by Ben Mezrich
One hundred thousand dollars, one short car ride away.
As the woman held the door open for Thad, he smiled at her. She smiled back—but in that brief second, he noticed that she was actually glancing past him, at something in the parking lot. He quickly followed her gaze—but it was just another couple of restaurant patrons getting into their own vehicle on the other side of the lot. A man and a woman, actually, dressed pretty formally for a warm Saturday evening. And they both appeared to be in their late thirties or early forties.
Odd—but Thad pushed the thought away. He told himself again, he was just being paranoid. In a few minutes, they would be back at the hotel. And then it would be just him, Rebecca—and a briefcase full of cash. After that—maybe there would be a nice, pretty beach, with plenty of palm trees to go around.
35
Thad was still thinking about that perfect, pretty beach as they pulled into the Sheraton parking lot, Rebecca and Gordon a single car length behind them. Lynn and Kurt had been pretty talkative for most of the short drive over from the restaurant, shifting through a range of topics, from the muggy weather in Orlando to the best beer makers in Belgium—and pretty much everything in between. Thad was starting to really like them, and even found himself wondering if they’d all stay in touch after the deal was completed. He was certain that Gordon would be out of the picture as soon as he got his ten grand, but Thad and Rebecca would one day want to travel to Europe—and it would be nice to have people there to show them around. Kurt could introduce them to his brother, and Thad could finally meet the man behind all those e-mails. He was sure he’d have a lot in common with such a conscientious rock hound. Hell, maybe they’d all end up visiting that pristine beach together, share some laughs about the deal that had brought them together.
But the minute Lynn jammed her foot on the brake, sending the car skidding to a sudden, screeching halt, Thad’s mind went absolutely blank, the imagined beach swallowed in a burst of pure and instant terror. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could find any words, Lynn and Kurt were out of the car—and then there were men racing at him from every direction, shouting and screaming and pointing—
And then Thad saw that the men had guns. Dozens of them, everywhere, all over the parking lot, guns of varying sizes, pistols and automatics and even things that looked like sniper rifles, all of them drawn and aiming right at his face. Bright light exploded everywhere at once, illuminating the entire front of the hotel. Thad gasped, pressing back against the car seat, trying to disappear into the sticky, sweaty vinyl. But then one of the men was grabbing at the car door, and suddenly there were hands all over him, yanking at his shirt and his hair and even his skin. As he was dragged out of the car—above the shouting and the screaming—he could hear the thump thump thump of a helicopter up above. The shadow of the thing passed right over him, the fierce wind from the rotors pulling at his hair—and then it was past, out over the highway. And Thad could see, beneath the copter, at least twenty police cars, lights flashing, parked behind barricades and yellow tape. They had closed International Drive; in fact, it looked like they had shut down an entire section of the city.
“On your knees!” screamed a voice next to his ear. “Now!”
It was Kurt, but now Kurt wasn’t talking about idyllic beaches, and he didn’t have a Belgian accent. Now Kurt was aiming a .32-caliber handgun at the back of Thad’s head. And there, just a few yards away, was Lynn, but she wasn’t asking about his adventurous girlfriend or the movie of his life. Now there was a badge affixed to her suit jacket, and she was talking to two men in police uniforms—and they were all looking at Thad, and one of them was smiling, but it wasn’t an amiable smile; it was a mean, arrogant kind of grin.
And Thad knew, with every fiber of his being, that he was fucked.
He felt the tip of a shoe kicking at the back of his legs, and then his knees hit the pavement. A heavy weight pressed against the small of his back, and then he was down flat, his left arm being pulled behind his back. He could hear the clink of handcuffs being readied, and in that brief moment he felt his entire life energy flowing out of him, like a cork had been pulled out of his heel and all of his dreams and accomplishments and beliefs were just running out of him, water from a pierced balloon. And he knew, right then, that this was a perfect time to die. Up until that point, that very second, everything in his life had been so incredible and exciting. He was a NASA scientist with a chance of one day becoming an astronaut. He had a beautiful girlfriend and a beautiful, though separated, wife. He could speak multiple languages and fly airplanes and cliff-dive and swim in the NBL. He had ridden in the Space Shuttle Simulator. He had everything.
And now it was all gone, poof, everything he had ever worked for, everything he had ever achieved. Gone.
He knew immediately what he had to do. He glanced up, and even from that angle he could still see all those guns aiming at his head. Thirty, maybe forty of them, Christ, even though, of course, they knew he was unarmed, he was wearing shorts and a shirt and had just spent the past hour in a restaurant talking about moon rocks and Mars meteors. Forty guns, more than enough to do the job. The handcuffs weren’t locked on yet, he had a second left before it was too late—all he needed to do was roll over and start swinging. Hit one of the cops or the feds or even Kurt in the face, get them to start shooting. Thad wouldn’t even feel a thing.
