nothing about, watches the missing boat and also works for Sandoval, who is rich and politically connected.”
“Right,” Jessica said. “Suspicious, don’t you think, Judd?”
“Could be. But that’s a pretty tenuous thread, Jess.”
“It’s worth digging deeper, that’s all,” she said. “I’m just saying that there’s a connection.”
“Let’s assume you found something important and Sandoval is linked to the four Americans.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Then what are Sandoval and these poor dupes really up to? Is this a big mistake, a bunch of amateurs who got caught, or something bigger? If it’s something bigger, then what? And why Cuba?”
“Good question, Judd. What the hell is going on in Cuba?”
29.
U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
THURSDAY, 4:01 P.M.
What the hell is going on in Cuba?” Melanie Eisenberg was steaming.
The Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs sat forward in her chair and eyed the long conference table in front of her. “Those were the very words of the Secretary of State.” Several of the assembled staff shuffled papers and someone cracked their knuckles, but no one spoke. “What the hell is going on in Cuba?” she repeated. “We can’t have it. The Secretary can’t wonder what’s happening. She can’t have doubts about what’re we doing in Cuba. It reflects badly on all of us! Does everyone get that?”
Most heads bobbed in agreement.
“I don’t know what she’s been hearing, but we’ve got to put a stop to it. I’ve assembled all of you now to update the team on what we know and to clarify our course of action. Sybil, put up the slides.”