The Insiders

by Craig Hickman

  Hap nodded with a glint of realization. “We have a group of decoding experts working on possible interpretations right now. Teterboro will go to the top of their list, but they’ll want to know if anything else seems strange or out of character, besides the misnaming?”

  “She didn’t cry when she saw San Marco Square; she kissed me in front of everybody on the water-taxi and then laughed. And, it’s unlike her to overstate things like wonderfully beautiful.”

  “Good. We’ll be working on it while you’re at Carter’s. Another team will be jamming and recording your conversation from the street. They can be inside within ten seconds if you need them. Make sure Emerson knows that.”

  Wilson nodded to the one person outside Emily he still trusted, and then he left for Carter’s house.

  48

  Carter – Cambridge, MA

  The stately Victorian home, only a few blocks away from Brattle House, was originally built in the late 1880s for one of Harvard’s presidents. Wilson struck the front door three times using the brass knocker. Carter opened the imposing walnut door and ushered Wilson into his eclectic den where a fire was flickering beneath an ornate Italian mantle. Wilson chose the old brown leather couch while Carter took one of the tapestry wing chairs. Neither one of them said a word. Wilson had no intention of making this easy for Carter, so he waited.

  Carter finally broke the silence, “Where would you like to begin, Wilson? With your father? Your mother? Tate? Or me?”

  “You.”

  “Your father had a penchant for contingency, Wilson.”

  “I said you, Carter.”

  Carter shifted his position. Wilson could tell he was uncomfortable. “The week before your father was shot, he made two requests of me in the event that something happened to him. First, secure a full and complete disclosure, no matter what, and second, tell you the entire story, once it was over. I promised him I would do both.”

  As much as Wilson wanted to, he decided not to express the depth of his disgust or feelings of betrayal, at least not yet. He wanted more answers first. “Did he have reason to believe disclosure was in jeopardy?”

  “We both did. Our partners had lost their conviction in our ultimate purpose.”

  “So what Tate told me at lunch was a lie? Everything the partnership did was illegal?”

  “Of course it was illegal. And unethical. And immoral. We merely rendered it legally defensible. There’s a considerable difference. That’s what the burgeoning complexity of our legal system has allowed. And no, not everything Tate told you was a lie. For the most part, his memory and perceptions are surprisingly consistent with my own. What he kept from you were his motives.”

  “You were listening, weren’t you?”

  “Along with Malouf, Swatling, and Kamin.”

  Wilson worked to keep his frozen exterior from melting, despite Carter’s apparent honesty. “What are their motives?” Wilson asked.

  “They want to expand the partnership internationally.”

  “No final disclosure?”

  “None.”

  “And, if I try to stop them, they’ll kill Emily and then me.”

  “They will stop at nothing to achieve their ends,” Carter said, shifting his position again.

  “Exactly where do you stand in all this?” Wilson asked.

  “With your father. Always with your father, Wilson,” he said with a distant look in his eyes. “Even when I have to defer to the other side.”

  “What does that mean?” Wilson asked in frustration.

  “It means I must finish what your father and I began, without the cooperation or knowledge of our partners.”

  Wilson hesitated for a moment then asked the only question that really concerned him at the moment. “Is Damien Hearst the one responsible for shooting my father and kidnapping Emily?”

  “No. Damien Hearst was a rogue attorney who disappeared to South America a few months ago.”

  “Who then?”

  Carter looked at Wilson, his eyes full of what Wilson assumed was sympathy. “Professionals contracted by Wayland Tate.”

  “Will I ever see Emily alive again?”

  “Yes, if you go along with their plan to spin off corporate restructuring,” he said as he stood up and began poking at the fire. “They don’t want to kill either one of you, if they can avoid it. I think their feelings of guilt over your father, especially Tate’s, are deeper than they expected.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “No one knows except Tate. Maybe Swatling,” Carter said, turning from the fire to look at Wilson.

