The Devil on Chardonnay

by Ed Baldwin

  “But you’ve entrapped me!” His mind began churning, trying to remember his lawyer’s name to drop. Maybe stop this assault.

  “Yes, we have,” Pam said, softening her tone. “We want your cooperation. We want to know everything you know about BioVet Tech.”

  Cooper Jordan’s mind reeled. Curiously, he was reminded of a television show where he’d seen two police officers play “good cop/bad cop” with a suspect to get him to reveal information. If Pam was playing good cop, he didn’t want to even think about Boyd Chailland as the bad cop.

  “… and we want to know it now, this morning. This is a matter of national security, and you’re going to sit in that chair and not make any telephone calls until we find out what we came here to find,” she continued.

  **********

  Weeds poked up through the asphalt parking lot, and a stray dog that had been loitering around the dumpsters in back hurried into the woods as Boyd’s car rolled to a stop that afternoon. The BioVet Tech sign, built into a berm in front of the building, still looked new. The grass needed mowing. The last of the half-dozen cars parked there during the afternoon left just before 6, and Boyd, dressed in running shorts and a faded T-shirt, pulled in a few minutes later.

  Going through his routine stretch beside the car, he watched for any sign of security. There was none. Jogging slowly, he looped behind the building, getting a quick look at the trash area before getting to the county road just off the highway between Goose Creek and Monck’s Corner, a few miles north of Charleston. Forty minutes later, he returned, sweating like any jogger. He paused behind the building and tested the doors, looked into the dumpsters and jotted down the serial numbers of several pieces of equipment set out for the trash company to haul off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  A Taco Truck

  “A taco truck?” Gen. Ferguson exploded.

  “Yes, sir,” Boyd responded. “A complete bust. The money wired to Paris to pay off Jacques came from Island Enterprises LLC, an offshore company headquartered in the Cayman Islands with an account in Charleston. As I said, their only asset visible to Planters National Bank is a taco truck leased to a Salvadoran family that operates it on the Battery in the summer. It’s closed now that the tourist season is over.”

  “Any connection to that vaccine company you’re watching?”

  “None,” Boyd said, cringing at the rage he was feeling over the telephone. They’d burned up a pile of cash making like big-shot bankers and now they had zilch. To make it worse, they’d brought in teams from the CDC, FEMA and Homeland Security. Federal agents occupied an entire floor of the Omni, with more on the way. He was calling Ferguson on the secure line they’d had installed since expanding their investigation. They’d been having daily meetings with the U.S. Attorney, presenting him with what they thought was sufficient information to get a warrant to search BioVet Tech. He was unconvinced. The CDC was insisting on some kind of immediate takedown in the name of national security, and FEMA and Homeland Security were in agreement. The Justice Department was insisting that the CDC and South Carolina had authority to inspect BioVet Tech any time they wanted under existing statute. It was a standoff.

  “Wrap it up. Leave it to the bureaucrats. File a final report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Chardonnay

  The white of her sails was visible from Cooper Jordan’s office two hours before the sleek cruising yacht Chardonnay furled them in front of the Battery and motored smoothly up the Ashley River to the Charleston Yacht Club. Locals and tourists alike stared at the tall masts and rakish profile of this graceful ship. Unlike anything built in the past century, Chardonnay’s open deck and long bowsprit epitomized elegance and adventure, rare in this day when sailing vessels bulge with enlarged cabins to accommodate comfort at the expense of speed and simplicity.

  A woman stood on the foredeck, barefoot, clad only in the briefest of shorts and a longbrimmed baseball cap. She scanned Charleston through binoculars as Charleston scanned her ship. Between Fort Sumter and the Battery, when the flotilla of gawking tourists discovered that the tall slender individual in the cap was female and began taking pictures, she went below. Boyd watched Chardonnay approach through a long tripod-mounted telescope in the office of the president of Planters National Bank.

  “She made the crossing in only 10 days!” Jordan had exclaimed when the yacht club called the night before with the news that Chardonnay had radioed from a hundred miles out of the mouth of Charleston Harbor. “Even the big motor yachts don’t do it any faster than that.”

