Hostage in Havana - Noel Hynd

“No, no,” MacPhail said. “You stay back. I’ll get them.”

She put down her purse and her laptop. She cut off MacPhail and walked to the window.

NINETEEN

Three hundred meters away, across several Manhattan rooftops, Manuel Perez stiffened and frowned. He could not believe his eyes. The light that had just gone on in Alex’s apartment was the first signal that his moment was at hand. But then someone, a man who looked like a bodyguard, had come in first and gone from room to room, as if looking for something. Pieces of a puzzle flew apart and scrambled in his head. If police were searching her apartment, and if she was right there – as he could see she was several seconds later – then somehow the secrecy of his assignment had been compromised. Somehow the Americans had found out about the hit and were taking steps to prevent it. That being the case, and he quickly surmised that it was, he either took his shot now or he might never get another chance.

There seemed to be some discussion at the doorway. One of the agents was pointing at the window. His target, the woman, was already approaching. Quickly he realized that if a security ring was being dropped around her, this would be his only shot.

He cursed. He had never had a development quite like this before. But he stayed calm. He was good at quick shots and could launch a barrage if he had to.

His eye went back to the friendly O of the scope, and he moved the crosshairs and the little laser dot toward its target.

Head shot? Body shot? Body, he decided. Upper torso.

Then, at the last second, he decided he had more confidence than that. He would go for the head. Get any piece of it and he would have a kill.

Ancillary question: What about the bodyguards? He pondered for a second. Get them too?

Yes, he would. Seal the room with three dead people in it. It would give him more time to get away from his perch. He smiled. He had never missed. As he squinted, aligning the rifle perfectly, he could even see the color of her lipstick, the hoop earrings she wore. Pretty, he thought. What a shame. Well, nothing personal. She had her job and he had his.

He ran the crosshairs around the room, came back and found Alex. The nose of the rifle came up a millimeter. Head shot. She made things easy for him, walking toward the window. He eased his breathing down and prepared for his first shot.

TWENTY

In his study on Long Island, Paul Guarneri pressed the last two digits of Alex’s cell number with his thumb and hit Send. There was a moment’s delay as the signals shot around cyberspace, then beamed back down to earth on the west side of Manhattan.

On the other end of the line, the phone rang. Once, twice, three times …

TWENTY-ONE

Alex remained jumpy. When her cell phone rang, she jerked her head to the left. Almost simultaneously, she heard a deafening explosion as half of the plate glass window that overlooked Seventh Avenue shattered. Shards, like little knives, flew everywhere, followed by the whack of several follow-up slugs hitting the floor behind her and then ricocheting up against the wall.

It took less than a second for the situation to sink in, but when she looked back toward the open space where her window had been, there was no question. And the noise was drowned out by the voices of the men behind her.

“Down!” MacPhail screamed.

Alex was already on the floor, hard and flat. Ramirez hurtled across the room to push her flush against the wall beneath the window. Then he snaked to the side and reached upward, caught the blinds cord with a sharp yank, and dropped them.

MacPhail called out. “Anyone hit?”

Alex answered. “I’m all right!”

Ramirez followed. “I’m good.”

By then the unseen attacker poured shot after shot into the room, hoping to claim a victim in the chaos and in the dark. Five, six, and then seven more shots came in until the remaining bits of plate glass had been blown out and collapsed in a flood of shards and splinters. Alex heard most of it hit the floor but knew that much of it fell outside the building, raining down eleven flights onto the sidewalk below, onto anyone who had the misfortune to be passing by.

TWENTY-TWO

The next afternoon, Andrew De Salvo sat at the head of the conference table, waiting, a glass of water in front of him on the twenty-seventh floor room at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, FBI Headquarters. The blinds were always drawn.

De Salvo stood when Alex came in, escorted by George Ramirez and Walter MacPhail. She had stayed in a midtown hotel overnight. De Salvo reached to her and gave her an embrace. “Good to see you up and around,” he said.

“Good to be up and around,” she answered. “Good thing that guy can’t shoot straight. Must have missed by a combined three inches with two of those shots.”

“Good thing the phone rang,” Ramirez said, “or we’d be using the word homicide this morning.”

