by Mike Maden
“I haven’t a clue.”
“A Texas longhorn. It’s standing on top of the building across the street. It’s plastic, I’m sure.”
“Fascinating. Is that why you’re in Whackaburg—”
“Wickenburg.”
“Wickenburg, Arizona? To look at cows standing on buildings?”
“Didn’t I tell you I was flying out here today?”
Of course not. “It’s not on your calendar.”
“There’s a tract of land I’ve had my eye on not too far from here. Thirty-two thousand acres. Perfect for a solar farm.”
“Solar farm? I thought we weren’t walking down that road again.”
Like many of Elias Dahm’s brilliant ideas, solar farming was both the wave of the future and an economic boondoggle. CloudServe had previously owned two other solar farms, and both had nearly bankrupted the company.
Elias’s idea was to power all of the company’s vast server farms with solar energy and sell the excess electricity produced back to the utility companies, making both a profit and effectively providing free electricity to CloudServe.
Unfortunately, the cost of solar energy per kilowatt hour was prohibitively high, even when subsidized, and a poor price alternative to fossil fuels, particularly oil, which had plummeted in price in recent years, thanks to technological advances in oil sands and shale production. Worse, the Ryan administration had successfully lobbied to end subsidies for the solar industry. The CloudServe board liquidated both money-losing solar projects over Dahm’s objections.
“Things change, Amanda. Board members change. Markets change. The climate changes. But the sun never changes. It’s the perfect energy source, and it’s free. We need to be part of the solar revolution.”
Her jaw clenched. She had neither the time nor the energy to rehash the debate. It was just another goose in the flock of wild geese Elias Dahm endlessly chased. All of their feasibility studies indicated that another solar-energy investment would be a net-net loser for the company, even with federal subsidies that no longer existed. But Elias Dahm was an obstinate, relentless dreamer. She wasn’t going to win this argument.
“Can’t wait to hear all about it when you get back. But in the meantime, I need you to remember that we have a lot riding on this London conference. It’s the most important media event of the year for us.”
“I shouldn’t think we’d have much trouble generating media attention.” Elias had appeared on both the cover of Fast Company and the Joe Rogan podcast in the last week.
“I’m talking about the good kind. You know, the kind that makes us money? These are industry people I’m talking about. People who sign contracts. That means we have a lot of hands to shake and a lot of egos to stroke.”
“You’re really good at that stuff, Amanda. I’m confident you’ll handle it.”
Of course I’ll handle it, she told herself. Like I handle every other goddamn thing around here while you’re banging interns and artificially inseminating Argentine polo ponies.
“Elias, I really need your full attention on this.”
“I’m totally focused.”
“So where’s the speech? You’re the keynote speaker, remember?”
“It’s dynamite. I can’t wait for you to see it.”
By which you mean you haven’t written a damn thing.
“When are you coming back?”
“We’re four-wheeling out to the property in about twenty minutes. Oh—there’s an In-N-Out Burger just forty minutes up the road. We should grab a Double-Double sometime together.”
“I’m vegan, remember?”
“Since when?”
Go to hell, Elias. “Just don’t get bit by any Gila monsters or whatever is crawling around out there. And call me when you land in California.”
“Will do.”
“Safe travels.”
She ended the call, her blood boiling.
CloudServe was her company, too. She was one of the largest stockholders—on paper, she was filthy rich. Unfortunately, she wasn’t allowed to cash any of those stocks anytime soon. There was every chance Elias would crash the company before she had the chance to cash in.
Dahm was one of those new financial geniuses who didn’t see any particular value in the concept of corporate profits. That was just one of the reasons the price-to-earnings ratio on CloudServe stocks ran in the triple digits, thanks to aggressive accounting practices. In reality, it should have been zero.
Rather than profits and earnings, Dahm measured success by cash flow. CloudServe computing services was a high-margin business with heavy capital expenditures, but, as a separate division, it still ran at a profit. It was all of the other adventures Dahm dreamed up, including his passion project, his space company, SpaceServe, that were draining the coffers. Dahm simply didn’t understand the word no, and his handpicked board of directors didn’t want to buy him a dictionary. They were having too much fun going along for the wild ride.
Watson yanked open a desk drawer and snatched up a small bottle of essential oil. She put a couple drops on her palms, rubbed them together, and cupped her hands over her mouth and nose. She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep, lavender-infused breaths, imagining herself standing all alone on a sugary white-sand beach beneath an achingly blue sky. Her breath slowed. So did her pulse. Her conscious mind collapsed to the singular point of her breathing.
In. Out. In. Out.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the rage ebbed away.
A soft knock on her doorjamb snapped her out of her trance. She opened her eyes.
It was her new assistant. An Indonesian on an H-1B visa, her head covered.
“What do you need, Masayu?”
“You have a call on line two, Ms. Watson.”
Watson glanced at her silenced desk phone. “Who is it?”
“Mr. Dahm. He said he forgot to tell you something.”
