by Stuart Woods
“Did he ask you to conduct the scheduled press conference?”
“No, he just asked me to be there. He said he would conduct it himself.”
“Did the PR people come up with something for him to say?”
“Henry doesn’t need that sort of advice. He’s perfectly capable of handling such an event. They had given him some notes, but he threw them away in disgust. He does not like it when people try to manipulate him.”
“Were the PR people trying to manipulate him?”
“I meant people in general. Anyone who knows him knows enough to be careful about what they suggest to him.”
“Including yourself?”
“Certainly. I am always very deferential to him.”
“How, exactly, are you related to the Thomases?”
“My mother was a cousin of theirs, but Henry treated me like close family and was always complimentary of my work.”
“What is your work here, Mr. Damien?”
“I have worked in every department of the firm at one time or another. I suppose it was sort of an informal training program. Currently, I’m in charge of digital services, a department that I established.” Damien looked at his watch. “Gentlemen, I must ask you to excuse me. I have to be with Henry now. You may watch the press conference on my television, if you wish.” He picked up the remote and switched it to CNBC, then got out of there.
* * *
• • •
SEETHING WITH ANGER, Bob Cantor went back to his shop and spent most of the day cleaning the rooms and restoring everything to its proper place. By late afternoon, he was still very angry.
60
Stone, Jamie, Jeremy, and Scott were gathered in Stone’s office for the noontime press conference. To Stone’s surprise, Hank Thomas greeted the press.
“Good morning,” he said to the gathered media. “My grandfather, Henry Thomas, the chairman of H. Thomas & Son, scheduled this press conference for the purpose of addressing the scandalous and reckless story about my family in this morning’s edition of the New York Times, so I will turn the proceedings over to him. After he has made his statement he will not entertain questions. At that time, I will have further announcements to make.” He turned toward Henry. “Poppa?”
Henry Thomas was pushed forward in a wheelchair by a uniformed nurse, and he faced the camera without a script or notes.
“I beg to differ with my grandson,” Henry said. “This is not a good morning. I awoke to find a slanderous article in the Times, which was about members of my family who are long dead. In fact, I am the only living member of my family who can remember any of them when they were alive.
“One of the photographs is of my maternal grandfather, whom I hardly knew. I was a small child when he was around and a teenager when he died, so I can offer nothing of him. Every one of my family members whose photograph is in the Times would now, if still alive, be more than a hundred years old.
“Who among us can answer for his long-dead ancestors? And yet, I and my living family are expected to do so.
“I have no personal knowledge of whether or not any of the many allegations by the Times are true, and I do not plan to spend my remaining days substantiating or denying them. H. Thomas & Son is an excellent and properly run business with a sterling reputation in the financial world and with thousands of clients here at home and around the world. I say to them now: your confidence in us has not been misplaced. We are, as ever, at your disposal.”
He nodded to the nurse, and she wheeled him off camera.
Hank Thomas came on again. “I have two announcements to make, and I will not take any questions on either of them. Early this morning, after reading the Times piece, my father, John Thomas—known as Jack—returned to his office and took his own life.” He paused to wait for the gasps and exclamations to stop. “He had, for some weeks, been of unsettled mind, and the allegations in this morning’s Times apparently drove him over the edge. He will be missed in these halls.
“Second, I have decided to discontinue my candidacy for President of the United States, and to return to H. Thomas & Son, where I spent my youth, to try and fill the void left by the death of my father. I ask those who have placed their confidence in me for their understanding and patience. To the extent possible, my campaign will refund all the donations made by my supporters in amounts both large and small. We will live to fight another day. Thank you.”
The broadcast was immediately transferred to a television studio, where a panel of financial and political pundits opined on the meaning of what had been said. Stone turned off the television.
“Well,” said Jeremy Green. “No mention was made of the attempt to loot the world banking system.”
“Dino tells me the FBI will lead the investigation into our allegations,” Stone said. “I expect you’ll all be hearing from them tomorrow.”
“Jeremy, Scott,” Jamie Cox said. “You’ll need to replace me on the story. I’m either resigning or taking a leave of absence—up to you which—in order to write a book about all this. I will present the manuscript to you in due course for comment, and, if necessary, corrections.”
