Man in the Middle

by Ken Morris

“Ayers already informed me,” Sarah replied, making no attempt to hide her irritation.

  “I think we will pass on the boat ride,” Carlos said to the man. He put a hand on his hip, making it clear he was ready, if necessary, to access weaponry in a split-second.

  “This is what Ms. Stenman wants,” the man said. He remained calm, as if he had expected resistance.

  “Then let Señora Stenman take the boat,” Carlos said.

  “Miss Guzman, it is imperative that we move quickly. There’s too much risk traveling by land. And Ms. Stenman doesn’t want those documents destroyed until she’s had a chance to analyze them. I’m certain you understand why.”

  “No, Tia,” Carlos said. “We do not know this man.”

  The stranger matched Carlos’ deadly stare with one of his own. Clearly, he, too, was no stranger to violence and would not back down. “If this were a setup,” he said, “there’d be a hundred agents on this beach, kicking your ass and grabbing those documents.” The undercover agent waited for the logic to sink in, then said, “We need to get you into Mexican waters. If you’d rather drive your own car, wait an hour in line at the border, risk the highway patrol, and take chances you won’t be searched, then go ahead. But,” he continued, addressing only Sarah, “I’d leave ugly-puss behind.” He then shifted his gaze and looked straight at Carlos. “If I were an immigration agent, zipper-face would be the first gilipollas I’d stop.”

  “Chupamela, cabron.” Nuñoz’ breathing came in rapid pants.

  “No thanks, marico. I prefer women. Are you ready to leave, Ms. Guzman?”

  Carlos took a step forward, his hand on the gun strapped to his hip. Sarah shook her head. Carlos’ skull might just as well have been made of glass. His deadly thoughts were transparent.

  “How long before we are out of U.S. waters?” Sarah asked, resignedly. The documents she held in her hands had the power to destroy her and everything she had spent years building. Not just that, but she had skimmed enough of the papers to realize that Hannah Neil’s handiwork also implicated and named many clients. She and Morgan needed to go through these papers thoroughly. Because of all these things, Sarah Guzman would take this opportunity to escape. She had already decided, quite simply, that she had no other choice.

  And although these current arrangements did not sit well with her, she had confidence in Morgan Stenman and in the safeguards put in place. Peter Neil, her biggest concern, was vulnerable—Morgan would make him pay if this did not go according to plan. People like Neil didn’t have the balls to screw them over. Only fools dared try, and Neil was no fool. Yes, she told herself, this will not become a problem. Having convinced herself, she turned her attention back to the man who would take her to safety.

  “I asked you how long before we are in Mexican waters? Answer me.”

  “Forty minutes, maybe less,” the man said. He did not take his eyes off of Carlos. “We’ll take that outboard to the cabin cruiser.” The man pointed to the boat-launch a few yards beyond the north end of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.

  A moment later, Sarah Guzman allowed herself to be escorted down the beach while Carlos, his shoes filled with sand, unhappily followed.

  Stenman stared as Sarah Guzman and Carlos Nuñoz climbed into a small motorboat waiting at the boat-launch, just below their window.

  “Whatever’s happening, nobody is forcing them,” Stenman said, more a spoken thought than anything she wished to share.

  Stenman turned and searched the room with roaming eyes. Peter followed her gaze to the front door. It was open and Ayers had disappeared. “Where is Jason Ayers?” Stenman barked to her guards.

  “He left just this minute,” one answered.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “I didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to go.”

  “You.” Stenman pointed to one of the men. “Get him and bring him back.” Her voice was husky, and darkness engulfed her face. “If this is what I think, Peter, you are dead.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Shut up!”

  Stenman gave a subtle nod and one of the remaining two guards gave Peter a full-assed cold-cock. Peter fell, not quite unconscious, but close. Under the circumstances, the floor felt better than a feather bed, and he elected to remain down. His cheek grew hot, and the deepness of the bruise pulsated against his skin, but he didn’t mind. In fact, he had expected to get pummeled. So long as Stenman didn’t give another of her silent cues and have one of these thugs pull out a gun or a knife and finish the job, he was happy to have been right-crossed. That this part of his plan was working— his still being alive—came as a pleasant surprise. So far so good, and he reckoned he had less than half an hour for the rest of his plan to play out. Not too long to withstand the suspense, he thought to himself.

