Mortal Crimes 1

by Various Authors

  Most Americans would never know just how close the entire economy had come to total collapse in the later summer and fall of 2008. The crisis had left the financial system shaky, nervous, and ripe for manipulation.

  For all the exploits, rumor, and innuendo, the building looked elegant, modern, and stately. As professional as a bank lobby, as hallowed as a temple.

  The three men—Malcolm Hathwell, James Ivie, and Abe Goldberg sat on one end of the massive table. The table was fifty tons of Vermont granite, seamless. It had been in this room for half a century; all remodeling was done around the thing.

  “Now, what’s the angle?” Goldberg asked.

  Malcolm laid out the case.

  He’d done his research since meeting with Terrance Nolan. ChinaOne Petroleum was the big prize. It was traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which had more relaxed rules for foreign ownership than mainland Chinese exchanges. The current market capitalization was just under sixty billion dollars.

  The potential was something else entirely. Terrance claimed that this single field would give ChinaOne an extra three million barrels per day of production, giving it a total that would approach Exxon-Mobile, currently the world’s largest company by both revenue and market capitalization. This field alone would justify a six, eight, maybe even tenfold increase in the value of ChinaOne.

  Taken as a whole, the other companies involved offered a similar potential. Total market capitalization of these companies was about one hundred billion dollars. When the dust settled, that number might reach a trillion.

  The men listened to his presentation in silence. He could see the greed in their expressions, but also reservations.

  Only one kind of person made it on Wall Street. It wasn’t enough to be smart or even smart and hard-working; someone else would always outwork you, or stab you in the back. Smart, hard-working, and ruthless was a good start, but even that wasn’t enough. Those guys usually burned out, took their hundred mil and retired to a beach house in Saint Tropez.

  It was the guys like Malcolm and his partners, who commanded all three of those virtues, together with a nasty competitive streak, who owned the world of finance.

  Boiled down to its simplest form, Wall Street was just a game of Monopoly with more elaborate rules and bigger stakes. You didn’t play to amass real estate, to collect the rents of the fools who landed on your properties. You played until your enemy drew the dreaded ‘Advance to Boardwalk’ card, a property you just happened to happened to own, fully developed with a hotel.

  Two thousand dollars, please. What, you can’t pay? So sorry, I guess you lose.

  Yeah, it was real money on Wall Street. No difference. Money didn’t matter, money was just the scoring system.

  James Ivie tugged at one ear, the lobe of which was longer than the other side from decades of tugging while thinking. He was the cautious one; if Malcolm won him over, Goldberg would follow.

  “Sounds dangerous. The current administration is not as likely to turn a blind eye, not with all of the scandals of the last ten years.”

  “We’re risk takers,” Malcolm said. “And think of the rewards. Each man in this room will be richer than Buffett or Gates. What risk isn’t worth that kind of take?”

  “The risk of spending the rest of my life in prison,” Ivie said. “Insider trading of this scale…”

  “It’s not insider trading. We have no connection to any of these companies, not yet. And all we’ll do is position ourselves. Line up our assets, ready to spring when the news is leaked. When we leak it. We’ll take some modest positions now, lay a paper trail for what we’re going to pull off. It will look incredibly lucky, but it won’t look like insider trading.”

  “And what about your friend?” Goldberg asked. “What did you promise him?”

  “Terrance Nolan? One percent of the take, but I wouldn’t worry about that. We can easily throw him a bone, or cut him out entirely if we don’t want to bother.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ivie asked. “He’s the one most likely to rat us out.”

  “He’s CIA and this is CIA information. He rats us out, he’ll be facing treason charges. He goes down, his cell won’t be a country club prison in Greenwich. It will be Leavenworth. Or worse.”

  They went around the table a few more times, but in the end Malcolm’s partners came around to his way of thinking.

  “Tell us what you need,” Goldberg said, after it was decided.

  “Liquid money. We each need to raise two billion dollars by opening bell day after tomorrow.”

