Predator

by Wilbur Smith

  Jo Stanley made it her business to find out.

  First she called Ronnie Bunter and asked him to send her an email that she could pass on to Weiss. “It can be anything,” she said, “like, you’re worried about the welfare of your former staff at this time of crisis and you want to know what plans he has to deal with that.”

  “Well, that’s true enough. I’ll get it to you right away.”

  Once armed with the email, which she printed up, Jo waited till she saw Weiss walking to the john. Then she picked the message and headed toward Weiss’s office. His assistant, Dianne, was outside. Having started out doing secretarial work herself, Jo had always made a point of being polite and friendly to all the assistants, so she said hello to Dianne, exchanged a few quick words of chit-chat and said, “Is Shelby in? I’ve got a message from Ronnie Bunter that I hoped I could talk over with him.”

  “He’s, uh . . .” Dianne gave her a conspiratorial smirk, and put her hand up by her mouth, as if to stop anyone else listening in. “He’s in the little boy’s room.”

  “Do you think he’d mind if I left it on his desk?”

  “Of course not! You go right on in, hon. You can wait for him if you like. I’m sure he won’t be long.”

  Jo did not quite know what she expected to find in Weiss’s office, or what she would say to him to make him reveal what was going on. So it was pure chance that she saw his phone on his desk. Jo looked around. The office door was open, but Dianne couldn’t see her here. Treading as softly as she could, with her heart pumping and her nerves on edge, she stepped around behind the desk and looked down. There were two alerts on the screen, one saying that Aram Bendick had called and the other that he had left a voicemail message.

  But why would Bendick be calling Shelby Weiss, and, it was clear, calling him regularly enough to be in his contacts list? The obvious connection was Bannock, but why would a financier in New York be talking to an attorney in Houston about that? Had Weiss been feeding Bendick inside information? No, that wasn’t possible. Even now, after the purchase of Bunter and Theobald, Weiss had no direct access to the inner sanctums of Bannock Oil. Unless . . .

  “Miss Stanley, what can I do for you?”

  The sound of Weiss’s voice hit Jo like a slap in the face. He was standing in the doorway, staring at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. She could not control the guilt that flashed across her face, nor the tremor in her voice as she said, “I was just leaving something for you, sir.” She held up the email printout. “It’s a message from Mr. Bunter. He’s concerned about his former staff at this time of . . . of . . .” Her mind had gone blank, unable to find a word to end the sentence.

  “At this time of temporary uncertainty?” Weiss suggested, walking toward his desk and glaring at her as though she were a hostile witness about to undergo a savage cross-examination.

  “Er . . . yes, sir . . . I guess,” Jo blathered, getting out of his way as he sat down, feeling furious with herself for not responding better under pressure: Pull yourself together, woman!

  “And why couldn’t he just ask me this question himself?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I guess you’d have to ask him that. We were already in communication; maybe it was just easier for him to pass the message through me. Anyway, here it is.”

  She held out the piece of paper and Weiss snatched it from her. He cast an eye over the printed text and then glanced up at her.

  “Well, since you and Mr. Bunter are already ‘in communication,’ as you put it, you can tell him that I’ve read his letter and I’ll take it under advisement. As you can see, the situation’s very fluid at the moment. No one really knows what’s happening. When we do, Mr. Bunter will be the first to know.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You can go now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jo returned to her desk and started joining the dots, putting all the facts she knew and the connections between them into the most coherent logical order. When she’d finished she sat in silence, trying to come to terms with what she’d concluded. It was crazy, unbelievable, and yet it made more sense that any other possible explanation. She had to tell Ronnie Bunter what was going on and discuss it all with him, but a phone call was out of the question. It had to be in person. Meanwhile, there was one other person who needed to know and in this case, it had to be done in writing. Jo opened up her personal Gmail account and began to type.

  In his office, Shelby Weiss was talking to Aram Bendick. “We’ve got a situation. There’s a woman here, Jo Stanley, works for Bunter—”

  “The old guy you bought out, the one who was best buddies with Henry Bannock?” Bendick asked.