  Wilson leaned back on the couch and shook his head at Carter. “And you still think we can expose them?”

  “Me, not you. Going along with their plan to divest corporate restructuring is your best chance of seeing Emily again.”

  “But you’re not certain?”

  “No, Wilson, I’m not,” Carter said, turning back toward the fire. “Tate arranged Emily’s kidnapping without any of the other partners knowing. To protect our deniability, was how he justified it.”

  Wilson stayed silent, reliving his earlier lunch with Tate and waiting for the returning nausea to subside. What Hap had told him was true. Emily’s life depended on finding her before it was too late. To accomplish that, Wilson needed to know everything Carter knew or was willing to tell him about the secret partnership. “You’re not worried that Tate will have you killed?” Wilson asked.

  “No,” Carter said firmly. “He no longer sees me as a threat.”

  “Why?”

  “Your father’s coma was enough for them. If I were going to challenge them, I would have already done so. That’s what they think,” Carter said with the same distant look in his eyes. “Truth is made true, Wilson. Remember your William James? My partners expect me to make sure you spin off corporate restructuring. As long as I continue to contribute to the game, they will not perceive me as a threat.”

  Wilson studied Carter who was standing by the fire. “Is that why you invited me here? To convince me?”

  “That is entirely up to you, Wilson. No more games.”

  “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

  “Your father put you at the center of things, despite my efforts to dissuade him. Now we have no choice but to work together.”

  “Why was my great-grandfather killed?”

  “To keep him from publishing his memoirs.”

  “Where are they?”

  Carter shrugged. “Hidden. Stolen. Destroyed. I wish I could tell you, but I can’t.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  Carter frowned at him. “I’ve been trying to keep you alive.”

  “I heard Tate’s version. Tell me yours. What exactly were you and my father trying to prove?”

  Carter sat down again, his eyes piercing. “That freedom is a lie. That anyone with less than ten million dollars in liquid uncollateralized assets is an economic slave. That those at the top of the socioeconomic ladder are feeding on the weaknesses of those below them. Capitalistic Darwinism is our reality. Democracy is faltering because freedom and liberty are grossly inequitable. Everyone knows that the wealthy have infinitely more freedom and power to self-realize than the poor or the middle class, and the gap is widening. But no one’s addressing the underlying cause. Competition is the weakness, not the strength, of capitalism. What we lose from insufficient collaboration and cooperation dwarfs what we gain from rabid competition.”

  A sudden burst of energy like a stroke of genius or moment of clarity took Wilson’s breath away. Trust him. Carter is not your enemy. For an instant, as if observing the scene from outside his body, he allowed himself to admire his father and Carter again. While the feeling lingered, Wilson asked the one question he knew Carter was waiting for, “What do we do now?”

  Carter smiled, “I was uncertain you would ever ask that question of me again.” He walked over to a locked cabinet amid the bookshelves and gathered up eight large volum
es, four at a time, and placed them in front of Wilson. A History of Capital Market Abuses in the United States of America, Volumes I through VIII.

  Wilson opened the first volume. It was two inches thick and slightly larger than a letter-sized binder. Inside was a well-organized collection of journal entries, company profiles, executive biographies, manipulation summaries, stock price fluctuations, financial analyses, press clippings, corporate memos, and extracts from annual reports. Thumbing through the other volumes, Wilson found more of the same. “Is this your disclosure?”

  “These are the paper summaries of eight years worth of corporate manipulations and financial system abuses. The supporting computer files, audio and video clips, and detailed analyses are backed up by hard drives, thumb drives, and CDs. I’m still working on the final disclosure document. It should be ready for the FBI and the Justice Department within a few days,” Carter said, his face becoming dour again. He remained silent for a few moments, staring into the fire before adding, “If for some reason anything goes wrong, and I am no longer in the picture, someone will be in touch with you. Your father and I called him the Watcher. You can trust him. Focus on the money at the highest levels. Generations of concealed corruption have created unimaginable wealth and unparalleled institutional protection. If I didn’t think you’d already made up your mind about all of this, I’d tell you to walk away from it. But I guess it’s too late for that.”