  Some hard swallows at that. Malcolm thought of his trades in terms of zeros. Fifteen years ago, most of his trades were six zeros, or even five. These days, a typical trade was seven zeros, with an occasional eight thrown in if something big came up. This was nine zeros, twice over. And it had to be liquid.

  “I’ll get it,” Goldberg said.

  “Me, too,” Ivie nodded. He tugged again at his earlobe. When he looked up, his face was serious. “You’d better know what you’re doing, Hathwell.”

  Malcolm nodded. He, too, was thinking about how to raise those nine zeros. And wondering, too, if Terrance’s information was good enough to stake his life on.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Markov watched with grim satisfaction through one swollen eye as Charles Ikanbo’s men tried to put out the fire he’d started in the barrel to burn up the hard drives and other computer equipment. That fire was phosphorous. It would burn as long as it wanted.

  Men dragged chairs into the basement and duct taped Markov and Julia, bound their hands and feet.

  Ikanbo pressed a Glock to Markov’s forehead. He had taken off his pressed shirt to stand in a white tank-top undershirt. He was strong and sinewy in appearance. He leaned close and said, “Would you like to call the embassy?”

  “Yes, please,” Markov said.

  Ikanbo wrapped the gun against his skull, just hard enough to hurt. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you will ever talk to your friends again. And what if you did? Why would they bother with a spy like you?”

  “I’m not a spy, I’m U.S. Foreign Service. A diplomat. And I wasn’t spying.”

  “Not only are you lying,” Ikanbo said, “not only do I know you’re lying, but you know that I know that you’re lying.”

  That was true, of course. Markov had been on the other end of this same kind of interrogation. It always struck him as a ludicrous game that both sides felt compelled to play.

  Only Markov knew how the game would play out, because one player held the superior position. Ikanbo—if he were a competent player, and his opening moves were perfect, so that was a yes—would march his pieces across the board, break down Markov’s feeble defenses one by one. It would end with Markov broken, mentally and physically.

  Unless, perhaps, he changed the rules. How would Ikanbo deal with a confession?

  “Okay, I admit it,” he said. “I’m a spy. CIA. I entered the country under false pretenses. If I write out a confession, will you let me talk to the embassy?”

  Ikanbo took a step backwards. A brief flicker of confusion flashed through his eyes. “Let you talk to the embassy? No, of course not.”

  “Then what do you want? To torture me, to break me? You think you can do that? Go ahead and try.”

  “You arrogant bastard,” Ikanbo said. He pressed the gun harder into Markov’s skull, then wrapped his other hand around Markov’s throat. “Do you know what it’s like for Namibia? To be surrounded by corruption—Angola, Congo, Zimbabwe—and have every tribal leader think he should be Big Man?”

  “So Namibia is the virgin in the whore house, is that it?”

  “So easy for you. You see one small advantage, you Americans, and you are willing to burn a country to the ground to get it.”

  “I haven’t done anything like that.”

  “The hell you haven’t. The number of countries you’ve sold out is almost too many to name—Georgia, Chile, Palestine, Rwanda, Sudan. Oh,
and let’s not forget Iraq.”

  “I mean that I haven’t. Personally, I’m not responsible for any of that.”

  It was a small advantage, but Markov was no longer the one under interrogation. Instead, Ikanbo’s righteous anger had burned away his earlier motives. He was now interested in arguing with Markov, convincing him.

  Markov decided to press his advantage. “Let Dr. Nolan go. She’s just a civilian contractor.”

  Ikanbo turned and look at Julia, who shrank under his gaze. So far the men had not touched her, but Markov knew what she must be thinking.

  “She’s not a contractor. She’s a spy, like you. I don’t know how, or why, but I’m going to find out.”

  Ikanbo gave a little nod to one of his men. The man rubbed a big, rough hand down the side of her neck. “What a pretty woman,” he said to Ikanbo.

