Without obeying a conscious decision, Jack worked his way through the press of bodies. An inner circle of horror-stricken spectators surrounded the victim. The slim and nearly insubstantial remains were covered by a white sheet, the cloth dampened by wetness, the woman’s delicate figure starkly outlined. When the emergency crew lifted the water-laden body onto a stretcher, a corner of the sheet fell away, for a second only, long enough for Jack to glimpse brown hair, vacant eyes, and a single crooked tooth visible within an astonished mouth.
The crowd emitted a collective gasp of dismay, many looking away, others fascinated by the starkness of death.
Keri Parris wasn’t as pretty as he remembered. Or death, in its manifest cruelty, robbed her of that indefinable animation of being, the stuff that made her unique above all other women. When they strolled along the water’s edge in the dark of a starlit night, he hadn’t noticed the caked powder on her cheeks. Or the faded outline of lipstick on her parted lips. Or the random strands of gray running through her hair. Or the spider webs fanning out from the corners of her eyes. In the light of morning, he noticed all these things, and more. Tear-stained mascara smeared the delicate depressions beneath her eyes. Ugly bruises fanned around her neck. More bruising marred her cheekbone as if a cruel fist had smashed into it, knocking her out and momentarily dazing her, rendering her indefensible against the final insult. Her blank eyes were still staring at her killer who, after choking the life out of her, calmly walked away, not once looking back, not even to admire his handiwork. Her clothes had been ripped from her body, either by the undercurrent of an unforgiving sea or more likely by the rough hands of her assailant. Less than twelve hours earlier, Jack had thought her patrician, fastidious, and lovely, a tasty meal of womanly delights that he mindfully left on the dinner plate. Now she had become the leftovers. Torment was evident on her face, frozen in rictus. But of what? Pain, surprise, horror, or realization? All of it, he decided.
He wanted to cry out to the gods. And he wanted blood.
In his head, he heard the crowd screaming. There he is! That’s him! Grab him! He’s the murderer! It seemed real enough. Except for one thing. Everyone behaved as before, with pale dread and subdued voices, none looking at Jack, or even seeing him, as if he were invisible. But for providence, they were probably praying to the Heavenly Father above, it could have been me. Only Jack would understand the premise to be a false one. Providence had nothing to do with this woman’s demise. Destiny had.
He backed away, the sand beneath his feet giving way as sand always does. With reluctance. When he reached the periphery of the crowd, he stopped and glanced back. The sun was shining the way it always shines in a tropical paradise, searing and bright. The aquamarine waters washed over the beach as waves always do, cool and refreshing. And the sand was glistening the way sand always does, white and blinding the eye, though not so white as to blind Jack.
Reluctant to go, the crowd lingered, speaking in undertones of horror. Every man was a potential murderer. Any one of them could have approached Keri with a proposition. To put John Fox at ease. To flatter him. To entertain him. To go with him to his room and sleep with him, where she probably would have died in any event. She had failed in her mission and escaped an embarrassing death, only to meet with a different kind of death, this one just as final. She had paid for her folly. And the price was too high.
He scanned the beach more closely, looking for a man of his acquaintance, a man with maddened eyes who wantonly killed one woman in a train station and a second woman in a house in the woods. He didn’t spot the Frenchman but he did notice the girl from the hotel bar. What was her name? Nancy? No, Dani. Dani Nguyen. She was loitering towards the rear of the crowd, leeward of the sea breezes, hair blowing away from her face as she looked on with the rest. She wore beachwear over a bikini, her body bronze, beautiful, and mouthwatering. Sensing his stare, she glanced around until her gaze met his. She took note of his wide stance and penetrating glare, then slowly backed away, placing sandaled foot behind sandaled foot. He advanced towards her at the same measured pace.
