Chapter Fourteen

Hanson

 

He sat on the couch in his underwear, eating cereal from a blue bowl, the TV on in front of him and his feet up on the coffee table. Through mutual agreement with Kishanna, he'd stayed in bed until the kids went to school. They'd speak to them together later in the day. No point in ruining a day of education because they were worried. And they were used to seeing their father's kit bag in the hallway, used to unplanned visits, used to not waking him when they got up. Kishanna had disappeared into work early. For the first time in a long time, Hanson found he had nothing to do. So he scooped up cereal, slurping at the milk on his spoon, and watched the news.

The headlines came up again. Oil, always oil. As much as Silva tried, through both business and political means, to make the United States more dependent on environmentally friendly fuels, oil still ruled all. But it was becoming prohibitively expensive these days. Hanson watched with muted interest as the news anchor announced that Egypt had discovered a vast oil reserve close to the Red Sea. Billions of barrels’ worth. Billions, trillions of dollars’ worth. He had no real feeling about this news. Not really. He wasn't even sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.

And the second story was more of the same. The Canadian parliament had announced a plan to build a massive pipeline down the length of the country to carry oil. Again, Hanson had no real view on this. Was a pipeline a good thing or a bad one? Moving oil fast and cleanly seemed to be a pro. But then, environmental protesters were already being shown outside of the parliament building in Ottawa. So maybe he was wrong.

The news continued on into the details of some celebrity divorce. Someone Hanson had never heard of. He reached down and hit the mute button on the remote, silencing the anchor with her big blonde hair.

What now? An entire twenty minutes of being awake with nothing to do had left him feeling empty and useless and bored. He needed a plan.

Getting up, he dropped his bowl in the kitchen sink and grabbed the notepad and pen Kishanna left on the refrigerator for grocery lists. A list—that was what he needed. A list of priorities, questions. He spent the next fifteen minutes sitting at the kitchen table noting things down. Had his trial been fair? Why hadn't White appeared? Who’d been on the sunken boat? Why had the boat been sunk? Did White or whoever’d ordered White to fire know that the boat was civilian? Was the boat really civilian? Who’d given White his orders? Where had those orders originated?

When he was done, he had a list of unanswerable questions. And the overarching theme, he realized, was Silva. Hanson always thought of him by his last name. He was a DC man at heart, and with Kishanna's job he tended to think he knew politicians better than he really did. He'd voted—of course he had. It was his civic duty, so he'd done it. He'd even voted for Silva, though to be honest he'd voted the Democratic line in general rather than for Silva in particular. He tried to stay out of politics; that was Kishanna's field, not his own.

The story she'd told him the night before had made sense in his head, though. It fit the facts as he knew them. But the implication, if the story were true, was that Silva was either directly or indirectly using the military to target civilians. And this was so against everything Hanson believed that he could barely even think the thought.

He needed to start from the bottom, he thought, as he re-ordered his list into priorities. He needed to pick away from the bottom up until he found the answers he needed. And that meant his very first question had to be whether the boat was really civilian. If it weren't, if the hurried naval investigation had somehow been flubbed or misreported, then nothing else mattered. So now, how to find out the results of the naval report?

He grinned and jumped up. He still had plenty of contacts, many of whom would have no idea yet that he'd been drummed out of the service. It was time to get going. He had to be fast, before word spread that he no longer had any authority. That meant all military-related questions needed to be dealt with first.

He was whistling as he made his way toward the shower. Not so much because he was happy—far from it. But because he had a plan. Having a plan always made him feel better. He had a goal, a target, and he was going to get himself some answers.

Still, he promised himself, if Diego Silva did turn out to be at the bottom of this, if he was misusing his office, if he was lying and taking advantage of the American people, if he was the scum that Hanson thought he could very well be . . . Well, then he'd kill the damned man with his own bare hands. It wasn't a question of personal pride. It was one of patriotism.

