Chapter 53. Suspicion
International Airspace. Above the Atlantic Ocean, North of French Guiana.
Julio Cezanne’s Lear Jet banked to the northwest, headed for Piarco International Airport. in Trinidad, a tiny island in the West Indies just north of Venezuala. On board were Cezanne, his cousin Davy Branco, the two scientists Matteo Graciano and Dominic Chastain, and four security guards, who were armed with assault weapons. Cezanne had paid off the man working the air traffic control tower at the Trinidad Airport. There would be no record of Cezanne’s plane landing in Trinidad. Branco was just getting off the phone, receiving a report from an associate in Brazil.
“Hey, bad news, Julio. Two of our guys were just picked up. And there’s a warrant out for me,” said Branco. Cezanne was livid.
“A warrant? For what?” asked Cezanne.
“Kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?! Davy, what did you do?” asked Cezanne.
“Well, remember when I told you we had some cops poking around the warehouse that we had to dispose of? Well, the lead Detective lookin’ into those cops was a guy named Rosario. Real Do-Gooder. Nothing we could do to turn him. I was concerned we needed a little insurance policy, so I had our guys snatch his daughter.”
Cezanne was apoplectic. “You snatched his daughter? Are you fuckin’ nuts? We didn’t need that! Now, the whole fuckin’ Brazilian police force will be after us!” Cezanne slicked back his black hair with his hand. The veins on his neck looked like they were going to erupt. “You stupid fuck!” Cezanne slapped Branco hard across the face.
Cezanne got out his gun and pointed it at Branco’s head.
“Whoa, whoa, Julio, cool down.”
“Say, ‘I am a stupid fuck.’”
“Julio, please, chill out.”
“SAY ‘I AM A STUPID FUCK’ or so help me God, I will put a bullet through your eye!”
“OK, OK,” stammered Branco. “I’m a stupid fuck. Sorry, Julio.”
Cezanne slowly put down his gun. “That’s the last mistake you make, Davy, you understand?”
“Got it, got it. Jeez, Julio, take it easy.”
Matteo Graciano looked at his brother. They were nervous about working with Cezanne. What would happen the minute they made a mistake?
“Um, Julio,” said Graciano, trying to break the ice. “I talked to our computer guy on the island. The uplink is all set for the recording. He’s got the whole thing masked so they won’t have any idea where the transmission came from.”
“Which one of you geniuses is going to make the recording?” asked Cezanne, waving his gun precariously back and forth between the two brothers.
“We’re going to do it together,” said Graciano.
“OK, well as long as you have the wire transfer instructions right, that’s all I care about.”
“Have you decided on a number?” asked Graciano.
“I think $25 Billion has a nice ring to it,” said Cezanne.
Graciano nodded. Cezanne was insane, that was certain.
“Did the boxes ever make it to Mexico City and Victoria?” asked Chastain.
“Zipped up tight as a bug in a fuckin’ rug,” snarled Cezanne.
In two large warehouses, one in Mexico City and another in Victoria, Canada, were over two hundred large cardboard crates containing the antidote to the Mackinac Ebola Virus, created from the antibodies in the blood of the bat rescued from the cave in Tanzania. If the American and Dutch governments acceded to the terrorists’ demands, they would get the location of the two warehouses. Otherwise, there were going to be a lot of sick people.
NSA, Washington, D.C.
Special Agent Bobby Fils had started a special investigation into Julio Cezanne, the owner of the Guadalajara warehouse where American Special Forces had found the diseased monkeys and dead bodies. He had files spread all over his desk containing known Cezanne associates, hideouts and mansions owned by Cezanne, locations of his drug processing plants, and so on. He picked up a file, which contained information on Cezanne’s family. He saw that Cezanne had a cousin named Davy Branco, who lived in Brazil, and was renowned to be a small-time thug and drug dealer. Out of curiosity, he called the CIA case officer in Rio, and asked him if there was anything new on Davy Branco. After a few hours, the CIA case officer, T. Martinez, got back to him.
