by Andrew Gross
Or maybe it was worse…
“That auditor’s position up in Montana,” Naomi said, smiling cautiously, “you’re thinking that may not be such a joke…”
Whyte got up. He smiled only enough to let her know he wasn’t amused. “Come back to me with something firm. Facts, Naomi—not conspiracies. You’re a goddamn Treasury agent, not Jack Bauer on 24.”
In his gaze Naomi suddenly saw that everything was now in play. Her future as well. That auditor’s position up north, it might not be Rob’s next posting.
She might get there first.
“I’m working on something, Rob…”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
That first night back, Annie came over. Mondays, Hauck generally cooked. Then they’d hang out on the couch and watch a game or rent a movie. Monday was Annie’s only night off and the last thing she needed was to spend it at a restaurant.
That Monday, Hauck felt a little nervous how things would go.
He knew he hadn’t been completely honest with her. About what had been taking up his attention as of late. Where he had been in the past week and why. It was time to come clean. As she came up the stairs, in a pair of torn white jeans and a cute orange tee, she waved brightly, but he could tell in her reserved smile that something was a little wrong.
“Hey, stranger.” He gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek.
“Glad you’re back,” she said, hugging him back.
Tonight, Hauck was doing lamb burgers on the grill, with caramelized onions in balsamic and topped with Danish bleu.
“Sounds awfully good,” she said. “Spoil me.”
They opened some wine and sat on the deck overlooking the sound, feet up on the railing. A nice breeze came off the water. She didn’t ask about the trip. It was like she was waiting for him to volunteer it. They chatted about the restaurant. How it was time to get his boat in the water. He asked about Jared. She said he was doing okay. The conversation felt like the weight of a two-ton truck pressed across his back. They both felt it. There was something distant between them tonight.
How could there not be?
Hauck stood up. “Maybe I should go fire up the grill…”
“Listen, Ty—”
“Me first.” He sat back down. “I’ve actually got something to say. About where I was. What it is I’ve been up to lately. I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Annie, and—”
“I know what you’ve been up to, Ty…”
He stopped, looked at her. Annie’s eyes were round and totally nonjudgmental. Still, her gaze made him feel a bit ashamed.
She said, “I let myself in here while you were away.” She put her wine down and faced him. “I wasn’t snooping. I’d left my earrings the last time I was here and I went upstairs to look for them. I found them, on your dresser. Elena must’ve put them there…I also found something else.”
Hauck swallowed. The breath he inhaled almost hurt him; he knew what it was.
“I found that picture, Ty. It was right there. I think you know the one I’m talking about. That gal who was killed…What was her name, April?”
“April.” He nodded a little guiltily.
“And you.” Her eyes stayed solidly on him. Not accusingly; more like she was hurt. “Who was she, Ty? I’m not jealous. Well, maybe a little…But you’ve been different since the very day that happened, and you withheld it from me. I think I deserve to hear the truth.”
“She was just a friend, Annie,” Hauck said. “I promise, that’s all. That photo was taken a long time ago.”
“I know it was a long time ago, Ty. So why… Why did you have to hide it all from me? Why couldn’t you just tell me? Whatever your connection to her. You knew her—and not just from around town.”
He nodded, releasing a contrite blast of air from his cheeks. “There’s a period in my life, Annie, I’ve never gone into much. With anyone. Not just you. After Norah was killed. As things started to fall apart with Beth…”
He told her about how he walked out of his job at the NYPD. The dark period that followed. The guilt he bore. About not being able to find a reason to even get up in the morning. “One night I just sat in my car in front of the store I was heading to when it happened. I was so angry…I took a rock and hurled it through the window. The cops came…If I wasn’t a cop, I would have spent the night in jail. Maybe it was depression.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was just blame. I had a lot of it. I didn’t know how to talk about it then. Clearly, I’m not exactly a whiz now…April just helped me back, that’s all. We met in a depression group. We started to meet, afterward, for coffee. I needed someone then. I don’t know how I would have made it on my own. I don’t even think about that period now, but when I saw she was killed…”
Annie stared at him. “You’ve been following up on her death, haven’t you? All this time. You don’t think I saw it in your face? You don’t think I felt that something had changed? That maybe I had done something—”
“You haven’t done anything, Annie.”
All of a sudden her expression changed and her hand covered her mouth. “Oh my God! That’s what the attack on Jared was all about, wasn’t it? It was meant for you—to pressure you off the case. Did you keep that from me too? Did they try to hurt my son because of you?”
He nodded, flattening his lips. “Yeah, I think so, Annie.”
“Oh, Ty…” Her eyes glistened. “How could you possibly keep something like that from me?” She stared, tears about to flow, as if she was looking into a face she had seen a million times but that had now changed. “What have you gotten into, Ty? You have a new life for yourself. You have me. What hold does she have on you? What is it that’s dragging you back there, Ty?”
“I’m not dragged back anywhere, Annie…”
“Yes, you are.” She nodded. “You are… This woman’s dead, Ty. I’m here. Why are you willing to throw it all away? Why can’t you love me like that?”
“I do love you, Annie,” he said. “I do.”
