Naked Ambition

by Rick Pullen

  The memory chilled him. He’d heard too many whispered tales from men around him, indiscreetly slurred after several shots of tequila. It wasn’t like this gardener fellow lusted for the kill. It was worse. He was indifferent—a true psychopath dispassionately killing on command. It appeared the gardener cared only about one thing—his stupid plants. He would cut off a man’s head without thinking, yet he’d nurse a plant back to life. What was with that? It made no sense to the pilot. It was a damned good thing they were on the same side.

  Still, having a murderer on board made him uneasy. And that stare—that wild-looking eye. It just made the goon look more ominous. He was supposed to drop off the gardener at the Grand Cayman airport and return to Venezuela, just like he did a month or so ago. But at the last minute, the boss had told him to stay over a few days while the gardener attended to some unspecified business—something about tying up some loose ends.

  He’d heard that one before. It was always “unspecified business.” Whatever. His job was simple. Don’t ask. Don’t tell. It was his pilot’s creed for survival. It had done well by him. He was making more money than ever keeping his mouth shut, and he figured he could retire to his cabin in the mountains in another year. No more ferrying drug money or drug lords—or whatever their dirty business was. He would retire at last. He’d seen a lot, perhaps too much, so it was probably a good idea to get out soon.

  Word had spread quickly through the organization about the last time he’d dropped off this creep in Cayman. Apparently he’d killed the wrong person—some innocent couple in a hotel. How dumb was that? The pilot couldn’t imagine killing two perfectly innocent people. Oh sure, some have it coming. He’d heard horror stories. And in this business, sometimes it’s just business. But to fuck up so badly and to not give a damn. Collateral damage. That’s what they called it.

  The boss was more upset about it than this guy. Yet knowing the boss, he was probably more upset things didn’t go as planned than about killing an innocent couple. Yeah, it was time to get out, to retire and get away from these fruitcakes.

  But first he had to put up with this inconvenience. He was playing offshore chauffeur on a fishing boat to this malicious weirdo. He wasn’t quite sure how he had gotten roped into this one. But as always, it came from the top. Just because he could captain a small jet didn’t mean he could pilot a twenty-eight-foot boat. At least the boat had GPS so he could find his way back—if this guy ever stopped attempting to fish.

  Attempting. That was a good description. The gardener hadn’t caught a thing, and it was pretty damned obvious he’d never been deep-sea fishing before. But then what did a pilot know? He was more comfortable thirty thousand feet above sea level rather than three thousand leagues below.

  The gardener sat in a fishing chair at the back of the boat, his seat belt undone and his big pole pulling his line through the water as the pilot churned the boat forward, glancing back every so often to watch, well, not much at all.

  Just then, the gardener yelled. He’d hooked something—probably an old fisherman’s boot or some flotsam from another boat. The pilot turned again to see a taut fishing line skimming across the small waves. A giant fish leaped out of the water about thirty yards from the boat. The gardener grunted and leaned forward, trying to reel in his line.

  He turned to the pilot. “Come here. I can’t hold it.”

  “What?” the pilot yelled back over the engine roar.

  The gardener motioned for him to come closer.

  The pilot slowed the boat, shifting too quickly into neutral, and the wake instantly rocked the craft, water splashing over the stern where the gardener sat on the cushy seat. The pilot grabbed a railing for balance. His inexperience was showing. As the motor rumbled on, he finally walked gingerly to the stern trying to keep his balance while the boat bobbed atop the waves.

  “Here, I can’t hold it,” the gardener yelled in broken English with a heavy accent. “Bad back.”

  There was a pause. The pilot looked at the gardener, now covered in sweat or was it salt water? What the hell was he supposed to do with this fishing pole?

  The gardener shoved it in his hand, and he felt an immediate tug. He grasped the pole tightly with his second hand, fearful it would slip into the water and be lost forever.

