Power Play

by Joseph Finder

  "You telling me you don't really care one way or another if something happens to any of those guys? Sorry, I don't believe you."

  "Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see anyone get hurt. But it's not like any of them are friends of mine. They may be worth more, but their lives aren't worth any more than mine."

  "You'd care if something happened to your girlfriend."

  "She's a friend. Not a girlfriend." I hesitated. "Yeah, I'd care if anything happened to her. I'll admit that. But I'm cooperating. I want this to be over. I just want to go home."

  "Well, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Anything could happen."

  "Like I said, I'm cooperating."

  His pewter eyes had become dull, opaque, as if someone had switched off a light. "Sounds to me like maybe we're on the same side here."

  He didn't mean it, and I knew better than to agree. "I don't know about that," I said. "But I get it that you're not kidding around. So I'll do whatever I can to help you get what you want."

  "That's what I like to hear."

  "So what are you gonna do?"

  "What am I gonna do?"

  "Half a billion dollars, huh? That's a shitload of money. What are you gonna do with it?"

  His stare pierced through me as if he had X-ray vision and was examining my insides to see what made me tick. "Don't worry. I'll figure something out."

  "Half a billion dollars," I said. "Man. Know what I'd do? If it was me?"

  A long pause. "Let's hear it."

  "I'd take off to some country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S."

  "What, Namibia? Northern Cyprus? Yemen? No thanks."

  So he had looked into it. Most people wouldn't know the right countries unless they were serious.

  "There's other places," I said.

  "Such as?"

  Was he still sizing me up, or did he really want to know? "Costa Rica, I think," I said.

  "Forget it. That's like trying to disappear in Beverly Hills."

  "There's this place in Central America, between Panama and Colombia I think it is, where there's no government. Ten thousand square miles of real outlaw country. Like the Wild West in the old days. Kit Carson stuff."

  "You're talking about the Dariйn Gap." He nodded: You couldn't tell him anything. "No roads. Mostly jungle. Full of Africanized honeybees. I hate bees."

  "There's gotta be decent countries in the world that haven't signed extradition treaties-"

  "Signing an extradition treaty is one thing. Enforcing it's another. Plus, there's a difference between extradition and deportation, buddy. Sure there's plenty of decent places. You can get lost in Belize or Panama. The Cubans won't deport you to the U.S. if you know who to pay off. Cartagena's not bad, either."

  "You've done your homework."

  "Always. I hope you learn that sooner rather than later."

  "Sounds to me like you've been planning this for a while."

  A slow, lethal grin. He said nothing.

  "I hope you've taken precautions to cover the money trail, too," I said. "You steal half a billion dollars from one of the world's biggest corporations, you're gonna have an awful lot of people trying to track it down. Track you down."

  "Let 'em hunt all they want. Once it moves offshore, it disappears."

  "You know, our bank's not going to authorize a transfer of five hundred million dollars to the Cayman Islands or whatever. That'll just raise all kind of red flags."

  "Actually, I was thinking Kazakhstan."

  "Kazakhstan? That sounds even more suspicious."

  "Sure. Unless you know how often Hammond wires money to a company in Kazakhstan."

  "Huh?"

  "It's all there on the Internet. On some-what is it?-Form 8-K on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Seems Boeing buys their titanium from Russia, so you guys buy it from Kazakhstan. One of the largest titanium producers in the world."

  "That right?" I'd never heard this. I wondered if he was making it up; I didn't think he was.

  "Titanium prices keep skyrocketing, so you guys like to stockpile it. Hammond's got a ten-year contract with some company in Kazakhstan, name I can't remember, for over a billion dollars. So every year you wire hundreds of millions of dollars to the National Bank of Kazakhstan."

  "We wire money to Kazakhstan, huh?"

