The Insiders

by Craig Hickman

  For the past twenty-four hours, Tate had been studying Wilson’s behavior and mannerisms on digital video, downloaded from one of Tate’s many private contractors. Reading another human being by the set of the mouth, look of the eyes, wrinkles on the forehead, speed of facial movements, and any other idiosyncratic gestures, had become integral to the art of manipulation for Wayland Tate. He now recognized Wilson Fielder’s most common mental and emotional states—tranquility and contentment, anger and hate, commitment and resolve, uncertainty and fear, and curiosity and discovery.

  Unfortunately, what he saw on Wilson’s face as he exited security was not a welcome sight. Tate followed him to his connecting gate just to make sure, but there was no mistaking the combination of anger and resolve on Wilson’s face. Tate had hoped for uncertainty and fear, or at least a combination of anger and fear, but that was not the case. He returned to the main terminal before calling Morita, who was now in the New York offices of Tate Waterhouse.

  “Plans have changed,” Tate said. “I’m going to Boston for a few days.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” Morita asked, her voice filled with concern.

  “I’m still traveling in disguise just to make sure,” Tate said. Then he added, “We need to take a different course with Wilson Fielder. If I’m wrong about our ability to influence him, I want to be close enough to adjust things quickly. Can you find me a suite at one of the larger hotels, the Westin or Marriott in Copley Square? I’m traveling under the name of Marsden Welker. You have the account numbers. Tell Swatling to meet me for breakfast tomorrow morning in my room—six o’clock,” Tate said, knowing that either one of the hotels near the Copley Place Mall would provide him with sufficient cover.

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “One more thing. Who was handling surveillance in Venice?”

  “Sutton and Turley.”

  “Did they arrive on the same flight as Fielder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell them I want to see them tonight. Looks like the shuttle is light; I should be there within two hours. Have them meet me at Bar 10 in the Westin Hotel.”

  “Anything else?”

  “How’s the press handling Quinn’s death?”

  “There was a lengthy obit in the Chicago Tribune. Fortunately, the article focuses on Quinn’s legacy, which was what he always wanted anyway. It concludes with a few details of the double suicide. None of it is negatively affecting publicity or customer visits, thanks to the twenty million new customers who went to the America’s Warehouse grand opening,” Morita said.

  “Most people seem to delight in stories of the rich and famous failing in their personal relationships—makes them feel less envious and more satisfied with their economic status. Quinn’s death may actually increase customer visits,” Tate scoffed.

  “I think it already has. The President even commented on the marketing campaign during a press conference on the economy. He said America’s Warehouse symbolized the American spirit and corporate renewal at their finest. I’ve ordered a transcript.”

  “Poor Quinn, if he’d only learned to enjoy the ride. How’s his replacement doing?”

  “He’s become national news as the man who replaced a tragic visionary. Musselman stock closed at eighty-two dollars today.”

  “It’s all so fucking predictable,” Tate said, pausing. “How’s Vargas handling things?”

  “A little harder than we expected. I think she actually liked him, but she’s ten million dollars richer as of last week,” Morita said, pausing a moment. “She’ll be fine, but…”

  “She could use a rest. Right?” Tate said to complete Morita’s sentence.

  “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

  “I misread Quinn.”

  Morita didn’t say anything.

  “Still nothing from the FBI?” Tate asked.

  “Nothing. They don’t have anything without Quinn,” Morita said. “But that won’t stop them from keeping us on their radar screen.”

  “We’ll just have to sting them,” Tate said with a snort, looking around to see if anyone was watching him as he approached the gate to his flight. “How’s the story coming?”

  “The press will have it by tonight. Vargas still has a few pieces of evidence to place, just to make sure.”

  “Perfect,” Tate said, smiling to himself. “Deputy Director Wiseman and Special Agent Kohl will be up to their asses in alligators, explaining why they got duped by a deranged, sex-crazed CEO. How’s Kamin handling things?”

  “He’s working from a villa outside of Rome, consumed with the Musselman sell-off and negotiations with Morgan. I think he’s actually excited about leaving KaneWeller,” she said.

  “Let’s keep it that way. Don’t say anything about me being in Boston for now. I’ll talk to him in a couple of days.”

  “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” Morita asked.

  “Not worried. Uncertain,” Tate said, making a slow search of everything and everyone around him before entering the jetway. He was worried, but he wasn’t about to let Morita know that. Too much depended on her cool-headedness. Besides, now that they had Emily Klein, Wilson wouldn’t do anything stupid. But he had to make sure.

  “How did Wilson look when he got off the plane?” Morita asked.

  “Angry and resolved.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. If he’s eminently dangerous, we’ll know in the next day or two,” Tate said as he arrived at his seat. “I think it’s time to tell him the truth.”

  40

  Emily – Learjet 60, Inflight

  Emily slowly regained consciousness only to discover that she was tied to her seat inside a small jet airplane. She spied the label on the seat next to her—Learjet 60. Her eyes darted around the cabin. There was no one else in sight, but she could hear voices talking beyond the drawn curtain, several feet in front of her. The window shades on both sides of the airplane were pulled down. It was still light outside. They were traveling west, she thought, into a setting sun.

