The Insiders

by Craig Hickman

  Once inside the well-appointed yacht, they watched television until well past midnight, waiting for a special news report. But there was nothing, except for a sketchy account on a local news channel about the FBI’s involvement in an apparent gang-related shooting in Boston’s Back Bay region.

  “I can’t believe they’ve kept it under wraps,” Emily said.

  “Why? They’ve done it before,” Wilson said.

  “Not with something this widespread,” Emily returned.

  “Sure they have. We just don’t know about it.”

  They laughed nervously as they turned off the television and got ready for bed. When they finally lay down in the yacht’s cozy master bedroom, they were emotionally and physically exhausted, despite the naps they’d taken in the afternoon. Clinging to each other, they quickly fell asleep.

  62

  Hap – Bailey Island, ME

  Through the scope of his 338 Lapua Magnum rifle, Hap Greene watched his man Jones brace himself against the pylon of an abandoned pier, a thousand meters away on the opposite side of Mackerel Cove. Hap lay in a prone position atop the wooded knoll near Mo Bobicki’s marina loft. Jones had been an outstanding team leader ever since Hap hired him away from the CIA three years ago. But he’d been compromised. Hap guessed at how much Tate had offered Jones—five million, ten million, maybe more—to turn him.

  As soon as it had become apparent that the FBI was compromised and Wilson and Emily were going to fend for themselves, Hap had hired two independent contractors and sent them to Mackerel Cove to protect Wilson and Emily. He’d taken extra precautions to make sure no one in his organization knew about them by keeping all his communications with them outside the FBI’s and his company’s network.

  Then, just minutes before the fire and explosions at Brattle House, Hap had received a call from the two independent contractors, informing him that Jones and two other men had arrived on Bailey Island and were clandestinely surveying the marina loft. Somehow, Hap realized, Jones had discovered the back-up homing device in Wilson’s wristwatch, even though Hap had told no one about it.

  After the situation at Brattle House had been addressed and everyone was safe, Hap traveled to Bailey Island, where he confirmed what his two independent contractors had told him about Jones. He also discovered that one of the other men with Jones was Jules Kamin, who obviously hadn’t died in the explosion at his Manhattan apartment. The third man, he didn’t recognize. Hap had hoped for an opportunity to remove Wilson and Emily from the scene, but Jones’ surveillance was unyielding. He sent the two contractors back to their respective positions, inside the cabin of a lobster boat docked at the marina and near the docks on the other side of the island. Their assignment was to make sure none of the three men they’d been observing got near the loft or the sailboat. Hap was now taking personal responsibility for eliminating Jones, Kamin, and their accomplice.

  Hap watched single-mindedly as Jones seemed to be waiting for a few more lights to go out before he unpacked the case he’d set down on the rocks next to him. Jones was skilled in the use of stingers, tear gas launchers, and other man-portable missile systems. It had been one of Jones’ passions since returning from Afghanistan.

  Suddenly Jones pulled a cell phone from his pocket, listened for a moment, and spoke a few words. Then he returned the phone to his pocket.

  He must be talking to Kamin, Hap thought. Kamin was waiting at the docks in a sixteen-foot fishing trawler on the other side of the island. Earlier in the day, a few minutes after arriving on the island, Hap had identified Kamin with Jones aboard the trawler surveying the loft and the cove. That was several hours ago. Now it was almost two o’clock in the morning. Most of the lights had already gone out along the island’s two slender peninsulas that formed Mackerel Cove.

  Jones bent down, opened his carrying case, and withdrew a missile launcher. Before inserting the small missile, Jones placed the launcher on his shoulder and looked into the mounted scope.

  Hap knew exactly what he was doing. Using the missile launcher’s computerized laser technology, he was taking a reading of the number of meters between him and the north facing windows of the marina loft. Jones then punched in a few numbers on the small keypad below the scope to program the missile for detonation once it entered the loft. The missile probably contained some sort of gas—chlorine, saran, VX, or phosgene.