  He turned to the sea. Then he tried to play the fish. He tugged on the line, and it tugged back again. The fish, whatever it was, was powerful. This was not going to be easy. The fish jumped again. It was large, but he couldn’t make out what it was—as if he knew anything about fishing.

  “Beer?” the gardener asked.

  “Down below.” The pilot glanced back to see the gardener disappear into the cabin. He then turned to the fish and began to tug again. Slowly, he began to reel it in. He’d never done this before. He’d only watched deep-sea fishing on TV. He pulled hard and then leaned forward and reeled in the slack in the line.

  He started to get a feel for it. The fish ran about twenty yards to the side of the boat, and he stepped around to avoid getting wrapped up in his line. He was going to win this battle.

  He caught a glimpse of the gardener stepping onto the deck and taking a swig of water from a plastic bottle. He thought he had asked for beer. He reeled in some more line.

  “Hey, you’re pretty good,” said the gardener.

  Perhaps the guy wasn’t all bad, thought the pilot. Like him, the gardener had a job to do. It was just business after all—at least he’d like to think of it that way. He turned to the Gardener.

  “Thank—” The words froze in his mouth. The gardener held a .45-magnum pistol about a foot from his face. The barrel was huge and black. “What the—”

  He heard the blast, or at least part of it before everything turned black. He felt his face crack open in horrific pain as he realized he was the unspecified business. For an instant, his head was on fire. And then it wasn’t.

  59

  Over a breakfast of eggs and corned beef hash the next morning in a Fort Myers Beach hotel, Beck sat in front of his copy of USA Today. He had five hours to kill before his flight to Grand Cayman. He’d left Washington so abruptly; he’d been unable to reserve an earlier connecting flight. Between sips of coffee and the day’s news, he occasionally looked through the shade of the wide outdoor patio at the placid sun-drenched Gulf of Mexico and the glaring white sand beach that separated him from its quiet slap of repetitive humble swells.

  “Excuse me,” came a voice from behind page 2A.

  Beck lowered his paper and looked at a very tall, muscular man with a salt-and-pepper goatee.

  “May I bother you for a moment?” He was dressed in an expensive navy-blue pinstripe suit and a neatly folded red silk handkerchief peeked from the breast pocket. A bit odd for the beach, thought Beck. The stranger was broad-shouldered with perfect posture, and he wore a crisp white button-down dress shirt with no tie. His flecked gray hair flowed over his collar and was swept back from his forehead.

  “I’ve seen you before,” said Beck very slowly. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Someone who wants to chat about Mrs. Rikki. Or was it Mr. Kem-per?” The stranger smiled, showing off his perfect teeth. “May I?” The man gestured to the chair across the table.

  Beck nodded. The man eased into the seat. Beck folded his newspaper on the table and gave him his full attention.

  “Pardon me if I don’t introduce myself. It’s probably better that way. I’d like to talk to you about your intentions.”

  The stranger’s Hispanic lilt and perfectly groomed goatee matched his regal bearing. This man didn’t seem to fit the stereotype of a criminal, yet he had been following him for weeks, or so Beck thought.

  “I can see you’re puzzled.”

  “Yeah. You’re the crosswalk guy. You’ve been following me all over DC. Who the hell are you?” Beck sipped his coffee, his eyes at full attention.

  “Let’s just say I have connections who have an interest in your fine work. Your investigation of Senator Bay
ard was right on point, as far as it went. But we believe you may again be embarking on an investigation.”

  Beck felt a chill. They knew. “What makes you believe that?” His stomach was churning, but he tried to keep his voice matter-of-fact calm.

  “You see, I work for people who have been watching you closely— ever since you landed in Grand Cayman, and the moment you talked to that Texan who lives next to Senator Bayard’s waterfront villa.”

  “Was he tied to Bayard?”

  “No, just the opposite. We paid him to keep tabs on the senator. We try to stay one step ahead of Bayard’s people most of the time.” “The guy in the white straw hat who followed me in Cayman?” “One of theirs.”