  Replaying the abduction in her mind, she tried to remember as many terrifying details as possible. After Wilson had left the apartment to get the fax, she had stopped curling her hair and pranced to the open window overlooking Hotel San Fantin. She’d wanted to shout buon giorno and ti amo to Wilson as he came out of the hotel. That’s when she’d heard the hardwood floor creak behind her. She turned around quickly, thinking maybe it was Wilson already back with the fax, but it wasn’t him. Two men stood no more than six feet away from her—dark hair, swarthy skin, one with a mustache, and the other with heavy stubble. She’d never forget the terror she felt.

  Whipping back around toward the window, she started to scream, but her cry was barely audible as the larger of the two men clamped his huge hand over her nose and mouth and grabbed her around the waist. The last thing she remembered was the smell of ether.

  As she sat tied to her seat, she could only imagine what torment Wilson must be going through. She tried to move her arms and legs, but the leather lashings were too secure. Methodically weighing her options, she felt surprisingly calm and lucid, even though she’d been horrified by her captors only hours earlier. Wilson was right. This secret society, insider’s club, or whatever the hell it was, could not be allowed to continue in any form whatsoever. She wished she’d never questioned Wilson’s resolve to expose them. She’d only done it out of fear. Fear of death. Fear of harm. Fear of difficulty and struggle. Fear of being alone without Wilson. But now that her worst fears had materialized, she felt her a new resolve burning inside her.

  She swore to herself that if she was able to get out of this alive, she would never again allow fear to control her. Never. She repeated the word never again and again until she remembered how her captors had fondled her body before she lost consciousness. She fought back the tears. Everything can be taken from you except your freedom to choose your thoughts and feelings, she said to herself, even in th
e worst of circumstances.

  Wilson would be moving heaven and earth to find her. She knew that. The thought strengthened her. She would find a way to help him find her. Her emotions were on fire. The only way they could stop her would be to kill her.

  41

  Wilson – Boston, MA

  When Wilson and Mike Anthony arrived back in Boston, they took a cab to the Back Bay apartment. Hap Greene and three of his associates were waiting for them. Wilson sat down across from Hap and the others. Driggs was the only one of the associates Wilson had previously met; Hap introduced the others as Jones and Taylor. He then informed Wilson that, since yesterday afternoon, 153 private jets had arrived from Europe at more than three-dozen airports along the northeastern seaboard. Hap studied Wilson before asking, “What are you going to say to her when she’s on the phone? You’ll only have a few seconds.”

  Wilson appreciated the directness. He’d already given Hap’s question considerable thought. “Nothing. My guess is that after they get me on the phone they’ll shove the phone in her face to let her say a few words and then take it away. There won’t be any dialogue. Emily is savvy. She’ll be thinking the same thing we’re thinking. She knows we’ll be recording and analyzing every word she says. If she has any idea where she is, she’ll find a way to give us a clue without making it obvious.”

  Hap looked at Wilson with a slight smile. “Good. You’re right about the dialogue. I hope you’re right about Emily.” After a pause and a glance at his associates, he continued. “One other thing. Tell the kidnappers that you want to hear her voice telling you she’s okay at least once a day. The more opportunity she has to give us information, the better. Even then, we won’t get many words from her. The first time all we’ll get is I’m okay. After they see you’re cooperating, maybe they’ll allow her to complete a sentence, but it won’t be a long sentence. And, they’ll scrutinize her every word just like we will.”

  Wilson nodded soberly before expressing a concern that had been plaguing him.

  “You said public knowledge of the kidnapping would increase the probability of her death. I don’t think we’ll be able to keep Emily’s kidnapping a secret for more than a week or so.”

  “Which means we have to find her before that,” Hap said with a wildcat fierceness in his eyes.

  Wilson had never seen that look in Hap’s eyes. It bolstered his confidence, but he also recognized that he was grasping at anything to brighten his hope. “How’s my father and family?”

  “Everyone’s safe and heavily guarded. There’s been no change in your father’s condition,” Hap said. Then he reached under the coffee table and brought out three newspapers—The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He dropped them on the table in front of Wilson. TRAGIC VISIONARY SHAPES AN INDUSTRY was the headline on the front page of The Chicago Tribune. The other papers carried similar headlines. Wilson read the Tribune’s sub headline “Double Suicide Brings Heartbreaking End to Pinnacle of Success”, and then looked up at Hap in horror.

  “They killed them?”

  Hap nodded slowly, “It’s definitely possible.”

  “But why?” Wilson asked as he read with breakneck speed about David Quinn, his wife Margaret, and the J. B. Musselman Company. Moments later, he said, “The America’s Warehouse campaign seemed to be working brilliantly, at least for the moment. Why kill him now?” Without waiting for a response, he read further.

  Hap and the others remained silent as Wilson finished scanning the three newspapers. When Wilson looked up again, Hap said, “It’s also possible that they killed themselves, just as the articles state.”

