Clawback

by Mike Cooper

  The plan was that no one would ever know I’d been inside the Riverton suite. Nothing stolen, everything put back and, to all appearances, undisturbed. Like the emperor’s ninja, I would vanish unseen. I needed information—not a posse saddling up. Still, if something went wrong, and some painstaking forensic team went through afterward, I didn’t want them sweeping up my DNA.

  Running into someone unexpectedly in the hallway was a chance we’d take, but a small one. The building appeared deserted, and I’d only be in public areas for a minute or two.

  Hendrick pulled the door open, then closed it silently behind us. He wasn’t going in, so he didn’t need the protective gear.

  The Riverton Commodities door was halfway down the hall. Hendrick bent to examine the buffed keypad for a long moment, then knelt and put his head all the way down to the floor, peering at the door’s base.

  “Are you ready?” he whispered.

  “Yup.”

  “I will bypass the alarm first, then open the door. I think tape will hold the latch fine. Then I leave. Where will you wait?”

  “In the stairwell.”

  “Please remember, twenty minutes.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  He gave me a funny look. Dutch schoolchildren must not use that expression.

  “I mean, I pinky-swear.”

  Hendrick just shook his head. He took a coat hanger from under his jacket—yes, a regular, laundry-service wire hanger. Same reason as Zeke carried a BB gun instead of a real weapon. He untwisted it and bent the wire into a big L.

  “Okay,” he muttered, then punched a four-digit code into the keypad. The lock clicked.

  I didn’t even have time to be impressed by the speed before Hendrick had knelt again and fished the coat hanger under the door. An instant later he reached up, turned the knob—

  —and stood up, like a satisfied butler, gesturing with a sweep of his arm and a small bow.

  “That’s it?” For what I was paying him, it should have taken longer than a few fucking seconds.

  “They never reset the administration password,” he whispered. “And when the motion detector saw movement inside, it thought someone was exiting, so it unlocked the door automatically.”

  “If it’s that easy, I’ll do it myself next time.”

  “Sure.” He shrugged, then cut a strip of metal tape from a small roll and placed it over the latch. “Go ahead and try.”

  Back inside the fire stairs Hendrick clapped me once on the shoulder and started to walk down.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Twenty minutes, don’t forget.” And he was gone.

  I stood and waited, beginning to sweat inside the plastic suit.

  Ninety-five seconds later Zeke’s voice came through the earpiece.

  “He’s gone.”

  “All the way?”

  “Saw the car drive off.” A pause, then, “All clear otherwise.”

  “Good.” I checked my gloves one last time. “Fuck the twenty minutes, I’m going in.”

  “Fine.” Unsurprised.

  I went back down the hallway. In the building’s dense, after-hours silence, my Tyvek rustling seemed painfully loud. At Riverton’s door, I didn’t stop—just pushed it open, and stepped through.

  Assuming Hendrick’s analysis of the security system was accurate, all I had to do was find the camera’s controller, almost certainly in the equipment closet I’d seen during my reconnaissance visit, and turn it off. He’d given me a USB stick, preloaded with Russian cracking software, that would go to work automatically. Kind of like a pick gun for a PC. I didn’t mean what I said before—the guy was a genius.

  I felt like whistling as I headed into the executive suite. This was going to be a walk in the park. I could just feel it.

  “Good God! Who the hell are you? What’s going on?!” Frank Riverton jumped up, yelled and scrabbled for his console phone all at the same time. Papers went flying. Somehow he knocked his laptop off the desk, and it crashed to the gleaming hardwood floor.

  So much for all that stealth ninja shit. I should have just kicked the door in.

  Of course my Sig was inside the zippered moon suit. I jumped over to the desk and grabbed the phone out of his hands, yanking the cord so hard it broke.

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  “What is this shit?!”

  “What’s up?” Zeke’s voice in my ear. My yelling had probably deafened him.

  “An asshole working overtime.”

  Pause. “Is this a situation?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll let you know.”

  We were in the biggest office, with corner windows and heavy teak furniture. Riverton stared at me, finally quiet but twitchy.

  “We found sarin in the ventilation system,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. You’ll probably be dead in five minutes.”

  It only threw him for a few seconds, but that was enough. I finally extracted the P226 and pointed it at him.

  “What do you want?” He fell back into his big executive chair, suddenly nerveless.

  “Are you Riverton?” Of course I knew the answer was yes, but I wanted him to think we were meeting for the first time—one more bit of distance from the idiot who’d stopped in yesterday, trying to pawn his ex-wife’s jewelry.

  “Uh—”

  “You run this bucket shop?”

  He hesitated, then: “No. He went home already.”

  I pulled the trigger. The blast was stunningly loud in the room. The bullet passed just over his shoulder, shredding leather and padding and knocking the chair backward. Riverton fell off, hit the floor hard, and came back up slow. We were both half deafened.

  “Shit,” I said. “I missed.” I took the handgun in both hands, aiming more carefully at the center of his face.

  Zeke’s voice: “You never miss. Stop fucking around up there.”

