Naked Greed

by Woods, Stuart

  Gene got out of there. A fucking veterinarian! This was one more humiliation that he held against Barrington.

  —

  Stone stared at Ambassador Abdul-Aziz. “Who recommended me to you?”

  “That is confidential.”

  “All right, who is this Rattle, and what do you want to sue him for?”

  “He is an intelligence agent of the British government,” the man replied, “and he is responsible for the murder of five of our sultan’s subjects.”

  “Is Mr. Rattle a resident of Britain?”

  “Major Ian Rattle, yes.”

  “That would present difficulties. Why don’t you sue him in Britain?”

  “Because we have information that he is in New York as we speak. And anyway, the court system here might be more favorable for our cause.”

  Stone took a jotter from his jacket pocket and uncapped his pen. “What is Major Rattle’s address in New York?”

  “Ah, we have not yet determined that, but we should know soon.”

  “If you don’t know where he is, how do you know he’s in New York?”

  “We have very accurate information from a source who must remain anonymous.”

  “All right, who are you alleging Rattle killed?”

  “Our sultan’s twin sons and his nephew and two pilots of his Royal Air Force.”

  “They were killed in an airplane?”

  “In an airplane crash.”

  “And how did Major Rattle effect this crash? Was he aboard, as well?”

  “No, his hirelings, who call themselves Freedom for Dahai, fired a rocket at the aircraft as it was approaching our airport.”

  “How do you know who killed them?”

  “They issued a press release claiming responsibility.”

  “And how do you know that Major Rattle persuaded them to commit murder?”

  “Again, from a confidential informant, who is completely reliable.”

  “Ambassador, it is possible in this country to bring a civil suit for a criminal action, but usually, a conviction is sought first.”

  “We have read of the intricacies of your criminal justice system and the appeals process. We believe we can more quickly satisfy our aims with a civil suit.”

  “And what are your aims?”

  “To show the world that the British are uncivilized and to receive compensation for the families of the dead and for the cost of the airplane.”

  “If you want the world to know that the British are uncivilized, why don’t you simply hold a press conference and announce it. That would be much less expensive than bringing a lawsuit.”

  “We wish our denouncement of the British to have the force of law, thus the suit.”

  “I see. And what damages are you seeking?”

  “Five hundred million dollars—one hundred million for each family involved—and forty-five million dollars for the aircraft, a Gulfstream 450.”

  “Now we come to the matter of witnesses: Did anyone see the freedom fighters shoot it down?”

  “Many people saw the crash.”

  “But did anyone witness these people firing the missiles?”

  “Our government is tor— questioning potential witnesses as we speak.”

  “I see. And was there a witness present when Major Rattle ordered the missile attack?”

  “Again, we are questioning potential witnesses now.”

  “Is there any scientific evidence of the crime—for instance, can you prove the missile was of British origin?”

  “We have determined, from inspection of fragments, that the missile employed was of Russian origin.”

  Stone made something of a display in capping his pen and returning the jotter to his pocket. “I’m afraid, Ambassador, that a lawsuit at this time is premature.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that, at this moment, you have no witnesses or other evidence to connect this Major Rattle to the crime, nor to identify the perpetrators. The only facts you can place in evidence are that the victims are dead, the aircraft destroyed, and that the missile used was of Russian origin, which contradicts your other allegations.”

  “But we wish to file the lawsuit immediately, to bring this horrible crime to the attention of the world.”

  “If you should do so, the suit would be dismissed out of hand by the judge at the first hearing, for lack of evidence. And I must tell you, Mr. Ambassador, that should this case go to trial, I would much rather represent the defendant than the claimant.”

  The ambassador sat, blinking rapidly, apparently unable to speak. Finally, he found words. “Then I must apologize for wasting your time, Mr. Barrington. Good day.” He rose and left the room.

  The butler approached. “This way out, please.”

  Fred showed Felicity into the study and took her luggage up to the master suite, as instructed.

  Stone embraced her. “You look very beautiful,” he said.

  “A great weight has been lifted from me,” she said. “That sort of relief, rare as it is, tends to knock off about ten years.” She accepted a martini. “Cheers. How was your day?”

  “Surreal,” Stone replied. “I received a phone call from the Dahai ambassador to the UN, a fellow named Abdul-Aziz, asking me to come see him.”

  “I know of the man. He is a brother of the sultan of Dahai. Why on earth would he want to see you?”

  “He wanted to retain me as his attorney to file a lawsuit in New York.”

  “How would he even know of you?”

  “That, like most of everything else he said, was shrouded in secrecy.”

  “Whom did he wish to sue?”

  “Ian Rattle.”

  Her mouth fell open; she closed it. “Don’t make me pull this out of you, Stone.”

  “He said that Ian was responsible for the deaths of the twins, who were the sultan’s sons; another man, who was his nephew; and two pilots of the Dahai air force. He wanted me to file a wrongful death suit, seeking five hundred and fifty million dollars for their families and the cost of the airplane.”

  Felicity clasped her breast. “I am staggered. Did he actually know you know Ian?”

