The Insiders

by Craig Hickman

  Ignoring Wilson’s attempt to conclude the conversation, Zemke dug deeper. “Apparently, Davis Zollinger was a longtime associate of your father’s.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Wilson said, annoyed by Zemke’s persistence. “I haven’t been involved in my father’s business. I only know a handful of his clients and associates.”

  “Your father’s firm helped Dutton Industries sell off some of its divisions. I don’t understand all those financial manipulations, but I’d wager that you do,” Zemke said, making no attempt to veil the accusation.

  Wilson cringed at the detective’s tone and his choice of words. “I’m a management consultant, detective, not an investment banker,” Wilson retorted, feeling more vulnerable by the second.

  “Has anyone ever tried to blackmail your father?” Zemke asked.

  “Not that I know of, why?” Wilson said, sitting down again while keeping his eyes fixed on Zemke.

  “Zollinger’s daughters tried to get the FBI to investigate their father’s death. Claimed their father was a member of some sort of secret society that was blackmailing him into siphoning money out of Dutton Industries. When their father decided to go to the authorities, he was killed.”

  “What did the FBI find?”

  “Not a thing. Pretty much closed the investigation after a couple of months. Lack of evidence. Considered it to be one more unsubstantiated conspiracy theory. According to friends of the family, the daughters went into hiding out of fear for their lives. Said they’d received a bunch of threatening phone calls.”

  “That explains the phony IDs.”

  “Sounds pretty farfetched, huh?” Zemke said, beginning to believe that Wilson indeed knew very little about his father’s business activities.

  Wilson didn’t respond to Zemke’s probe.

  “We need access to Fielder & Company’s files. Any problems with that?”

  “Not at all,” Wilson pretended. “Contact Weintraub, Drake, Heinke & Redd. They’re the company’s legal counsel,” Wilson said, nervously questioning whether Bill Heinke would be able to restrict the scope of access to Fielder & Company’s files afforded to Zemke, the Boston PD, or the FBI. He wanted to prevent a full-blown, asset-freezing investigation into his father’s life and business practices. He needed to go through his father’s files at Fielder & Company before they did, cleansing them if necessary. Not because he wanted to obstruct justice, he just needed to slow things down until the estate was liquidated and his loved ones were protected.

  “We’ll be in touch.” Zemke stood up abruptly. As the detective was about to leave the house, he turned to Wilson. “Before Boston PD closes the Daniel Redd case, do you have any reason to believe that his death was something other than an accident?”

  “No,” Wilson said. Then, with feigned surprise, he asked, “Do you?”

  Zemke trained his eyes on him like a hawk ready to snatch its prey, but Wilson didn’t flinch.

  “Be careful, Mr. Fielder. Seems your family has chosen a dangerous business,” he said as he turned and walked away.

  Wilson watched Zemke stroll to his car, troubled by what an intensified investigation might bring. When he went back inside the house, his mother was in tears. Rachel, Darrin, and Savoy were standing next to her in the foyer hallway. “What’s wrong,” he cried.

  “She just received a threatening phone call,” Rachel said, her voice trembling with fear and anger.

  “Do we have any idea who it was?” Wilson asked, putting his arms around his mother while looking at Savoy.

  His mother shook her head. “No. Just a man’s voice.”

  “My team initiated a trace, but the signal was bouncing. These guys are professionals and very serious,” Savoy said.

  “What did he say?” Wilson asked.

  “He said you were putting the family in danger. They want you to stop asking questions and stop helping the police. He said if you ignore his warning, our family will pay the consequences,” his mother said before bursting into tears.

  Wilson could see the terror in her eyes. He wrapped her in his arms again, attempting to console her. But inside his anger was raging, as fifty-two avenues of retaliation flew through his head.

  “I think we should call the police right now,” Rachel said, feeling powerless.

  “No,” her mother said, emphatically. “Let Wilson do what he’s planned.”

  Wilson continued comforting his mother for several minutes before excusing himself. He went to the library. Emily needed to come to Boston as soon as possible. He picked up the phone. The scrambler was attached but not turned on.

  After two rings, Emily answered, “Wilson?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Finally. I’ve been worried sick. How’s your father?”

  Wilson gave her a brief description of his father’s condition. Then, after telling her to hang on a minute, he turned on the scrambler and said, “Don’t say a word. The phones are bugged. I just turned on a scrambler at my end so they can hear you but not me.”

  For the next three minutes he told her about the surveillance, Daniel Redd, Hap Greene, and everything that had happened in the past few days, including the threat to his mother. He also told her about his plan to make the surveillance crowd think they were afraid and distancing themselves from his father’s business affairs. When he finished, he turned the scrambler off again.

  “I’m back. Sorry. My mother’s not in very good shape. She received a threatening phone call a few minutes ago from the people who shot my father. They think I’m a threat, which is ridiculous. All I want to do is sell Fielder & Company and give my father the best medical care we can find. You and I have a lot to talk about. How soon can you come to Boston? I’d come to you, but there’s too much going on here for me to leave right now.”

  Emily remained silent in utter disbelief, but she immediately understood Wilson’s dilemma. She wanted nothing more than to be with him.