“No.” She shook her head with tears in her eyes. “Not like that.”
He wanted to reach out and take her in. He wanted to tell her there was more to it. More than he was saying. But what hurt him was that she was right. They had only made one commitment to each other. Dealing in the truth. Honesty. She deserved that one thing.
And he had withheld it from her.
“I won’t even ask you where you’ve been.” She tried to smile bravely. “I mean, it’s not my business. You’re a good man, Ty. I know that, and I know you’d do anything for me. And for Jared. You’ve already proven that. You treat him like a son. But he’s not; I know that. And I’m not your wife either.”
“I was in Serbia, Annie. And London.” He swallowed. “I was with an agent from the Treasury Department, and we were tracking someone who may have been responsible for her death.”
“Serbia?” Annie shook her head, wiping away a tear. “London. Well, at least it wasn’t anywhere exciting or glamorous, right?”
“We weren’t exactly on a Butterfield and Robinson bike tour, Annie.”
That made her smile. “I’m sure. Was it dangerous?”
He looked at her, not really wanting to say. Not now. “I guess.”
“You guess…” She sniffed a little cynically and shook her head. “So did you catch him? The person who did this thing.”
“No. He’s dead. Annie, listen…” He took hold of her hand and squeezed it in his own. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I held things from you. I’m sorry to have hurt you in any way. That’s the last thing I wanted to do. Or that you deserve.”
“You’re damn right it’s the last thing I deserve. But I can’t make you love me either, can I? And I deserve that too. I don’t need the roses or the Valentine’s Day hearts or some big commitment. But I deserve to be loved, don’t I?”
“I do love you, Annie…”
“No.” She shook her head. “I meant like her.”
She smiled at him one more time, then glanc
ed at her watch. “I guess firing up the grill doesn’t exactly seem like the thing to do right now.”
He looked at her and tried to smile back. “No, I guess not.”
“I hope you find ’em, Ty.”
“Who?”
“The one you’re looking for.”
Hauck didn’t know if she was talking about April’s murderer or maybe someone else.
She got up. “You know, it’s not like me to leave with something corny like this…” There was a wistful twinkle in her clear blue eyes. “But I guess I was always hoping, inside, when you went to someplace like London, it might have been with me.”
She brushed past him and he reached for her arm.
She stood there for a second in his grasp.
“Regarding April, I haven’t told you everything. There’s one more thing…”
“I’m sorry, Ty.” Annie pulled free. “But I don’t want to know.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
The e-mail flashed on Naomi’s laptop when she logged on at six the next morning. It was a short, three-line response, and she stared at it in her oversize Princeton tee. She read it twice, just to make sure.
It changed everything.
She waited as long as she could, showered, her heart racing. Then she punched in the number on her speed dial. “Ty…”
“Hey.” He sounded groggy.
“I figured you’d be jet lagged. You okay?”
“I’m okay,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Didn’t sleep much. I’ve been up since three. Just something personal. What’s going on?”
“I got something back from Bern.” Her voice shook with excitement. She told him about the response. From the assistant consul general at the embassy there. “A private jet, registered to a Dubai aviation company, landed in Geneva at seven twenty-one A.M. June twenty-fifth. Hassani passed through immigration there half an hour later. That’s the day before Thibault’s lift ticket was dated, Ty.”
“Geneva’s not Gstaad, Naomi.”
“Geneva’s the closest airport to Gstaad for someone clearing immigration. It’s only a two-hour drive away. I checked. Hassani was there, Ty!”
She had tried desperately to fit it all together ever since she had received the reply. It was clear now something important had taken place there. A conspiracy mapped out, put in motion months later by the largest stock fund in the world dumping U.S. securities. Two investment managers secretly paid off to conceal massive losses at their teetering banks, then killed, setting in motion a terrible slide in the already reeling financial sector. Stocks sent plummeting. Banks going under.
The walls tumbling down.
Now she had to get her people involved. Hassani was in New York. This might be their only chance to get him. The FBI, the Justice Department…What she had to do now was figure out who she could trust.
“Who have you told about this, Naomi?”
“No one,” she replied. “Just you. But I can’t keep it that way any longer. Hassani’s in New York. He’s there for the Reynolds Reid annual meeting. I’m not certain for just how long. I know Geneva’s not Gstaad, but we can prove he was in the area at the same time as Thibault and al-Bashir. We have the transcript of him on the phone setting the plan in motion. The flow of cash from one of his firms to pay off James Donovan. The three of them were behind a plot to take down the economy of the United States, Ty. Marty al-Bashir basically admitted that much.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to jog on it first. There’s a lot at stake. Not to mention my career if I blow this up. I was thinking…” Something al-Bashir had said had occurred to her. About how it wasn’t terrorism but something much, much larger. “What if there were more than three? What if there were others involved? Who were there. What if this Gstaad Gang had a few more paying members?”
“I’ve thought that too,” Hauck said back. “And I’m already on it, Naomi.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY
He was getting ready to leave when his cell rang. Steve Chrisafoulis.
“I want you to see something, Ty,” the Greenwich detective said. “Are you near a computer?”
“Can be,” Hauck said back, throwing his car keys on the counter and heading to his desk.