  Jones removed the long, slender mini-missile from the case—twenty-seven inches of carbon-fiber tubing less than three inches in diameter, with small fins on one end. It probably carried enough gas to kill a few hundred people, especially in humid weather like tonight. Even if the stinger missile took out the entire window before releasing its gas, everyone within a hundred meters could be dead within minutes, including Wilson and Emily in the sailboat two hundred feet away. The only sounds would be breaking glass and something akin to the whoosh of lighter fluid being ignited. Jones inserted the stinger and raised the rocket launcher once more to his shoulder, this time in preparation for firing.

  Hap squeezed his trigger first. Jones’ head snapped back sharply, the back of his cranium disintegrating as pieces of red and gray matter splattered onto the mossy green rocks. His body collapsed on the rocks. Hap didn’t move, keeping the scope of his Lapua Magnum focused on his fallen comrade and then raising it slowly to view the highway. He remained in position on the wet, grassy knoll for another seven minutes, until the unidentified man with Jones and Kamin exited his car and crossed the highway, approaching the bluff above the abandoned pier. The man crouched down in the grass of the bluff, looking through his binoculars until he located Jones’ near headless body lying on the rocks. He immediately drew his weapon and looked around cautiously. Hap pressed the trigger of his Lapua Magnum again and the man was thrown back in spread-eagle fashion with a hole the size of a grapefruit between his shoulder blades.

  Hap jumped up from his prone position and ran toward his car, which he’d hidden beneath a cluster of pines. His third target would not be so easy, but he was determined to finish this himself. Without turning on his headlights, he drove to the highway where he turned right and continued another two hundred yards before stopping. He quickly worked his way through the trees and brush to the eastern side of the peninsula and then along another bluff overlooking the ocean, searching for the fishing boat that had brought Kamin and the other two to the island earlier in the evening.

  Suddenly, there was a steep rise in the terrain and a pathway with cobblestone steps that took him into a thick grove of trees. When he emerged from the trees he was in full view of the secluded cove below. He pulled out his binoculars to examine the small pier. But Kamin was a step ahead of him, having already spied Hap through his own binoculars. By the time Hap dropped to the ground in a prone position and flipped the safety on his rifle, Kamin was five hundred yards farther away in the sixteen-foot fishing trawler and about to disappear behind the point of the cove. The independent contractor got out of his camper and prepared to take the shot.

  “I’ve got it,” Hap said into his collar microphone. He fired his third round.

  Kamin collapsed to the floor of the boat, his right arm and shoulder completely severed from his body. He was struggling to get up when Hap’s fourth round caught him in the chest and propelled him overboard. Kamin’s lifeless body rode the waves for several seconds before sinking out of sight.

  Hap returned to his car and drove back to the knoll near the marina, parking under the same cluster of pines. He waited a few minutes and then walked down the dirt road to the gravel ramp leading to the marina. His two independent contractors emerged from behind the marina store.

  “Targets eliminated,” Hap said. “Thanks for the good work. If the local police show up before dawn, call my cell phone and talk to Ms. Kohl. Otherwise, I’ll let her know what happened here when I get to Boston.”

  “You leaving now?”

  “Yeah,” Hap said. “Let them sleep or do whatever they like, but don’t let them out of your
sight.”

  “You got it.”

  63

  Wilson – Bailey Island, ME

  When the sounds of the lobstermen woke Wilson and Emily before dawn, the first thing they did was turn on the TV. Nothing. They watched patiently. Then, at exactly forty-eight minutes past six o’clock, it finally happened. The event his father had spent the best years of his life trying to accomplish. Disclosure: full and complete disclosure to the American public of an eight-year-long conspiracy to manipulate the price of company stocks traded on the New York and Nasdaq Stock Exchanges. The breadth and depth of the conspiracy’s impact was apparent on Anderson Cooper’s solemn face as he reported.