  "Not directly. To their correspondent bank in New York. Deutsche Bank."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "Like you said, Jake, I do my homework. So let's say I set up a shell company in Bermuda or the British Virgin Islands or the Seychelles and gave it the name of some made-up titanium export firm in Kazakhstan, right? Your bank wires it to this fake company that has an account at Deutsche Bank in New York-they're not going to know any better."

  "I thought the Germans cooperate with the U.S. on money laundering."

  "Oh, sure. But Deutsche Bank isn't going to have it for more than a second or two before it goes to the Bank for International Settlements in Basel. And from there-well, just take it from me. I got this all figured out."

  He really did. He wasn't making it up-he seemed to know too many details. "I'm impressed."

  "Never underestimate me, buddy. Now, a couple of questions for you."

  I nodded.

  "That lady CEO," Russell said. "Cheryl Tobin. Most of these guys don't like her, huh?"

  "I like her okay." What did he care?

  "Well, you're low on the totem pole." A sly smile. "I'm talking about the senior guys."

  "Most don't," I admitted.

  "How come? Because she's a bitch?"

  I paused for a second. Some guys use "bitch" interchangeably for "woman." Men like Russell, I figured. I wasn't going to teach him manners. "Yeah, they're probably not comfortable having a woman in charge. But the fact is, like it or not, she's the boss."

  "Boss may not always be right, but she's still the boss, that it?"

  "Like that."

  He shook his head. "I think it's because they don't want her investigating them. They're scared she might find something. Like a bribe, maybe."

  "News to me." Had Slattery told him about the internal corporate investigation? Or someone else-his inside source? "Wouldn't surprise me, though. She's a real stickler for rules."

  "They'd love to get rid of her."

  "Maybe, some of them. But the board of directors hired her. Not them."

  "And she doesn't have the power to fire any of them, does she?"

  "Never heard that before."

  "There's a lot about your company I know."

  "I can see that." And I wondered how.

  "She's holding out on me."

  "That's her job. Someone has to, and she runs the company. But she'll come around."

  "Maybe I don't need her."

  "Maybe you do. That's the thing, Russell. You gotta keep your options open. Anyone who has signing authority is someone you might need around. The point is for you to get your money. Not prune the deadwood."

  "But she doesn't have signing authority, does she?"

  "That's way above my pay grade, Russell."

  "Interesting, isn't it?"

  "If true. You get all this from Ron Slattery?"

  "I have my sources." He winked. "Gotta know who I need to keep alive."

  "You never know who you might need."

  "Only need one."

  I shook my head. "Don't assume that. The amount you're talking, the bank's probably going to require the authorization of two corporate officers. That means user IDs and passwords and who knows what else."

  "Once I get the user IDs and the passwords, I don't need 'em anymore."

  "Russell," I said, "let's be honest: You're talking about shooting someone to put the fear of God into the rest of us, right? But the thing is, you don't know which names the bank has on their list. What if they insist on a callback?"

  "A callback?"

  "A phone call to verify the transaction."

  "Not going to happen t
hat way. It's all going to be done over the Internet."

  "Right, but look at it this way. A request for half a billion dollars e-mailed from some computer outside the country-that's bound to raise all kinds of questions at the bank."

  "Not if we're using the right authorization codes."

  "Maybe," I said. "Or maybe not. Let's say the wire request goes to some pain-in-the-ass bureaucrat at the bank. Some low-level employee in the wire-transfer room who's seen too many TV shows about Ukrainian bank fraud and doesn't want to lose her job. She calls back the number on file for the Hammond treasury operations office or whatever it's called, but nobody at Hammond headquarters has a record of any transfer request."

  "The top guys are all here," he said. He sounded a little less sure of himself.

  "So someone at headquarters says, gosh, I don't know anything about that, but here's the phone number of the lodge where all the honchos are. The bank lady, she's thinking she's being such a good doobie, she's gonna get a promotion for sure, maybe even be made deputy assistant supervisor of the wire room, and she calls the number here. Which happens to be the only telephone in the whole place-the manager's satellite phone. Maybe you answer the phone yourself. Whatever. But she asks to speak to someone whose name's on her list."

