by Dean Murray
Ambushed
by Dean Murray
Copyright 2013 by Dean Murray
Also by Dean Murray:
The Reflections Series
Broken (free)
Torn (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)
Splintered
Intrusion
Trapped
Forsaken
Riven
The Greater Darkness (Writing as Eldon Murphy) (free)
A Darkness Mirrored (Writing as Eldon Murphy)
Driven
Lost
The Dark Reflections Series
Bound
Hunted
Ambushed
The Guadel Chronicles
Frozen Prospects (free)
Thawed Fortunes (free if you sign up for Dean's Mailing List)
Brittle Bonds
Shattered Ties
Chapter 1
Alec Graves
Deutsche Bank, Cayman Office
George Town, The Cayman Islands
You don't get to be a Senior Vice President in a bank the size of Deutsche Bank without learning to do at least a reasonable job of concealing your emotions, but that doesn't mean that you don't feel them. It was obvious to me that the man sitting across the massive mahogany desk from me was very nervous.
The simple fact that Mr. John H. Ford had failed to introduce himself would have told me he was feeling off balance, but there was more than that to it. When it came to me—to my kind—there was almost always more to it than just simple observation.
I could hear Mr. Ford's heartbeat stuttering, could smell the stress-induced perspiration that was hidden so well by the jacket of his thousand-dollar suit. Someone watching us from outside of Mr. Ford's luxuriously appointed office would have probably thought there wasn't anything unusual going on, but this wasn't just another day at the office for him. Days like this were the sole reason that he'd been assigned to this branch.
The Cayman branch of Deutsche Bank was a big branch—it had to be given the sheer amount of money that flowed through it on a daily basis. As Switzerland's banking laws had become less and less protective of the identities of account holders, more and more of the black-market money that had once hidden in Switzerland had shifted to other offshore locations like the Cayman Islands.
Just having an office in the Cayman Islands no doubt caused problems for the banks that operated here, but the simple fact of the matter was that there was too much money to be made for most of them to pass up a slice of the action. Deutsche Bank probably made more money out of their Cayman branch than they did out of the next three biggest offices combined.
Each of the big multinational banks that operated here tried to insulate themselves from repercussions in slightly different ways, but it all boiled down to the same thing. They needed a fall guy, someone to throw to the regulators if something came back to bite them. Mr. Ford was the sacrificial lamb in Cayman and he knew it.
There were offsetting perks, of course. Mr. Ford probably made three or four times what other people at his level in the bank made, but I could tell that he was getting to the end of his endurance. It had to be hard to sleep knowing that he could go to jail at some point because of transactions like the one that we were about to make.
"Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Peterson."
I was nervous too, but the fact that I was using a fake identity that was strong enough to fool even the head of the U.S. National Security Agency meant that I didn't have as much on the line as Mr. Ford did. If everything went against me then I might lose the money in the account he was looking at, but it would take more than a dozen human police to have any hope of capturing me, and even then, I'd probably hear them coming from a long way off.
I leaned back in my chair, causing the expensive black leather to creak, and smiled.
"I expected nothing less, Mr. Ford. I'm familiar enough with your internal policies to know that you wouldn't have allowed me to cash out my account before now. However, now that I've met the relevant criteria, I'd like to proceed."
I'd paid some very unsavory contacts a total of nearly two hundred thousand dollars to find out exactly how long my money needed to sit in Mr. Ford's bank before I could liquidate it, and I hadn't waited a day longer than I had to before arriving to start the process of moving it yet again.
Most governments had a decided interest in knowing whenever anyone opened or closed a large account, but even now there were a few countries where the banking laws were strong on privacy and weak on regulation. I'd moved the money I'd stolen from Kaleb—stolen from my father—more than a dozen times since I'd left Sanctuary.
Kaleb had kept the money in a variety of accounts, all of which I'd moved into an offshore account that Donovan had set up for me years ago. If I'd been up against someone with less resources, that probably would have been enough to shield me, but Kaleb still had billions, maybe even tens of billions in assets and he wasn't the kind of guy to confine himself to strictly legal methods of getting what he wanted.
I'd bounced the money around to accounts in the Middle East, Hong Kong, and Singapore every few days before finally deciding to make the switch here in the Cayman Islands. Some of the countries my money had passed through were very hostile to the U.S. government, so Kaleb's contacts in the Justice and State departments wouldn't be enough to get him access to the records he'd need to track the money down, but I still felt like the clock was ticking.
Getting people inside of the bank's computer systems would take time, even for Kaleb, but he had access to some of the best hackers in the world, and if that didn't work then he'd eventually get someone inside the buildings. It ultimately wouldn't matter if he did it by hiring someone to pose as a new employee, by bribing a VP somewhere, or by old fashioned breaking and entering. It was just a matter of time before Kaleb followed the electronic trail that my funds transfers were leaving.