De Salvo returned to the head of the table. Alex sat to her boss’s left, two empty chairs between them. MacPhail and Ramirez sat across from her. It was after lunch and Alex had spent the morning with the New York City police, detailing what had happened.

“Okay, the first problem,” MacPhail said, “is simply to keep Alex out of the crosshairs. That means keeping her out of her Fin Cen office for a while – and maybe out of the city completely. How’s that for starters?”

“Brutal but understandable,” De Salvo said.

“For how long?” Alex asked. “Away from everything?”

“Until we know the threats against you have been negated,” Ramirez said.

“Are we talking years?” Alex asked, her indignation rising. “Someone takes a shot at me and misses, and it puts me out of business? Then the other side has succeeded? I don’t like it.”

“They haven’t succeeded,” De Salvo said with sudden defensiveness. “The arrests are continuing, the investigations as well, the indictments …” He paused. “Someone else will pick up your files and not miss a beat.”

“What about the Dosis?” Alex asked. “Anything new this morning?”

“Still fugitives,” De Salvo said. “We’re checking all flights to Israel as well as nontraditional venues in South America.”

“Do we know what passports they’d be traveling on?” Alex asked.

Silence around the room, which meant no.

“Alex,” De Salvo said. “You’re going to have to let go for a time. Your safety is the paramount issue now.”

“They nearly kill me and I’m supposed to let it go?” she snapped.

“No,” De Salvo said, “but you’re better off letting other people handle it.”

She turned to MacPhail, who spoke before she could. “We approach these things thirty days at a time,” he said. “We get you out of this office, hopefully this city, for a month. After that, we’ll see where we are.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“We’ve never lost anyone in our custody yet,” Ramirez said.

Alex couldn’t resist. “You nearly did last night.”

MacPhail sighed. “Look, not to separate the flea feces from the pepper, but you weren’t technically in administrative custody yet. You were in – “

“My own home and my head nearly got blown off,” she said, “because you guys were a few days behind the guy assigned to whack me! That doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, gentlemen. I don’t feel myself bonding here.”

“Look, I can put Alex on protective administrative leave,” De Salvo said. “This happened one other time in my memory. That’s what we did and it worked.”

“But where do I go?” asked Alex. “I’m not sure I have faith in the system you’re presenting to me.”

“Where would you like to go?” Ramirez asked. “Within reason.”

She considered it. “What are we talking about? Short-term witness protection?” she asked. “Something ‘flyover’? Arizona? New Mexico? Grand Rapids, Michigan?”

“Something like that. There’s a lot of latitude.”

“I’m not buying into this, gentlemen,” Alex said. “Part of me says I could go underground by myself and survive just as well.” She thought of the two million dollars in the bank. “Maybe even better.”

“Than what?” MacPhail asked. “We can’t help without your cooperation.”

Silence rolled around the room like a fog. Finally, “Well, maybe you should make that trip to Cuba, after all,” De Salvo said as a joke.

“Maybe I should,” Alex answered, not as a joke.

MacPhail and Ramirez glanced at each other. “What trip?” MacPhail asked.

“One that’s not going to happen,” Alex said.

Another uneasy silence rolled around the room. Then, “If you have something good, we need to hear about it, okay?” MacPhail said. “Cuba? Can you talk about this?”

Alex glanced to De Salvo, who threw her a shrug. She looked back to MacPhail and Ramirez. “Can I talk about it?” she asked her boss.

De Salvo opened his hands and nodded.

“This goes back to a previous operation,” Alex began. “A friend of a friend has unfinished business in Cuba. Goes back many years. He’s looking for someone to go to Cuba with him. A woman.”

De Salvo looked to Alex. “Give them the back story,” he said.

She did, in a five-minute mini-clinic, running from the catastrophe in Ukraine to the most recent dinner in Brooklyn.

“How long would the trip to Fidel’s socialist paradise take?” De Salvo asked.

“Maybe a couple of weeks,” Alex said. “A month at most. That’s what Paul was talking about.”

“Paul?” MacPhail asked.

“Her quasi-organized crime guy who’s running this,” said De Salvo.

“He’s not OC himself but he knows people,” Alex answered. “We don’t have anything on him except where he was born and who his old man was.”