Jeremy spoke up. “Scott and I had anticipated this, so please take a leave of absence—as long as you like—and we wish you well with your book.” He looked around the room. “Where is Huey Horowitz?”
Stone spoke up. “He’s in Connecticut, helping to make funeral arrangements for his girlfriend, Trixie, who was murdered yesterday.”
“I assume the police are investigating,” Jeremy said.
“Yes, they are, and I hear they have some leads.”
“Good. I’ll write Huey a note of condolence.”
“Stone,” Scott said. “Have you heard anything of Bob Cantor?”
“I have,” Stone said. “He will be returning to the city shortly, and he will resume his work.”
“Good,” Jeremy said. “Please express our gratitude to him for his work on this project. It wouldn’t have happened without him.”
“I’ll do so as soon as I see him,” Stone said.
* * *
• • •
BOB CANTOR GOT OUT of his van in the parking garage of the Thomas building, wearing his copy-machine technician’s clothes and mustache and carrying his toolbox. He made his way upstairs to the reception desk, which was unmanned. People up and down the halls were watching some sort of press event on televisions.
Bob plodded down the hallway, past the large room where the computer staff worked, to the room where the copying machine lived, let himself in, and partially disassembled the unit, so as to make it appear that he was working on it. He then went next door to where the stacks of computers hummed quietly.
He removed the two upper trays of his toolbox and removed an object the size of an ordinary brick, but with wires protruding from it. He chose one of the PCs and slid it from its shelf, then he replaced it with the object and began to connect it to some of the wires that ran along the wall. Finally, he attached a small box with an antenna, and connected that, as well, then he pushed his work against the wall and reinserted the PC into its slot, concealing the fact that he had been there.
He replaced the shelves in his toolbox, reassembled the copying machine, and printed out a test sheet, then he let himself out of the room and walked back down the hallway to the front desk, where the young woman he knew was now sitting.
“Your machine checks out very nicely,” he said. “See you next month.”
The young woman who had a large bite of sandwich in her mouth, simply gave him a wave, and he left.
He got back into his van and drove home. There he removed the business name from the van, took off his coveralls, and walked everything to his backyard, where he turned on a gas firepit. Everything went into the flames. He walked into the kitchen, opened a beer, then went and sat in a lawn chair until nothing recog
nizable was left in the firepit. He collected the ashes, placed them in a trash bag and added it to his garbage, which would be collected the following morning.
Finally, he went back to his workshop, switched on his computer, and entered a secret website with a very long and complicated password. He typed in an instruction, received a confirmation, then switched off his computer.
* * *
• • •
RANCE DAMIEN ENTERED the computer room shortly after the press conference, and everyone stood up. “We’re very sorry for what’s occurred,” a supervisor said on behalf of everyone.
“Thank you all,” Damien said. “Steve, you and Marty stay with me for a few minutes. The company will be closed until Monday morning, you are all excused until that time.”
Everyone began shuffling from the room.
“Now,” Damien said, taking a seat at a computer. “We’re going to rerun the program from before and make those transfers again, plus, all the other transfers we had planned. By the time we leave here tonight, you guys will have earned a handsome bonus for your work. When the FBI arrives tomorrow morning, there will be no trace of what we have done, and we will be a billion dollars richer.”
Damien logged on to a website, then used his password to enter system operations. He inserted a thumb drive into his computer and downloaded the software his people had written, entered another password and a command, then sat back to watch the computer work. His two coders stood behind him looking over his shoulders at the screen.
A moment later, they were lifted off their feet and slammed into a wall, followed by a storm of monitors and keyboards, and by a wall of flame that consumed everything before it.
* * *
• • •
STONE AND JAMIE were driven to Teterboro Airport by Fred, where Stone’s Citation Latitude and its two pilots awaited. The customs car arrived and cleared them, and Stone got into the cockpit and started the engines.
Twenty minutes later Stone pushed forward the throttles, and the airplane rolled down Runway One, then lifted off into the evening sky.
Stone flew the airplane until they had left American airspace, then turned over the controls to Faith, his chief pilot, and joined Jamie in the rear of the airplane for dinner, before their refueling stop in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
On the transatlantic crossing, Stone would spell the two pilots in turn, then they would set down the aircraft on Stone’s airstrip in the south of England at midmorning the following day, where the forecast was for cool and sunny.
