by Rene Fomby
“Okay, so, yeah, when she told me last week that she wanted to go ring shopping, my fallback was the fact that I was completely broke, and I couldn’t exactly borrow the money from our firm account. From you. Even Annie wouldn’t go along with that idea, for reasons you probably well understand. Then she found this ring, and was like, oh my God, it’s perfect. I saw the price tag, and it cost more than my truck. So no way that was ever going to happen.”
“And yet it did,” Sam pointed out.
“Right. The problem was, I didn’t know Daddy had given her an Amex card with basically no limit. So she paid for it herself on the spot.”
“And you were left trying to slam on the brakes on a speeding car whose brake lines had just been cut.”
“Precisely. So now it’s done, and advertised to the whole damned world, and her mother is busy planning the wedding, and even my parents are over the top jumping for joy about the whole thing.”
“I didn’t hear your name in that list of celebrants.”
“No.” Harry hesitated, looking down. “I mean, it’s really something I want. Honestly. I really love Annie, and I’m excited about spending the rest of my life with her. But—”
“Everything’s happening way too fast,” Sam suggested.
“That’s it exactly,” Harry said. “Maybe that’s the whole problem. I’m a planner. You know that about me. And this whole thing has just come at me completely out of left field. And so I don’t honestly know how I’m supposed to react. Marriage is a big deal, and for me it’s a lifetime commitment. And maybe that’s why I didn’t call you to tell you about it. I’m just not completely certain how I truly feel about it all right now.”
Sam was split between her own feelings, and her responsibilities to Harry. As his best friend. She decided reluctantly to stay safely on the friendship side for now. “I can understand completely. I was floored, too, when Luke dropped down on one knee to propose. But the thing to remember is, you still have some time to work through all of this. Nothing’s going to happen tomorrow, particularly if Annabelle and her mother are planning a blowout kind of wedding. Those kinds of details take nine months to a year, at the very least. So take a deep breath, let it out, and then spend some time exploring your own feelings. Don’t let Annabelle and the whole wedding game take control. Make it all work the way you want it to work. And in the meantime, if you ever need a shoulder, I’m here. I’ll always be here, you know that.”
“I do, Sammie. And I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you as my friend.”
“Ain’t gonna happen, buddy. So, come on now. It’s late, and you need your beauty sleep. We can chat about all this later.”
Harry looked like a huge burden had just dropped off his shoulders. “Thanks, Sammie.” But suddenly he remembered something else. “Hey, what happened with those Turkish bankers?”
“That discussion can wait for another day, Harry. Go to bed.” And with that, she reached up and touched the screen, ending the call.
She sat there, staring at the computer screen for a long while, considering the fact that no matter how hard she tried to get her life in order, to assert some level of control over the sea of events that were constantly washing over her, keeping her off balance, nothing seemed to work. Just then she had a thought, something she could do that made a difference. She picked up her cell phone and placed a call to Claudia, her assistant.
77
Istanbul
Several days later, Sam was sitting in her office pouring over reports from the bank, all of them dismal. Hearing all the rumors swirling around that the bank was on the verge of collapse, depositors had started withdrawing their funds en masse. If she couldn’t find a way to close the deal on the tractor plant, and fast, then even her tier two capital reserves would dry up within the month.
Just then her desk phone rang. A call from her personal assistant’s desk.
“Yes, Claudia, what’s up?” she asked, pushing the reports into a loose pile in front of her.
“Ms. Tulley, I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s a certain Mr. Archibald Bennington on the line. He says he met you at a reception during your trip to Istanbul. Should I take a message?”
“No, no, put him through, by all means.” It seemed Sam’s little ploy may have paid off, after all. She heard a soft click in her ear, indicating that he was now on the line. “Sir Archie! Great to hear from you. I needed a little boost this morning.”
“Ms. Tulley! Sam. I must say, your voice is like a ray of sunshine in my normally gloomy day, as well.”
“Good to hear. Most days lately I tend to wonder about all that. But anyway, what’s new in your corner of the world?”
She heard Archie give out a little cackle on the other end. “Well, I think you know exactly what’s going on. I just got off the phone with a lady from the Israeli Antiquities Authority. It seems they’ve had a change of heart, and have decided to let us move forward with the Acre project after all.”
“Really?” Sam was struggling with playing the ingénue, but was delighted to hear that her phone call had apparently had the desired effect. The Ricciardelli train might be ready to jump off the track any moment now, but for this moment, at least, she could still make a small difference in the world. “What seemed to change their minds?”
“Tut-tut,” Archie admonished her, playfully. “You know exactly what happened. A certain someone made a sizable contribution to the university’s archaeology department, in exchange for their agreeing to support the opening of the tunnel. Now they’re acting like they were onboard with the whole thing all along.”
