“Also known as O. Anything?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“I need you to find out ASAP. It’s urgent. Anything you can find on Oswaldo Guerrero or O. The minute you’re back.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m on it.”
“What else have you got for me?”
“I met with your husband’s Justice Department contact. That’s where I’m coming from.”
“She give you anything new on Ricky Green?”
“Not exactly, ma’am. I think I have something better.”
“Spill, Sunday,” she said.
“One of the missing men from the fishing boat, Alejandro Cabrera, had a brother Ricardo who dropped off the radar in 1983.”
“Keep talking.”
“I found him in the records, but they stop in 1983.”
“So what happened in eighty-three, Sunday?”
“That’s where it gets interesting. Ricardo last appears to have been arrested in a drug bust in South Florida in 1983 and then he just vanishes.”
“So he was killed? Drug dealers disappear all the time. Especially in Florida.”
“This wasn’t local police, ma’am. It was a major federal interagency operation. I’m talking about FBI, DEA, and at least half a dozen other agencies.”
“So you’re thinking Ricardo was flipped by the FBI? That he disappeared into witness protection?”
“Maybe. DOJ won’t say. But now his brother suddenly appears on our radar? Alejandro’s fishing boat is captured in Cuban waters, he’s the grandson of a leader from the Bay of Pigs, and this mysterious Ricky seems to be in the middle of it all. Seems awfully coincidental, ma’am.”
“This drug bust. Don’t tell me it was in—”
“Everglades City, ma’am.”
Jessica was silent on the line for moment, then spoke up. “You’re thinking . . . Ricky Green is Ricardo Cabrera.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m pretty sure of it.”
Jessica was quiet again.
“Ma’am, that’s not even the best part,” Sunday said, just as his car passed the exit sign for the GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE.
“What else?” Jessica asked.
“A large amount of cash went missing,” he said. “Drug money that should have been seized during the bust . . . it just disappeared.”
“Happens all the time.”
“But this haul was huge. Could be as much as two hundred million dollars in cash.”
“Who keeps that much cash?”
“Operation Everglades took down a major cocaine cartel. It’s plausible.”
“Okay . . . So, how do two hundred million ghost dollars fit with Ricardo Cabrera going into witness protection and becoming Ricky Green? Why would the FBI even allow that?”
Sunday pulled onto the exit ramp past a sign warning AUTHORIZED CIA EMPLOYEES ONLY.
“Ma’am . . . I don’t think it was the FBI.”
53.
MORRO CASTLE, HAVANA, CUBA
FRIDAY, 9:45 A.M.
Are you in the goddamn CIA?” Crawford Jackson poked his fingers hard into the chest of Alejandro Cabrera.
“Let’s not get crazy here,” Brinkley Barrymore III said, stepping between his two friends. “We can’t turn on each other.”
Crawford’s eyes locked with Brinkley’s. “I asked Al a question.”
“Just look at him,” Brinkley said. Alejandro was slumped in a chair, his belly stretching the filthy orange jumpsuit. “Al’s not CIA.”
“Are you?” Crawford narrowed his eyes.
“This is just what they want,” Brinkley said. “To make us turn on each other.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Brink,” Crawford said.
“I’m not even going to dignify it,” Brinkley shot back.
“The gear, the boat, the last-minute trip—”
“Bonefish,” Dennis Dobson spoke up, his first words since they had been detained some forty hours ago.
“What?” The others all turned to face Dennis.
“Bonefish,” Dobson said again. “You told us we were marlin-fishing, but then you changed your mind and had us go after bonefish in the Seminole Flats. That’s how we wound up in Cuba. That’s how you got us into this. Bonefish.”
“See!” Crawford shouted. “Deuce’s with me. What the fuck’re you two really up to?”
“And the bonefish turned into diamonds. But, why did you need all those guns, Al?” Dennis was waking up.
“Is this another Agency clusterfuck? I’m the SEAL. Dennis is, what, the techie? What’s Al supposed to be? Is this your half-assed operation, Brink?”
“This was all a huge mistake,” Brinkley insisted. “A big misunderstanding.”
“Either you are a fool or someone set you up, Brink,” Craw said. “Someone set us all up. No other way to explain it.”
“All that matters is that we’re getting out of here soon,” Brinkley insisted.
“I don’t care what you and Al are up to. Go ahead, get yourself killed on some weekend warrior yahoo bullshit,” Crawford said. “But why would you drag us into it?”
“I want to know what we were really doing?” Dennis shrieked. “If we weren’t fishing, and we weren’t treasure hunting, then what the heck were we really doing out there?”