  “Yeah, him.”

  “So what’s the problem with this Stanley chick?”

  “I found her in my office just now. I think she saw that you’d called.”

  “So? People call each other all the time.”

  “So she knows about, ah, our mutual acquaintance. He’s mentioned her to me by name. My point is, she can figure it out. So what are we going to do?”

  “We?” said Aram Bendick. “There ain’t no ‘we’ in this. I am in New York City, on the other side of the country, and I’ve never heard of this woman before in my life. You, on the other hand, are just across the hallway from her. So you’re the one that’s gonna do what it takes to deal with the situation.”

  Weiss couldn’t argue with that. So his next call was to D’Shonn Brown. “You and me need to talk. In private. I saw what you did for a friend of mine and I need you to do something for me.”

  “Yeah? And why exactly should I do that?”

  “Because you never, ever want me to be in a district attorney’s office, making a plea bargain, using whatever I can get to save my ass.”

  “Hmm . . . I see. Where do you wanna meet?”

  When Hector Cross saw an email from Jo Stanley in his inbox, headed “Please read this: Urgent,” he didn’t bother to open it. He had more important things to think about than the pleadings of an ex-girlfriend who’d not had the guts to stick it out with him. His entire waking life had essentially become a salvage operation. It was obvious that Bannock in its present form was doomed. The most likely scenario was that its assets and operations would be sliced, diced and sold off in little pieces to the financial vultures waiting to pick the flesh off the bones of a once great company.

  Meanwhile, the legal vultures were circling around him. Ronnie Bunter kept him informed on an almost daily basis as attorneys and prosecutors across the U.S. competed to be the ones who would lead the class-action civil suits on behalf of the victims and their families, and the potential criminal case for negligence.

  “If you want my advice, you should make yourself as poor as possible,” Bunter said during one of their calls.

  Cross gave a bitter laugh. “I think the world is already doing that for me.”

  “Well, yes, everything you or your daughter have tied up in Bannock is probably worthless. But you’ve still got a couple of valuable properties, and then there are all the private assets Hazel left you—her jewels and antiques alone have got to be worth enough to keep you and your descendants very comfortable for the rest of your lives. Just make sure that everything is in Catherine’s name, or in a trust—anywhere that a lawyer like me can’t get at it.”

  “I’ve already got Sotheby’s and Christie’s both pitching for the right to auction the pictures,” Cross said. “It’s not just for Catherine. I want to make sure that all my people are properly looked after. They shouldn’t have to lose out because people in Houston put short-term greed above the need for proper planning and training. And they certainly shouldn’t be hurt because some legal bloodsucker wants to take me to the cleaners. I’ll take my lumps, but not at their expense.”

  “That’s very noble of you, Heck.”

  “Ah, not really . . . To tell you the truth, Ronnie, so long as I’ve got a roof over my head, some food in my belly and a good woman at my side, I couldn’t give a damn
about money. Just look at the Bannock family. How much good did all Henry’s money really do them? Sure, they all lived lives of unbelievable luxury. From the day Hazel and I became an item, I never once flew on a scheduled flight, or caught a train, or did my own shopping, or ate at a normal pizza joint. Take those pictures. Every single one that was hung on any wall in any house or yacht or God knows what that Hazel owned was a copy. All the real ones were in bank vaults. So Henry Bannock had bought a bunch of masterpieces that no one could ever see. That’s just crazy.”

  “There’s a reason people say that the rich are different,” said Bunter with a gentle chuckle.

  “It’s worse than that, Ronnie. I lost Hazel because that money attracted evil like the brown stuff draws flies. They’re all dead—the whole Bannock clan, except for Catherine, and believe me, she’s going to be brought up to be a plain, simple, bog-standard Cross.”

  “Technically, Carl Bannock isn’t dead.”