  No work had gotten done in the office of the president since the sail first appeared on the horizon at 9 a.m. Boyd, Pamela, Donn, Cooper, his secretary and various other bank employees checking in every few minutes watched the approach of the yacht. At first, Boyd didn’t understand what the big deal was. It was just a boat. Then the size and uniqueness of the ship became evident.

  “Chardonnay is 118 feet long, her mast is 129 feet tall, she is all wood, constructed in 1909,” Cooper recited proudly, as if speaking of a granddaughter.

  “Impressive,” Donn said, taking his turn at the telescope. Boyd thought he might be talking about the woman and not the boat.

  With Cooper Jordan’s cooperation, they had maintained their banker identities for a few more days as the federal agencies continued their wrangling over at the Omni. The stakeouts of BioVet Tech had produced nothing.

  “The provenance is even more interesting,” Cooper Jordan broke in to take yet another gaze at the spectacle sailing into Charleston Harbor. “Chardonnay is owned by the grandson of the founder of Meilland Freres, one of the oldest and most prestigious of the European merchant banks, and the lady you see there is his granddaughter. They are the aristocrats of the banking industry.”

  “Aristocrats or predators?” Pam said darkly.

  “Hah! A student of banking history. Yes, Meilland Freres has been at the center of European political turmoil for 150 years. In Europe, the merchant banks have been the only source of capital. They bring new stock offerings to the public, underwrite bonds, both corporate and government. It was the merchant bankers who enabled expansion, financed wars, massive projects like the Suez Canal, and even propped up governments during times of panic and crisis. As the providers of capital, they’ve been at the center of whatever happens in government, science and industry,” Cooper responded, stepping back from the telescope.

  “And, they’ve fed upon the losers,” Pamela said, taking his spot to look at Chardonnay.

  “Yes, fortunes are made and lost, and the merchant bankers handle the transition.”

  “It was more than that,” Pam said, stepping back and letting Cooper’s secretary have a look. “When the French Revolution began the process of making commoners of royalty, and they had to sell off their estates to pay the taxes, it was the Rothschilds, and the Warburgs, the Lazards, and the Meillands who handled the financing. Then, as wars coalesced the small duchies and kingdoms of the Middle Ages into modern Germany, France, Austria and Italy, the losers cashed out with the merchant bankers.”

  “Pam, you’re a socialist. You should love that,” Donn said with a laugh.

  Boyd was in awe of her passion. When Pam got started, it was something to behold.

  “The merchant bankers helped the strong devour the weak. Then they licked the plate,” she said in disgust. But, she couldn’t stop.

  “They financed Bismarck when he jumped into World War I to expand Germany’s borders. They were at the table, urging appeasement with Hitler, when Chamberlain gave away Czechoslovakia. Jews, gypsies, blacks and liberals of all types fled Hitler, and the bankers bought their property for a fraction of its value. After the war, it was the merchant bankers who handled the aid payments from America to rebuild Europe, taking their cut as always. The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted to ensure the U.S. never has permanent insiders, upper class bankers, like the Meillands.”

  “Isn’t the presid
ent of Citicorp like a Meilland? Boyd asked, remembering Pamela’s rage at Ferguson when she had first met him. Elitism seemed to spark a special hatred.

  “No. He’s appointed by a board of directors, and they are elected by shareholders. When they feel inclined, they replace him,” she exclaimed, as if the replacement would be accomplished with a beheading. “And his son does not step into the job.”

  She sulked now, point made.

  “There’s some gossip,” Cooper Jordan said cheerfully.

  “There always is,” Pamela responded, rancor dissipating.

  “It seems Mademoiselle Meilland has been involved in a series of intrigues of the heart.”

  His smooth, deep voice drew out the vowels, the result added emphasis to each part of the sentence.

  “A count and his wife, the countess, had an actual duel with pistols in the casino at Monte Carlo. The rumor was that they were both in love with Mademoiselle Meilland.”

  They all laughed.

  “Who won the duel?” Boyd asked.

  “They were both terrible shots.” Jordan responded slowly, as if savoring each syllable. “A croupier lost part of an ear. Several cut glass mirrors were broken, and a chandelier was destroyed. The royals were unscathed physically, though they must have suffered whispers and snickers for some time afterward.”

  “What’s she doing here?” the secretary asked.