  “I don’t believe so. In any case I feigned ignorance.”

  “And how did you respond to his request?”

  “I told him that he had no grounds for a suit and that, given his lack of evidence, I would rather represent the defendant than the complainant.”

  Felicity burst out laughing. “And how did he respond to that?”

  “He invited me to leave.”

  “I expect so.”

  “He attributed nearly all his answers to my questions to a confidential source.”

  “Did he give any hint as to who that might be?”

  “He did not. I’m sorry I didn’t do a better job of getting it out of him, but I was so flabbergasted that my mind wasn’t working properly.”

  His cell phone rang, and he glanced at it. “Excuse me for a moment, it’s Dino. Hello?”

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “I thought you’d like to know that we rousted Gene Ryan a few minutes ago. We found him at home.”

  “Did he have a motorcycle and a shoulder wound?”

  “We didn’t have enough for a search warrant to look for the bike, and short of slapping him on the back, we couldn’t search him for a wound, either. He was sitting in his living room, having a beer and watching the news, like a normal person. He denied everything, of course.”

  “What do you need for a search warrant?”

  “Pretty much an eyewitness. That could be Fred, of course, but he didn’t see enough to be of much help. You want dinner tonight?”

  “I’d love to, but I’m plying a dinner guest with liquor as we speak.” He smirked at Fel
icity.

  “That would be Dame Felicity Devonshire of MI6, would it not?”

  “I will neither confirm nor deny that.”

  “You can hide nothing from me. See you later.” Dino hung up.

  “And how is Dino?” Felicity asked.

  “Just fine. He guessed you were here.”

  “I guessed he would.”

  “How is Ian coming along?”

  “He was discharged early this afternoon and is resting in his new flat in the embassy residence.”

  “A pity I couldn’t worm the name of your mole out of Abdul-Aziz, then he could go home.”

  “I needed some new blood in New York, anyway.”

  He cocked his head and looked at her. “You seem awfully relaxed about the mole.”

  “Relax is all I can do, until we’ve worked through our investigation.”

  “And how long is that going to take?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “And Ian has to live with that for the duration?”

  “He’ll be pretty much under wraps in New York. It’s not like he’s going to be making public appearances.”

  Stone looked at his watch. “The Four Seasons?”

  She smiled. “You know how I love that place.”

  Stone was briefly awakened the following morning by Felicity getting out of bed, and he had a vague memory of hearing her in the shower, but when he finally was awakened by the buzzer from the dumbwaiter, announcing breakfast, she was gone, and there was a note on the bed.

  Sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you, but I got a call and have a fire to put out. I’ll call you as soon as I can.

  Stone ate his breakfast, read the Times, and got to his desk a bit later than usual. Felicity hadn’t called. His stomach announced the approach of noon, and he felt like getting out of the house. He took a cab to the Upper East Side, to a town house in the Sixties housing a club he had been elected to the year before. The place had no name; it was referred to by most of its members as “the place on the East Side,” and Stone had not used it much since he and Dino had been elected to membership, Dino first. The cab deposited him on the sidewalk a couple of doors down from the house, and he walked the last few steps to the front door.

  He had put a hand out for the door handle when the door, anticipating him, silently opened and closed behind him. A man at a desk inside said, “Good day, Mr. Barrington,” indicating to Stone that something had recognized him as he entered, because he didn’t know the man at the desk.

  He took the elevator to the top-floor restaurant and emerged into a room lit by the sun through skylights and a wall of French doors that opened onto a roof garden. He decided to sit outside and stopped at the bar there and ordered a Buck’s fizz, as the British and the club bartender called a mimosa—half orange juice, half champagne. He took a seat at the bar and surveyed the roof garden. Familiar faces from the business community, the arts, and politics dotted the crowd. A man approached the bar and took a stool a couple down from Stone.

  “Good morning, Stone,” the man said, and Stone turned to find the senior senator from New York, Everett Salton, sitting there.

  “Good morning, Ev,” Stone replied. He had met the man only a couple of times, but he recalled the warmth and bonhomie the man exuded. He had managed to make himself seem, on first meeting, like an old friend.

  “Funny I should bump into you,” Salton said. “Just got off a helicopter twenty minutes ago after a closed hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Your name came up.”

  Stone was sorry to hear it. “I hope it was not taken in vain,” he said.

  “Aspersions were cast, but I did what I could to soften them.”

  “I can’t imagine why a closed session of an important committee would be bandying my name about when I feel so perfectly innocent of doing anything that might offend them in the slightest degree.”

  “An innocent heart is a perfect shield,” Salton said. “I would attribute the quote, but I made it up only just now.”

  “You have the soul of a poet, Ev.”

  “You are not the first to notice,” the senator replied with a small smile.

  “I suppose, due to the secret nature of the session, that you are unable to tell me what thought or deed on my part led to this testimony?”

  “It was not so much testimony as conversation.”

  “Gossip, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps, but members tend, when in session, anyway, to rely on fairly solid sources for their assertions. May I buy you some lunch?”