“Sometimes that’s enough,” MacPhail said. “But no matter. Maybe we can use this.” He paused, then asked, “You’re on a first-name basis with this guy? Good work.”

“Don’t make more of it than it is, all right?” she answered sharply.

“A trip to Cuba would get her off the New York streets for a time while we wrap up Manuel Perez,” Ramirez offered.

“Far off the streets. No one would ever look in Cuba, I got to say. On that score, it’s brilliant. And the beaches are great, I hear,” MacPhail said. “I know Canadians. And Germans. They go snorkeling and scuba diving every February. It’s cheap.”

“He means drinking and fornicating, most likely,” Ramirez said.

“Gentlemen, let’s bring it back to our immediate problems, okay?” De Salvo said. “Is this a possibility?”

“Yes, it’s a possibility for us if it works for you,” MacPhail said. “And there’s one other iron that we might be able to get in the fire. Want to hear it?”

“Go ahead,” Alex said.

“Okay, look, I hear things,” MacPhail said. “Caribbean desk. They often use freelance people in Cuba. What are you going in for? What purpose specifically?”

“My friend seems to think that a sizeable amount of money is stashed somewhere. He wants to go grab it. At least that’s what he’s telling me, though whether he’s telling me everything is another question,” Alex said. “Some of what he says doesn’t wash. But I feel he’s got credibility on the money angle.”

“Okay,” MacPhail resumed. “What are you supposed to do on this trip?”

“Pose as his wife where necessary and watch his back.”

“So he could help you on an operation in return for you helping him, correct?” MacPhail asked. “And all of this would be off the books? No one would even know … that’s what you’re saying?”

“In essence, yes,” Alex said.

“We could put her on leave,” De Salvo said. “There’d be no official record of where she is.”

MacPhail settled back. “Let me run a name past you,” he said. “Roland Violette.” The name drew blanks from Alex and her boss. “Nothing?” MacPhail asked.

They shook their heads.

“Roland Violette was a CIA employee in the 1950s and 1960s,” MacPhail said. “Turned out he was a Russian agent. He ratted out several CIA operatives in Central America to the Soviets in the ‘70s, then defected to Cuba in the ‘80s. He’s been there since.”

“So?” Alex asked.

“He’s been making noises about coming back to the U.S.,” MacPhail said. “Says he’s got a packet of Cuban intelligence goodies to bring with him. We could use someone to go in, check out the situation, and get him on a covert flight out if he’s worth it. Interested?”

Alex glanced to her boss, then back to MacPhail. “Might be,” she said.

“We’re dealing with him through the Swiss Embassy in Havana,” MacPhail said. “If you can get yourself onto the island, we can get you off … maybe seven to ten days later. Would that allow you enough time to keep your capo happy also?”

“Don’t know. I can ask.”

“Why don’t you tell him, not ask him?”

“That might work too,” she said.

“Why don’t you do that?” MacPhail asked. “We can work within a time frame that will cover the next thirty days. See when your friend wants to go into Cuba, when he wants to get airlifted out.” MacPhail glanced at De Salvo. “What do you think? How crazy is this?”

“It might work,” De Salvo said. He turned to Alex. “I can have someone step up and run your operations for you, we can clean up the Perez mess, your Mafia guy gets his payback from the Federov operation, and you get out of town.”

Alex turned back to her boss.

“If I’m going to do this,” she said, “I’m going to need some quick background. I’m not going to a place like Cuba cold. I need to know what I’m doing.”

“I can arrange it,” De Salvo said.

TWENTY-THREE

Late that afternoon, Alex’s guards took her to a townhouse maintained by the FBI on East 38th Street between Lexington and Third. The building had six apartments. Two NYPD guards sat in the lobby, which was concealed from street view behind two locked doors.

Alex was given a three-room apartment on the third-floor rear. It was pleasantly appointed, clean, and safe. The Feds also sent a housekeeping team over to her home on West 61st Street. The housekeepers retrieved clothing and everything else she requested and moved her in by that evening at 9:00 p.m. She settled in, knowing that she would be moving again within a few days, if the Cuban mission received a green light.

De Salvo came by that evening. He had files on flash drives for her and a fresh laptop. They had a working dinner over Thai takeout.

“So,” Alex asked at length, “what can you tell me?”