“And why is that?”
“Are you familiar with the Click Theory?”
Cracker tilted his head, wore a brief look of concentration, then said, “No. What’s the Click Theory?”
“A quantitative economist named Rodney Click has re created the foreign exchange market in an elaborate computer model. He has used it to predict that six currency traders, properly placed in the right institutions across the globe, could trigger a precipitous plunge in the value of the U.S. dollar if they all bailed on the dollar at the same time.”
“Interesting,” Cracker said. “And why would this Volkov fellow want this to happen?”
“Again, Volkov is just the muscle. He’s giving the MonEx codes to someone else. Until we know who that person or group is, it’s almost impossible to guess motive—other than that it’s someone who wants to cause a major financial calamity.”
“And Volkov has killed five people already?”
“That’s right.”
“How terrible,” Cracker said. “But what makes you think I’m going to be number six?”
“Professor Click tweaked his model to predict who the sixth banker might be. It reported there was an eighty-seven percent chance it would be you.”
“I see.” Cracker spoke as if his mind was churning through its own predictive modeling. “Well, in that case, it’s a good thing my company has a security force. My chief of security is a man named Barry. He’s excellent. I’ll alert him to this threat and see to it he treats it with the utmost seriousness. Thank you, Mr. Storm. Thank you so much for coming out and telling me about this.”
“You don’t believe me,” Storm said, flatly. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.
“No, no. I mean, yes. Of course I believe you. It’s just that Barry can watch out for me.”
“Barry is really that good, huh?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So good that he was fully aware that your house—and probably your car and your office as well—have been bugged.”
“You make a fair point,” Cracker offered. “So what are you proposing I do?”
Storm had already been pondering his options. Volkov had been in South Africa that morning. It was possible he could be in the New York area by now. And if he had enough of a team in place to bug Cracker’s house so thoroughly, it meant he had enough of a team in place to move in. Storm considered having Jones pull some levers and get the Chappaqua Police to park a patrol car outside the Cracker residence as a deterrent, but then he thought better of it. There was nothing one municipal cop was going to be able to do to stop a man like Volkov. Storm would just be putting one more person in harm’s way.
Besides, Storm could play defense later. First, he wanted to play some offense.
“First, here’s my number,” Storm said, handing him a Storm Investigations business card. “If you become fearful for your life, call me. Remember that if you call me from your cell phone, your home phone, your office phone, or from anywhere other than a pay phone in the middle of nowhere, someone is probably going to be listening.”
“Okay,” Cracker said, accepting the card and programming the number into his phone.
“Now our plan: We’re going to flush them out of hiding,” Storm said. “See who ‘them’ really is. Hit them before they hit us.”
“How do we do that?”
“Mr. Cracker, how fast do you usually drive?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ten or fifteen miles over the speed limit. I’m no speed demon, but if you don’t go at least that fast around here, you’ll get run over.”
“What route do you drive to work?”
Cracker told him, finishing with “Why are you asking all this?”
“Because,” Storm said, “I need to borrow your car.”
Fifteen minutes later, wearing Whitely Cracker’s driving cap, Derrick Storm settled in the front seat of Cracker’s Maserati and rolled out the Cracker front gate. He hunched down to appear a few inches shorter than he was. He was counting on darkness to hide the other dissimilarities between his and Whitely Cracker’s appearance.
He had instructed Cracker to head back into the house and tell Melissa that he needed to return to the office. This, of course, had two purposes. It would alert Volkov’s team that “Cracker” was about to be on the move; it would also safeguard Cracker and his family, since Volkov’s men would think that their target was in the Maserati, not back at his house.
If it meant putting himself in danger, so be it. Better him than a hedge fund manager, a house wife, and two children.
He did not bother sweeping the car for bugs; he just assumed there would be at least one and assumed, further, that someone would be listening. He needed to make everything sound normal. He punched the radio on, ready to suffer with whatever auditory assault came next. Cracker struck Storm as the kind of guy who might listen to some truly awful world music, filled with flutes and bongos and crap like that. Thankfully, Bloomberg Business News filled the car’s speakers.
As Storm had suspected, there was no one waiting for him at the end of the driveway. There was no good place to hide there, and besides, there was only one way out of Cracker’s neighborhood. They could afford to tuck themselves somewhere out on the main road and wait there. Storm drove the twisty part of the route by himself.
He picked up the tail once he reached King Street. It was a white panel van, likely one stuffed full of monitoring devices in the back. Storm smiled. This would be easy. White panel vans were good for a lot of things. Tailing someone surreptitiously was not one of them. The van would be easy to spot the whole drive.
Storm merged onto the Saw Mill River Parkway, an ancient and thoroughly outmoded roadway that predated the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system. It was cramped and winding, filled with blind curves, and yet some cars bombed down it at eighty-five miles an hour like it was a broad, flat stretch of the Autobahn. Yes, Derrick Storm was an international spy who was regularly hunted by assassins and had narrowly cheated death dozens of times, but the Saw Mill River Parkway? Man, that road was dangerous.