  Wilson shook his head confidently. “No. They broke him, and he couldn’t live with it. They killed him to keep him from going to the authorities, just like Zollinger,” Wilson said, standing up from the black sofa, glaring at his team of former agents.

  “They’re going to kill her, aren’t they?”

  “Not necessarily. They need her to manipulate you,” Hap said. “You may be right about Quinn and his wife, but you’re a much bigger threat than one of their disgruntled CEOs. You’re sitting at the center of this thing, in control of the company that created this beast in the first place. They’ll stop at nothing to manipulate you. Only if and when they can’t, will they kill her. Then they’ll try to kill you. But we’re not going to let either one of those things happen,” Hap said. Then he added, “Let’s review the details one more time to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

  By the time they finished, Wilson was sure he’d summarized everything he knew about his father, Fielder & Company, and the secret partnership. But it still wasn’t enough to expose the secret partnership in the way he’d planned. Emily’s kidnapping had made it agonizingly clear that they had no intention of bringing him inside. And David Quinn’s death at the so-called pinnacle of success meant only one thing—they would not hesitate to kill him and Emily, just as Hap had said. Did I go too far in baiting Malouf and Tennyson—or not far enough?

  Now he had to find another way to first appease and then expose the secret society. “I won’t let them kill her, no matter what I have to do at Fielder & Company,” Wilson said.

  Hap pointed to Driggs, who would be staying with Wilson in the apartment, his eyes boring into Wilson. “Don’t go to the bathroom without Driggs. We’ll be in the apartment next door. First thing in the morning, we’ll talk about next steps at Fielder & Company.”

  42

  Emily – Learjet 60, Inflight

  When she heard the cockpit door open and close, Emily quickly lowered her eyelids to almost shut. The aircraft was descending quickly. A woman wearing a Venetian carnival mask walked over to Emily and placed a blindfold over her eyes and earphones over her ears. It was the same woman who’d brought lunch and drinks earlier, but hadn’t spoken a word.

  A few minutes later, after the small jet had landed, Emily’s right arm was injected with something that made her feel groggy and lightheaded. She was untied, lifted out of her seat, and assisted into what seemed like a delivery truck. She gradually began to lose consciousness, but not before the vehicle carrying her had stopped and she was lifted off the hard bench and taken somewhere else. The only thing she knew for sure was that she wasn’t in another vehicle.

  When Emily awoke several hours later, she was lying face up on a cot in a cold space. Her eyes were blindfolded, her ears covered with tight-fitting earphones that made a constant humming noise, her mouth taped, her arms and legs strapped down, and she was covered with a heavy blanket up to her neck. She could feel the forced air of a space heater on her face and there was a faint smell of oil or gasoline in the air. While she couldn’t be absolutely sure because of the injection she’d received, her sense was that the ride in the vehicle with the hard bench couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes, which meant she was probably in a warehouse or hangar near the airport where they’d landed. Now all she had to do was figure out which airport and how to let Wilson know.

  Just then, a computerized woman’s voice spoke through the tight-fitting earphones telling Emily that she would be talking into a phone to her boyfriend in a few minutes. She was to only say, “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

  Emily’s mind raced frantically to figure out how she was going to tell Wilson that she was at an airport, somewhere several hours away from Venice by jet—probably west. The more she thought about it, the more discouraged she became. She could be anywhere in the western hemisphere. Blurting out that she was at an airport would only get her moved. Besides, how many airports were there in the western hemisphere? She calmed herself down and focused. Any information would be better than none, if she could deliver it without raising suspicions. And just maybe, there would be more opportunities, not only to find out where she was, but to talk to Wilson. One step at a time. One piece of information at a time. Then it came to her. She knew exactly what she was going to say and how she was going to say it.

  When the phone rang in Wi
lson’s apartment rang, Hap and his men were on their feet, out the door of their apartment, and into Wilson’s.

  “I haven’t given this phone number to anyone except Emily,” Wilson said as Hap entered the living room. It was now on its fourth ring. Wilson was silently pleading for it to be Emily, while looking nervously at Hap for any last minute guidance.

  “Go ahead and answer it. Everything’s set to record and trace the call as soon as you pick up,” Hap said.

  Wilson picked up the phone. A male computerized voice said, “Wilson Fielder.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have your girlfriend,” the voice said. There was a click and brief pause before Wilson heard Emily’s voice.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice breaking as if she was about to cry. Wilson could hear her take a deep breath before she exhaled the words, “I’m j…” then he heard her whimper before she said, “…fine.”

  There was another click and the computerized voice returned to the line. “If you want to keep her alive, you must completely remove yourself from our business affairs. When you do, she will be returned unharmed.”

  “I want to hear her voice every day and the next time I want to talk to her,” Wilson demanded quickly.

  “You’re in no position to be making demands, Mr. Fielder.”

  The next thing Wilson heard was another click and the line went dead. Wilson stood motionless. Hap’s voice revived him. “Come listen to the replay.” In the kitchen, he and Driggs were hunched over a small digital recording device.