She dashed off, taking the only clear path of escape, away from the bystanders and towards the shoreline, where footing was easier on wet sand. Jack followed, surefooted and barely breaking a sweat. She veered inland, arms pumping, sprinting at a fast gait, trying to lose him. She spurted onto Bay Road, looking left and instantly right. A few yards separated her from him. She rabbited north, mingling with tourists, and ducked into a boutique, catching her breath and pretending to shop for beachwear. Jack loitered outside, leaning against a lamp post, waiting for her to come out. After pulling out a hanger and admiring a cover-up, she slid it back onto the rack and boldly turned toward him, hands braced on hips, elbows thrust out. Defiant. Cocky. Then she assumed an almost laughing expression. She strolled forward, feigning meekness and mildness, her beachwear shifting with her hips and her bikini bottoms revealing strong thighs and a taut butt. She coquettishly lowered her eyelids and shouldered her straw purse. Mere feet away, she bolted back the way she had come. Combing around for an escape route, someplace safe, she zipped towards a resort hotel. The doorman looked perplexed as she skipped inside, giggling as she went. Jack slowed his pace and threw his eyes at the doorman as if to say, Women. The doorman grinned, tipped his hat, and stood aside.
She had made herself comfortable in the breezeway lounge, legs crossed and an elbow resting on an umbrellaed table, her cupped palm propping up her chin as she gazed up at him, wholly amused. “Thirsty?” she said, still catching her breath.
He lowered himself on a rattan chair and regarded her, hunching forward, arms crossed, eyes direct. “I remember you now.”
“Sure,” she said, angling her head. “Last night.”
“Before. In Washington. Downtown station. You were shagging me. Angling for a hookup.”
“Me? A hooker? Ha!”
“You licked your fingernail like you’re licking it now.”
She dropped her hand and lay it awkwardly in her lap, her face tilted defiantly, her eyes narrowing until they were little more than slits. The pinkness of her exertion reddened to the embarrassment of discovery. “Didn’t think you made me.”
“Who do you work for?”
She lifted her hand and licked one of her polished fingernails, gazing down demurely, grinning. “I saw you push her. The woman in the train station.”
“You know I didn’t.”
“It was you, all right.”
A waitress swung by their table. Dani ordered a tropical drink. Jack asked for ice water. Their conversation was bound to be a short one, their drinks probably arriving long after their parting. Jack slid a twenty-dollar bill onto the table, weighing it beneath a flower vase. He sat back and crossed his arms. “Is your name really Dani Nguyen?”
She looked surprised. And then not so surprised. “They said you had a photographic memory.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “CIA?”
“You think you’re so fucking clever,” she said with a sneer. “Not clever enough, Mr. Wise Guy. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
“Who killed the woman on the beach? One of yours?”
Slowly she shook her head. “One of yours. Maybe even you.” Her smile was irresistible, dimpled at the corners and verging on laughter.
“If I were you? I’d tell your overlords to fire you. You make a lousy undercover agent.”
Jack got up and walked out.
22
Kansas City, Missouri
Tuesday, August 12
THE AIRLINER RAN into turbulence halfway to Kansas City, making for a stomach-churning flight. When Cordelia Burke stepped off the jetway and entered the airport terminal, her nerves were jangling and her head, pounding. What the flight attendants passed out for food wasn’t good enough to toss into the nearest garbage can. She was ravenous.
She scouted out a café with a decent menu. Though officially breakfast time, she ski
pped the eggs and bacon and ordered a turkey wrap. It arrived with a sweet-and-sour sauce that soothed her stomach and revitalized her energy. She had flown to Kansas City to track down dirty money hacked from four Wall Street brokerage houses and wired around the globe to several offshore tax havens. Two business concerns—Sintex Manufacturing, Incorporated and Kansas City Federalist Bank—were the loose ends. As soon as she met with the certified public accountant who oversaw the transactions, she intended to hop on the next flight back to Washington and get home in time for a romantic candlelit dinner, made all the better if she had a man to share it with. She didn’t.