  “CNN has just learned that a massive stock market manipulation conspiracy involving the nation’s largest corporations, over the past eight years, has been uncovered by the FBI. More than three hundred arrests have been made in the past twenty-four hours, with more expected today. CNN’s financial expert, Lou Dobbs, is here to help us understand what all of this means,” Anderson Cooper said as he looked over to Dobbs. “Lou, how could something like this go on for so long without being detected by the SEC, the Justice Department, boards of directors, company employees or shareholders?”

  “That’s a question we’ll all be wrestling with in the weeks and months to come, Anderson, but one thing we’re certain of; the enormity of this crisis makes the recent mortgage credit debacle look like a misdemeanor,” Dobbs said, and then faced the camera. “Based on what we now know, the manipulations were orchestrated through what appeared to be normal business practices such as the hiring and firing of senior executives, company reorganizations, mergers and acquisitions, the spin-off of a company division to create a new publicly traded corporation, new product introductions, and the involvement of high-profile management consulting firms, all of them legitimate business activities.”

  “So why all the arrests?” Cooper asked.

  “For two reasons: first, the FBI claims it has obtained sufficient evidence to prove that the CEOs and some senior executives, from more than three hundred of America’s largest corporations, secretly organized themselves with the express purpose of systematically causing their own companies’ stock prices to rise and fall. Second, these same CEOs and senior executives shared information with their secret partners from other corporations regarding the orchestrated ups and downs of their companies’ stock prices. Trading on so-called insider information is not legal. So, as I understand it, they’re being arrested on multiple counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States. The charges could carry mandatory life sentences.”

  “Financial markets in Europe and Asia are already predicting major declines in anticipation of Wall Street’s response,” Cooper stated. “What are the domestic and international ramifications of this conspiracy?”

  “Domestically, the fact that this could happen on such a large, widespread scale, involving the nation’s most respected corporations, without government agencies, industry analysts, or the news media knowing about it, simply means that America’s stock exchanges, our economic and financial systems, and the nation’s practice of capitalism, in general, will have to change. The war against the middle class has now escalated into open warfare. We now have documented proof of what some of us have long known—the privileged class has been widening the gap between rich and poor by manipulating the system while our government turns a blind eye.

  “Internationally, the implications are staggering. The United States with its long record of economic success has been the main impetus behind the globalization of free market capitalism and the democratic rule of law. Every country in the world will be thinking if this can happen in the U.S., it can happen anywhere. And worse, it will most certainly erode confidence in our capital markets, giving some countries reason to question the future of global capitalism and others the justification to wage war against it. Much of what happens either domestically or internationally, however, will depend on how our government responds to this crisis, Anderson.”

  “We’ll have more from Lou Dobbs and a panel of Wall Street experts later, but now, let’s go to Wolf Blitzer, outside FBI Headquarters in the nation’s capital, to see how the government is dealing with this economic crisis. Wolf?”

  “Anderson, here at FBI Headquarters everyone is being very tight-lipped about the arrests that are still going on in various parts of the country. We have been told that more than thirty FBI agents have been killed, and several others wounded while making these arrests. Currently, there are more than three hundred corporate CEOs and their accomplices in custody and we’ve heard numbers ranging from one hundred to five hundred in additional arrests expected before this is all over. FBI Director John Bainbridge has called a press conference for eleven a.m., Eastern Time, at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. We will be here to provide live coverage. Anderson?”

  Emily looked at Wilson with eyes like saucers.

  “Hard to believe isn’t it. Even when we knew it was coming,” Wilson said, feeling a mix of relief and anxiety. Part of him hoped that what his father had set in motion eight years earlier would reap positive benefits, but the other part of him kept questioning whether any lasting improvement would come from the disclosure. He and Emily had already been through so much, it was hard to take on a fresh perspective. Had it really been worth it?