“We had an ID come back. One of Sonny Merced’s buddies in Iraq. They knew each other in the Hundred-and-first over there. I told you we were checking that out. He also worked as an armed security consultant with GTM, the security firm that told Merced to get lost. Talon’s firm.”
“Yeah.” Hauck turned on his computer. “I remember, Steve.”
He logged on to his e-mail account. He saw the message flashing. He clicked it open and then the attachment.
A photo came on the screen.
A man in fatigues, leaning on an armored vehicle. From his GTM days. Muscular, ripped. In a gray army T-shirt, brandishing an M4 rifle. His hair short, wiry, pulled back in a stubby ponytail.
Jack “Red” O’Toole.
“I’m on it, Steve…”
“He did two yearlong stints with GTM after his military tours of duty were over. I spoke to his field boss. Known as a real cowboy over there. Quick on the trigger. I think it’s our guy, Ty. I asked who his main clients were over there. Just on a whim. You’re never gonna believe what he came back with.”
“I’m listening, Steve…”
Hauck stared intensely at the photo. The muscular physique. The short ponytail. The connection to Merced.
But it was something else that made Hauck’s blood come to a boil.
It was what was on his neck. A kind of tattoo. A claw, it looked like, maybe a lion or a panther. Just as the photos Evan Glassman had snapped from the second-floor window had shown.
The person who had killed his family.
Jack “Red” O’Toole.
“Nice work, Steve.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE
She did jog on it.
Close to five miles. On the path along the Potomac. Until the answer came to her. Stopping, hands on hips, breathing heavily, she knew she’d be taking a huge risk. To go out of channels this way.
Yet it was something she had to do. To let this situation pass, to possibly lose Hassani, was not an option now. Eight innocent people had died. Not to mention the global economic collapse that he had precipitated. Or the fact that al-Bashir’s son’s face still resonated in her.
Corny as it was, she found herself staring at the Lincoln Memorial.
This was her job.
She took out her cell and put in the call. She had only been with him privately that one time. She requested ten minutes—alone. That morning, if possible. And to keep the call confidential.
Ninety minutes later Naomi walked into the office of the treasury secretary of the United States.
She had gone through the list of anyone she could talk to, anyone who could take action, someone she could trust. Thomas Keaton was the one name that came to mind.
His secretary walked her in, opening the large, paneled doors just as she had once before, revealing the spacious room, the polished mahogany desk and gleaming conference table. The bright seal of the United States staring up at her from the carpet. The un-obstructed view of the Washington Monument.
I hope you know what you’re doing, Naomi…
From his desk, Thomas Keaton stood up. He motioned for her to take a seat in a large leather chair that suddenly seemed way too big for her.
“Agent Blum,” he said. “You asked for a private meeting. You realize how unorthodox this is…”
Naomi sat down, her heart pounding like a jackhammer. “I realize that, sir.”
“I assume by private, you didn’t mean Mitch.” Mitch Hastings, the department’s chief counsel, was seated on the couch nearby.
“No, of course,” Naomi said. She nodded to the lawyer. “How are you, sir?”
Hastings gave her a tight smile, adjusting his glasses.
She removed a large file from her satchel and
placed it on her lap. “I’m sure you both have important matters to attend to. I won’t take up much time.”
The secretary sat back down. “If by ‘important matters’ you mean the world markets being in free fall, California’s largest bank having collapsed, the world wondering which iconic investment house is going to go under next, the president’s going on the air today to tell the public to have faith in the markets…yes”—he glanced at Hastings—“the day is a bit full. The last time you were here you made some pretty lurid innuendos. I asked you to come back with proof. Have you found that proof, Agent Blum?”
“Yes, sir.” Naomi nodded. “I think I have. I’m sorry, but I didn’t feel comfortable taking this through normal channels. When I was here last I mentioned a Saudi investment manager named Mashhur al-Bashir, who I suspected had precipitated a global sell-off in stocks as part of a plot to destabilize the U.S. economy. I think you’re aware that two days ago we attempted to take him into custody?”
“I am aware of that, Agent Blum.” The treasury secretary’s face soured. “This al-Bashir was a respected figure in the financial world. To date, it’s just been reported he and his family are somehow missing. I instructed you to keep this under the radar, not create a public incident. What the hell happened on that?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Naomi shifted uncomfortably. “But before it occurred, Mr. al-Bashir confirmed to me he had, in fact, been part of a conspiracy just as I mapped out, along with Hassan ibn Hassani. As you may recall, the original evidence of this surfaced from a transcript of a monitored phone conversation between Mr. Hassani and al-Bashir, which I was trying to tie to the two traders whose deaths sent Wertheimer Grant and Beeston Holloway into insolvency through an intermediary, Dieter Thibault.”
The treasury secretary leaned forward. “And were you able to make that connection, Agent Blum?”
Naomi opened her file. “I’ve been able to show a trail of money between Thibault and one of Mr. Hassani’s corporate entities, a real estate development firm in Dubai, Ascot Capital, that was used to advance a significant amount of money to James Donovan of Beeston Holloway, who we are now pretty certain did not kill himself, but in fact was murdered, sir.”