About ten minutes into the drive, Storm figured out what his move was going to be. He stripped off his jacket, tied it to the steering wheel, then anchored the other end by rolling up the window on it. He wanted to see if he could get the car to continue at least somewhat straight without his hands on the wheel. Yet it still had to allow him to make a left turn.
He fiddled with the jacket until he was satisfied it would work. Then he decided to wait before springing it and untied it. He wanted to lull the van’s occupants into thinking this was just another trip to the office by a guy who worked too much. He needed them to be as unwary as possible. Time was on his side.
They had probably been sitting on the house for days and were likely tired from the stakeout. They’d be sleepier by the end of the ride.
He continued onto the Henry Hudson Parkway—Hudson would have begged his crew to mutiny if he could have seen the road they named after him—and kept a steady speed toward Manhattan. The white panel van stayed comfortably behind him, sometimes as much as a quarter mile back. It was the kind of tail being performed by men who had done this before, knew where they were going, and were not concerned about losing their mark.
Storm passed the George Washington Bridge and stayed with the road as it became the West Side Highway, renamed in 1999 after baseball star Joe DiMaggio—another icon now rolling in his grave. As they went below 42nd Street and started hitting lights, the panel van actually got trapped one light behind, causing Storm some mild consternation. He needed the van tight behind him for his idea to work. He relaxed when it caught up.
Storm made the turn toward the Marlowe Building at Warren Street. There were any number of ways to reach Cracker’s office, but that was the route Cracker said he took. Then Storm made the right on Broadway. He signaled well in advance of Liberty Street, his next turn. He rigged Cracker’s jacket to the steering wheel as he had before.
Storm took
one last glance at the panel van. It was still about a block back, cruising through lights that were all timed to stay green. Perfect.
He made the left on Liberty, just beyond a tall building that housed a Sephora and a Bank of America on its lower floors. The moment the van was out of sight, Storm punched the cruise control, which he had set to a pokey twenty-five miles an hour. He sprung from the driver’s seat, leaping out of the passenger side. The car was still accelerating and wasn’t going much more than about twenty. Storm landed on his feet then quickly rolled in between a pair of parked cars.
Eight seconds later, the panel van eased past him, having just made the turn itself. Another car, a red Honda, followed it ten seconds later. Up ahead, Storm heard the scraping of metal as the Maserati careened along some parked cars. So much for straight. Storm peeked out in time to see the Maserati plow into a yellow cab waiting at the light on Nassau Street. The panel van slowed to a halt behind it. The Honda stopped behind the panel van.
The cabbie had sprung out of his car and was waving his arms in the air, shouting in some language that even Storm didn’t understand. The driver of the red Honda—who couldn’t see past the panel van to know what had happened, but could make out that the light was green—honked his horn impatiently.
It was a perfect cover. Storm raced alongside the passenger side of the panel van. He was assuming there were two people in the van, one driving, the other in back with the equipment. His plan was age-old and simple: shoot the driver, make the guy in back take the wheel, and go someplace a little more private, then have a conversation with him.
Storm yanked the passenger door open and had the trigger halfway depressed when he realized the barrel of his gun was pointed at Clara Strike.
CHAPTER 22
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ling Xi Bang camped out near the Dirksen Senate Office Building, spending the final minutes before her appointment on a park bench, where she could monitor the comings and goings in Senator Donald Whitmer’s suite. Mostly, it was just goings. Around twenty minutes to eight, the last of his staffers went home, leaving the senator alone.
At 7:57, she watched Whitmer take a phone call that, she knew, would be coming from Fake Senator Feinstein’s office. That was Xi Bang’s—or, rather, Jenny Chang’s—cue to move in. She reached into her pouch and pulled out the pill she had been provided. It was a CIA standby: benzotripapine, which counteracted the intoxicating effects of alcohol. It was hell on the kidneys, she had been told, so it wasn’t wise to take it very often. But Storm said Senator Whitmer was a champion drinker, and she needed to be able to keep pace without getting impaired.
Thus prepared, Jenny Chang breezed by Security, into the building, up the elevator, through the front door of Senator Whitmer’s office, through the reception area, and to the outside of the inner sanctum without difficulty.
She tapped on the door.
“What is it?” Whitmer asked. He sounded annoyed. Just like a man who had been asked to stay late and then got stood up at the last minute.
Then schoolgirl Jenny Chang appeared in his doorway, clutching a file.
“Why, hello there, young lady,” he said, his voice warming up by about fifty degrees.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” she gushed. “I thought this was Senator Sessions’s Office. I was just supposed to deliver this to him. Oh my God.”
Donny Whitmer laughed. “Darling, I’m afraid you’re a little lost. Senator Sessions is the junior senator from Alabama and he’s in the Russell Building. I’m Donald Whitmer, the senior senator from Alabama. Although I’ve been told I look five years younger than him.”
Donny ran his hand through his silver hair. There was nothing like a schoolgirl to bring out the schoolboy in any man, no matter what his age or station in life.
“I’m so, so sorry to bother you, Senator,” she stammered. “I’ll just…”
And then it happened. In all her fluster, Jenny Chang let the file she was holding flop open, dropping its contents on the floor. She immediately stooped down to pick it up, making sure to give Senator Whitmer a nice view.