  “I’m going to the marina store to get the morning papers,” Wilson said, getting up from the bed and walking to the cabin door.

  Emily got up to join him. As they ascended the steps and climbed off the yacht, she said, “Tell me what you really think.”

  “I think it’s all happening just as my father and Carter planned, but with more bloodshed than either one of them anticipated.”

  “Will the country survive it?”

  “I honestly don’t know, Em. I hope so,” Wilson said, opening the screen door to the marina store for Emily.

  “Good morning. Checking out?” Jaclyn said, still behind the counter and looking as if she’d never left.

  “I think we’ll be staying another night,” Emily said, looking at Wilson questioningly.

  He nodded.

  “Fine. I’ll have someone bring you a change of linens and fresh towels,” Jaclyn said.

  Wilson looked around the store. Everything seemed normal. The world hadn’t come to an end or stopped dead in its tracks. “What newspapers do you carry?” Wilson asked.

  She pointed to the stacks on the floor behind him as she turned to another customer. “Take what you want, you can pay me later.”

  Surprisingly, the stacks included several major newspapers. He quickly unpacked the bundles and brought one from each stack back to the loft. The front-page headlines told the story:

  FBI UNCOVERS MASSIVE STOCK MARKET MANIPULATIONS

  CONSULTING FIRM FRONTS FOR WEB OF DECEPTION

  CORPORATE CONSPIRACY SHOCKS NATION

  SCHEME THREATENS FUTURE OF CAPITAL MARKETS

  SECRET SOCIETY CORRUPTS AMERICAN INDUSTRY

  For the next three hours they read and reread the detailed newspaper accounts while watching updates on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Early Show, and Fox Headline News. They were so engrossed in the media frenzy that they didn’t notice, and wouldn’t learn until later, about the cleanup that was underway on the mossy rocks across the cove.

  Carter was frequently quoted in the newspaper accounts and so was Wilson. David Quinn received occasional mention as the first whistleblower, but it was the independent analyses from Ernst & Young and Booz Allen and the ongoing SEC and FBI investigations that captured the harrowing reality. The patterns of corporate manipulation, the sleazy enticement schemes, the murders and attempted murders—it was all there in black and white. And it was a hundred times uglier than Wilson and Emily ever imagined it would be. The New York Times article alone ran for three columns on the front page and continued for four full pages inside.

  By half past ten in the morning, all four networks and CNN were providi
ng live coverage from FBI Headquarters. The usual reporters, political commentators, and financial experts were predicting everything from a constitutional meltdown to global calamity, as they waited for the FBI Director’s news conference. CNN’s red, white, and blue banner for the story read, “American Capitalism on Trial,” NBC’s was, “Capitalism in Crisis,” ABC called it, “The Corruption of Corporate America,” CBS simply dubbed it, “The American Illusion,” and Fox christened it, “Wall Street Exposed.”

  When the press conference began at eleven o’clock, Director Bainbridge read a ten-minute statement and distributed excerpts from Carter’s eight-volume history with the promise that all eight volumes in their entirety would be available on the Internet by Monday morning, and in book form by Friday. Then he opened it up for questions.

  Wilson was actually shocked by how clearly they presented the facts and discussed the implications. Nothing was being whitewashed, sugar-coated, or covered up. Carter’s demand to include the five reporters from the Times, the Journal, the Post, the Globe, and the Associated Press in his debriefing of the FBI and other government agencies had worked. The nation’s attention was being galvanized on the largest-scale corruption of its financial market system in history, just as his father had planned.

  The press conference went on for about two hours, followed by mostly doomsday commentaries and expert interviews throughout the rest of the day. The most intellectually definitive interview was with Eli Dennison, distinguished professor of economics and former dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He summarized the situation this way: “The long simmering conflict between the equality promised by democracy and the inequality produced by capitalism has finally boiled over. An era has ended. We now enter a period of profound metamorphosis in which a new form of capitalism must be invented.”