  “I’ve been so foolish, Em.”

  “Oh God, Wilson. We’ve both been foolish.”

  “I miss you. More than you know. ”

  “You have no idea,” she said before promising to be on an airplane the day after tomorrow, once she’d turned her patients over to colleagues and wrapped up a few other loose ends.

  As they hung up, he vowed to never again cause their separation.

  15

  Wilson – Boston, MA

  Wilson stepped into the newly renovated lobby of the Harry Wilson Fielder Building, located on the Charles River in Boston’s Back Bay near Copley Square. His great-grandfather had built the ten-story edifice in 1921. Two security guards approached—not the usual uniformed types, more like undercover agents—quickly recognizing Wilson and escorting him to the elevators. One of them pushed the button to the executive offices on the top floor, while asking Wilson about his father. Wilson responded with a brief update.

  Once inside the elevator riding up to his father’s office, he felt strange knowing that the office would be empty. When Wilson got off on the tenth floor he was greeted by another security officer, who seemed to expect him. The guard asked if he needed help finding anything.

  “No, thank you,” Wilson answered, heading toward his father’s office. The most secretive consulting firm in America, Wilson said to himself, repeating words from a recent edition of The Wall Street Journal. The article stated that his father was considered by many to be one of the most brilliant business minds in America, having turned Fielder & Company into a highly influential corporate priesthood, with offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, London, and Hong Kong. But now there were only clouds of doubt and suspicion hovering over his father’s firm and legacy.

  He walked through a maze of corridors lined with contemporary art to his father’s office and was surprised to see so many staffers and consultants working at their desks after hours. Luckily, Anne Cartwright, his father’s senior administrative assistant, was sitting at her desk outside his father’s office. She stoo
d up to greet him.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Anne,” Wilson said.

  “It’s nice to see you, Mr. Fielder,” she said, looking surprised. Then, softly, she asked, “How’s your mother doing? I talked to her this morning about your father, she seemed so worried.”

  “She’s doing fine, all things considered,” Wilson said, feeling uncomfortable. He didn’t like the idea of putting his mother through more pain, but they had to talk, either tonight or tomorrow morning. He couldn’t wait any longer. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Fielder?”

  “Please, call me Wilson,” he said, looking around to see if anyone else could hear him. The nearest desk was empty. “I’d like to look through some of my father’s files.”

  “Mr. Emerson was here today. I gave him access to all the files, just as you requested.”

  “Thank you, Anne. Hopefully, his history of the company will help us dispel some of the rumors.”

  Anne nodded hesitantly. “Let me show you where things are and you can help yourself.”

  She obviously wasn’t used to giving such free reign to anyone other than his father. Anne was a tall, professional-looking woman in her late fifties with an expression of sadness in her eyes. Wilson let her unlock the office door, even though he had his father’s key. “How many people have keys to this office?” he asked.

  “Just myself, the security company, and, of course, your father had his key.”

  Wilson nodded as he followed Anne into the office. He could almost feel his father’s presence in the room. The wall of glass overlooking the Charles River, the elaborate Italian renaissance ceiling, the exposed columns of stone, the collection of unusual books and curious artifacts from around the world, it all reflected his father’s eclectic tastes.

  At the far end of the sizeable office was his father’s workstation, which covered an entire wall. A variety of electronic devices and gadgetry were spread across the builtin black walnut desk. Two fax machines, a paper shredder, three computer screens, two printers, a scanner, three flat-screen TVs, stereo equipment, and four telephones. There were also a number of family pictures from their travels around the world, which brought a new wave of emotions. Wilson looked away to stay focused. A few feet in front of the workstation was a gray stone conference table, oblong and irregular in shape, surrounded by seven black leather wing chairs.

  Emotions returned as Wilson remembered a time, eight months earlier, when he’d come to talk about his career at Kresge & Company. Secretly, Wilson had wanted his father to say, Why don’t you come to work for me? Even though he probably never would have accepted, he still wanted the invitation. But his father had never asked. He remembered wondering whether his father was waiting for him to make the overture, asking outright: I’d like to join you at Fielder & Company. Now, he wished he had. Maybe both of them had been too proud or too fearful of rejection. Or was my father simply trying to protect me? Mental images of his father in the hospital brought him back to the present, as Anne opened the twelve file cabinets on each side of his father’s workstation.

  “How long do you need me to stay?” Anne asked.

  “You can go home when you like, Anne. I’ll be here for a few hours. I’ve got my father’s keys, so I can lock up,” Wilson said, taking the keys from his pocket. “Do I have everything I need?”

  She examined the keys closely before showing him which ones were file keys, office keys, and building keys. Then, she held up an oddly shaped gold key. “This one opens the vault in the clothes closet,” she said, pointing to the bookshelves at the other end of the office, past the matching French sofas and large wrought iron and glass coffee table in the sitting area. “You also need to key in the password HWF1952. I haven’t given Mr. Emerson or anyone else access to the vault.”