  “Thank you, yes.”

  Salton raised a finger, and a headwaiter materialized beside him and led them to a discreet table shaded by a potted ficus tree. They glanced at a menu and both ordered the haddock and a glass of Chardonnay.

  “Can you characterize the nature of the gossip without endangering the safety of the nation?” Stone asked after the waiter had left with their order.

  “I think about all I can say is that some present were of the opinion that you might be harboring a fugitive.”

  “A fugitive from what?”

  “Justice, apparently.”

  “I have a roomy house and often have guests, but I can’t recall any one of them who might attract the attention of the law.”

  “Perhaps I should have said ‘natural justice.’ Think British.”

  “I have recently had a guest who had something to fear from what one might conceivably call vigilante justice,” Stone said.

  “And on what was his fear based?”

  “Two previous attempts to render him, ah, irrelevant.”

  “Ah, yes, irrelevance is a nasty state.”

  “I find it impossible to imagine why any member of your committee might find his presence in my home to be antithetical to my country’s interests.”

  “May I ask how he came to be in your home?”

  “He was there at the request of two government officials.”

  “Was one of them ours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Legislative, judicial, or executive?”

  “Executive.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me who?”

  “I would, reluctantly, if I was subpoenaed by your committee and placed under oath.”

  “You wouldn’t take the Fifth?”

  “I would have no fear of self-incrimination.”

  “An invitation to testify may not be so far from possible as you might imagine.”

  “I am at the committee’s disposal.”

  “Can you not tell me anything that might reassure me enough for me to reassure my members?”

  “I believe I’ve already told you that much.”

  “The members are fond of the explicit.”

  “Then they should exercise their power to elicit explicit answers.”

  “I’ve heard you are a very good lawyer, and now I believe it.”

  “It’s easy to be a good lawyer when your heart is pure.”

  Salton laughed. “I think it would be very entertaining to see you before my committee.”

  Stone laughed, too. “Is there anything I can say that might assuage the fears of your members?”

  “You could say that neither of the government officials in question was our president.”

  “It was not. There, does that make you feel better?”

  “Much, thank you.”

  Their lunch arrived, and they ate it with gusto, conversing on other subjects.

  Frank Riggs, né Russo, played a game with a television newscaster: he repeated every sentence spoken by the man and imitated his pronunciation and intonation. He had been doing this for a couple of days, and given Frank’s naturally imitative ear, he had managed to make himself sound more like an accentless American from some midwestern or western state, instead of
a New York thug.

  His new “law” partner recognized this. “I’m very impressed with the change in your speech, Frank,” he said.

  “Thank you. I’m trying to blend in.”

  “I like the new suits and shirts, too. Have you found a tailor?”

  “Just a men’s store whose clothes fit me well.”

  “The mustache is coming along nicely, too.”

  “It still itches, but I’m getting used to it. By the way, thank you for the law license and legal education and the office space.”

  “I don’t expect anything to come up, but it always helps to have a background, if you need it.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Frank, I’ve had a proposal from a guy who was recommended to me for robbing a bank in a small town inland from here. It sounds good: no major law enforcement to deal with, the usual alarm systems, and an attractive amount of cash.”

  “From what source?”

  “A number of agricultural enterprises within a reasonable radius of the place pay their employees on Friday, and a great many of them come into the bank in the afternoon to cash their checks, so the bank stocks up to meet their demands.”

  “Sounds reasonable. What’s their modus operandi?”

  “In and out quick, two getaway vehicles.”

  “I have some rules about banks,” Frank said. “Would you like to hear them?”

  “By all means.”

  “To begin with, don’t assume because the bank is in a small town that they don’t have much in the way of security. It’s best to assume they have every modern technology and to be prepared for it.”

  “Prepared how?”

  “Employ masks, gloves, and identical clothing—something like the jumpsuits worn by workers, maybe carpet cleaners. Wear hats of some sort. On entering the premises, disarm the uniformed guards and threaten people with short shotguns—they’re more frightening than pistols.”

  “And more effective.”

  “Tell them to fire no rounds, if at all possible, though a single shot to the ceiling will concentrate the minds of those being robbed, and tell them, above all else, don’t actually shoot anybody. Money is just money, but a bleeding teller is a goad to law enforcement and has legs in TV news. Don’t bother with the tellers, and don’t worry about alarms—somebody will set one off, regardless. Go straight to the vault and stuff trash bags full of cash. Don’t get greedy, leave the vault after no more than one minute. They should be in and out of the place in ninety seconds, and somebody should call the time. They should drive at the speed limit and change vehicles twice and avoid stolen cars and vans, if possible. I like places that rent old vehicles. Returning them is a good time to change cars. Then meet somewhere after an hour, divide the money, go home, and don’t call each other. Afterwards, don’t spend anything for three months or so, just live a normal life. Don’t pay bills in the neighborhood with cash—use credit cards or checks to attract less notice. That’s a rough outline. They should, of course, plan everything in detail. The hardest part is not calling attention to themselves after the robbery by throwing money around. How much seed money do they want from you?”