 

***

 

Two hours later, Hanson was at lunch with a fellow captain. Charles Bingham, or Chuck, had been a fellow cadet at the academy but had chosen an administrative path through the navy—something Hanson was loath to let him forget during reunions. But they were good friends, teasing aside, and Hanson felt somewhat bad about not letting the man know he'd been discharged. Still, it was all for a good cause. Besides, Bingham worked partly for Naval Intelligence and Investigations and was likely to have the info Hanson needed.

“So,” said Hanson, once the small talk and gossiping were over and a couple of drinks had been imbibed. “I need to pick your brains about something.”

“Knock yourself out,” said Bingham, chomping down on a chicken wing.

“Three days ago a craft was sunk by the USS Brandyn,” Hanson began, unsure of exactly how to continue. Fortunately, he didn't have to.

“Huh,” grunted Bingham, mouth still half full of chicken. “The civilian yacht, yeah, I've heard about it. What of it?”

Hanson lifted an eyebrow. The fact that the craft was civilian didn't seem to bother Bingham. “Civilian?”

“Wouldn't be the first time.” Bingham shrugged. “It happens. Terrorist connections, generally. What's the problem?”

Not the first time. Hanson filed that away for future thought. “Who was on board?” he asked.

Bingham straightened up and swallowed. “The investigation into the sinking is sealed,” he said primly.

“And I know what happened that night in Hong Kong with a certain little lady, or should I say gentleman?” countered Hanson, grinning and trying to look as nonthreatening as possible.

“Christ, I'd almost forgotten about that,” Bingham said, grabbing another wing. “Look, I gotta tell you, I really don't know. By the time the file crossed my desk, half of it had already been blacked out. What I do know is that the boat left a small private marina close to Jacksonville. Does that help?”

“Maybe,” Hanson said, taking a chicken wing himself. But it didn't particularly help; he'd already known that.

“Gotta take a slash,” Bingham said, standing up. “Oh, there was one weird thing in the file, though. The boat's IMO number was misprinted a couple of times. Just two or three times, I think; the IMO number was a digit off. Jesus, could you imagine one of us getting away with something like that? We'd have been hung, drawn, and quartered. God knows what kind of trash they're letting into the Academy these days.”

“You all right?” Hanson asked when Bingham returned.

“Yeah, just swamped,” Bingham said, downing the rest of his beer. “This whole Egypt thing is giving us all overtime. You know how it is before a deployment.”

“Egypt?” Hanson said before realizing he shouldn't question it. This was something he should know.

“Eh, it'll probably come to nothing. But we gotta be prepared anyway. Frankly, I don't see why now. I mean, it's not like Muslim terrorist groups are new in Egypt. But hell, what do I know?”

Bingham hadn't noticed his slip-up. Egypt. That was the second time today he'd heard the country mentioned. It took a second before he remembered the oil news he'd seen that morning. Connected? Maybe. Again, he filed the information for later thought.

Hanson was careful to moderate his drinking for the rest of lunch. He took a cab home and downed a couple of glasses of water before sitting in front of the family laptop. A half hour later, he had the beginnings of an answer. He clearly remembered the IMO number that intel had given him for the target craft: 1978330. Now he had the IMO number for the craft belonging to Christian Jennings: 1976330. One digit. A 6 that could easily be changed into an 8 with a dab of paint. Would Jennings have noticed? Did you examine a number you'd seen every time you stepped aboard your boat? Hanson was willing to bet that Jennings had had no clue. Or perhaps someone aboard had made the slight alteration.

Definite proof it wasn't. But it was a step in the right direction. Even more so when Hanson dug into the life of Jennings himself and found him to be the CEO and owner of Graded Bio-Fuel, Inc., a direct competitor to Silva's energy company. So direct, in fact, that several legal proceedings had been begun between the two companies, all ending in judgments favoring Graded Bio-Fuel.

Curiouser and curiouser. Hanson ticked one question off his list. He had more work to do.