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“About three months ago a DEA agent went missing. He was operating in Baja and had links to informants there connected to the Baja Cartel. We haven’t had word from him since early March. There were rumors that a US agent was tortured to death but we haven’t had corroboration and believe me when I say that we have been conducting scorched earth investigations. We don’t take lightly attacks on our agents. The Baja Cartel is headed by Jorge Marin de Herrera. Marin is a gifted chemist and is known to be able to extract any kind of info pharmaceutically, coupled with torture when necessary. If our agent was tortured, he knew about the meeting. Marin is a new generation of jefe—smart, tech savvy, using violence surgically.”
Emma picked up the story. “Marin, in the guise of an American businessman, visited the CEO of my company, Pacific Investment Bank, about two months ago. I am an analyst at PIB and a colleague of mine, Toby Jackson, a very gifted quant, started picking up odd movements in the financial markets.”
“Odd?”
“Yes, investments that made no real sense. And they picked up in force and size until it became a torrent. Billions of dollars in short sales, much of the money invested in dark pools. Toby, do you want to continue?”
Onscreen, Toby shook his head and rolled his index finger forward. He looked wiped out.
“Okay,” Emma continued. “Dark pools are private exchanges for trading securities that are not accessible by the investing public. They are essentially a way to make huge investments without people knowing and without distorting the market. They allow institutions to hide big trades from speculators and coat-tail investors. Selling short is a way to bet against something, if you think that market will tank. So, Toby traced massive short sales, many of them back to our employer, PIB. And all of them starting to come due as of today. As of 10:30 this morning, in fact, and continuing on for the next week.”
Silence.
“Obviously, these massive investments, these huge short sales, presuppose knowing that something bad is going to happen today, at around 10:30. In about an hour. The short sales are spread across various sectors. We are assuming that wiping out the US security and intelligence community would be a disaster of vast proportions.
“If our suspicions are correct, there will be an attempt made on the lives of the people at that summit and someone will walk away the world’s first trillionaire.”
Black listened to this with a sober look on his face. “Security is very tight here. Very tight. No one will get within ten miles of this place. We have cordons. We have drones flying in the sky. Every person in the building has been vetted by the FBI. My company was given the contract to be backup to the Homeland Security agents and we have gone over every single contingency. My company has been working on this for a month. I don’t doubt what you’re saying, but I just don’t see how terrorists could attack us here.”
“They wouldn’t be terrorists, not in the sense you mean. It’s not a political act but a financial one.”
Raul chimed in. “We’re talking a lot of money, Black. Almost unimaginable amounts of money. Lotta people do a lot worse for a lot less.”
Black’s face creased with thought.
“Are there no issues there? None at all?” Raul pushed. “Nothing even slightly out of place?”
If they were mistaken, if something else entirely were to happen, they were wasting time. It would be too late to do anything about it.
“Everything is fine, unless …”
Raul’s neck crackled wildly. He felt something all down his spine. “Unless?”
“Well, it’s ridiculous. But the toilets aren’t working and we can’t get water. But we’ve set up Portajohns everywhere and we have thousands of water bottles. It won’t really affect the meeting.”
At his side, Emma had been furiously typing on her laptop.
She lifted her head. “Ah, Mr. Black. Just before leaving the NSA, we had a briefing on new threats. There’s a new type of explosive which is liquid. A slurry.”
Black’s eyes narrowed. “True. But we’ve had sniffer dogs all over the place and the compound has been cleared.”
“In my briefing, there was mention of a new type of liquid explosive that had only been seen once. It had a low percentage of ammonium nitrate and was very hard for sniffer dogs to smell. Plus, they could actually be in the water pipes which act as insulation.”
“Well, we’ll go over the place once again, but we’ve had surveillance drones on oversight for a month now and there hasn’t been any disturbance. How would they infiltrate the place?”
“You’ve gone over the footage?”
“Not personally, no. There’s over 740 hours of footage. But we’ve run it through our computers, in an excess of caution. Nothing.”
“Not nothing, no,” Emma interrupted. She turned her laptop around so Black and Toby and Hope and Dante could see it. It was a video that had been stopped. Everyone leaned forward. Raul had the best view. It was the conference venue from on high. The resolution was extraordinary, far beyond what a drone could give. The image was taken in step-optic pairs, side by side images taken at slightly different angles, giving a 3-D view.
Emma pressed a key and the scene sprang to life.
There were two vans, withSloane Plumbingpainted on the sides, and seven men in overalls were hauling out material from the back.
The date was given in the top right-hand corner. May 28. Twelve days earlier.
Jacob Black’s face was taut and expressionless as he sat back. “That’s twelve days ago.”
