Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

The Cubans were all armed, and though they weren’t from the Toluca area, they at least knew how to blend in here in Mexico.

They didn’t know about the North Koreans’ responsibility in the attack on the U.S. President; as far as they knew, they were simply helping their communist friends catch a kidnapper during a ransom exchange and hold him until he revealed the location of his victim.

—

At eight p.m. Riley walked through the theater entrance with one backpack over his shoulder and the other in his hand. He bought a ticket to the first movie advertised on the marquee above the cashier’s head, and he stood at the concession stand, as ordered by Zarif, for five minutes. He assumed this was so that Zarif, who was somewhere here in the large multiplex, could identify him.

After his five-minute wait, Riley entered the theater where his film would be playing, and he walked up the stairs and found a seat in the top row.

Almost immediately the lights lowered, and soon after that Riley saw a lone man climbing the stairs toward him.

Zarif sat down and looked at him strangely. Riley replied, “You said you didn’t want to see any North Koreans, and you wanted someone who spoke English.”

The Iranian nodded. “I thought you would be Mexican. Who are you?”

“I am a business associate. Nothing more. There was a misunderstanding yesterday, and it’s my hope I can put it right.” He patted the two backpacks stacked on the chair next to him.

“Let’s see the money.”

Riley reached into his shirt and pulled out the bound stack of one hundred hundred-dollar bills. He tossed it into Zarif’s lap nonchalantly, like there was a hell of a lot more where that came from.

“Ten thousand. The rest is here.” He patted the bags.

Zarif looked it over and stuck it into his pocket. “Hand it over to me.”

“No. I want the phone first, and any other recordings you made.” Zarif handed it over and Riley looked to find the video the man had made. It was there, so he slipped the phone into his pocket.

Then Riley leaned close. “We need to know you didn’t do anything else with that video.”

“There is one more copy in a safe place. When I get the money and get away, I will call you and—”

He stopped talking because Riley was shaking his head back and forth. “That’s not on, mate. Tell you what. You keep the ten thousand. I’ll keep this one-point-nine-nine mil. When you are ready to give me what I want, everything , then give me a call.” He smiled. “Buy yourself a phone with what I gave you.”

Zarif tried to stop him, but Riley stood. He left the theater via the main entrance. As soon as he did so, he called Kim. “I expect he’ll be running out one of the back exits.”

“The Cubans are ready.”

—

Adel Zarif left the theater where he met with Riley and walked into one of the other theaters in the cineplex, heading for the fire escape. He was confused and scared now. The exchange looked like it was going to go off without a hitch, but suddenly the Englishman just got up and left.

It was only at the moment when he pushed through the fire exit that he realized it had all been a trick. There was no more money, because the entire meet was simply to make sure that he was there in the theater.

He saw two young men in leather jackets standing in the alley, just feet away from the exit. They looked Mexican to him, like everyone else he’d seen on the street around the theater, so he was not alarmed at first. But as he passed under a streetlamp and continued down the street, he saw their long shadows following him.

A black Jeep Cherokee came from the other direction in the alley, then pulled to a stop right next to him. Zarif turned to take off in a run, but now there were four men around him; they tackled him to the ground on the sidewalk and they dragged him into the Jeep.

A pillowcase was put over his head and his arms were pinned behind his back and secured with electrical tape.

He thought he heard a conversation in Spanish, and then a man speaking English with a British accent, clearly the same man as in the theater. “Where did you send the file?”

“I uploaded it.”

“That’s a bloody lie, mate. I checked your phone. You didn’t e-mail it or text it to anyone but our mutual friend in Havana.”

“I used a cable, I uploaded it on a computer.”

“ What computer?”

Zarif hesitated. “Just give me the money and I’ll tell you.”

“There is no more money. There is only the chance to save your life, and that is fading away like the money did. Talk!”

Zarif thought over his options, and there were none. He could tell them, and they would surely kill him because he had no more leverage. Or he could not tell them, and they would torture him. Eventually he would die, or he would talk and then he would die.

From somewhere in the vehicle a fist was thrown and it connected with his jaw. The Englishman screamed: “Where is the bloody recording?”

Zarif decided his only chance was to stall and hope Allah saved him.

He spat blood out of his mouth; it wet the inside of the pillowcase.

And then he said, “Allahu akbar.”

“Oh, bloody hell. Take him to the villa. We’re in for a long night.”

66

The operators of The Campus had been on Riley’s trail for an entire twenty-four hours. They landed in Mexico City at six-fifteen in the morning, and the Gulfstream purposefully taxied to the same fixed-base operator that Riley’s Embraer jet had used a few hours before. Ding Chavez spoke with the manager on duty and asked about the earlier aircraft. The man wasn’t terribly forthcoming at first, but after a pair of hundred-dollar bills changed hands, he seemed to remember some details about the Embraer. From this Ding ascertained the name of the limousine company that had picked up the one passenger on board. A call to this service brought out the same driver—precious few limousines ran between three and seven a.m., after all—and a ride into the city led to a friendly chat that was made more friendly with two more Ben Franklins, and just like that, Chavez was taken to the same Polanco hotel where the Englishman had been dropped earlier in the morning.

By ten a.m. the entire Campus team was in position around the hotel. Caruso and Ryan were on rented motorcycles, Clark and Driscoll drove in a nondescript 2010 Dodge Durango, and Chavez had access to a rented C-Class Mercedes that he’d parked with the valet. The men were spread out, but wired together via earpieces. Chavez remained in the lobby; he wore a business suit and he sipped coffee while reading El Día , the local newspaper.

There were a lot of Asians in the building—the hotel was popular with foreign businessmen—so a call from Clark for everyone to keep their eyes open for possible North Korean Riley accomplices turned up nothing conclusive.

Finally, Riley himself came out of the elevator at noon with a fit-looking Asian whom Chavez immediately pegged as RGB. The RGB man picked up a Lexus SUV from the valet stand, and both men climbed in and headed off.

For the next hour the five Americans leapfrogged in a four-vehicle mobile surveillance, tracking Riley and his colleague all the way to Toluca, an hour west of the city. They watched the men circle a theater very slowly, and then drive to a café, where they spent an hour talking on their phones. Soon after this Riley did some shopping at a department store and then a bookstore, where he purchased a curiously large number of paperbacks.

In the early evening the Lexus pulled into the parking lot of a shopping center, and soon a pair of black Jeep Cherokees stopped next to it. By now the Campus men had dispersed themselves hundreds of yards away to stay out of sight. Dom and Jack were parked on an overpass, Chavez was in his Mercedes in an adjacent parking lot, and Driscoll and Clark stood in the atrium of an office building across the street. They were far from their targets, but they all had binos or other optics and could see the team of ten Hispanic-looking males meeting with the Englishman and the North Korean.