  “Who are they? Who the hell are you?” Beck’s head was spinning.

  “Let’s just say I used to be in your business. Sort of. I investigate and monitor things for some powerful people who have a great interest in you. You see, there is the permanent campaign infrastructure in the United States, and then there is the political underground known as political intelligence. That’s where I fit in. We keep tabs on what’s going on. We monitor situations, and yours became a situation we needed to monitor.”

  “So you’re Democrats spying on Republicans? Or are you Republicans spying on Republicans?” In the shade of the covered porch, Beck looked for some tell in the stranger’s expressive dark eyes, a clue as to who this guy really was. Nothing.

  “Does it matter? Both sides are in the same business. We do what we need to do to maintain power and democracy in America. Political power is about getting what you want. Otherwise, why would you need all of those lobbyists throwing money at elected officials?”

  “So how did I come up short?” Beck continued to look for any signs that would give him a hint. The man’s skin was smooth and tanned and lacked wrinkles to match the graying hair. Brown chest hair peeked up from his open collar. Who was this guy really?

  “I’m not sure you did come up short. You got everything right—as far as it went. However, you needed to dig deeper to get to the bigger story. I believe you discovered the missing link yesterday.”

  Beck couldn’t believe it. They knew everything he was doing. “How did you know that? How do you know what I was doing in my living room yesterday?”

  “Who is Red?”

  “You’ve bugged my condo again. What all have you heard?”

  “Since 9/11, Washington has become one of the most secure cities in the world. Probably only London has more cameras and recording devices than our nation’s capital. When people of power want to find out something about a private individual, there really is no one to stop them.”

  “You bugged my condo.” Beck’s gut turned from fear to anger. “Yesterday, you figured out the true meaning of the land deals, didn’t you?”

  “You bugged my condo.”

  “Okay. Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does to me.”

  “Yesterday, you finally figured out what was behind the land deals.” The stranger paused, waiting for Beck to speak.

  “It’s a giant money laundering machine. It’s a lot bigger than Senator Bayard. Large land deals churned over and over. Money changing hands. A lot of cash is being funneled into somewhere, and I think I know exactly where.”

  “Just like Watergate back in the 1970s. You follow the money.”

  “That kind of cash has gotta be drug money,” Beck said. “Mexican? South American? That’s the question. I don’t think it will be hard to figure out or follow.”

  “You’re sharper than we gave you credit for, which is why I’m here this morning instead of bumping into you on the street in Washington. You see, the land development project in Grand Cayman—if you want to describe some acreage and a few signs as a land development—wasn’t anything of the sort, as you have figured out.”

  “Money laundering. I get it. South American?”

  “Precisely. Building lots are bought and sold, over and over again, to shell entities, and each time they’re given a different corporate name. The sales, which are perfectly legal, generate the necessary paperwork to bring cold hard cash into the international banking system in Grand Cayman without being questioned. It’s South American drug money made socially acceptable.”

  The waitress approached and offered them coffee. Beck took a refill. “It made no sense that someone would buy a building lot and resell it six months later for no profit,” he said. “Actually, by my calculation, they took a small loss.”

  “Precisely. They got a little sloppy there. Who is Red? We saw no one coming or going from your condo.”

  “Even I have my secrets. I’m not the only one who knows what I know, but there are some things you will never know.” Beck stared at the silk handkerchief in the stranger’s breast pocket. “Whose campaign coffers are the recipients of all of this drug cash? Your pin-striped friends?”

  “You are quite perceptive.” The man glanced down at his suit and sighed. He raised a thick eyebrow and continued. “Jackson Oliver’s half brother, Roger Kindred, put the scheme together, and Oliver brought the senator in years ago to get a piece of the action. The brother continually incorporates shell companies and partnerships to buy the lots. No one checks the background of the owners because Kindred pays all of their corporate and real estate taxes promptly. The lots are churned constantly, and because expensive land sales are the excuse for the large bank deposits, nobody even questions them. Rather ingenious, don’t you think?”