  “She’s come to buy Sand Island, and she’s been invited to a party in her honor at the yacht club tonight. It should be quite the affair. You should come. The elusive Lymon Byxbe should be there,” Jordan said, turning to face Boyd with a wry tilt of his head.

  “Lymon Byxbe?” Boyd asked.

  “Lymon is the chief researcher and majority shareholder of BioVet Tech.”

  *****

  A soaking rain was falling as Boyd arrived at the Yacht Club, parking two blocks away and sprinting past the lines of cars trying to get the ladies close to the door to save their hastily coifed hair. Inside, chaos reigned. The 119-foot yacht was a splinter compared with the USS Yorktown, a World War II aircraft carrier permanently anchored in the Cooper River on the other side of the Battery, yet here were scores of people gussied up for a party called in just the past 24 hours to celebrate its arrival.

  “Oh, Boyd, thank God you’re here!” Amalie Jordan exclaimed, grabbing his arm as he entered. “Cooper is back in the kitchen arguing over shrimp and liquor, and the club president is late as always. Chardonnay has radioed a request for the covered launch to pick up Mademoiselle Meilland, and I’ve no one to send with the driver. Would you be a dear and take some umbrellas and go along, to help her?”

  “I can handle that,” Boyd responded.

  Amalie thrust two umbrellas into his hand and indicated a young black man dressed in rain gear waiting by the door. He followed the man out into the rain, through the yacht basin with a hundred or more closed up sailboats and fishing boats, out to the dock where the motor launch was tied.

  Chardonnay loomed much larger than he’d expected when he had watched her approach that sunny morning. Now in the rainy, early evening gloom, her bowsprit pointed upriver like the tusk of some ancient sea creature. Lighted by floodlights on deck, the two masts brushed the clouds.

  The launch maneuvered toward steps lowered from the deck a few feet above them. Boyd felt inadequate holding two flimsy umbrellas with swells raising and lowering his launch three feet at a time and rain falling straight down so hard the noise drowned out all sound but the gurgle of the launch in neutral.

  “Permission to come aboard!” Boyd called out, remembering something about the proper way to board a naval vessel in port.

  His voice was lost in the rain. He looked to the launch driver who stared blankly back. Repeating his request, louder, he closed one of the umbrellas and stepped onto the bottom step. The flimsy stairs, little more than a ladder, swayed with his weight and he was afraid they would break. As he looked down into the dark, oily water below, a shadow passed.

  The light gray parasol had tassels hanging from the sides and flowers embroidered on the top. It appeared all the smaller because it was held in the grip of a massive hand, protruding over the stairs and attached to an equally impressive arm. Boyd heard a female voice speaking rapidly in French and then, quickly, pink high-heel shoes were on the steps above him, leading to fine shapely legs that disappeared beneath a short white skirt. Tearing his eyes from their natural tendency to follow the legs into the dark, Boyd looked up, above the skirt, to see a straight back with squared shoulders and blond hair done tightly in a braid. The rain brought down her scent, and Boyd was smitten before he even saw the face of Michelle Meilland.

  He stepped back into the boat and held up his larger umbrella for her. She backed quickly down the stairs, trying to keep her head in the small sheltered space created by the parasol held by the large man still on the deck above her. Reaching the last step she turned to face Boyd and hesitated just a moment before leaving the parasol and ducking under his umbrella.

  “Thank you. You are Monsieur Jordan?” She asked breathlessly, straightening her clothing as she stepped under the cover of the launch and finally standing to look up only slightly into Boyd’s wide-eyed, speechless face.

  “Uh. No. I’m Boyd Chailland. Cooper Jordan is back at the club, arguing over shrimp.”

  “A crisis already. I hope it’s not on my account.”

  “Well, no. Cooper wanted to meet you. I mean, we all wanted to meet you.” This was going badly, he thought.

  “I’m Michelle Meilland, Mr. Chailland. Are you French? You have a French name.”

  “A long time ago. Will there be anyone else?” He asked, looking back up the steps.

  “Yes.” She looked back up the steps. “Wolf. We are waiting.”