  "They'll talk to her, believe you me."

  "And maybe the protocol is, she's got to talk to two senior officers. An amount that size."

  "Maybe."

  "So you want to have at least two of them around to answer the phone and say, yeah, it's cool."

  "She's not going to know who she's talking to. Shit, Buck could pretend he's Ronald Slattery, comes to that."

  I shrugged. "And if they have voiceprints? Half a billion dollars, you never know what sort of security precautions they might take."

  "Still only need two of them."

  "Thing is, Russell, you don't know for sure which names are on the bank's list."

  "Huh?"

  "Look, I don't know how this works. But what if the bank has a list of two or three names you've got to call if a request comes in for a transfer over, I don't know, fifty million or a hundred million bucks. You're not going to know who's on that list."

  He was silent for five, ten seconds. Looked around the porch. Moths fluttered outside. Some big insect-a june bug, maybe-kept colliding with the screen. The crickets seemed to be chirping louder and faster, but maybe that was just my imagination. It was brighter outside than in here: I could see the glimmering of the moon on the waves, the silvery wooden dock, the boulders and rocks of the shore.

  "You're pulling all this out of your ass, aren't you?" he said.

  "You bet."

  He nodded, smiled. Then his smile faded. "Doesn't mean you're wrong, though."

  "And another thing? One of the hostages needs his insulin."

  "That guy Latimer."

  "He could go into a coma. He could die. You don't want that."

  "I don't?"

  "He's the General Counsel. He might have signing authority, too. Don't dynamite any bridges you might need to cross later on."

  He nodded. "Why're you being so helpful?"

  "Maybe I want to save my ass."

  "If you're trying something, I'll know."

  "I told you. I just want to go home."

  We looked at each other for a few seconds. It felt like an hour. The roar of the ocean, the lapping of the waves against the rocks on the beach.

  "Stay on my good side," he said, "and you'll make it out of here alive. But if you try anything-"

  "I know."

  "No," Russell said. "You don't know. You think you know what's happening here, dude, but you really have no idea."

  47

  Russell's words echoed in my head as Travis followed me out of the screened porch and through the great room.

  You think you know what's happening here, dude, but you really have no idea.

  He took me to another room I hadn't seen before, some kind of parlor or reading room with antlers and moose heads mounted on the walls. The floor was covered with a large Oriental carpet, where some of the hostages were stretched out or curled up, and others sat in clusters, talking quietly. For a moment it reminded me of kindergarten, when all the kids would lie down on little rugs at naptime.

  A Coleman lantern on a trestle table near the door gave off a cone of greenish light. Nearby, two guards on duty, sitting near each other in railback chairs, murmuring to each other: Buck, the one with the black hair and goatee; and Verne, the ex-con with the teardrop tattoos.

  Only one door, I noticed. There were windows, but they were shut and, I assumed, locked.

  I wondered how long they'd keep us here. It was early Thursday morning already. I assumed that Russell would be interrogating people throughout the night: the large pot of black coffee.

  Travis shoved me to the floor. Then he called Geoff Latimer's name. Latimer was lying on his side, pale and exhausted.

  "You're in luck," Travis said, helping Latimer to his feet with a gentleness I didn't expect.

  "Thank God," said Latimer.

  Travis and Latimer left the room, and the two guards whispered. Verne, twitchy, jiggled his foot up and down. They obviously weren't worried about us-unarmed, our hands bound.

  The room was mostly quiet. Bodine and his guys were speaking in low voices. A few of the hostages whispered to one another-Bodine, Barlow, and Bross, the Three Musketeers, off in one corner, conspiring. I noticed that Ron Slattery had joined them.

  Others had fallen asleep already, worn out by the stress and the long day and the late hour. A few snored.

  "Jesus, Landry."