  “Ha!” Cross exclaimed. “I’m in enough trouble already, so I won’t contradict you. But let me put it to you this way. Johnny Congo has been rampaging around the world causing trouble for the past few months and in all that time there’s not been the faintest sign, or hint, or sniff of the one human being in the whole world that Congo actually cares about. That should tell you something.”

  “Not if I don’t want it to,” said Bunter.

  Since that conversation, Cross had stepped up the process of asset-stripping his own life before anyone else could do it. Dave Imbiss, speaking for all Cross’s staff, had assured him that he had no obligation to beggar himself on their behalf. “We’re all very, very good at our jobs,” Imbiss told him. “That’s why you hired us.”

  “It could be the other way around,” Cross said, only half in jest. “It could be that I hired and trained you. That’s why you’re so good at your jobs.”

  “Either way, there’s no shortage of work in this world for people like us. Not that we’re looking for work, any of us. We’re all behind you, Heck. You’ve never let us down. We won’t do it to you.”

  But Jo Stanley had let him down—or so Cross, whose view of loyalty was very much black or white, my way or the highway, had persuaded himself. Even so, she had always been an intelligent, level-headed individual. If she thought something was urgent, maybe it was. So, eventually, he opened the email. It read:

  Dear Hector,

  One day I would love to talk to you about what went wrong between us, and how very sorry I am about how things worked out and how I behaved—how I panicked, I guess. But this isn’t the time and that’s not why I’m writing.

  I think I’ve found something out about the whole Bannock Oil disaster that explains a lot about why it happened. Maybe it can help you defend yourself against all the terrible things people are saying about you. I really feel so bad for you. Anyway . . .

  Shelby Weiss was Johnny Congo’s lawyer, just before he escaped.

  Then he got his firm to buy Bunter and Theobald—to get his hands on all the money from the Bannock Trust, if you ask me.

  So now that Bannock’s collapsed, everyone at the firm is feeling terrible and frightened for their future.

  Except Shelby Weiss. He’s as happy as a pig in you-know-what. And I wondered why that was. So I did a little snooping and I found that he’d been in touch with Aram Bendick, that hedge-fund guy who’s been boasting about all the money he made betting that Bannock would go under.

  So now I’m thinking, what if Bendick knew that Bannock would be in trouble because he knew that things were going to go wrong at Magna Grande?

  And what if he knew that because Shelby Weiss had told him, because Weiss is still Congo’s attorney?

  I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve figured it all out yet, but I just hope there’s something there that you can use, because you don’t deserve to be attacked the way folks here are attacking you.

  I know you, Hector. I know you are a good, brave man and you would never do anything unless you truly believed it was the right thing. So if I can help you, maybe you’ll think I’m not such a bad person, after all.

  Please let me know if this has been any use to you,

  Love,

  Jo x

  You clever girl,” Cross whispered to himself. “You clever, clever girl.” It was as if Jo Stanley had completed a circuit in his mind. The last wire was put in place and suddenly the lights went on. Now Cross could see the whole conspiracy in its entirety, and Congo was right at the heart of it.

  Congo had given da Cunha enough money to buy his way into the struggle for Cabinda, but that was just a front for his real purpose, which was to attack Bannock . . . and attack me, Cross thought.

  That explained why the so-called Cabindan rebels on the platform spoke French, not Portuguese. French was the language of the Congo, the tongue spoken by the coltan traders Carl and Johnny had done business with in Kazundu.

  Somehow Congo had made the connection with Aram Bendick. Was it through Weiss? Or had Congo just seen Bendick’s name in the media and made the introduction himself? One thing was for sure: if Weiss had made money by getting in on Bendick’s bets against Bannock Oil, Congo must have made even more.

  Bendick was the key to it. He knew exactly what had gone down. And if that knowledge was ever made public, if the full extent of the conspiracy was known, then no one would blame Hector Cross or any of his people for what had happened at Magna Grande, because the true perpetrators of that evil would be known, caught, convicted and punished as they deserved to be.