  Julia cringed, started to cry. She wasn’t in any danger, not at the moment. The Namibian touching her was too deliberate. Ikanbo was in complete control of the situation; he’d told his man how far to go, what to say. They were just intimidation tactics. And they were working.

  “You’ll be okay,” Markov told her. “Just keep your head down, think about…” He tried to think of something mechanical, distracting. “Walk yourself through a surgery.”

  She nodded. But she let out a sob.

  Ikanbo slapped Markov across the head with his pistol butt. “Shut up.”

  “Just ask your questions,” Markov said. He had to get control of the situation again. “Get it over with.”

  “Get what over with?”

  “I have no idea until you tell me what you’re looking for.”

  Ikanbo nodded. “How about this, to start. Why are you trying to overthrow the Namibian government?”

  Markov blinked his good eye, astonished. “Why are we trying to overthrow the government?”

  “That’s right. What is it about this oil find that’s so important?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  Ikanbo gave something that looked like a cross between a smile and a snarl. “I know, you idiot. I want to see if you’ll tell me the truth.”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  Everything started to come clear. He’d assumed Ikanbo was playing from the other side of the board. That he was part of the group trying to undermine the Namibian government. Instead, this man was a patriot. His anger was legitimate. His security forces were as disciplined as they appeared. What he was trying to do was save his country.

  “Of course I know, you bastard,” Ikanbo said. “I know what you’re doing, how you’ve corrupted the government, how you’re planning to—” He sputtered out, lifted his gun to pistol whip Markov again.

  “No wait, listen to me. Listen!”

  Ikanbo paused with the gun held back over his left shoulder, ready for a back swing with the butt.

  It was time for Markov to make a choice.

  His father had been a respected physicist at a university in eastern Ukraine until he complained one too many times of the factionalism, the playing of party favorites, and other corrupt factors that had nothing to do with science. Enemies had blocked his research projects, denied him advancement, and even destroyed his research. He had defected with his family from the Soviet Union to the United States in the 1970s, where he opened a mail-order camera shop to take care of the family. Markov’s mother went back to school to get a nursing degree. It was a step down from her position as an ear, nose, and throat specialist in the Soviet Union, but neither parent had the money or the time to repeat a combined two decades of education.

  Markov’s parents had focused attention on their sons, especially Anton, the oldest. “It doesn’t matter if you’re an immigrant,” his father said on more than one occasion. “You can get anywhere in this country. Because it doesn’t matter who you know, it’s just what you do that counts. Just obey the rules, keep your nose down and work hard.”

  Markov recognized, even from a young age, what sacrifices his parents had made for him. He would never let them down. And he would follow the rules. But what was his father’s bigger lesson, to follow the rules, to be blindly loyal, or to make a difficult path and stick with it?

  Because this was where he would forever cross the line. Markov could take torture, as much as any man. He could carry out hard orders for his country. But he couldn’t stand by while superiors committed acts of treason.

  And so he was going to talk. He was going to take a chance on Charles Ikanbo.

  He said, “We were set up, by our own government. My agents were sent into the ChinaOne camp, then attacked by their own forces when they were discovered by the mercenaries. What we found was disturbing.”

  “I’m listening.” Ikanbo lowered the gun.

  “There’s oil in Namibia. A big strike at the ChinaOne camp.”

  “I know that. That’s not news.”

  “Do you know how much oil?”

  Ikanbo said nothing in response, just looked at him. And so Markov explained, just as he had to Julia and Ian. The size of the field, the money involved, the stakes for a world desperate for every additional drop.

  After Markov finished, Charles Ikanbo was silent for a long minute. He looked back and forth from Markov to Julia, then to the two men who’d remained with him in the basement computer room, presumably his most loyal.

  “There was something that kept bothering me,” Ikanbo said. “I knew why China made such a big deal over the camp. Their national pride is at stake, and they are desperate to show they belong in Africa, that it shouldn’t just be the Americans and Europeans with the right to plunder and steal our resources.” A wry smile. “Or develop them, if that’s the word you prefer. But why would the American government get involved?”