Before leaving on the red-eye flight, she had a final sit-down meeting with the only man currently in her life—Jonathan Taggert—her boss and sometimes lover. They went over the plan of attack, specifically how to wrangle the bean counter into spilling the beans, and what she would do if he wasn’t in a cooperative mood. They went over the possible scenarios and rehearsed the play-by-plays from every conceivable angle, including the arguments and counterarguments, cajoling tactics, and subtle and not-so-subtle threats. Cordelia believed she could wing it. Taggert wanted to make sure she was prepared for anything. He also wanted to protect her, to watch over her, even to come with her. It was sweet of him to offer. But face it, he was being an overprotective ninny. Plus he was a very intimidating fellow, which would only make the accountant dig in his heels. He approached her, encased her face between his large hands, and delivered a warm kiss to her cool mouth. Then he stood back, nodded once, and went back to his desk, where he waved her away as if she were a pesky fly.
MonCom held a unique place in the intelligence gathering community. Its existence was relatively unknown to the public, but its mission of tracing the digital tracks of soiled currency was indispensable for getting the bad guys. The CIA, FBI, NSA, IRS, and DOJ relied on MonCom to assist them in uncovering large terrorist operations and drug cartels as well as lone wolves, sleeper cells, crooked bankers, underhanded politicians, crime syndicates, and international operatives whose games always included money laundering or tax avoidance, usually both.
At present she was tracking down the movements of Jack Coyote, charged with murder but suspected of so much more. Cordelia had researched his background, from his rough beginnings, to his hacking background, to his career in government, even to his love life. After being thrown into jail for killing his girlfriend, he was eventually released on bond based on inconsistent evidence. Within days, he slipped through the nets of law enforcement and immediately took up the life of a one-man assassination bureau. Then he dropped out of sight. Everybody was chasing Coyote. So was Cordelia, but from a different angle. She was following the money trail he left behind.
She finished breakfast and hailed a taxi to take her to an address near Prairie Village, some twenty minutes away. During the ride, she went over her notes. As far as she could determine, the fifty million Coyote swiped from those brokerages initially arrived in Vanuatu, a remote island in the South Pacific and a known repository for dirty money. Almost immediately, the money was wired to the Cayman-based branch of Hertford International. From there the funds were transferred to two Hertford subsidiaries before being diverted to Nauru, yet another South Pacific island known for lax banking laws, despite the heavy-handed authority of its Australian overlords. Eventually the money landed in Kansas City Federalist Bank on behalf of Sintex Manufacturing, Incorporated, a dummy organization. It took only a few hours before the assets were split up and dispersed to several offshore tax havens.
Cordelia made an appointment with Elias Kirschner, the accountant who handled the paperwork on behalf of Sintex. His office was in one of those shiny business parks set among rolling lawns and asphalt parking lots. When he greeted her in the lobby with a brusque handshake, Cordelia noted his sweaty palm. She handed him her business card. He looked her over much more closely. He had probably underestimated her. Almost everyone did.
He led her upstairs to his executive suite. Having already set out a slim file folder on his spotless desk, he politely indicated one of two visitor chairs. He opened the file folder with the tip of his manicured thumb. Elias Kirschner was a prudish man with a priggish manner. Cordelia went straight for the accountant’s scrawny gullet, summarizing her investigation of the millions stolen by a presumed hacker and briskly siphoned through Sintex under his watch. She wanted an explanation. Did he have one?
He regarded her with disdain before referring to the contents of the file folder, his posture erect and his nearsighted eyes shifting back and forth. “We handled the funds as a matter of course, all up-and-up, something we do every day of the week.”
“Really? Every day?”
His pale complexion grew paler but he said nothing more.
“What we’re trying to figure out, Mr. Kirschner, is how the money made its way to Sintex. And how the bank in Nauru figured into it.”
He reacted to the mention of Nauru but again said nothing.
“The money trail seems to have passed through Nauru, almost like a ghost, before winding up at Kansas City Federalist. It took a while for us to pick up the trail but it wasn’t too difficult since the amounts were to the penny, even though the receipt and dispatch numbers differed. As if―” She paused. The air hung thick with anticipation. She waited for his reaction.