Watson forced a smile.
“Thank you.”
She took it. A joke he’d heard. Wanted to tell her before he forgot it. She faked a laugh and hung up.
She tried the lavender oil again.
It didn’t help.
41
WARSAW, POLAND
We’re here, Jack,” Liliana said, gently shaking him.
Jack jolted awake, startled, not sure for a second where he was. His right arm instinctively drew back for a punch, but Liliana’s smiling face short-circuited his instincts.
“Having a bad dream?”
Jack wiped his face. He was groggy as hell. The day all came flooding back.
“How long was I asleep?”
“About two hours. I tried to wake you a couple of times, but you wouldn’t budge.”
Jack sat up and glanced out the window. They were in the forecourt of his urban hotel.
He glanced down at himself. The smeared mud on his coat, shirt, and slacks had at least dried.
“Now that you’re awake, do you want to go inside and get cleaned up, and we can head out again?”
Jack shook his head, as much to clear the cobwebs as to communicate anything. “I think we played out all of our options today. I’ll put a plan together tonight. We’ll regroup tomorrow morning.”
“Sounds good.”
“Well, thanks for everything.” Jack stuck out his hand. They shook.
“See you tomorrow. Say, eight o’clock?”
“Eight o’clock.”
Jack watched Liliana pull away before heading through the hotel’s sliding glass door. A fashionably dressed young couple was coming out. The man shot him a dirty look and the woman giggled as they passed by.
The clerk behind the desk frowned at the sight of Jack. At first, he wasn’t sure why, but it suddenly occurred to him that he must look like a homeless guy with a laptop bag who had been sleeping under a bri
dge.
Jack pulled out his electronic room key from his wallet and flashed his best used-car-salesman smile. “Ryan, room three-eleven.”
The man took the card but was skeptical.
“Helped change a tire in the rain. Got a little messy,” Jack said as the man typed on his keyboard.
Jack’s unsoiled check-in photo appeared on the clerk’s screen. “Yes. Mr. Ryan. Very good. Will you be requiring a dry-cleaning service, then?”
Gee, Einstein, how could you tell?
“That would be great.”
“Please put your dirty clothes in the dry-cleaning bag provided in your room and hang it on the door latch tonight. Everything will be available tomorrow by seven a.m.”
“Thanks.”
The clerk peeked over the top of the desk at Jack’s feet. “Shoes, too?”
Jack’s brown oxfords were trashed.
“Please.”
“Leave them outside the door as well.”
“Just bill it to my room number.”
“Already taken care of.”
Jack nodded his thanks and headed for the stairs. He was wide awake this time, but he didn’t relish the idea of riding up the elevator with anyone right now.
* * *
—
Before he did anything else, Jack locked the hotel room door and crossed over to the far wall fronting the entire space. He reached down and pulled out the square wall charger he used to power up his laptop from the European-style plug adapter and brought it over to the desk.
He powered up his laptop and connected the wall charger to it with the dual-use USB connector. He opened a program that accessed the motion-activated digital camera embedded in the wall charger unit that doubled as his computer’s power source. The camera’s tiny fish-eye lens had a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree angle, wide enough to capture any movement in the room’s single living-sleeping area. If anyone had entered, the camera would have captured it. The unit could even detect if it had been tampered with.
Jack deployed a similar power/camera unit for an electric razor in the bathroom. But no point in pulling that one up if this one didn’t capture somebody breaking into his room in the first place.
The program indicated that nothing recorded except Jack leaving earlier that morning and returning just now, the final image showing his lens-distorted hand enveloping the unit as he unplugged it.
“Good ol’ Gav,” Jack whispered to himself, grateful for the bag full of electronic tricks Biery had given him to deploy on this trip. None of them had actually paid off yet, but it was nice to have something to do besides ask questions that nobody intended to answer honestly.
Next Jack treated himself to a hot, steaming shower. It had been a long day, most of it spent on his keister, either in the Hendley Associates Gulfstream or in Liliana’s Audi. The bottom line was that he hadn’t come up with squat regarding Dixon or any dirty deals she might have cooking with her stepson, Christopher Gage. Gage himself appeared to be moving and grooving on business deals here in Poland, at least with Stapinsky, who seemed harmless enough, even if he was a pretentious ass.
The steamy bathroom air felt good as he brushed his teeth, trying to decide his next course of action. The best he could come up with was to call Gerry.
“Hey, kid. How’s it going over there?”
Jack gave a brief overview of the day’s events, concluding with “And nothing to show for it.”
“Look, I didn’t send you over there to prove anything. I sent you over there to see if there was anything to find. If there’s nothing, then there’s nothing. And after all, it’s still only your first day. Give yourself a little credit.”