  Ali was sitting ten or fifteen feet away with Cheryl and Paul Fecher, the manager, and the manager's son. I looked over at the two guards at the other end of the room, their faces half washed out by the lantern's light, half in shadows. I couldn't tell how closely they were watching us, whether they were really paying much attention.

  Slowly, I slid across the rug.

  "We were worried about you," Ali said.

  "It was fine."

  "When he caught you on the other side of the fireplace-"

  "It was a little tense," I said.

  "What'd he want to know?" Cheryl asked.

  "Well, he figured out pretty quickly I didn't know anything useful. Mostly he seemed to be sizing me up. He asked about you and…" My voice trailed off. The manager and his son were sitting near Ali, watching us talk, but no one else from Hammond was within earshot. "He knew about the investigation."

  Her eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then narrowed. "How in God's name? Why would anyone tell him?"

  "I'm pretty sure he has a source inside Hammond."

  Cheryl nodded. "He knows too much, that's for sure. Danziger also thinks he may be a professional, in the K &R business."

  She glanced over her shoulder. Danziger was lying on his side by the wall, asleep. "He also briefed all of us on the duress code."

  "Much better than my original idea," I said.

  "At least you had a plan," she said. "I owe you an apology."

  "Why?"

  "I misread them. You had them pegged. And the way you stuck up for me-I won't forget it." She seemed embarrassed. "This isn't easy."

  "This isn't easy for any of us," I said.

  The door opened. Travis entered with Latimer, then called out Danziger's name. Latimer sat near us. He looked much better, now that his diabetic crisis had passed.

  He smiled, mouthed Thank you.

  I just nodded.

  Suddenly the lights in the room went on, as abruptly as they'd gone off. Lamps and wall sconces blazed to life. A number of people woke up, looked around.

  "Guess the generator's fixed," Latimer said.

  I nodded.

  "You know, what you did before-getting over to the other side to talk to Grogan and Danziger?"

  "Stupid, huh?"

  "Brave, Jake. Guys with guns strutting around here. You could have gotten yourself killed.
"

  "I don't think so."

  "You're a brave guy, Jake."

  "Just a survivor."

  "More than that."

  "Well, you know, a wise man once said that one of the great tragedies of our century is that a man can live his whole life and never know if he's a coward or not." I smiled, held up a forefinger. "Russell told me that."

  "You know what the definition of a coward is?" he said. "A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage."

  "So maybe that's it," I said. "No wife, no kids. And I don't have a mortgage. I rent."

  There was a noise at the far side of the room. Wayne, the crewcut one, entered with Peter the handyman, a small, pudgy man with a bushy gray mustache, receding gray hair, and thick aviator-frame glasses. He was sweating profusely.

  Wayne whispered to the other guards for a few minutes, then led the handyman to the back right corner of the room.

  A minute or so later, Russell and his brother entered, John Danziger in front of them.

  Danziger looked terrified.

  Russell cleared his throat. "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," he announced. "We have a little business to transact." He unholstered his Glock.

  "Some of you guys apparently think you're gonna be clever," Russell said. "Try to throw a little sand in the gears. Try to screw things up for everyone else. Like I'm not going to find out." As he was talking, he popped out the Glock's magazine and held it up, scanned it to see if it was full. It seemed a strange thing to do. He must have known the gun was loaded. "Didn't some guy say that we all gotta hang together or we'll hang separately? Like, George Washington or one of those guys?"

  "I believe that was actually Benjamin Franklin," Hugo Lummis said.

  Russell looked at Lummis blankly for a moment. "Why, thank you, Hugo." He nodded. "Not many of you got the balls to correct a man with a loaded gun."

  "I'm not correcting you," Lummis said hastily. "I'm just-"

  "Quite all right, Hugo," Russell said. "I like learning stuff. Not everyone does, though. People get ideas stuck in their heads. That's why you're all gonna have a little lesson right now. A seminar. Shouldn't take too long, though." He seated the magazine back in the butt of the pistol with a quiet click.