CHAPTER 36
ON THURSDAY MORNING, TWO DAYS AFTER THE FOURTH OF JULY holiday, a private jet landed in Castries, St. Lucia.
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Bev Mangrove was the lowest-ranking member of the group that piled into the black SUV.
Those that outranked her included her boss, Cooper Schott, whose vacation she had ruined a few days before, the director of the FBI, and the head of the State Department.
A half-dozen staff members squeezed into a trailing vehicle.
They rode mostly in silence, occasionally mentioning the beauty of the island and the lush tropics of the rain forest that surrounded them.
But the lure of relaxation that the Caribbean typically offered was nowhere in the vehicle. There was serious work to be done.
Thirty minutes later, they pulled up to the Government House on the northern edge of Morne Fortuné, a hill that overlooks the southern Castries.
The building was the personal residence of the governor-general, a location where official business was rarely conducted.
An exception was made today. An assistant greeted them when they arrived and led them into the building.
Waiting for the U.S. entourage and seated around the living room were the prime minister, the governor-general, and the Honorable Francis Bryan, judge of St. Lucia’s Supreme Court.
Greetings and handshakes were exchanged, and everyone took their seats.
Present in the hilltop home in the eastern Caribbean were the men and women who ran the Justice Department in their respective countries.
They had a great deal to discuss, much to bargain, and wide authority from the few people more powerful than them to get this issue resolved.