“Oh my God, I’m such a klutz!” she moaned.
“Here, here, let me help you,” Senator Whitmer said, springing out of his chair with very non-septuagenarian agility, until he was kneeling on the floor next to her. Very, very next to her.
“I’ve got it. I’ve got it. Please, I don’t want to trouble you.”
“Now, now, it’s no trouble,” he said, warmly. “But now you’re going to have to tell me who you are. You can’t just walk into my office and throw things around unless I know your name.”
“I’m so, so, sorry,” she said, standing up and holding her arm out stiffly. “I’m Jenny Chang. I’m an intern for Senator Jordan Shaw of Connecticut. I’m sorry. I’m new.”
“I can see that,” Donny said, taking her right hand softly in his.
“I just love working for her, though. She’s just the best. Don’t you just love her?”
Senator Shaw was a Democrat, one of the smartest people in the Senate and yet, in Donny’s mind, a total bitch—one of those female Senators who most certainly didn’t play ball with the boys. He hated her.
“Who doesn’t love her?” he cooed. “She’s a great public servant. You’ll learn a lot from her.”
“Oh, I know. I know. I’m just so lucky to have landed this internship. It just sucks that it’s over in six months.”
“Well, there are always other opportunities on Capitol Hill,” Donny said. “I might have an opening coming for an… energetic young person. If you’re interested.”
“Really? Oh my God, that would be so amazing! But don’t you have to, I don’t know, interview me or something?”
“That’s a fine idea,” the senator said. “How about now?”
“R-r-really? You mean it?”
“No time like the present. If that’s okay with you. Why don’t you take a seat?”
“Oh my God, that’s great,” she said, walking toward one of the chairs in front of the senator’s desk.
“Not there,” he said quickly. “Feels too… undemocratic. Why don’t you have a seat over there. We can get comfortable. Get to know each other in a less formal setting.”
He gestured toward the couch–love seat combination in the corner. She chose the couch. “You mean like here?” she said.
“That’s fine. Just fine. Why don’t I pour you a drink? You can’t work for an Alabama senator unless you learn how to drink a real Alabama-style whiskey.”
“Is that… is that allowed?” she asked, going as wide-eyed as she knew how.
“Well, that depends. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-two, but…”
He silently gulped. “Well, then, there’s no problem at all.”
One drink led to two. And then more.
Jenny Chang was bubbly and enchanting. She arched her back. She crossed and recrossed her legs. She leaned toward him, then away.
It certainly was having the desired effect. Donny wanted her. Bad. Enough that she was quite sure it wasn’t his big brain doing the thinking anymore.
Oh, he was doing an admirable job at being gallant and gentlemanly. He resisted sliding down the couch toward her. He asked thoughtful questions and seemed to be interested in her responses—which was impressive, since even Xi Bang wasn’t interested in some of the vapid crap that was pouring out of Jenny Chang’s mouth.
He even maintained good eye contact as they spoke. Except, of course, every time she looked away from him, she watched out of the corner of her eye as his gaze traveled downward to her breasts and legs.
Soon, she shifted their conversation toward politics, which Jenny indulged even though it, like, sort of, you know, didn’t always make sense to her. She had to make him explain things a lot. And drink more as he did it.
When he was done telling a particularly self-important story about victory in a partisan scuffle, she threw her hands up in the air and declared, “It just seems,
like, so hard to get anything done around here. It’s like everyone’s all ‘Oh, I’m a Republican’ or ‘Oh, I’m a Democrat,’ and they just argue all the time. They forget that they’re supposed to pass laws and stuff.”
“Now, now, darlin’, don’t lose faith in the process.”
“Why shouldn’t I? Nobody gets anything done in this city anymore without a gun to their head.”
“That’s not always true. You can… you can still get things done if you… if you know how,” Donny said smugly, a crooked smile on his face. Clyde May had seen to it he was no longer feeling much pain.
“Yeah? Give me one example,” she said. “Tell me about one time when you got a bill passed without it turning into World War Four between red and blue.”
“Well, okay, okay now… So, fuh example, a few weeks ago, a friend… friend of mine called me up. Needed a favor. Wanted a little something-something passed. So I got it passed for him. Put it into a propro… an appropro…,” he stopped and drunkenly spit out the word, “an ah-pro-pre-aye-shuns bill, and it sailed right on through.”
“Just like that?”
“Jus’ like that.”
“That must be a good friend,” she said, and scooted toward him in a way that lifted her skirt a little higher. “How does one become such a good friend to such an important senator?”
“Well… you have to be gen… gen… gen’rous.”
“Maybe I should call up this friend of yours, and he can give me pointers on how to be generous,” she said, stooping slightly so as to unfetter his view. “What’s this friend’s name?”
Donny couldn’t help himself. Even though he knew she was watching, his eyes shot down her blouse, to that black lacy bra he had already taken off a hundred times in his mind.
“Tha’s parta what makeshimafriend,” he slurred. “I can’t tell you.”
“Oh, come on. I’m your friend, right? So you can tell me. I won’t tell anyone.”
Storm Front: A Derrick Storm Thriller Page 17