  Wilson looked at Carter curiously, wondering if he would ever be able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. He simply nodded. It’s too late to keep me out or expect me to walk away, he thought. For the next few hours, Wilson studied the eight volumes of history, discussed disclosure timing with Carter, and mulled over dozens of contingencies. It must have been a trait he inherited from his father, Wilson thought.

  Regardless, he knew that as soon as Wayland Tate placed his plan for divesting corporate restructuring into his hands, Hap and his people would have only a couple of days to find Emily. He prayed they’d made sense of her clues.

  When Wilson left Carter’s home, he considered stopping at Brattle House to confront his mother, but he wasn’t ready for that. Hap had assured him that they were safe and that was enough for now. As he drove to the Back Bay apartment near the Fielder Building, he decided it was time to bring in the authorities, mostly because of what he’d read during the past several hours. His concern for Carter’s safety was growing.

  49

  Hap – Boston, MA

  There was dead silence in the twenty-by-fifteen-foot bedroom where Hap Greene and his associates—Driggs, Jones, Potter, Irving, and an independent decoding specialist named Rachwalski—had set up a strategy room in Wilson’s Back Bay apartment. Coffee cups, water bottles, and paper plates with the remains of pizza and sushi were strewn over the round table in the center of the room.

  Hap sat back in his molded plastic chair staring at the wall covered with hundreds of pieces of paper ranging in size from post-it notes to flip charts. Taped to the top of the wall written in black ink on folded flip charts were Emily’s three messages with potential keywords underlined:

  Dooon’t woooorrry …(break in voice and deep breath) … I’mmm jet … (whimper) … fiiinne.

  I only have a few seconds. I’m on a seesaw with my emotions but I’m fine. They let me call my parents to tell…

  Mom and Dad, it’s me. Sorry I missed you. Just wanted you know that we’re back. We had a glorious time. When we arrived by sea at the San Marco port and I saw the Campanile d’Oro and the Palazzo Ducale, I started crying because it was so wonderfully beautiful. And where we stayed was only minutes from San Marco. Never fear, I’ll tell you all about it when we visit you next week. I love you.

  Underneath the three messages were eleven columns of pieces of paper in various shapes and colors. Each column was labeled with a yellow three-by-five-inch index card bearing a keyword written in black ink. Under the “jet” column there were no names because everyone in the room had concluded that the word jet simply referred to jet airplane and airport. Under the “seesaw” column were the names of airports near the sea—i.e., Boston (Logan), Atlantic City (NJ), Baltimore (MD), Nantucket (MA), San Francisco (CA), and Teterboro (NJ), which wasn’t as close to the ocean but had the teeter-totter link with seesaw. The “sea” column listed airports containing those three letters—Seaside (FL), Seattle (WA), Seaboard (AL), and Seaview (MI). Under the “port” column were airports with that word—Portland (ME), Portland (WI), Portsmouth (NH), and Newport News (VA). The d’Oro column identified airports with the words oro or gold—Hillsboro Beach (FL), El Oro (Mexico), El Toro (CA), Goldsboro (SC), Bayboro (NC), Gold Bay (British Columbia), and Teterboro (NJ). And, so on for eleven columns.

  Of the 300 airports listed, only 128 of them reported that private jets with international flight plans had landed between Saturday afternoon and Sunday night. Of the 128, there were thirty-two that appeared in more than one of the eleven columns and showed more than one private jet landing during the critical period. Of the thirty-two, only eight were located within two hours by air from Boston, but the landing records provided no additional clues. Emily could have arrived at any one of the eight airports. The eight were listed on a flip chart that hung in the middle of the wall. Cap-d’Oro, Nova Scotia; Portland, Maine; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Clarksboro, New York; Seaview, Michigan; Teterboro, New Jersey; Newport News, Virginia; and Bayboro, North Carolina.