“Yeah, we got something new on this Branco character. There was just a warrant issued for Branco’s arrest for the kidnapping of an Amy Rosario. Turns out that’s the daughter of Natal Homicide Detective Manuel Rosario. They’ve had a lot of activity up there. Two cops just turned up dead. Their shot-up squad car was found in a lake. Rosario was the lead Detective looking for the killer of the cops. And down by the docks, a whole storage container of dead bodies was found just yesterday.”
“Dead bodies?” asked Fils. “How did they die?”
“All shot. Maybe twenty of them. All adults, and one little girl, who miraculously made it out alive. You get the feeling that somethin’ big is goin’ on up there. You don’t kill twenty people and stuff them in a storage container unless you have got something really bad to hide,” said Martinez.
“Any reports of a lot of sick people in that area?” asked Fils.
“No, I didn’t read anything about that.”
There was suddenly a lot of noise on the other end of the line.
“What is that?” asked Fils.
“Hey, shut up, you idiots!” yelled Martinez. “Guys down here, they’re all betting on the Brazil game.”
“Hmmm,” said Fils, who was not a sports fan.
“You watchin’ the Cup?” asked the Case Officer.
“No, I don’t follow soccer very much.”
“That’s all they talk about down here,” said Martinez. “Too bad the United States lost today. I lost a lot of money on that one. They were playin’ up there in Natal, right where that girl got grabbed.”
Fils suddenly made a connection.
“Martinez, when was the game in Natal?”
“Started at 1 p.m. It’s been over now for about four or five hours.”
“Thanks,” said Fils. “You’ve been a big help.”
Fils panicked for a moment. He did a quick Internet search on the World Cup and learned everything he needed to know about the games in Natal. Then he made a call to Detective Manuel Rosario. After multiple transfers, and waiting on hold for what seemed like an eternity, he was finally routed to Detective Rosario.
“This is Detective Rosario.”
“Detective Rosario, this is Special Agent Bobby Fils from the NSA here in Washington, D.C. We have been tracking a terrorist named Julio Cezanne and we understand that you have had some contact with his cousin Davy Branco.”
“Terrorist?” asked Rosario. “Cezanne is a drug dealer, that’s for sure. But I did not know he was a terrorist.”
“Detective, what can you tell me about Davy Branco?”
“Well, I can tell you that the sonofabitch kidnapped my daughter, and I am looking for him now.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Fils.
“I don’t know, but trust me, I am going to find out. Have you guys tracked Branco down or something?”
“No,” said Fils. “Is your daughter okay?”
“Yes, she’s shaken up, but she will be okay. Thanks for asking.”
“Did your daughter say anything about her kidnappers or about why they took her?”
“Well, now that you mention it, she did say something strange. She said that the guys who were holding her hostage made a comment that they had to get out of the country because the stadium job was finished.”
“The stadium job?” asked Fils.
“Yes. I assume they meant Natal Stadium, where the big football matches are going on. So I called the Head of Security down there, and asked him if there was anything suspicious, and he said no. After the game between the USA and The Netherlands, we shut the stadium down and did a full sweep. There were no bombs, no guns, nothing suspicious that we could find.”
Fils remembered that the abandoned warehouse with the monkey cadavers looked like some kind of bottling plant. Fils thought for a moment.
“Detective, were people at the stadium allowed to bring in bottles?”
“No, no glass bottles or anything like that were allowed in. And they check everything when you come in, pockets, purses, the whole deal. They had to buy refreshments at the stadium. We’ve gotta make some money down here, you know?”
“Is there any type of bottle with liquid in it that they sell outside the stadium?”
Rosario thought for a minute. “Well, there were guys selling these water sprayers, you know? It gets hot down here. You could bring those in, I think. Why, what are you thinking? Did they poison somebody?”
“Agent Rosario, do me a favor. I need you to check the vendor licenses of every person selling bottles of anything outside the stadium. I will call you back in an hour.”
“Okay. But it would be helpful if you could tell me what you know.”
“When I know, I will,” said Fils.
Fils grabbed his Cezanne Family file and some sheets off the printer, and ran down the hall to talk to his boss. Within an hour, Agent Jimmy Pond was in a jet and on his way to Natal, Brazil.