  “Don’t shoot me.” The man’s voice was hoarse.

  “Let’s try again. Are you Riverton?”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “Very good.” I kept the Sig motionless, locked on his eyes. “I have one question. It’s a very easy question. Will you answer it?”

  “Yes!”

  Researchers on hostile interrogation—makes you wonder where they do their fieldwork, doesn’t it?—have discovered that getting your subject to say they’ll help, even under duress, actually increases the likelihood of truthful answers. Hard to believe, but true.

  Our own brains are usually our worst enemies.

  “You conducted a number of related trades recently,” I said. “I’m going to briefly describe the transactions, and then you’ll tell me the name of the client. All clear?”

  He nodded.

  “I said, all clear?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay.” I allowed a brief, dramatic pause. “July. Cobalt. The counterparty was Jeremy Akel—”

  I could have stopped at the second word. Riverton’s face was so obvious I wondered how he’d ever worked the pits.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but…” His voice trailed away.

  “Good, that makes this easier. So who was it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Excuse me?” I gestured with the pistol, drawing his attention back to the mouth of the barrel.

  “I don’t know!”

  “What do you mean? Twelve mil didn’t walk through here in cash. Who the hell signed the checks?”

  “All I had was a company name. Everything was transacted via bank drafts. Final disposition was a SWIFT transaction to a foreign account.”

  Skating the edges of regulation, that. “Uh-huh. What was the company?”

  “Blacktail Capital.”

  It took me a second, and then I felt that electric thrill of discovery.

  The jigsaw puzzle, assembling itself. The case was moving.

  Riverton had given it up so fast that I decided he�
��d actually been playing the game straight. He would have filed all the proper reports with both British and U.S. regulators, kept good records, maybe even called the police himself when Akelman died, just to keep his nose clean.

  If he wasn’t dirty, then he wasn’t involved.

  And if he wasn’t involved, he’d do the right thing again, and call 911 as soon as I was gone.

  “Boo-Boo Bear?” I said to Zeke. “Might be code red after all, when I finally leave.”

  “Make it soon.”

  “Yup.” I turned my attention back to Riverton. “Okay, that’s fine, we’re done.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, one thing.” I almost forgot. “You’ve got cameras running in your foyer. I’m afraid I can’t leave that video behind.”

  Indeed not. Riverton wouldn’t be a good eyewitness. The outfit I was wearing—hat, scary suit, hood—along with the handgun, which kept his attention pretty much every second, would make it very difficult for him to provide the detectives a useful description. But the cameras could. I needed to eliminate that footage.

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  The son of a bitch was trying to be sly. I felt affronted.

  “No? Fine. Option two.”

  “Option…?”

  “I’ll have to assume that camera server is located in your computer room down that hall, with all the other equipment.”

  “I don’t know,” Riverton said again. But I watched him closely, and it was like a textbook illustration of tells: quick swallow, eyes cutting to one side, a short breath.

  “I don’t have time to figure out which server is which, though. Instead, I’m going to have to destroy them all.” I reached into the moon suit. “A couple of thermite charges will melt every hard drive in there down to slag.”

  He blanched. “Wait—”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You’ve got offsite backups for the critical data, right? All your trading information, like that?”

  Zeke in my ear: “What is he, a total moron?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No.” Riverton, sweating visibly, held up a hand. “Maybe I remember.”

  In the utility closet, he showed me the camera computer, and I probably could have figured it out myself: its dedicated monitor showed a view of the waiting area, and the only external connections were two coaxial cables that entered the wall just below the ceiling. Still, nice to have the confirmation.

  “Thanks,” I said, and cracked the box open to extract the drive. Fortunately it was one of those toolless builds.

  “Yo.” Zeke, so quiet I barely heard him. “Hurry up.”

  “Almost done.” I yanked the drive free, tearing its internal connectors.

  “Sirens.”

  “On my way.” To Riverton: “Sorry.” I tapped him on the head with the pistol and spent an extra moment to flexicuff him to the server rack. It would take the police that much longer to find him here—seconds, or maybe even minutes, that I needed.

  “Broomstick,” said Zeke.

  “Broomstick,” I repeated. Not exactly NSA cryptography, but we’d just agreed to meet at our second—B for 2, get it?—prearranged rendezvous. A few blocks farther away. I had no doubt Zeke would be there, too, despite the increased risk to himself.

  It makes you feel good having people you can trust.

  “Good night moon,” I said, and let myself out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  One of the oddities of my profession is how difficult it can be to arrange a face-to-face with the client.

  “I could swing by your office.”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Coffee shop nearby?”

  “No coffeeshops.”

  And so forth. Of course we couldn’t discuss business on the phone. And I understood why Ganderson didn’t want to be seen with me, at least not anymore. Conditions were volatile, the case out of anyone’s control. Hiring your own off-the-books Annihilator could draw attention Ganderson didn’t need—the IRS not least, always interested in those missing 1099s.

  Still, even to someone as paranoid as myself, this was ridiculous.