“Yeah, well, I may have helped move things along just a little bit,” Sam admitted. “The thing is, I figured the stick approach wasn’t really working—the Israelis can be as hard-headed as us Texans when they feel like they’re being pushed around—so I thought maybe it was time to feed them a carrot. The Ricciardelli Foundation was already planning to make a large contribution to the university’s humanities program, so I just siphoned off some of that money and redirected it to where I thought it might have the biggest impact.” She paused for a moment, remembering the second carrot she had promised them. “Look, I may have overstepped my bounds, but I kinda also promised them they could get some of the credit for the whole thing. Second billing, of course—you and your team would get the most credit for pulling this off—but seeing as how it’s all happening on their turf—”
“No, I already heard about all that,” Archie said. “And it’s perfectly all right. In fact, I should have considered that myself in the first place. This really is a big deal. If we find the Templar treasure down there, it will be the biggest news in archaeology in several decades. Maybe even longer. There’s plenty of room atop that rising tide to float a great many boats. If everything works out as planned, we’ll all wind up quids in.”
“Good, good. Glad to hear that’s going to work out.” Sam had agonized over that little detail, not sure how it would go over with Archie, and she was very relieved to learn that it was going to be okay. “So, now that you’ve got the green light, when do you plan to move forward with this?”
“Well, Sam, my thinking is we better make hay while the sun’s still shining,” he said. “Any delays would just open up more opportunities for some bureaucrat to get his tail up over his back and shut us down again. So, the upfront work is already complete, the photography and all the supporting documentation. All we need to do now is knock down the wall blocking the entrance to the tunnel. Based upon my conversation this morning, I think everyone’s eager to get started, so we were thinking maybe Monday or Tuesday of next week.”
“Wow, you guys move fast! I always thought of archaeologists as a bunch of folks hunched over a pit, dusting dirt off a pot shard with a small paint brush.”
“I’m way too old for that line of work,” Archie responded with a smile. “No, we’ll have to go a little slow knocking the mortar out from between the stones, but barring any
unforeseen developments, we should be done and inside the tunnel in just a few hours.”
“Well that’s just super,” Sam said. “I can’t wait to hear what you find down there.”
“Why wait?” he asked. “If you have the time, why don’t you join us? This project would still be on indefinite hold if it wasn’t for you, and I’d be delighted to share a spot of tea with you while we watch the excavation. Oh, and by the way, Mehmed will be there, too. It’ll be like a little reunion of sorts.”
Sam pulled up her schedule on her computer. The beginning of the next week was filled with meetings, as usual, but nothing that couldn’t wait or be shoveled off to somebody else. And, after all, in less than a month, these kinds of magical opportunities would probably be drying up like a mud puddle in Lubbock on a hot summer day. “Sure, why not? How could a small-town girl from Texas turn down a once-in-a-lifetime chance like that? Just send me the details, and I’ll be there.”
“Excellent! And here I was thinking things couldn’t get any better. A fortune in gold, the lost library of Solomon, and now a lovely lady to share it with. Absolutely delightful!”
“I can’t wait. See you guys in a week.” Sam hung up, unable to shake the image of that fortune in gold. And not a single ounce of it could be used to save the bank.
the deadliest end
78
Rabat
Every time Gavin issued an investigative report—every single time—he made sure to include a top-level summary on the very first page, along with a complete and well-titled index to all the supporting documents and analysis. That way, a field agent desperate to get to the meat of the report—the answer, if in fact there was one—needed only to glance at a single paragraph or two, and then dive into the rest of the document only if he needed more detailed information. But whoever had issued this report on the ownership of Crismon Pharmaceuticals was either a sadist, or a demented dyslexic stream-of-consciousness Russian playwright.
Flipping quickly through page after page of tedious details on financial trails that all eventually wound up as dead ends, Gavin was quickly developing a bad feeling about this one. Maybe the author had left out the summary because there simply wasn’t anything worthwhile to summarize.
Finally, though, almost three quarters of the way into the over thousand-page analysis, one trail ran hot. Crismon, it turned out, was a shell inside a shell inside a shell, which was itself connected sideways to another string of shells, one of which eventually intersected with an ongoing FBI investigation out of the field office in Zurich.
And that investigation centered on the last name he ever expected to see again.
79
Washington, D.C.
Andy was still stuck back in Washington, handling follow ups on the discovery of the dead bodies in Tunisia, and their tie-in with the strange shell company in Brussels. She’d received a copy of the same report that had been overnighted to Gavin in Rabat, but other than the fact that it seemed to lead to another ongoing investigation by Treasury and the FBI, none of it made any sense. Crismon was somehow loosely connected to a bank out of Italy, and had received a large loan from the bank that was later used to purchase a small start-up biotech in Massachusetts. What made her look twice at the deal was the fact that Crismon had no apparent assets to back up the loan, other than the biotech itself. And zero income, as well. And yet the bank apparently continued to funnel money to the biotech through Crismon for several years.
As if that wasn’t fraudulent enough on its face, that bank was itself embroiled in a massive investigation into the widespread looting of the bank and related companies by its CEO, an American named William Tulley, looting that had left those companies on the verge of bankruptcy. Tulley himself had disappeared, along with his daughter. A short entry in the file referred to yet another investigation involving the Tulleys, and Andy made a note to look that up.