  Bareheaded and nearly soaked, Wolf descended the stairs quickly. His tanned calves seemed to squeeze into shoes too small to support a man so large. He turned on the last step and glided into the shelter of the launch, his wet shirt stretched over pectorals. His tiny puckered nipples seemed afterthoughts, hiding from the cold rain under a bulging mass of muscle. He offered his meaty hand.

  “I’m Wolf Goebel.”

  “Boyd Chailland.” Boyd took the hand, not afraid of a strong grip.

  When he looked into Goebel's eyes for the first time, Boyd was surprised. Square Nordic face, blond hair and blue eyes, thick neck and squared trapezii, Wolf outweighed Boyd by 30 pounds, though he lacked an inch or two in reaching Boyd’s height. Instantly, he knew Wolf to be one of those he’d expected to meet on this mission. The surprise was in how quickly he knew it: Wolf had killed.

  Wolf knew just as quickly. The smile seemed genuine, but he was wary. He kept himself between Boyd and the woman. The launch started, and they swung out into the channel and back toward the Yacht Club.

  Keeping the two large umbrellas overlapped, Boyd and Wolf kept Michelle Meilland dry, getting soaked themselves as they hurried up the wooden dock to the brief awning at the back door of the Yacht Club. The door swung open as they arrived, and Donn and Cooper Jordan rushed out, eager to help, now that the job was done. Shaking off the water, Boyd and Wolf stepped under the awning; their combined bulk shadowed the others from the mercury vapor light overhead. Brief introductions, and then the door was opened again and they entered. The room, noisy with the conversations of a hundred people, became silent in an instant.

  Cooper Jordan maneuvered himself to be on Mme. Meilland’s left, and he took her arm as if he had assisted her across the quarter mile of rain-swept sea to this spot. His baritone voice, seemingly out of place in such a frail, mousey little man, boomed out a formal introduction in French.

  “Please, I am Mikki. Please call me Mikki. Michelle is so formal. My grandfather calls me Michelle, my friends know only Mikki.”

  She pronounced Mikki with equal emphasis on each syllable, which gives more weight to the second than is usual in South Carolina pronunciation, which would draw out the first and clip off the
second.

  Boyd chuckled to hear dozens quietly repeating, “Mikki,” with the emphasis on the second sound. Every eye was locked on her as she wiped her face and then ankles with the proffered towel. Boyd and Wolf dripped unnoticed.

  Her pink shoes accented faint pink edging on the cuffs, collar and lapels of the white linen suit. The simplicity of expensive linen carefully padded in the shoulders and snug around the buttocks, then fuller just slightly as the skirt ended midthigh, assured even the casual observer that this costume was made for, indeed was crafted on, this woman and no other.

  As she held out her hand to the first of a forming line of well-wishers, her diamond earrings captured the light in a dozen twinkling ways. They were simple, yet none who met her failed to look at them for a moment at least.

  “Mme. Meilland, I understand you have met professor Lymon Byxbe, our esteemed scientist and industrialist.” Cooper Jordan had placed Byxbe at the head of Charleston society for the introductions.

  Both men beamed under the charismatic charm of Mme. Meilland. Boyd craned to see. Byxbe was bald, thin, middle-age. He fit Jacques’ description of Mosby.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Oyay Ajak

  Davann Goodman leaned on his cane for balance as he stood at the foot of the bed mating vigorously with the African girl he’d met at the Mombasa Yacht Club. His war injuries impaired ambulation but not copulation, and he was pursuing that with a single-minded enthusiasm. The rounded perfection of Mariam Ajak’s freely offered posterior had driven Davann to carelessness, and he hadn’t noticed when the door downstairs squeaked open or the passage of several large bodies up the stairs.

  Completing the act, Davann dropped his cane to the floor and collapsed on the bed with Mariam. She covered herself, then rose and walked to the toilet and closed the door. Several minutes passed and Davann went to sleep.

  “Sir!” A deep melodious voice broke the silence.

  Davann woke to see three large black men at the foot of his bed. In an instant, he was the Marine again, mind racing. He hadn’t seen any guns, good, as his was in his pants behind the intruders. He rolled to the side of the bed and pulled the survival knife he always kept strapped to his ankle, an ace in the hole when everything else fails. The window, and a three story drop to the street, was behind him. He calculated his chances.