CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
THURSDAY, 7:03 P.M. EST
Fifteen hours, Sunday thought. I’ve been at this desk for fifteen long hours.
He’d given up finding anything more from his data collection on oil facility attacks. Then he’d swept every last corner of the intelligence vault to find anything and everything that the U.S. government had on Judge Bola Akinola. There he’d found circular reporting of rumors, but nothing incriminating. And nothing clearly exonerating.
Sunday was no closer to having solid answers. For Judd Ryker, he still had nothing. For Jessica Ryker, he still had . . . nothing.
Several times over the past few hours, Sunday had logged off, shut both his computers down . . . and then had one more idea. One more rock to turn over before calling it a day. He tried looking into patterns of security contractors for the oil companies. He searched a database of oil licenses to analyze the structure of the joint ventures. He tracked the principal shareholders for each of the oil companies that had been targeted with violence and come up with long lists of pension and hedge funds but nothing obviously suspicious. No apparent links to terror groups. No obvious connections to international criminal syndicates. No clear national security implications that would need to be sent upstairs or to the DNI. Nothing to set off alarm bells at the White House. Sunday found . . . nothing.
Now Sunday was out of ideas. His eyes were bleary. His head ached. He wanted to sleep.
“Hey, S-Man, Lucy and the boys are heading down to the Blarney Stone,” his colleague Glen said as he pulled on an overcoat. “I know you’re probably too busy or have to walk your cat—”
“I’m in,” Sunday said.
“What’s that?” Glen stuck out his chin.
“I’m in for the pub. For a drink.”
“Well, ain’t that a hippo in the Sahara,” Glen smirked.
“It’s been a long, frustrating day. I could use a distraction,” Sunday said, turning off his monitor.
“It’s about goddamn time.”
“A pint of Guinness is just what I need,” Sunday said.
“It’s Thursday, S-Man. Thursday at the Blarney Stone is Coors light and buffalo wings,” Glen said, arching his eyebrows.
“We’re going to an Irish pub for light beer and chicken wings?”
“This is northern Virginia, not Dublin. It’s not even really Irish.”
“The Blarney Stone isn’t Irish?”
“Yeah. The manager told me that it’s owned by some company based in Amsterdam that’s really owned by a hedge fund in Hong Kong or Singapore or somewhere over there.” Glen fluttered his hands. “Anything Irish about the Blarney Stone is just a cover to trick the customers.”
Sunday plucked his jacket off the hanger on a hook he’d installed on his cubicle wall and zipped up. “A convenient fig leaf of misplaced nationalism?”
“Whatever,” Glen said.
“It’s clever,” Sunday said.
“The Blarney Stone’s brilliant. You’ll love the buffalo wings.”
A convenient fig leaf of misplaced nationalism, Sunday thought.
“I’m . . .” Sunday unzipped his jacket. “I’m going to have to meet you there.”
“What?” Glen blurted out.
“I just have one more thing to do,” Sunday said, pushing the power button on his monitor.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Glen huffed in disgust. “I was so close.”
“I’ll meet you at the pub,” Sunday said, waving him away.
But Sunday’s evening plans had already drained from his mind. He shuffled his chair in close to his desk and reopened his list of oil company shareholders. Then he logged in to a classified U.S. Treasury database, uploaded his list, and ran an automated query to identify the ownership of each of the shareholding hedge funds.
As he waited for the computer results, Sunday took off his jacket and carefully rehung it on the hanger. He pulled an aerosol can out of a desk drawer and blew the dust out of his keyboard. Just as he finished, his screen flashed.
Results: 26,674 items
It was a long list of every significant international oil company, their principal shareholding firms, and the secondary owners of those funds, along with locations where each was registered. He typed “Russia” into the sort field.
Results: 1,040 items
Still too many to search manually. He typed “Russia + US” for any company that had some ownership shared by both nationalities.
Results: 56 items
As he scanned down the list, he found mostly American pension funds invested in the big Russian oil majors or Russian banks invested in American oil companies. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Until one item caught his eye.
Wildcat Oil LLC, 14664 Energy Corridor Park, Houston, Texas → Principal: Holden Harriman Quinn, 419 Park Avenue, New York, NY → Principal: Bolshaya Neva Fund, Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg, Russia