  “How about outside? We can take a walk.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “Not more than a drizz—”

  “And there are cameras everywhere. You can’t go anywhere outside without someone watching you on video.”

  Fair point.

  “How about you pick me up in the limo again?”

  “I don’t want a driver involved.”

  Of course he wouldn’t drive the damn thing himself. “Well, what do you suggest?”

  A minute later, Ganderson came up with an idea original enough to impress even me.

  “A hospital waiting room,” he said.

  The more I considered, the better it sounded. “No cameras, because of health-care privacy law. No one else paying attention, because either they’re in pain or their friend is. Constant background noise to keep a conversation private. I like it.” Ganderson had just had a genius moment.

  A few more and he wouldn’t need me any longer.

  So here I was, in the half-filled, reasonably clean vinyl seats of St. Joseph’s. It hadn’t been my first choice, because I’d come through just four days ago with Clara. But it was convenient to Ganderson’s office, and he wouldn’t consider going farther.

  The waiting area seemed crowded for a weekday, with more than half the chairs filled and background chatter punctuated by children crying and an occasional siren. Of course Ganderson had to make me wait, thirty-five minutes past the time we agreed. Fortunately there was an amusing little mishap, at the swinging doors between the ambulance dock and the emergency wards, when a gurney collided with a scrub nurse carrying an open Starbucks. The coffee must have been hot, because the patient screamed and jerked around and tore out his IV line. Everyone got so busy yelling at each other they nearly forgot about the victim.

  I was still chuckling when Ganderson walked in.

  “No, don’t get up,” he said, dropping into the chair next to me. Not that I had made any move to. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Don’t sit there,” I said, but he was already up again, slapping at the seat of his nice charcoal suit. “What is that? Blood? Mother of God!”

  “No,” I said. “Baby puke, maybe.”

  A satisfying start to the meeting, all the way around. We finally settled in across the room, Ganderson wiping at his ass with wet paper towels.

  “I’m still working,” I said. “I’d have reported anything new. What’s up?”

  “That last time we talked, the body count was still at three. Now it’s five.”

  “Everything I know about Faust and Plank has been in the news already. And Plank’s still alive, isn’t he?”

  “Faust and Plank.” Ganderson shook his head. “Simon Faust was a friend of mine.”

  Different circles, all right. “I’m sorry,” I said flatly.

  “Maybe ‘friend’ is overstating the case. Business acquaintance, anyhow. We did a deal or two together.”

  “Still.”

  “That’s right. Still.” Ganderson stared at the triage desk, the kind of stare that doesn’t actually see anything. “He called me.”

  “That morning?”

  “Yes. About an hour before he was…before he died.”

  “He knew he was being targeted?”

  “Of course. About fifty people had contacted him, he said.”

  I wondered who. Other traders, I bet, thinking the same as Johnny: Interesting rumor—what can I do with it?

  “But Simon said he’d seen it first on the Today show,” Ganderson continued. “Can you imagine that?”

  Hearing on national television that I was next on some mad killer’s to-do list? “No,” I said. “I can’t imagine that.”

  “Me neither.” And just like that, the eulogy was over. Ganderson cleared his throat and swung his gaze back to me. “Terry Plank is different,” he said.

&nb
sp; “Yes.” Among other things, as mentioned, he was still alive.

  “The press has abandoned all forbearance on this story. It’s everywhere.”

  “I might have noticed.”

  “In other words, sorry to say, exactly what you were hired to prevent has now occurred.”

  “Well, not exact—”

  “These deaths,” Ganderson bored on, “are now the single biggest news story in the country.”

  “Really? Bigger than Lindsey Lohan?”

  “That’s a different audience.”

  We paused while a middle-aged woman shuffled past, supported on either side by a younger version of herself, the two daughters muttering at each other over her head.

  “Did you have that conversation with Blacktail?” I asked.

  Ganderson nodded. “I’d have to say they were…evasive.”

  “Gee, really?”

  “They had a lawyer in the room, the whole time. Phil Tarbari, you know him?”

  “Only by reputation.” Powerful, downtown, well connected—a silver-haired fixer, decades on the Street, the sort of guy whose client list was more or less published in the Forbes 400 every year.

  Blacktail had brought a howitzer to a knife fight.

  “Did they tell you anything?”

  “We discussed the weather. And the Giants.”

  I shook my head. “Joe Saxon works for Blacktail, as their director of security.”

  “They don’t deny it.”

  “Saxon is a Special Forces veteran gone very bad.”

  “They showed me his service record.” Ganderson laced his fingers over one knee. “They’ve got a certified war hero on the payroll.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Why do you think they need him? To walk around the office at night, checking the windows? Come on.”

  “Honestly?” Ganderson smiled. “He’s part of the sales pitch. ‘We’re so important, even our support staff includes Medal of Honor winners.’ Same reason they hire models and strippers for IR.”

  Investor relations, that is—the public face of the firm. Actually, I kind of doubted the stripper part, but it was undeniably true that many hedge funds had tall, blond twenty-four-year-olds issuing their press releases.