* * *
• • •
AFTER DINNER, Stone switched on the satellite television and tuned in to CNN. A few minutes later, they were watching a huge fire burning in downtown New York.
“The fire was contained to a first-floor computer room,” a reporter on the scene was saying. “The building had been emptied and closed for the remainder of the week after the death of Jack Thomas, president and CEO of H. Thomas & Son, so there are no reported casualties, except for three persons in the computer room, one of whom died of his injuries. Their names have not been released, pending notification of their families.
“A source in the FBI ventured an opinion that the explosion and blaze might have been set deliberately to cover illegal wire transfers, which the Times have alleged took place.”
Stone turned to Jamie. “Looks like Bob Cantor is back in town,” he said.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.
However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all of my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.
If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.
Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.
When you e-mail, please do not send attachments, as I never open these. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.
Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions, or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get e-mail addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.
Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.
Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may e-mail it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, Penguin Random House LLC, 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic, or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California 98212–1825.
Those who wish to make offers for rights of a literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10022. (Note: This is not an invitation for you to send her your manuscript or to solicit her to be your agent.)
If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website, www.stuartwoods.com, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact his Penguin representative or the Penguin publicity department with the request.
If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Sara Minnich at Penguin’s address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.
A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.
Keep reading for an exciting excerpt from SKIN GAME, the latest Teddy Fay novel by Stuart Woods and Parnell Hall.
1
Teddy Fay finished his twenty laps in the terrace pool. He pulled himself out and sat on the deck, drinking in the morning sun.
His broken leg had nearly healed. Remarkable, considering the amount of stress he’d subjected it to before allowing it to be put in a cast. Or rather, put back in a cast. Extenuating circumstances had forced him to cut off the original cast in order to deal with a life-or-death situation. He’d been a good boy since, even followed his rehab regimen.
The fact that he liked swimming didn’t hurt.
He got up, sat in a deck chair, and poured himself a cool glass of lemonade.
Teddy enjoyed the three-story split-level Hollywood house on Mullholland Drive that he’d purchased in the name of Billy Barnett. Teddy had three identities. That is . . . three current identities. In the course of his career, he had played many roles, occasionally more than one at a time, but they were usually temporary. As Billy Barnett, he had risen through the ranks from production assistant to producer at Centurion Studios. As Mark Weldon, he was a stuntman who had evolved into a character actor who specialized in playing villains.
As Teddy Fay, he was not known at all.
His cell phon
e rang. Teddy scooped it up. “Hello?”
“Billy Barnett?”
“Yes.”
“This is Lance Cabot.”
Teddy nearly dropped the phone. Lance Cabot was the head of the CIA. Teddy had worked for Lance once, before going rogue and killing people who deserved to die. Lance had organized a global manhunt for him, but Teddy was so elusive they soon elevated him to the top of the Most Wanted list. When even a presidential pardon failed to cool the Agency’s ardor, Teddy changed his name and dropped out of sight. He’d been rumored dead. Most agents subscribed to the rumor.
Teddy said, “Why would the head of the CIA be calling a Hollywood film producer?”
“I’m not calling you in your producer capacity.”
Teddy paused. “Go on.”
“We have a problem in Paris.”
“Oh?”
“We have a mole. Which is ridiculous—there’s nothing happening in Paris that would warrant an enemy power planting a mole at that branch. The Agency was tracking only one individual recently, a low-level Syrian agent named Hassan Hamui. Recently he suddenly dropped out of sight, as if he knew he was under surveillance: knew when, how, and by whom. That’s why we think we have a mole.”
“And you want someone to handle the situation? Well, I’m not the man you’re looking for. I happen to know you went out of your way to try to kill him, so I’d hardly care to be that guy. But if you want me to apply my meager talents to the situation, perhaps we can work something out.”
“You want money?”
“Hardly. I can’t be bought because I have all I need. I’m not above doing a favor for a friend, but you hardly fit into that category.”
“You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“If I wanted to, finding and killing you wouldn’t be hard. After all, I made this phone call.”