  Hap stood up, walked to the flip chart and marked three of the eight airports with a check. “We have to start somewhere. Mark your top three. We’ll send teams to four airports at the same time beginning with the top four vote-getters,” he said as he returned to his seat and watched the others take their turns at marking the chart.

  When they were finished, Hap stood up again. “Driggs, you’re at Teterboro. Potter, you take your team to Cap-d’Oro. Irving, you take Portsmouth. Jones, you’ve got Bayboro. If we haven’t found anything in twenty-four hours, you’ll be given the next four airports and another twenty-four hours. If we haven’t found her by then, I’m not sure we will, unless she can give us more information. Call me on my cell phone if we need to talk, otherwise, check in with the office every two hours for updates and reports. Concentrate your efforts within a five-mile radius of the airport and start with the executive terminal grounds themselves. We’re all on twenty-four-hour duty for the next two days, so get your rest when you can. Good luck.”

  After the four team-leaders left the apartment, Hap joined two other associates in the living room waiting for a briefing from Wilson on his session with Carter Emerson. When Wilson arrived at the apartment ten minutes later, a little past midnight, he nodded at Hap’s men stationed outside the twelfth-floor apartment and walked through the entryway into the living room.

  Hap started the discussion by updating Wilson on the targeted airports.

  “What if she’s not at one of the eight airports?” Wilson asked.

  “Assuming we don’t get any new information that would cause us to change or expand our target sites and we can’t find her within the next forty-eight hours, we’ll have to bring in the FBI,” he said, pausing to see Wilson’s response.

  Wilson nodded. His own doubts about whether the government would fully expose the secret partnership had been superseded by his concern for Emily. But after reading Carter’s history, he’d conceded that no democratic government would be able to sweep this under the rug. “Will she have a chance, if it comes to that?”

  “Of course, but the FBI will have to find her before Tate and her captors figure out what’s happening.”

  “Let’s bring them in now,” Wilson said bluntly.

  “I think that’s exactly what we should do. Given the extent of Carter’s documentation and Tate’s penchant for murder, it makes no sense to wait. I can meet with the head of the FBI’s corporate crime division first thing tomorrow morning. Her name is Kirsten Kohl and she’s as good as they get. They’ll need a day to debrief Ca
rter and develop a plan of attack, but Tate won’t do anything rash during the next couple of days, as long as you’re spinning out the division he wants. With any luck we’ll find Emily while you’re buying us time by following Tate’s wishes,” Hap said with the same confidence he’d displayed earlier in the day.

  “Tell me the truth, Hap. What are our chances of finding her in the next two days?”

  “Her clues are good, Wilson. They allowed us to narrow it down to eight airports. I think our chances of finding her are very good, as long as they don’t move her.”

  Wilson ignored the last part of Hap’s comment for the moment. “What will you do when you find her?”

  Hap hesitated.

  Wilson already knew what he was going to say before he said it. It was the only thing that made sense under the circumstances, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.

  “We’ll have to keep her under close surveillance until the FBI is ready to arrest Wayland Tate and everybody else in the secret partnership,” Hap said, his eyes firm yet sympathetic.

  Wilson nodded noncommittally.

  Hap continued, “If we don’t wait, Tate and his partners will disappear. You, Emily, and your family will continue to be at risk.”

  Wilson turned his attention to the other part of Hap’s earlier comment. “What if they move her?”

  “Then it will be up to the FBI to convince Tate and his partners to give her up.”

  Wilson closed his eyes. The thought of losing Emily caused his body to ache, as if twisting until his bones were ready to break. When he opened his eyes, the sweat on his forehead was visible. He pushed back his moist hair. “Make your contact with the FBI,” he said. “Carter will have to accelerate his disclosure schedule.”

  50