But then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the commotion across the parking lot—Gordon and Rebecca being dragged down to the pavement just like he was, another dozen or so cops swarming over them like maggots over meat. Gordon was one thing, poor sap had screwed himself by coming down to Florida—but Rebecca … Christ, Rebecca. He could just barely see her tiny form splayed out on the pavement, her wrists being pinned behind her lower back.
Tears burned at the corners of his eyes. Rebecca. He had to help her. He had to make sure she got out of this okay. He had to protect her. And if he died here, in this parking lot, she’d end up in prison, maybe even hating him for the rest of her life. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to live, to make sure she continued to love him. To make sure she stayed safe.
He let the last few drops of his life energy dribble out the bottom of his heel, closed his eyes—and listened for the piercing, metallic crack of the handcuffs clicking tight around his wrists.
36
Axel Emmermann didn’t truly understand the enormity of the situation—or the storm that was headed his way—until he saw the look on his fifteen-year-old son’s face. Sven had come through the door to Axel’s bedroom at a full run, and now he was just standing there, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, as he struggled to catch his breath. Christel was already out of bed and on her feet, rushing toward the boy to see if he’d somehow injured himself, but Axel waved her back, having a pretty good idea that Sven’s nearly catatonic state had something to do with the flurry of phone calls Axel had received via his cell phone the night before.
That, in itself, had been unusual, because he almost never used his cell phone, and he’d missed the first few calls trying to find the damn thing. When he’d finally discovered it in the bottom drawer of his dresser, it was still ringing; he’d been surprised to hear the familiar voice of the president of the Antwerp Mineral Club on the line.
His old friend had sounded as breathless as Sven now looked. The president himself had just gotten off his own phone, having received a panicked call from his elderly mother. The woman, deep into her eighties, had been a sort of mascot to the Antwerp Mineral Club for some time. Apparently, a journalist who had once written an amusing piece about her interest in rare rocks had tracked her down in the middle of the night. Because of her age, she had been pretty confused by the call, and had simply passed the journalist’s information to her son.
“Something crazy is going on,” the president had gasped, once he’d gotten Axel on the line. “There’s been some sort of major arrest in the United States, and it seems that it somehow involves our mineral
club.”
Axel had nearly dropped the cell phone. He hadn’t heard anything from the FBI or Orb Robinson in over a week. He had dutifully passed the baton to the people who were supposed to know what to do with it, and even his wife had finally let the issue drop. The last thing he had expected was to hear about it again—via the eighty-year-old mother of the president of the Antwerp Mineral Club!
But apparently, the Belgian journalist had been eager to hunt her down because the FBI had issued a little press release. Buried deep within that release was the mention of a Belgian collector from the Antwerp Mineral Club. A reporter from Tampa, Florida, had contacted a colleague from Belgium—and the trail had led all the way back to Axel Emmermann.
The president of the club had guessed, correctly, that Axel hadn’t simply erased Orb Robinson’s e-mail as everyone else had done. He had taken it upon himself to do something about what they all had assumed was a hoax. After the president’s initial shock had worn off, he had become very excited at the prospect of all the coming press. Axel’s actions had put the Antwerp Mineral Club on the map.
Axel’s thoughts had been swirling as he’d hung up the phone, but he hadn’t even had time to inform Christel when the phone was ringing again. It was the Tampa Herald, a newspaper all the way on the other side of the world, calling him to talk about his role in bringing down Robinson. The reporter hadn’t gleaned much information yet—just that arrests had been made, and that the people arrested were connected to NASA. Nevertheless, the journalist treated Axel like a hero. And at the end of the conversation, the man warned Axel that this was probably just the beginning. A crime this big had never happened at NASA before. There was a good chance it would become an international story.
Looking at Sven’s face as the poor kid stood in the doorway to the bedroom, Axel had a feeling that the journalist had been correct.
“There’s something being erected outside my bedroom window,” Sven finally managed. “It looks like it might be some sort of spaceship.”
Axel looked at his wife, then quickly rushed out of the bedroom. He barreled down the hallway to his son’s room. Christel and Sven were right behind him, his wife holding on to the back of his shirt as they went. When he got to his son’s window, he yanked back the drapes—and Christel gasped behind him.
Rising up on his front lawn was a giant steel television antenna. Behind the antenna, there were at least two news trucks with satellite dishes affixed to their roofs. There were reporters everywhere, a few he even recognized from the local nightly news. Beyond the trucks, he could see his neighbors gathering outside on the street, even though it was barely five-thirty in the morning.
Axel turned and grinned at his wife. He didn’t need to say anything, because he could see from the expression on her face that she was equal parts stunned and proud.
Axel was now an international superhero.
