“Do you think that if he’s in custody or dead, that it’ll stop Bahmad from going ahead with whatever plan they hatched?”
“I don’t know, Dick,” McGarvey said. He sat down. “We’ve had no luck finding him or the bomb, and assuming we can get through this weekend in one piece, maybe an end run will be the only practical thing to do.”
“That’s assuming the Saudis will want to announce that they’ve finally caught bin Laden,” Adkins pointed out. “There’d be a lot of repercussions against them and us. Most of the Islamic world would be up in arms.”
“They are anyway, Dick.” McGarvey shook his head. “No matter how this thing turns out we’re going to end up being the bad guys. And that’s just the way it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was a few minutes past 10:30 a.m. when Bahmad entered the Fremont Building just off Pershing Square. He was dressed conservatively in a blazer, gray slacks and club tie, and carried a thin attach case. He’d recolored his hair salt-and-pepper gray.
He took the elevator to the eighteenth floor offices of Omni Resource Financing, Ltd. “Gordon Guthrie to see Mr. Sanchez,” he told the pretty receptionist. He handed her his card.
“Do you have an appointment this morning, sir?” the young woman asked cooly. “Mr. Sanchez is in conference at the moment.”
“No appointment, luv,” Bahmad said. “But if you’ll just give him my card, he’ll see me.”
The receptionist picked up the telephone and pressed a button. “Luis,” she said and she hung up. A moment later a young Hispanic man, very sharply dressed, came out, took the card, glanced at Bahmad and went back inside.
Bahmad smiled. “Have you worked for Mr. Sanchez very long?”
“Yes, sir. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”
“No thank you. I won’t need more than a minute or two of his time.”
She gave him a smirk and turned back to a pile of mail that she had been sorting. Bahmad drifted over to a very nice Picasso print on the textured wall, but when he got closer he saw that it wasn’t a print after all, it was an original. He looked around the large, very well furnished reception area. Six other paintings ranging from a Gainsborough to a Warhol, all originals, hung on the walls with absolutely no sense of coordination or theme. But then he supposed it was to be expected. Emilio Sanchez had no class but he headed the largest Mexican heroin cocaine cartel in history so he had plenty of money. Unlike the Colombian drug lords who operated out of jungle fortresses and seldom took the chance to travel far from their safe havens because they were afraid of being captured, Sanchez conducted his affairs out in the open here in Los Angeles as a respected, if flashy, businessman. He had his financial fingers into everything from real estate to offshore oil exploration, and from Silicon Valley high- tech companies to portfolios of blue chip stocks.
All of it was a front for a highly sophisticated money laundering operation that no government in the world had uncovered yet. Sanchez himself had been nothing more than a small-time gangster in Mexico City until eight years ago when bin Laden’s people had sniffed him out, and set him up in business here.
Since then he’d become a godless, arrogant bastard filled with self-importance, but he was getting the job done. In the last three years alone more than two and a half billion dollars had passed through Omni Resource Financing, and the next three years had promised to bring more of the same. Until now, Bahmad thought. In a few days everything would change, and there would be no going back for any of them.
“Mr. Guthrie,” the receptionist called.
Bahmad turned and gave her another smile. “Yes?” Luis stood respectfully at the open door, and the receptionist’s demeanor had changed from one of dismissal to one of respect.
“Mr. Sanchez will see you now, sir.”
“Thank you,” Bahmad said. He followed the young man down a broad, thickly carpeted hall, more originals on the walls, past several large offices in which a lot of people were very busy at work, to a palatial corner suite of beautifully furnished offices with floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a magnificent view looking east across the city toward the San Gabriel Mountains.
Emilio Sanchez, dark and dangerous looking, sat scowling on a leather couch by the windows, two men seated in chairs across a broad coffee table from him. One of them got up and came across the room, smiling.
“Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Guthrie,” he said. “I’m Francisco Galvez, chief of corporate security.” He looked like a cop, with dark eyes that seemed to miss nothing, square shoulders and a firm grip. The other man was very thin, almost emaciated, with a heavily pockmarked face. He wore thick glasses. He was smoking a cigarette and the ashtray in front of him was nearly half full. He seemed very nervous. Sanchez, on the other hand, was short, going bald, somewhat paunchy and seemed surpremely confident.
“You might be just the man I came to see,” Bahmad said pleasantly.
Galvez who only knew that Bahmad worked for bin Laden, gave him a searching look, then brought him across the room where he introduced the thin man as their CFO Juan Zumarraga, and then Sanchez. Neither of them rose to shake Bahmad’s hand, nor was he offered a seat.
“What can we do for you?” Galvez asked directly.
Good, Bahmad thought, there was to be no time for pleasantries. “I’ll take just a moment of your time,” he said, smiling politely. “Since this has nothing to do with your financial operations, Mr. Zumarraga can get the fuck out of here, and somebody can get me a beer.” He glared at them. “Now.” He sat down in Galvez’s chair, opened his attache case and took out a map of the west coast of Baja California.
After a moment Sanchez nodded. Galvez went off to get the beer and Zumarraga got up and left. Bahmad marked the approximate position of the Margo on the map and handed it across the table to Sanchez. They had been told to expect him, but that had been a couple of months ago, before the missile raid on bin Laden’s camp. A lot of attitudes had changed since then.
“She’s a cargo ship northbound. I have to get aboard her sometime within the next twenty-four hours. Preferably tonight.”
Sanchez glanced at the map, then handed it to Galvez who’d come back with the beer. “What’s in it for us?” he asked.
Bahmad considered the question for a moment. “Your continued employment,” he said. “You’re doing an acceptable job, and we would like to keep it that way.”
Sanchez was amused. “Things have changed. Maybe I will simply continue on my own. I have connections.”
Bahmad considered that for a moment too, and then shrugged. He put the beer aside, took the map from Galvez and put it back in his attache” case. “Someone will be sent to assassinate you and your family. That will include your wife and children, as well as your mother and your young sister, Juanita.” Sanchez sat forward. “You fucking come here and threaten me?”
Bahmad spread his hands. “I’m merely the messenger from our friend,” he said. “I have no part in his plans, Mr. Sanchez. Believe me, I am nothing more than what you might call a bagman. But it is important that I get aboard that ship very soon.”
Sanchez was shaken, though he tried to hide it. He knew very well what bin Laden and his people were capable of. “How is Osama now?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Bahmad replied coldly.
Sanchez bit his tongue. He gave his security chief a questioning look.
“We could chopper Mr. Guthrie to Long Beach and fly him down to Rosario in the Gulfstream by three,” Galvez said. “How far off shore is your ship?” he asked Bahmad.
“A hundred miles by now, I should think.”
“Miguel could have him out there by dark in the Cigarette.”
“Do it,” Sanchez ordered. “Anything else?” he asked Bahmad.
“Forget that I was ever here,” Bahmad said, rising.