  Beck’s mind was racing. Why was this stranger telling him all of this? He smiled. “I have to give it to you. But sooner or later, even the Grand Cayman officials will get suspicious about all of those lot sales and not a single home being built.”

  “Precisely. There are already three permits to begin building houses. It will go slowly, and many years from now, when the development is built out entirely, it will eventually be sold off to real buyers. They will simply move the operation to another offshore location.”

  “How many operations already exist?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “It’s so efficient,” said Beck, flattering the stranger, hoping to encourage him to continue. “Each bank deposit Kindred makes from a lot sale, while substantial, is routine enough not to attract anyone’s attention. In a year’s time, you’ve deposited tens of millions of dollars. And Bayard knew?”

  “Of course. But not for a while. You see, Bayard had his own thing going with Lamurr Technologies, and he hired Kindred to do the legal work. He had no idea Kindred was Oliver’s half brother. Kindred watched Bayard’s dealings but did nothing for the first year. After he made inquiries, he figured out the true source of the senator’s money. Kindred knew then that he—forgive the pun—had a ‘kindred spirit’ in Bayard.”

  Beck winced at the bad pun as he considered what motivated this stranger to talk so freely.

  The stranger continued. “Kindred told his brother. Jackson Oliver immediately saw the political possibilities and pulled Bayard into the drug money operation. That’s why Bayard, who came late to the presidential contest, could so quickly gear up and have a formidable campaign war chest. Bayard thought big, far beyond his own campaign. He envisioned a permanent infrastructure for a drug money machine to finance Republican political efforts of all types throughout the US.”

  “Jesus. The American political system, bought and paid for by South American drug lords.”

  “Is it any different than a political system bought by special interests? Drug money is just one more special interest. Granted, it is much larger than most.”

  “Yeah, but the Federal Election Commission monitors individual donors. Bayard could never get away with that.”

  “That’s where you are wrong. Remember the Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to make campaign contributions? ‘Citizens United,’ I believe it was called. That ruling allowed anyone to spend unlimited amounts on a candidate, as long a
s the money was not given directly to the candidate’s campaign.”

  Beck shook his head. The stranger seemed to relish enlightening him. But for what purpose? The stranger continued. “When Bayard was contemplating whether to run for president, the Supreme Court had already handed him the keys to his secret money machine. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. And it was a fortune. No one could trace hundreds of millions in Latin American drug money being laundered into the process to support him for president, which made the drug lords ecstatic. They figured they were safe to do whatever they wished. The cartels were about to add a US vice president to their payroll, and then you stepped in and spoiled their plans.”

  Beck suddenly felt vulnerable. There was far more to this than he had imagined. “Unbelievable,” he said. “Someone who gives a few hundred dollars to a candidate must publicly disclose it, yet the South

  American drug cartels can spend hundreds of millions to manipulate elections, and no one’s the wiser.”

  “The future of secret campaign financing is already in full operation.” The stranger sighed again and stared at his hands while he rubbed his fingers and thumb together.

  Beck noticed that one finger on his right hand was weighted down by a massive gold ring embedded with a large diamond. It said Pennsylvania State University.

  The stranger looked him in the eye. “You must get it right this time, or you will bring down the entire political system. Powerful interests on both sides of the aisle do not want to see this matter exposed.”

  “Democrats are doing it too?”

  The stranger smiled. “As I said. I work for powerful people. They have monitored almost every move you’ve made in the past several months.” “I can’t believe that.”

  “My purpose in coming here is to make you a believer. You see, you were in danger for some time, almost from the start of your reporting. Oh, not from my people, but from the drug cartels.”

  Beck tried to calm his nerves. He quietly placed his hand on his knee under the table to stop it from shaking. “Am I in danger now?”