  This bit of internal banter was fleeting, however, and replaced by a hailstorm of thought. He didn’t want to die, not before he had another chance to see Kate. Had he ever told her he loved her? No. He never had. It was a thing he needed to do, and that desire filled him with resolve. He would survive. He had to.

  While Peter remained floor-bound, Stenman, intent on following each of Sarah’s footsteps, leaned forward, practically imprinting her nose onto the window pane. “She is being taken to that cabin cruiser. What is happening?” she asked, a tinge of panic lacing her hard-bitten voice. Peter assumed it was a rhetorical question. He stretched his mouth and moved his jaw side-to-side. It hurt, but his bones had apparently weathered the knockdown.

  The hotel phone rang while Peter struggled into a sitting position. His head still spun but he had the sharpened attention of a person listening for footsteps in the dark. Stenman picked up the handset on the second ring, listened for a few seconds, then said, “You’re telling me you just received a fax from Dawson granting immunity to Sarah Guzman? Allows what?”

  A moment later, Stenman slammed the phone into its cradle. “Get up, Peter.”

  A giant hand pulled him to his feet.

  “Sit him over there.” Stenman pointed. The bodyguard threw Peter onto a sofa as if he were no more than a bag of air. Stenman stood over him. “Sarah Guzman has been granted immunity. She has been given the ability to move assets into the U.S. unencumbered. Jason Ayers has disappeared. I want answers.”

  “I don’t have any idea what’s going on. I did my part. I wanted to get paid for those papers—that’s it.”

  “Bullshit. You, Ayers, Guzman, set me up.”

  “That makes no sense,” Peter said, looking frightened, which was easy for him under the circumstances. “Sarah Guzman tried to have me killed. She was responsible for murdering my mother. You think I’ve hatched a plot with her, of all people?”

  Stenman’s expression indicated she did not. The phone rang again. Again, Stenman answered. This time she placed the caller on speaker. It was the Swiss National branch manager.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last fifteen minutes . . .” said the manager. He explained his concern over the transfer of $800 million out of five accounts and the rapid movement of those funds to Mauritius Trust Bank. “I know what you do is none of my affair, but I decided to call and—”

  “Are you suggesting that I am missing close to a billion dollars?” said Stenman. “This had better be a bad joke . . . Who authorized the transfer?”

  “I’m not supposed—”

  “Who authorized the goddamn transfer?” she repeated, her voice full of death.

  “Your attorney. Mr. Ayers. Just a while ago. At first there was a problem—something about the acoustics in a bathroom—but then things cleared up. This isn’t our fault, ma’am. Mr. Ayers has authorization to move funds from one account to another. You and a Mr. Peter Neil then authorized the final transfer from your joint account.”

  Stenman vibrated. Peter tried hard to look shocked. “I . . . I’ll move the money back,” he stammered. “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Here.” Stenman handed Peter the phone.
“Make the damn call and get me my money back. Now.”

  Peter pulled the phone number from his wallet and placed the call to his 24-hour/7-day-a-week African banker. When he got through, he expressed a desire to transfer all of his funds to one of Stenman’s Swiss accounts.

  “I am happy to do so, sir,” the banker said, his accented voice resonating from the speaker, “but are you certain you wish to do that? We have a minimum transfer fee of $100 on this type of account.”

  “I don’t care about the fee,” Peter said, raising his voice in a manner meant to express impatience. “Do it.”

  “But, sir, it does not make sense to pay one-hundred dollars to transfer one dollar.”

  “This is Morgan Stenman,” Stenman shouted, “and I demand to know what you are talking about?”

  “Mr. Neil? Are you there?”

  “Yes,” Peter answered. “But what’s this about one dollar? I was told that someone transferred $800 million to my Mauritius Trust account from Swiss National. Check again.”

  After a moment of awkward silence, the unhappy voice returned, “I am sorry, Mr. Neil, but no transfer was made to your account. You have only the one dollar used to set up the account.”