  “We’ve gone to war for oil,” Markov said.

  “Yes, but not in Africa. Why do that when you can bribe, manipulate, or threaten? And you’ve got Angola and Nigeria, much bigger oil provinces than Namibia has ever been.”

  “Until now,” Markov said. “This one oil field changes everything.”

  “Yes, it has. I’ve realized something. America isn’t immune to corruption. Americans aren’t immune. It just takes a much bigger bribe to make them turn against their country, but only because they’re richer to start with.”

  Markov wasn’t so sure. He’d spent a lot of time in Africa, enough to see the weakness of its institutions and how many people considered themselves Herero, Tutsi, or Kikuyu, before they considered themselves Namibian, Rwandan, or Kenyan. Nevertheless, Ikanbo’s point was valid, much to Markov’s disgust.

  “Cut us loose,” Markov said. “We’re not your enemies. We’re your allies.”

  “Is that right? And how are you going to help me? By infiltrating the country and meddling in Namibian affairs? If you’re really working against your own government, how long until they send another team after you?”

  “I am the team sent in, to recover Dr. Nolan and Ian Westhelle. Unless you keep me from communicating with…”

  “While we’re talking about Ian Westhelle,” Ikanbo said with a smile. “Maybe you can tell us where he’s gone. He’s a fugitive in this country. Wanted for murder. Whatever else happens—”

  “It’s not his fault!” Julia interrupted. “He’s innocent.”

  Ikanbo turned his head sharply. “Yes, how is that?”

  “Julia,” Markov warned. Then, to Ikanbo, “I can explain.”

  He was surprised to hear that Ian was free. He must have gone upstairs, maybe outside, before the Namibians arrived. Could he possibly escape through the bush? Would he?

  “Yes, go ahead and explain,” Ikanbo said. “Explain how an innocent man killed dozens of people, including my agents. Explain how he innocently picked up his gun and put a bullet through someone’s head.”

  Markov took a deep breath. This was shaping up to be an insurmountable problem. “Dr. Nolan is right, Westhelle is innocent. He was…manipulated into attacking the camp and your men. I’ve s
een the evidence.”

  Yes, and destroyed the evidence, too. Even if he could have explained to the Namibian Central Intelligence Director about the implant, that was one step Markov couldn’t take. From there it might easily get back to the Chinese and endanger future operations.

  “Manipulated?” Ikanbo asked in a suspicious tone. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that he was acting under direct orders. Orders that if he violated, would have meant great harm or even death to his family.”

  Ikanbo snarled. “You Americans make me sick. Well until I see this agent, and interrogate him, I won’t believe anything you tell me. Until then, you’re just CIA agents with a clever story.”

  A voice spoke from the stairs behind them. “And what would you ask me, if you could?”

  It was Ian Westhelle. He held an AK-47 and had somehow armed himself, slipped past the men upstairs, and opened the door without anyone noticing. He wore the uniform of one of Ikanbo’s CIS agents.

  Markov’s jaw dropped in amazement. And admiration.

  Ikanbo and his men recovered quickly. The two men standing by Julia lifted their weapons. Ikanbo fumbled for something at his waist.

  “Put them down!” Ian barked.

  They froze. Ikanbo seemed to size up the odds, then gave a curt nod to his men. They set down their weapons.

  “And you. Take out whatever you were reaching for. Slowly. Do it. Now set it down.” When the Namibians had done as Ian commanded, he glanced first at Julia and then back to Ikanbo. “You have a knife?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Cut him lose, then set down the knife and walk over to the corner to stand with the others. No,” he said to the two men. “Back away from the doctor.”

  Ikanbo did as he was told. Moments later, Markov was free and armed with the knife. He cut the duct tape on Julia’s wrists. She got up, glowered at Ikanbo and especially at the man who’d touched her, then made her way over to Ian’s side at the bottom of the stairs.