  They both walked toward the wall of bookshelves. Wilson opened the shelf-faced door leading to a private bath, shower-steam room, and large walk-in closet. His father’s wardrobe filled the racks and drawers of the closet. Over the years, he’d occasionally borrowed his father’s clothes, having worn the same-sized pants and jackets since he’d turned twenty.

  “It’s on your right, behind the suit coats. Only your father had this key,” Anne said before handing the keys back to Wilson. Then she excused herself.

  After inserting the key and entering the password, he opened the concealed vault. Inside he found a solitary folder containing a computer disk and a paper printout of all the corporations, general and limited partnerships, limited liability companies, investment trusts, stocks, bonds, and other money instruments in which his father held partial or controlling interests. He’d seen a similar list in Daniel’s office. Many of the entities had Nevada and Wyoming addresses, others had Nevis and Cayman Island addresses, and still others had Swiss addresses. His father had obviously gone to great lengths to protect his privacy and conceal his assets. Under Nevada and Wyoming state law, only one name and signature was required to register a business entity, making it easy to keep owners and officers anonymous. Wilson could appreciate the appeal of Nevada and Wyoming, the most secretive states in the union. And Nevis, a tiny island country in the Caribbean, had even more favorable and flexible offshore banking laws than the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.

  According to the latest update of the files a month earlier, his father owned or controlled one hundred and ninety-eight different entities or instruments, each of which held ownership positions in a wide variety of publicly and privately held corporations. After reexamining the long list of additional investments, Wilson breathed a sigh of relief, having found no indication that his father owned shares in Zollinger’s Dutton Industries, Zebra Technology, or any of the companies identified in Daniel Redd’s fifty-two files.

  However, there was more in the concealed vault—an old book, Capitalism’s Flaw by William Tate Boyles, and a stack of loose papers and press clippings. He opened the cloth-covered book. It was a publisher’s bound proof. The pages were worn with age and brown at the edges. There was an inscription from his great-grandfather to his grandfather in blotchy blue ink, faded but still legible.

  Dear Son, December 25, 1935

  I tried to dissuade William from writing this book because it has placed his life in grave danger. Nonetheless, it is a vitally important work and you should be aware of its contents. It explains the real forces behind this nation’s debilitating depression. Lord Montagu Norman of the Bank of England is one of the vilest practitioners of the evil gift in our times. But he is only one of a corrupt society. Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Hjalmar Schacht of the German Reichsbank, and the entire House of Morgan are also nefarious practitioners. Whether the Hoover Administration and Lord John Maynard Keynes were active participants or mindless facilitators is, at present, uncertain.

  These are indeed desperate times, not merely because of the human suffering brought on by our economic woes, but also because of the mystification and manipulation wrought by hidden tyrants in high places. They are the authors of our needless woes and suffering, but now is not the time to expose them. We have neither the resources nor the mandate. The best we can do is protect ourselves and those around us from the corruption.

  I hope you can enjoy some peace during the holidays.

  Merry Christmas,

  Father

  After pondering the inscription, Wilson read the book’s introduction. It was a compelling summary of how a handful of men brought about the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression of the 1930s, simply because they wanted to slow middle-class wealth creation in America and shift economic power back to Europe. According to the book, the flaw in capitalism was that it allowed elite private corporations with captive customers and government protection—such as the Federal Reserve, international banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies—to preserve their power and wealth at the expense of the masses. Capitalism’s first movers had used their early success to structure the syste
m to their advantage and entrench their control.

  Wilson reflected on the many conversations with his father about corrupt authority and exploitation. They were conversations that had fueled his deep-seated distrust of authority. He quickly scanned the rest of the book, but he was preoccupied with reflections on what sort of men his great-grandfather and grandfather had been.

  He turned his attention to the stack of loose papers. The press clipping on top of the stack was a New York Times article about the death of Congressman Louis T. McFadden in 1936. Wilson sat down on the floor and began to read. Congressman McFadden was a Republican from Pennsylvania. He served as chairman of the Banking and Currency Committee of the United States House of Representatives from 1920 to 1931. According to hand-written notes on some of the press clippings and documents, McFadden had also been a close personal friend and associate of Wilson’s great-grandfather, Harry Wilson Fielder.

  On May 23, 1933, Congressman McFadden brought formal charges against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Secretary of the United States Treasury for numerous criminal acts, including, but not limited to, conspiracy, fraud, unlawful conversion, and treason. From the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman McFadden accused international bankers of orchestrating the stock market crash of 1929 and creating the nation’s Great Depression. He called the bankers a “dark crew of financial pirates who would cut a man’s throat to get a dollar out of his pocket… They prey upon the people of these United States.”

  Congressman McFadden and Wilson’s great-grandfather had worked together with author William Tate Boyles to expose the hidden tyranny of the Federal Reserve and international bankers who controlled the world’s credit and money supply, until lives were threatened. Boyles’ New York publisher was threatened with the death of his family if he printed Capitalism’s Flaw and McFadden barely escaped an assassination attempt near the Capitol Building. Wilson’s great-grandfather argued vehemently against further attempts to expose the corruption and severely reprimanded McFadden for his increasingly anti-Semitic views. Boyles agreed, but McFadden disregarded the warnings and continued fighting until his untimely death in 1936.