  Peter took the slip of paper Ayers had supplied him and Stenman for fund transfer. “My account number is 7392968127.”

  “Well, there,” the banker said, his voice registering relief. “That is the problem. The number you just read is not your account number.”

  “What? Not my number? . . .”

  Peter held up Ayers’ instructions and his account slip, pretending to look for what he already knew. Stenman leaned in, then grabbed the two papers and shook. She held the numbers side by side:

  7392698127

  7392968127

  “The six and the nine are reversed,” she said, her eyes wild. “We never sent the money to your account. They set me up.”

  Peter knew the “they” meant Ayers and Guzman.

  “We transferred those funds to someone else’s account. Whose account is this?” she screamed into the speaker.

  “I’ve already—”

  “Do you know who I am?” Stenman said, practically spitting at the African banker.

  “Yes,” he said through a croaking voice.

  “Then you either tell me, or I ruin you. Who?”

  “It was recently opened,” he began, “under Mr. Ayers’ authorization as a biometric account for Ms. Sarah Guzman. The account has already been emptied, however. Ms. Guzman called, not fifteen minutes ago, and moved everything to a Cayman bank.”

  “They took my money and got themselves immunity in the bargain,” Stenman said, now having heard more than enough.

  Peter didn’t need to explain. Stenman had figured it out. He and Morgan had sent the money to an account in Sarah Guzman’s name, with Morgan assuming it was Peter’s account. Sarah then made her call, from the beach, authorizing a transfer from that account to another ofher accounts in the Caymans. What Peter would never explain was that poor Sarah only did what Ayers told her to do. Sarah was under the impression that she had moved a mere five million dollars to Peter’s Cayman account. How was she supposed to remember all of her account numbers? After all, she had so many.

  Just then, a shot reverberated from outside. Peter’s look of shock was genuine.

  A few seconds later, the guard who had taken off after Ayers returned. “I had to, Ms. Stenman.”

  “You had to what?”

  “Mr. Ayers. He had a gun. I shot him. He’s dead.”

  Peter didn’t hear the sirens. This time, when the police cuffed him and read him his rights, he was oblivious to his own situation. Jason Ayers was dead. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

  As they escorted Peter, Stenman, and her three friends to the county jail, Peter wept.

  A smiling, good-looking man reached for Sarah Guzman’s hand and guided her on board the yacht. In the outboard motorboat, bobbing ten feet below the larger boat’s deck, Carlos watched and prepared himself to follow. Taking no chances, he had a 9mm in hand and at the ready. Carlos focused on his aunt and the man assisting her up the last rung of the ladder. The moment she stepped onto the deck, Carlos put his free hand on the side of the skiff to raise and steady himself.

  At that precise moment, a hand thrust itself from the water and snatched Carlos’ wrist, nailing it in place against the edge of the motorboat. A thick man in a black wetsuit broke the ocean’s choppy surface and tugged down, using his weight as leverage. Carlos lost his balance as the small craft tipped. The man who had met them at the beach—seated to Carlos’ back—started forward, his move perfectly timed. He gripped Carlos’ gun-hand and twisted. The boat then rocked in the opposite direction—buckling Carlos’ knees a second time—as two additional wetsuits effortlessly slung themselves on board from the far side. In less than five seconds, Carlos had eight-hundred pounds of Drug Enforcement personnel roughing him up. His weapon, now useless, lay at his feet. With a wet, rubber arm around his neck, he could barely breathe.

  The moment Sarah took her final step up, the engine of the larger craft revved and the boat lurched. “Follow me, Ms. Guzman,” the helpful man said. “We have a surprise for you.” He had to yell over the sounds of the powerful engine.

  Sarah looked for Carlos, but the boat took a sharp turn and the cabin blocked her view. “Where is Carlos?” she asked, her voice lost in the wind.

  The man shook his head and pointed to his ear, indicating he could-n’t hear her. When Sarah’s straw-brimmed hat flew off and tumbleweeded astern, the now not-so-helpful man made no move to retrieve it. She watched an ocean wave gobble the accessory.