How is all of this tied to the bodies in the desert? she asked herself. Eight men with bullet holes to the head, a brilliant young doctor who had been garroted, several members of his staff—all shot, stabbed or choked to death—and what apparently were some thirty or so patients, cause of death unknown. And why does that name Tulley seem to ring a bell?
She logged back on to her computer and searched the cross-linked Homeland Security database for more files on the mysterious William Tulley. The report hadn’t listed the name of the biotech, or any further details about what it might be involved with, so she made a note to dig into that as well. Deep in her gut, she knew that the answer to all of this rested with that mysterious company at the end of the money trail. Now she just needed to follow that trail to its inevitable, deadliest conclusion.
80
Washington, D.C.
Andy just couldn’t believe it. Gavin. No wonder the name Tulley sounded so familiar to her. William Tulley was the man at the heart of the FBI case that had ultimately cost Gavin his career at the Bureau. A man who had seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth, only to reappear here, right in the middle of an investigation into a mass murder.
Andy noted that Gavin had received a copy of the very same report. So, stuck with only dead ends as to the identity of the missing biotech, she picked up her phone and placed a call. Time to team up one more time. Third time’s the charm, she mused.
※
Gavin had just finished reading through the report for the fourth time, still no closer to figuring out a way to identify the biotech company at the end of the food chain. Treasury claimed the money trail simply couldn’t be traced after the initial payout to the company’s original owners, two Harvard-based oncologists. After that the biotech had simply vanished into clear air, every employee laid off with a generous severance, all of the equipment sold off, everything else boxed up and shipped off to who knows where. It was while he was lost in thought, sitting at his desk at the embassy doodling on a legal pad, when his cell phone rang. He grabbed it and answered automatically without even checking the caller ID, expecting to hear about yet another VIP who had lost his luggage at the airport.
“Gavin Larson, here. How can I help you?”
“Gavin! It’s Andy. How is my Moroccan man-hunk doing today?”
“Andy!” Gavin was instantly alert, subconsciously smoothing the front of his shirt, even though she couldn’t possibly see him. “What a pleasant surprise. You’re the last person I expected to hear from this morning. Please tell me you’re back in town.”
“I’m afraid not, but I wish I were. Being squired around Rabat is well worth the grueling trip out there. But hey, I’ve been reading up on that report on the Tunisian murders and hit bedrock, and I was kinda hoping you’d have some ideas on how we might dig around it.”
Gavin glanced back down at the report, still spread across his desk. A dead end trail if there ever was one. “If you mean, how can we hunt down that biotech, or William Tulley for that matter, I was just sitting here thinking the same thing. Usually we follow the money, but that doesn’t look like it’s gonna help us much here. I also tried a search on any biotechs that mysteriously popped up out of nowhere in that time period, and got two pages of hits. Seems to be a popular investment these days for people with a lot of money they’re willing to just throw away.”
“Hey, that was a good idea,” Andy said. “Wish I’d thought of that myself. So, what now? We hunt down every company on that list and check out its back story, see if we can connect it back to Crismon?”
Gavin nodded to himself. “Yeah, I’ve got some people at the Bureau already looking into that, but it’ll most likely take a while. Top priority goes to the breaking cases, trails that aren’t so cold. Long-dead people showing up in a foreign country that’s all but an enemy of ours doesn’t fall into that category, I’m afraid.” He paused, considering their next steps. “Hmm. I’ve got a contact at FDA I worked with several years back. Maybe I can call him and see if he has any ideas. Clearly, the original company was still in the research phase, so th
ey might have been far enough along to have to register with Food and Drug. After all, money continued to flow to the company through Crismon for several years, so they had to be spending it on something. And if so, FDA would likely have fresh contact info for the new company.”
“That’s a great idea, Gavin.” Andy thought to herself, once again, that the FBI brass had made a huge mistake when they decided to put Agent Larson out to pasture. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to be in on any conference call with him, to find out if he has any leads. Saves having to get the blow-by-blow from you after the fact.”
“Sure, that’s not a problem. And, really, I would appreciate having your eyes and ears on this as much as possible. You and I make a good team. With any hope, we can crack this thing wide open. And not just solve the riddle of who killed all those people. Maybe also track down a lead on William Tulley himself. And that witch of a daughter of his, Mary Ellen.”
“Sounds like a plan, G. Just text me when you have a time, and I’ll be waiting for your call.”
“Will do, Andy. Say, what time is it out there, anyway?
“Just after ten a.m.”
“Okay, that’s perfect. I’ll buzz you back as soon as I hear something.” Gavin hung up, then turned back to his computer to hunt down the old case files that would give him the contact info he needed. For a brief moment, the computer hesitated, and he had a bad feeling that his access to the files had finally been revoked. Always the first step HR takes in a termination. But then the screen cleared, and his case history flashed up in front of him. He scrolled down to find the right folder.