I needed this money to fight the war that I'd committed to when Kaleb had tried to sell off my sister Rachel to one of his goons. The only way to make sure the money would be safe was to move it without using electronic transfers.
"Mr. Ford?"
Apparently the stress was getting to him even more than I'd realized. He'd just spent the last thirty seconds staring off into space.
"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"I'd like to go ahead with the closure of my account here."
"Are you sure? We would really like to keep your business, Mr. Peterson. You have a significant balance in your account. Possibly we can arrange to put you in a better account. I'm sure we have something with a better yield than what you're getting right now."
I shook my head. "I'm afraid not."
"Very well. You indicated that you'd like to close out your account by purchasing bearer bonds?"
He didn't actually wait for my response; it was just more conversational filler. He knew I was probably doing something illegal, but I'd met all of the bank's requirements so there wasn't anything he could really do to stop me. Besides, he was about to make a ridiculous amount of money off of me.
"We don't actually have enough bearer bonds on hand to cash out the full value of your account…"
"That's fine, I'd like to proceed with purchasing all of the bonds you have on hand. I can always come back tomorrow to redeem the rest of the balance."
I half expected him to tell me that tomorrow was too soon, but apparently he'd pushed me as far as he was comfortable pushing. There weren't as many bearer bonds being issued these days precisely because they were so ideal for money laundering, but there were still trillions of dollars' worth out there, and hundreds of billions of it circulated between the banks here in the Caymans.
Mr. Ford would get ahold of the debt instruments I needed, and he'd do so by pur
chasing them from at least half a dozen different banks later on in the day so that he'd be less likely to know which bank I'd taken the bonds to. What he didn't know couldn't be pulled out of him on a witness stand at some later date.
"Very good. Have you made your own security arrangements, or would you like us to assist you there?"
"I've made my own arrangements."
He nodded absently as he typed something into the terminal positioned to one side of his desk. "Very good. When should I tell my people to expect the armored car?"
"That won't be necessary. I just need the bonds; I'll take care of everything else."
Mr. Ford's eyes practically popped out of his head. "I know it's not my place to tell you how to secure your wealth, but you must admit that simply walking out the front door with…that amount of money is irresponsible."
I fought down a smile at how careful he was being to avoid actually saying how much money we were dealing with.
"You're right, Mr. Ford, it's not your place. My people are very, very good. As long as there's no leak on your end of things, there won't be any issues."
I was momentarily grateful that the bank's policies prohibited the presence of non-account holders in meetings like this. Jasmin, James and Jess were incredibly dangerous, but they didn't look it and I wasn't sure that Mr. Ford would have agreed to let me walk out the door with nothing more than a trio of teenagers to guard that kind of money. That or he would have decided to see if he could arrange to steal the money.
He wavered for a moment, but I knew how to deal with these kinds of concerns. "Your bank's responsibility ends the moment you hand me the debt certificates, Mr. Ford, I'm well aware of that. I'll even sign something to that effect if needs be, but one way or another I will be closing out my account here over the next two days. If I have to, I'll wire the funds to another bank, one that will follow my instructions without all of these questions."
It was a bluff, a small one at least. I would happily wire the money to another bank if I had to, but my contacts had said that Mr. Ford was easier to deal with than most of the rest of his contemporaries at the other banks. If I had to wire the funds elsewhere I'd be forced to fly to Hong Kong or somewhere similar, and that would take time I didn't have.
"Very well, I'll have my secretary draw something up. There will, of course, be a small fee charged by the bank for our role in obtaining the bearer bonds."
"You can have a quarter of a percent."
That sealed the deal. It was only slightly more than my contacts had indicated was the going rate for something like this, but it would amount to tens of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars of which he would get a small but significant cut. Our complicated dance was now done and all that remained was the actual transfer.
"Very well, if you'll please follow me to the vault, we can proceed—unless your people need more time to complete their arrangements?"
"No, we're ready to go."
Two days ago I wouldn't have known how much security to expect, but my contacts had filled me in on that as well. Mr. Ford couldn't get access to the vault by himself any more than I could, so we stopped off at both the branch manager and the assistant manager's offices and collected them before heading to the back of the building.
I caught a glimpse of James and the rest waiting in the lobby, but they didn't acknowledge my presence any more than I acknowledged theirs. As we passed through a large, metal door I felt an unfamiliar sense of pressure that nearly made me stumble, but Mr. Ford and the others didn't seem to notice my clumsiness.
The pressure hadn't been completely unanticipated, but it still wasn't a welcome development. Getting the money to the Cayman First National Bank was going to be more complicated than I'd hoped.
The Deutsche Bank vault here was no fewer than three stories underground, but that wasn't a surprise to me either. My contacts had been very well-informed. We passed through four security checkpoints and were forced to shed all of the metal in our pockets before we finally came to our destination, or rather my destination.