He was slow in showing anything. Curiosity gave way. “As if―?”
“Someone meant us to find it.”
“Sorry. I’m not following.”
“You’re following quite well. In fact, you’re following so well, you’re scared shitless.”
“If you’re implying this arrangement was in any way illegal―”
“You mean money laundering.”
He looked at her wide-eyed. Beads of sweat popped up along his receding hairline. He was pasty-faced. He was slope-shouldered. He was thin-lipped. He was big-boned. He was a tall, gangly man dressed in a suit one size too large. Yet the way he flexed the long fingers of both his hands was girlish. Almost as if he were gay. Except the broad wedding band on his left hand said he probably wasn’t gay. Only starchy. Puritanical. And fastidious.
“That’s what you meant to say, right? Money laundering.”
“I’m familiar with the concept.”
“More than familiar. In fact, now you’re wondering if you missed anything. If the bank in Nauru slipped up. Or if something went wrong. And you know what? It did.” She gave him a big smile. “Your greed exceeded your intelligence, sorry to say. They took you for a patsy.”
He pushed back his chair and moved to get up. “If you think I’m going to sit here and―”
“You and your firm are in big trouble, Mr. Kirschner. I suggest you sit down and let me tell you why.”
He sat. He tugged at the knot of his tie. He gulped air like a drowning fish. He was a snide and nervous man. He wanted to belt her one, but he wasn’t man enough.
She figuratively pushed him against the wall. “You see, since the money was stolen from four personal accounts, whose owners are very angry, as you can imagine, the insurers will have to make good those losses, and they won’t be too happy about that. The holders of those accounts have already sued the brokerages for malfeasance and mismanagement. The insurers will follow suit. And everybody will be unhappy, including Rutledge, Sibley & Kirschner, of which you are the junior partner. Soon to be the ex-junior partner since the senior partners will be quite happy to cut you loose. You’ll lose your license. Be indicted. Go to jail. Well, you get the general idea.”
He shoved the bridge of his eyeglasses against his nose and glared at her with contempt. “We don’t know anything about any overseas banks. Sintex held an account with Kansas City Federalist, and that’s all we know.”
“And not where the funds went?”
“That we do know.” Sweat stained the underarms of his worsted suitcoat. “The funds ... the money ... was routed to Winthrop Liberty, a parent company of Kansas City.”
“And from there?”
“You’d have to talk to someone at Winthrop. Anyway, it’s out of our hands since Sintex withdrew their account from us.”
“Anyway isn’t a very good excuse, mainly since Sintex never existed. Except on paper. Here one day. Gone the next. But you already know that. And just for your edification, Mr. Kirschner? The money isn’t with Winthrop anymore. So,” she said, drawing out the word, “what I’m here to ask is whether you’re prepared to fully cooperate with our investigation.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you are implying.” His speech was formal, crisp, proper. And laced with fear.
“You have a fiduciary responsibility.”
“To my clients, assuredly.”
“And to yourself and your firm’s integrity.” She sat forward, an in-your-face posture. “Here’s what I think, Mr. Kirschner. I think you and your firm are hiding something.”
“I’m just an accountant who followed the instructions of my client.”
“In fact, a cartel accountant who aids and abets money launderers. Your partners, too, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Only if proven.”
“That’s quite a statement. Considering the position you’re in.” She let that sink in before smiling broadly and getting up. “This meeting? Consider it a formality. I wanted to take the measure of the man. And now I have it.” She started to go.
“All right,” he said, stopping her. “You win. We ... well, we were hired over the phone. We never met the woman. We set up everything on her behalf.” Once again he pushed at his glasses, his hand trembling this time.
“Her name?”
“I’d have to look it up.”
“Look it up now.”
He considered the request before saying, “Shasenka. Katya Shasenka.”
“Russian?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Russian,” she said crisply.
“And now,” he said, standing, “I believe our conversation is over.”
Enemies Within Page 14