Piarco International Airport, Trinidad
Meanwhile, Cezanne, his cousin Branco, the two scientists, and their security guards made their way easily through Trinidad Security at the Airport. The plane was stashed away in a hangar at the airport, known only to a few individuals who had been bribed. The terrorists made their way in a green Hummer to the safe house. Cezanne looked out the window. The sun was shining, and it was a beautiful day.
Wernigerode, Germany
At two o’clock in the morning, Hans and Gertrude Chastain were woken up from a cold sleep and taken in their pajamas to the local police station, where they met field agents from the “Bundeskriminalamt,” or BKA, the German equivalent of the FBI. Gertrude Chastain was separated from her husband and roughly thrown into a chair in a police interrogation room.
“Fraulein Chastain, where is your son Dominic?” asked the agent, a thin man with an even thinner moustache, who was wearing a black trench coat and smoking a cigarette.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“He called me about a month ago and said he was going on a long trip and would not be able to talk to me.”
“Where was he going on this trip?”
“I don’t know. I asked him that, and he said it was better that I don’t know.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know for the life of me. What is this all about? Is he in trouble with his job or something?”
“Ma’am, do you know your son works for the Robert Koch Institute here in Wernigerode?”
“Yes.”
“And are you aware that is a Level 4 Biohazard Lab, that handles deadly viruses like the Marburg virus and the Ebola virus?”
“Yes, I am aware of that. I don’t know why he ever wanted to do that, but yes, I knew he worked there.”
“When did he leave the Institute?”
“I didn’t know he left.”
“Ma’am, your son just left the Institute, and he has not been seen in over a month. And several of the biohazard suits and certain equipment from the Institute are missing. You know anything about that?”
“Ma’am, give me your cell phone, please.”
Gertrude Chastain, confused, handed over her cell phone. The officer looked through the phone. There had been no calls or texts in recent weeks. He looked up the son’s number in the directory and called it. There was a recording saying the number was no longer in use.
“When did he turn off his phone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ma’am, is he using another number to call you?”
“No, unless he calls our landline.”
“What is your landline number?”
She gave the officer the number. The field agent would be putting a tap on that line later this afternoon.
“Ma’am, we know your son is a terrorist. We just want to know what his plans are.”
“A terrorist? That’s ridiculous. My son’s not a terrorist! Why he just gave me flowers two months ago. He’s a very nice boy. He couldn’t hurt a fly.”
“Ma’am, I am going to ask you again. What are your son’s plans?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Tell me about your son’s upbringing. He’s adopted, as I understand it?”
“Yes, a victim of the unfortunate Bosnian conflict. We got him when he was just eleven. Poor thing. Lost his birth mother and father and sister. It took him a long time to recover from that.”
“Perhaps he never recovered,” suggested the BKA agent.
“What do you mean?”
“Did he ever express the desire to hurt any group of people?”
“Well, I am sure he harbored anger at the people that killed his family, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“But he wouldn’t kill anybody.”
“Ma’am, stay here, we’re going to talk to your husband for a bit.”
The field agent closed the door. His gut told him that this nice lady was telling the truth. She had no clue, but her son was a terrorist, that was certain. The agent went down the hall to talk to the father.
NSA, Washington, D.C.
At around dinnertime, Detective Rosario called.
“Bad news,” he said. “The License Office is closed. The guy who runs it cannot be found. He is not due back until the morning.”
Agent Fils was distressed at the news. “Detective, this is a matter of life and death, for both your country and ours. You absolutely have to find that guy that runs the License Office, wake him up, do whatever you have to do. But we need to see those records tonight!”
“Agent Fils, you have got to give me more than that. What is going on?” Agent Fils considered the matter. This was a high level security matter, but he needed to secure the Detective’s cooperation.
“Detective, have you ever heard of the Ebola Virus?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we have a suspicion that terrorists, possibly led by Davy Branco, were putting the Ebola Virus in water bottles and selling the bottles to people at the football match. If we are right, there could be a worldwide epidemic. We need to know if Davy Branco or Julio Cezanne had any of the vendor licenses to sell bottled water inside or outside the stadium.”
“Oh, my God. I’ll do my best,” said Rosario.
Detective Rosario started making calls to his patrolmen to find the man in charge of the License Office. They would find him tonight, no matter what they had to do.