  Cross called Dave Imbiss. “Get the team together,” he said. “I’ve got a job that needs doing, and if we get it right, there will be justice for all the people who died that night. And I want you to run it, Dave. It’s time you got to show what you can really do.”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Imbiss said with a laugh. And then, in a much quieter, more somber tone, he added, “It’s good to hear you talk like that, Heck. Makes me feel we’ve got our boss back again.”

  Hector felt his spirits rise. He was back in the game again and this time he knew he could win. When the phone rang and he saw Ronnie Bunter’s name on the screen, he answered with a cheerful, “Ronnie! Good to hear from you. How’s life in the great state of Texas?”

  A silence descended on the line and then Bunter spoke in a voice that was cracking with emotion, “I don’t know how to tell you this, Hector, but . . . something terrible has happened.”

  Jo Stanley left the office of Weiss, Mendoza, Burnett and Bunter at twenty past seven. This was much earlier than usual, but she’d seldom felt this dejected and lonely, as if everything had turned rotten and ugly and there wasn’t a single person in her world that she could turn to for comfort or solace.

  She locked her safe and put on her old mink and the brightly colored scarf that Hector had bought her in Marrakesh on that wonderful weekend which now seemed like fifty years ago. As she studied her face in the mirror of her compact she thought about him again. She had tried to put Hector Cross out of her mind, but it was five days since she’d sent him the email. He had not replied.

  I just hope nothing bad’s happened to him . . . as if the whole world falling in on him and Catherine Cayla isn’t enough. Poor little darling—I miss her as much as Hector.

  Jo stared at the reflection of her own face in the tiny mirror. When did I get old? It seems like only yesterday I was young and carefree, but now I’m old and gray . . . and so damn lonely!

  She saw the tears welling up in her own eyes and she closed the lid of the compact with a snap. No! I refuse to weep for him. I wrote that bastard a grovelling letter and he didn’t even have the decency to reply. She drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders. He is a hard, cruel man . . . and it’s finished. I don’t love him any more.

  But she knew it was a lie.

  Jo pulled on her soft knitted cap and tucked the loose strands of her hair under the brim, then she turned for the door. She heard Bradley Bunter in his own room at the end
of the corridor but she didn’t want to talk to anybody, especially not Bradley. She closed the door to her own office softly and slipped off her shoes so that her stockinged feet would make no noise. When she reached the elevator she replaced her shoes, and rode down to the underground garage where her old blue Chevy was parked. As she drove up the ramp into the street she noticed another car coming up the ramp behind her, but she thought nothing of it. It was going-home time and there was a flow of vehicles in the street outside the rear of the building, so she had to wait a little before she was able to slip into the stream.

  She remembered that her refrigerator at the apartment was almost empty so she took a right at the traffic lights on Maverick Street, and headed for the parking lot at the back of the Central Market.

  Lobster! She decided. And a half-bottle of Napa Valley Chenin Blanc. That’ll cheer me up. And to hell with all men, they’re not worth the tears and suffering. She turned into the parking lot and cruised slowly down the row, found an open slot near the end of the row and reversed the Chevy into it. Then she climbed out and locked the doors and set off toward the market, without looking back.

  The Nissan that had been following her since she left the offices of Bunter and Theobald was painted a color that had once had a fancy name like Mocha Pearl, but had long since faded to a nondescript shade of dust and dried manure. It drove slowly past Jo’s Chevy and parked near the end of the row of vehicles. The door on the passenger side opened and a Hispanic type in a dark-colored windcheater and baseball cap climbed out and sauntered back down the row of parked vehicles. When he reached the Chevy he took a large bunch of keys from the pocket of his windcheater. Working quickly he tried the keys in the passenger side lock one after another until the doors clicked open. He grunted in satisfaction and glanced around casually making certain he was unobserved. Then he slipped behind the rear seat and disappeared from view as he sank down as low as he could get between the seats and the floor. His companion remained hunched behind the wheel of the Nissan parked at the end of the row.