37
The holding cell was in Tampa, a bit of a drive via police caravan—lights flashing, sirens wailing—from Orlando, but it might as well have been on Mars; everything had become so surreal and foreign and confusing, and Thad had no choice but to just go with it, handcuffed and eventually shackled, a metal chain running between his wrists and his feet, fingerprinted and shoved along by a never-ending parade of police officers and FBI agents and people with badges he couldn’t even recognize. By the time he finally was led into the holding area, he’d been interrogated at least twice, but he had remained utterly silent—more the result of his stunned state of mind than from any sense of strategy. But the minute he saw Rebecca in the holding area, separated from him by the bars of their individual cells, his mind cleared, his senses sharpened. The world snapped into focus like a leather belt pulled tight, and he was able to zone out the dozens of strange and terrifying people staggering around the huge, open tank right next to his isolated cell—most of whom looked drunk and high and crazy, a few shirtless and even one completely naked, the smell of feces and sweat and fear so thick it made Thad want to gag. Instead, he focused on Rebecca, only Rebecca.
Her face was as white as the lightest part of the moon, and there were tears streaking down her cheeks. She was curled up in a neat ball, right up against the bars, so close that Thad could almost reach out and touch her. She saw him, but she didn’t even unfurl herself; she remained a little fetal ball, her shoulders rocking with each sob.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said, mustering enough strength to make his voice steady. “I promise, you’re not going to take any of the blame for this. Just tell them you don’t know anything.”
“I already told them everything!” she half wailed, and Thad was momentarily taken aback by the viciousness in her voice. She was beyond terrified, desperate, and devastated. “And they made me call my parents.”
“It doesn’t matter what you told them,” Thad said, not sure whether it was true, but trying to regain control, even in the most uncontrollable situation. “I’m going to take the blame for everything. You tell them you were afraid, that I forced you to do this, that you didn’t know anything about the moon rocks. I need you on the outside. I need you free, so that I can talk to you, so that you can be my lifeline.”
And he meant it. He knew that he was going to prison. The only way he’d be able to survive was if she was outside, free, living her life, and communicating with him. He believed that he could get through anything, as long as he could talk to her once in a while, hear her voice, tell her he loved her.
“But my dad—he’s coming to get me. And he says I can never talk to you again.”
This hit Thad harder than anything else so far. He shook his head.
“No, we have to stay in communication.”
“They told me we could get thirty years. Thad, I can’t go to jail for thirty years.”
Thad lowered himself to the floor, his head against the bars. He wished he could reach out and touch her. But she was too far away. Thirty years? It was probably bullshit. It had to be bullshit. What they’d done—it was a prank, a mental game that had gone a little too far. Shit, the cops were just trying to scare her. And they’d done a good job.
“You’re not going to jail; I’m going to tell them that it was all my idea.”
She raised her head from her hands, and the sobs seemed to subside a bit. Maybe his words had finally gotten through to her.
“But my dad—”
“For now, just do what he says. After a little bit, when you’re out of here, we’ll find a way—”
But he never had a chance to finish, because suddenly there were uniformed officers at Rebecca’s cell, and they were telling her to get up and follow them. She threw one terrified final look at Thad, and then her head was down, almost to her chest, she was moving quickly in the direction that the police officers had indicated—and a moment later she was gone, and Thad was alone. He breathed deeply, trying to catch one last whiff of her floral perfume in the air, even the tiniest molecule of her passing to keep him from completely coming apart—but there was nothing there but the fetid stench of that Floridian purgatory.
It was his turn to curl up into a fetal ball, his mind going numb.
…
“One phone call. You have five minutes.”
Thad stood in front of the pay phone as the uniformed officer stepped away, giving him a few feet of privacy. The bulky hunk of metal and plastic hanging from the wall seemed so utterly anachronistic, and Thad couldn’t help but remind himself that just two days ago he had been listening to voices through a bone-conducting receiver, and now here he was, standing in front of an ancient-looking pay phone, the sound of drunken gangbangers and transients echoing all around him.
Thad had no idea how long he had been in the holding cell before the officer had come to get him for his legally sanctioned call. He had considered telling the man just to leave him alone; the phone call wasn’t going to do Thad much good, because he only knew one phone number, and the person on the other end of that number wasn’t going to be very help
ful.
The minute Sonya’s voice echoed over the line, he knew that his prediction was correct. She was furious. He was in jail, calling her collect—and her fury only grew as he gave her the details of his situation. Not only had he gone through with this heist, but also he had done it with Rebecca, a girl he had known for less than a month. In the course of the short phone call, Thad realized that Sonya still had strong feelings for him—that somehow, even though they had barely spoken over the past few months, she had still harbored the thought that someday they would work things out.
Thad had put an end to that. The robbery, even jail time—these were things Sonya could have gotten past. But that he had done this with a girl other than herself—that was unforgivable.
He tried to talk past her anger—because he needed her help. He had been told by one of the federal courthouse officials that he was going to be given a signature bond, which meant that any adult in the country who didn’t have a criminal record could go to any courthouse and sign him out, to await his trial. It didn’t need to be a brother, it didn’t need to be a parent, it didn’t even need to be an angry ex. Just a signature from any adult, and he would be free until they were ready to try him for the crime.
“If you won’t do it,” he pleaded into the phone, “if your parents won’t let you or if you just can’t because you need to move on—I understand. But please, reach out to the people who know me, to anybody you can think of. Maybe someone at NASA, maybe someone from school—”
