Jonathan Silver came out of his chair.
“Are you crazy? This changes the law.”
“No, that would need an act of Congress. This simply alters the category of a chemical substance. That needs only an Executive instrument.”
“What chemical?”
“Cocaine hydrochloride is only a chemical. It happens to be a banned chemical, whose importation contravenes U.S. criminal law. Anthrax is also a chemical, as is VX nerve gas. But the first is classed as a ‘bacteriological weapon of mass destruction’ and VX as a ‘chemical weapon.’ We invaded Iraq because what passes for our intelligence service since I left was persuaded that it possessed them.”
“That was different.”
“No, it was exactly the same. Reclassify cocaine hydrochloride as a threat to the nation, and all the dominoes topple in sequence. Throwing a thousand tons a year at us isn’t a crime anymore: it’s a terror threat. Then, we can lawfully respond in kind. All the law is already in place.”
“Everything we have in the locker?”
“The lot. But deployed outside our territorial waters and airspace. And invisibly.”
“Treat the cartel as we would Al Qaeda?”
“Crudely but effectively put,” said Devereaux.
“So what I have to do . . .”
The silver-haired Bostonian rose.
“What you have to do, Mr. Chief of Staff, is decide how squeamish you are, and, more important, how squeamish the man down the hall is. When you have decided that, there is not much more to say. I believe the job can be done, but these are the conditions without whose fulfillment it cannot be done. At least not by me.”
Without being bidden to leave, he paused in the doorway.
“Please let me know the response of the commander in chief in due course. I shall be at home.”
Jonathan Silver was not accustomed to being left gazing at a closed door.
IN THE USA, the highest administrative decree that can be issued is the Presidential Executive Order. They are habitually made public, for they can hardly be obeyed if they are not, but a PEO can be completely secret, known simply as a “finding.”
Although the old mandarin from Alexandria could not know it, he had convinced the abrasive chief of staff who in turn convinced the President. After consultation with a much surprised professor of constitutional law, cocaine was quietly recategorized as a toxin and a national threat. As such, it came within the ambit of the war against threats to the safety of the nation.
WELL WEST of the Portuguese coast and almost abreast of the Spanish frontier, the MV Balthazar ploughed her way north with a declared general cargo for the Euro port of Rotterdam. She was not large, a mere 6,000 tons, with a captain and a crew of eight, and they were all smugglers. So lucrative was the criminal side of their labors that the captain was going to retire a wealthy man to his Venezuelan homeland within two years.
He listened to the weather forecast for Cape Finisterre, which lay only fifty nautical miles ahead. It was for a wind at strength four and a choppy sea, but he knew the Spanish fishermen with whom he had a sea rendezvous were hardy mariners and could work in a lot more than a brisk chop.
Portuguese Oporto was well behind him and Spanish Vigo lay unseen to his east when he ordered his men to bring the four large bales up from the third hold where they had lain since being taken aboard from a shrimper a hundred miles off Caracas.
Captain Gonçalves was careful. He refused either to enter or leave port carrying contraband, least of all this one. He would take aboard only far out at sea and off-load in the same manner. Short of being denounced by an informant, his caution made it unlikely he would be caught. Six successful Atlantic crossings had given him a fine house, raised two daughters and put Enrique through college.
Just after Vigo, the two Spanish fishing boats appeared. He insisted on the harmless-sounding but crucial exchange of greetings as the trawlers bucked in the chop beside him. It was always possible Spanish customs men had penetrated the gang and were now masquerading as fishermen. Realistically, if that had happened, they would be storming aboard by now, but the men half a cable away from his bridge were the men he had come to meet.
Contact made, identities confirmed, the trawlers slipped away into his wake. Minutes later, the four bales tumbled over the taffrail into the sea. Unlike those dropped off Seattle, these were designed to float. They bobbed on the water as the Balthazar headed north. The trawler men hauled them on board, two each, and bundled them into the fish holds. Ten tons of mackerel were poured over them, and the fishing boats headed for home.
They came from the small fishing town of Muros on the Gallaecian coast, and when they cruised in the dusk past the mole into the inner harbor, they were “clean” again. Outside the harbor, other men had hauled the bales out of the sea to the beach where a tractor and trailer waited. No other wheeled vehicle could manage the wet sand. From the tractor trailer, the four bales went into a panel van advertising “Atlantic Scampi” that set off for Madrid.
A man from the Madrid-based importing gang paid them all off in cash, then went to the harbor to settle with the fishermen. Another ton of Colombian pure had entered Europe.
IT WAS a phone call from the chief of staff that brought the news and a messenger who brought the paperwork. The letters of authority gave Paul Devereaux more power than anyone beneath the Oval Office had had in decades. The money transfers would come later, when he decided where he wanted his $2 billion lodged.
Among the first things he did was look up a telephone number he had kept for years but had never used. He used it now. It rang in a small bungalow in a side street of a modest town called Pennington, New Jersey. He was in luck. It answered at the third ring.
“Mr. Dexter?”