  “Did you hear me?” she shouted.

  The man shrugged, then tromped towards the cabin. When he turned and motioned, Sarah stumbled forward. Her hair stiffened in the wind like straw. Once they stepped down and entered the cabin, the interior calm was eerie. A small, skinny man with fishbowl glasses sat behind a built-in table. He looked happy and familiar.

  It took a second, but Sarah recognized Agent Oliver Dawson from his photograph. It was an epiphany, coming like a searchlight through a previously pitch-black cave. She had never been so unprepared. A trap had been sprung and there was nowhere to go. Impotent rage washed over her. In that moment, her mind searched for novel ways to bring an end to people’s lives: Neil? Dawson? Ayers? Friends? Family? Others? “You’ve kidnapped me,” she said, clutching the documents she had just received. “And you’re not even with the SEC any more.”

  “Here,” Dawson said, “read this.” He handed her a piece of legal-size paper. “A short time ago, I sent a copy to Freeman Ranson and the SEC Director of Enforcement. Congratulations. You are forever immune from prosecution of all crimes connected to these papers you are about to turn over to me. In addition, the money you stole from Stenman Partners’ accounts—which I understand included significant funds from several drug cartels—is yours to do with as you please. You may even transfer any of those monies to U.S. investments without interference. Sweetest deal we’ve ever offered, but still a bargain.”

  “If you are talking about the five million I transferred to Neil’s account,” said Sarah, “all I have to say is: who gives a shit?”

  “No, no. Not that. The eight-hundred million you moved from your account in Africa to your account in the Cayman Islands. It was a brilliant stroke, making the account numbers so similar nobody would notice.”

  Dawson went on to highlight what had happened next. When Sarah had made the transfer phone-call on the beach, in full view of Morgan Stenman and her associates, she had moved a gigantic sum of money into a third account, also in her name.

  Sarah acted unconcerned. “I don’t need to understand what you are talking about,” she said. “When Carlos looks into your eyes, and then slices your skin from your bones, an inch at a time, you will regret this charade. I’ve eaten and spit out little nothings like you. I will make you suffer.”

  “Ever choked on a little nothing?�
�� Dawson asked. “And Carlos? I don’t think I’ll be running into him any time soon. He has his hands full with DEA. With what we’re about to learn, thanks to your cooperation with those documents, he’ll be under a cloud of suspicion for dealing in drugs and drug money. He’ll be held, without bail, while these allegations are investigated. Convenient that Mexico’s president is a drug-fighter. We’ve received his assurances we can do with Carlos as we deem necessary.”

  “You think so?” Sarah asked. “When he gets out—”

  “When?” Dawson interrupted. “If . . . My friends at DEA inform me that the investigation will take at least a decade—and he may end up rooming with Manuel Noriega. You remember him? President of Panama? Maybe you did business with the prick before the U.S. military grabbed him and put him away. He’s been asking for a Spanish-speaking, scumbag amigo to rot in hell with. Nuñoz might be a good fit.”

  Sarah ceased listening. Reaching for her cellular phone, she fully expected Dawson to stop her, but all he did was grin, listen, and look full of himself, as she confirmed that she had indeed moved funds to one of her accounts instead of Peter Neil’s.

  “Fine, Goddammit,” she shouted to the banker at Cayman Island Trust. “I want to transfer the funds back. Put them in one of Stenman Partners’ accounts.”

  The SEC agent imagined what the frightened voice on the other end of the phone was saying. He counted to four, then heard pretty much what he expected from Sarah Guzman: “I don’t have a damn password, you moron. I want to move the money back. How difficult can that be?”

  This time Dawson counted to six before she again exploded: “I can’t get the password from Mr. Ayers for the simple reason that he set me up. This is . . .”

  Nice touch, Dawson thought. Peter and Ayers had sucked Sarah in. Not a dime would ever be moved from that account without an all-important password. Peter didn’t know what it was. Only Ayers had that bit of vital intelligence.

  Sarah’s phone conversation ended a minute later as she threatened to murder the banker, along with everyone else on Grand Cayman Island.