“I still have a few long shots to run down. I’ll check back with you tomorrow with what I have—or don’t have. If nothing else, I’ll have a list of leads to chase on the computer when I get back.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
“You know, everybody dances on the margins these days. Companies allocate big budgets to their accounting departments to push the absolute limits of legality to avoid paying taxes, which is smart, I suppose. It may be that Christopher Gage is just playing by the rules others have made, and the fact that I don’t like it doesn’t mean he or his stepmother are necessarily guilty of anything.”
“That’s a fair assessment. But keep digging anyway.”
“Will do.”
Jack pulled on a pair of athletic pants and a sweatshirt before dropping down in front of his laptop and composing a text message for Liliana.
Any chance we can get Baltic General Services info from their last quarterly VAT tax filings? I’m thinking: other businesses they might have purchased or partnered with? Also, any chance we can find out if Christopher S. Gage has formed any other corporations in Poland or that operate in Poland? I know it’s a big ask, but I’m running out of ideas. Thanks again for the terrific lunch and the excellent driving services. Can’t wait—
Jack caught himself. He deleted “Can’t wait” and wrote instead,
See you tomorrow at 8.
He drummed his fingers on the desk. He knew he was really missing something. But what?
What about generating a list of every Chinese company operating in Poland, and cross-referencing that with any Christopher Gage–related corporation? Then what? He’d have to dig into those as well. But without a warrant or some other legal authority to crack open their books—and that wasn’t possible without probable cause—he wasn’t likely to get very far. After all, if someone walked in Gerry’s door and asked him to show Hendley Associates’ business accounts, Gerry’s likely response would be a swift kick in the ass and a quick call to security to escort the idiot out the front door.
As far as Gage’s American tax records, those weren’t public documents, and if Gage owned less than ten percent in a foreign company he wasn’t obligated to report it to the IRS anyway.
Jack brainstormed for another twenty minutes but wasn’t coming up with anything. Despite the shower, his mind was still a little fogged.
His phone dinged. It was Liliana.
One step ahead of you. I had been thinking along the same lines. I called ahead while you were sleeping. We should have a list of possibilities first thing tomorrow morning. Shall I bring you coffee?
Interesting. Why would she be willing to dig further unless she was now interested in Gage as well? As a favor to him? Not likely. She was a pro—and a patriot. If she were interested in Gage, it meant she thought he might be into something that worked against her country’s interests. If that were true, that meant he was working against the interests of one of America’s best allies. And that was worth digging into.
One step ahead? Sounds like two or three. Thanks for doing that. I’ll grab coffee and breakfast at the hotel before you get here, but thanks. Have a great evening.
The offer was nice and, no doubt, perfectly innocent. But it was his own wicked heart that Jack was worried about.
He pulled up Ysabel’s contact info. Might as well drop her a line and see how she’s doing. He did a quick check of the message conversation history. He last wrote her two weeks ago, asking how she was doing.
She never replied.
What few conversations they were able to have in between dodging bullets and bad guys in Afghanistan and Iran weren’t exactly pleasant. She was angry, and had a right to be. He thought maybe they could patch things up.
Looks like he thought wrong.
Jack shut his computer. Might as well take advantage of the downtime and see the city. He started to pull up TripAdvisor on his phone to get a list of ideas of places to check out at night, but it suddenly struck him that he just wasn’t in the mood. He sure as hell didn’t want to hit the bar scene, and any museums he’d want to see would be closed by now. Besides, he still had a shit-ton of work to do on the Dubai deal that was still sitting on his virtua
l desk. He’d feel better about himself if he actually accomplished something for the good money the firm paid him.
He decided to put in three good hours of work, and if that didn’t settle his brain down, he’d pop an allergy pill and knock himself out so that his brain clock would reset itself for the task at hand tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, he could get the hell back home and reschedule his trip for Cory.
42
LUANDA, ANGOLA
It was the newest and most exclusive luxury hotel in the capital city—surprisingly, one of the most expensive cities in the world now, thanks to all of the oil money—built by a Chinese firm for Chinese investors. Expat Europeans and Americans loved it, though there were fewer of them these days, thanks to the regime change. Mostly it was Chinese executives. It was the place to be seen for business and social contacts. Few Angolans could afford it.
The young, mixed-race Angolan woman turned nearly every head as she crossed the expansive lobby. Green eyes, caramel skin, thick blond curls, and a hard, curvaceous body flowed with effortless grace toward the private express elevator serving the penthouse floors.
She waved a key card in front of the buttonless call device, and moments later the mirrored elevator doors opened.
She was a regular now.
The hard, familiar face of the rock-jawed Chinese security officer greeted her with a curt nod as she stepped inside. Once the doors closed, he pressed a button holding the elevator. He wanded the perfectly proportioned physique with a handheld metal detector. His cold eyes searched hers for any sign of deception or fear, but found none.
She flashed a teasing “come hither” smile for her own amusement but elicited no reaction from the iron-hard security man. He checked her small handbag. Key card, lipstick, breath mints, and three condoms in gold foil packets.
He spoke into the mic attached to his wrist.
The elevator rose swiftly.