A pair of very competent security guards showed me to a tiny room that had more than six inches of Plexiglas positioned between me and the actual vault. I watched as Mr. Ford and the others went through a series of biometric checks before being allowed past the final checkpoint and into the vault. Once they were inside, I moved over to the pair of old-fashioned binoculars that had been left in the room precisely so that I could watch what happened next.
Mr. Ford and the others opened up the vault and then used a combination of keys and their fingerprints to unlock a heavy steel drawer that functioned as a kind of mini-vault inside of the main vault.
Once all three of the bank employees had done their part, the drawer slid out and they started pulling out bearer bonds that each had a face value of fifty million euros. I kept a silent count as they pulled out fifteen separate certificates and then counted again as they moved on to bearer bonds in smaller denominations.
By the time the vault had been emptied, they had pulled out nearly a billion euros' worth of bonds, and the assistant manager's hands had started shaking slightly. It was an almost unimaginable amount of wealth, but they were going to have to have many times that amount on hand tomorrow in order to fully close out my account.
I didn't actually expect any of the bank employees to try anything funny with the certificates, but I kept an eye on them regardless as Mr. Ford and the branch manager walked the bonds out of the vault. The assistant manager was left to close the drawer that had been holding the certificates. Under normal circumstances the other two probably wouldn't have left him to lock up by himself, but there wasn't anything of value in the drawer now.
One of the security guards buzzed the door to my room open, which was more of a relief than I let on. The room had been furnished with a comfortable chair and a small table, but my beast could recognize a cage and he hadn't liked being trapped inside such a small space. We probably could have transformed into our hulking hybrid form and shattered the locking mechanism on the door if push had come to shove, but neither of us had been completely sure of that.
Mr. Ford and the branch manager met me just past the final security checkpoint and then Mr. Ford and I walked down the hall side by side so that I could continue to keep an eye on the bonds he was carrying. It took only a few minutes to go back through the security check points in reverse order, but we stopped before exiting the last one and Mr. Ford led me into a small room that had just enough room to seat all four of us around a table that was empty but for a couple of sheets of paper and a dumb terminal on the far end.
I did my best not to fidget, but my beast was still riled up, and being confined once again inside of a small room with three other people wasn't doing anything to calm him down. The others were probably just assuming I was nervous at having so much of my wealth concentrated in a few frail pieces of paper, but I still couldn't afford to seem too uneasy. I abandoned my attempts at placating my beast and instead just shoved him back into the tiny corner of my mind where he spent most of his time.
My beast roared in protest and threw himself at the metaphysical bars of his cage, but I was a dominant, I ruled my beast, he didn't rule me. Saying you were dominant was a bold, uncompromising statement, but things weren't always as cut and dried as that, sometimes it was closer than I liked to admit.
I took a couple of deep, calming breaths, and then turned my attention back to Mr. Ford who was waiting on me to begin a final count of the certificates. Someone had delivered the liability release to the room while we'd been down in the vault, so once Mr. Ford was done counting the bonds, I signed the release and accepted the stack of paper that had been my whole purpose in traveling to the Cayman Islands.
"And now if you'll sign here, accepting receipt of the bonds, I'll counter-sign and then we'll update the balance in your account."
A few seconds later the paperwork was all done and we were all standing to leave.
"Your backpack an
d briefcase should be right where you left them, Mr. Peterson. If you'll come right this way, please."
I nodded and followed Mr. Ford across the hall. It was almost amusing how much more relaxed he was now that the bonds were safely in my custody. He'd done his part, he'd earned his commission, and now he could safely focus on the next step, that of buying up enough additional bearer bonds to finish our transaction tomorrow.
Mr. Ford showed me into the small, windowless room where I'd left my backpack and the heavy steel briefcase that I'd brought into the bank, and then closed the door. I spared a moment to wonder if he'd wait outside for me, and then opened up the briefcase and fished out the handcuffs and key that were a vital part of my plan.
The debt certificates went into a rigid plastic case, which I stuffed into the backpack. I locked the briefcase, handcuffed it to my left wrist, and then slung the backpack over my right shoulder.
As I stood back up to leave, I felt the same sense of pressure that I'd felt on the way in. It was even stronger this time, strong enough that I dropped back into the chair as my legs collapsed underneath me. I'd been told that no two people experienced a mental invasion in quite the same way, but for me it felt like someone was pulling my mind out through a keyhole in my skull.
I loosened the chains I'd been using to restrain my beast, and smiled as he charged out to do battle with the alien presence that was trying to find out who I was and where I was taking the money. The flare of power from my beast was only a shade less than would have been required to shift my body into one of my alternate forms, but this time the energy was directed elsewhere.
The vampire—it had to be a vampire—pushed harder and suddenly the keyhole was replaced with two burning knives that were slowly cutting their way through my mind. My beast attacked one of the daggers, shattering it into millions of pieces while I focused on pushing the other one out of my mind.
It was like trying to lift an SUV using nothing but my fingertips, but I refused to let the vampire beat me. For a second it seemed as though my beast was going to be able to come help me, but then he was distracted by another attack.
