by David Lender
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 David T. Lender
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781477827277
ISBN-10: 1477827277
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014948610
ALSO BY DAVID LENDER
Sasha Del Mira Thrillers
Trojan Horse
Sasha Returns (A Short Story)
Arab Summer
White Collar Crime Thrillers
Bull Street
Rudiger Stories (A Collection of Short Stories—Also Available Individually)
Mickey Outside
Other Thrillers
The Gravy Train
Vaccine Nation
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to Cindy Begin and Manette for being my first draft readers and critics, and to Manette for your love and support throughout the process. Thank you to David J. Bikoff, MD, PA, FACS, for your assistance with the medical aspects of the manuscript, and for some great catches in your other comments and critiques.
Thank you to David Downing for proposing the title, and for another great editing job. Your ideas and comments were, again, consistently on point. You’re a pleasure to work with.
Thank you to Robin Cruise for your laser-like focus and excellent suggestions in your copyediting.
And thank you again to the team at Amazon Publishing.
For Styles
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
John Rudiger sat at his usual table in the Beach Grill Restaurant beside the pool at the Blue Moon Hotel in Antigua, his lunch in front of him. He looked off in the distance at his house, three stories of glass, marble and steel that had taken two years and $5 million to build into the rocky hill at the end of Blue Moon Bay. He scanned the curve of the bay, the brilliant blue of the Caribbean, the salt-white sand of the beach. I never get tired of it, he thought, and then the moment was shattered as his gaze drifted back to Senior Sgt. Carlen Isaacs of the Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda, seated before him.
“Is John Rudiger’s mind wandering?” Isaacs said.
Rudiger took off his sunglasses and leaned forward, staring directly into Isaacs’ face. Rudiger said, “No, I was intentionally not paying attention. I figured if I didn’t respond you might just get up and leave me in peace with my lunch.”
Isaacs said, “This important discussion. To you and Carlen Isaacs.”
Rudiger didn’t answer. He glanced yet again at the young mother reading on a lounge chair on the pool apron, her toddler son next to her fidgeting, ready to make a break for it.
Isaacs said, “You don’t do nothin’, and Carlen Isaacs tellin’ you, there be trouble. For you. This U.S. Attorney in New York, Charles Holden, must’ve closed big case and now has time on his hands. Never seem to forget about you. Every year, two years—”
“I know. He sends his people down here, and they always go home with nothing.”
“But you don’t do right thing, pretty soon one come down here and he don’t go home with nothin’. He go home with John Rudiger. Extradited.” Isaacs put his elbows on the table and leaned forward at Rudiger. “And he especially pissed off about this Katie girl he send last time.”
Rudiger shrugged. “Nothing I can do about that.”
“Maybe not, but Holden, he track her to Cape Verde, see she got big house now, pay lots of money to doctors for her daddy, figure you gave money to her when she come down here and then you two go back to New York and get it where you hid it.”
So how much is this going to cost me? Rudiger figured he’d find out soon enough. Isaacs never took too long to get to the punch line. He looked back at the mother and son next to the pool just as the boy scooted out of her grasp toward the pool. Rudiger came half out of his seat, then relaxed as one of the waiters grabbed the child and delivered him into his mother’s arms.
Oblivious to the poolside near-drama, Isaacs said, “So you need to protect youself, and only way to do that is for Carlen Isaacs to protect you.”
“Why would I need you to do that? I’m an Antiguan citizen with a birth certificate, a public health card and a passport to prove it. John Rudiger. Born and raised here.”
Isaacs narrowed his eyes. “New identity Carlen Isaacs arrange for you.”
“It was Commissioner Desmond Browne. You just drove me back and forth to get my documents. Remember?”
Isaacs leaned back in his chair. “Even though Commissioner Browne, he retire, he still need money. All he got is pension—”
“I’m his pension,” Rudiger said.
“—and Carlen Isaacs got lots of responsibilities, need to take care of family.”
Rudiger waited.
Isaacs looked at Rudiger for a long moment, then said, “Commissioner Browne need another $5,000 per month. And for Carlen Isaacs, $2,000 more per month.”
“You must have a new mistress or something.”
“Carlen Isaacs got lots of responsibilities.”
“This is the second time you’ve hit me up in a year. Don’t press your luck.”
“You don’t pay, Carlen Isaacs get you sent back.”
“You get me sent back and who’s gonna pay?”
Isaacs didn’t respond, so Rudiger said, “And where’s the money going? Maybe you take the extra $5,000 in Commissioner Browne’s envelope and give him your $2,000.”
“You ought to be careful how you talk. Carlen Isaacs Senior Sgt. now, important man with influence. Even if you don’t get sent back, bad things could happen to you.”
Rudiger shifted his gaze off to his house again. He put his sunglasses on again, then turned to look back at Isaacs. He didn’t want to even give him the satisfaction of nodding his agreement. After a moment he said, “It’ll be in the drop at the beginning of next month.”
Isaacs said, “No. Starting today.”
“I said beginning of next month.” Rudiger reached forward and unfurled his napkin, placed it in his lap. “Now how about you get out of here so I can eat my lunch?”
Rudiger watched Isaacs get up and saunter away. He now had trouble believing he’d initially felt sorry for Isaacs when Rudiger first arrived in Antigua. Isaacs then a hapless patrolman, a toady who did all Commissioner Browne’s dirty jobs. Harried, his superiors always pushing him around, dark semicircles of perspiration under the armpits of his pastel-green uniform. But today Isaacs was almost as insufferably self-important as Browne had been. And harder to deal with. It always amazed Rudiger that Isaacs’ lifeless eyes weren’t a pretense at trying to play dumber than he really was.
After Isaacs left, Rudiger did the math. Former Royal Police Commissioner Browne, now $17,000 a month. The minister of public health, who’d issued his bogus birth certificate and
public health card, $6,000 a month. The superintendent of schools in the Saint George Parish who’d falsified his grammar school records, $3,000 a month. Two low-level clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles and the public registrar’s office who’d falsified his driver’s license and passport, $1,000 a month. Current Royal Police Commissioner Benjamin, $12,000 a month. And now Senior Sgt. Isaacs, $7,000 a month. When he first came here 11 years ago, his all-in cost was $50,000 a year. Now it was over $500,000 and it only promised to get worse. Whatever happened to the good old days when a fugitive financier could bribe a bunch of local officials with one-time payments?
A year ago he’d already been thinking of moving someplace that didn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S. The Cape Verde Islands, another paradise off the coast of Africa. Perfect weather, 70s to 80s all year. Beautiful beaches. And Charlie Holden couldn’t touch him. In fact, he was the one who mentioned Cape Verde to Katie during their business deal-turned-tryst in New York.
Just thinking about Katie made him smile. The strawberry blonde, petite, with the body as tight as a drum in the navy-blue bathing suit and the flush on her chest. She’d pitched him within a minute of meeting him at the very table where he now sat. She’d admitted that she worked for Charlie Holden in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York. He’d sent her down there to finally get enough to prove Rudiger was really Walter Conklin and extradite him to the U.S. to stand trial for embezzling half a billion dollars from his hedge fund.
What a joke. Half a billion dollars, my ass.
Over $400 million of that had been market losses after he’d fled New York and left his fund unmanaged while the markets were in free fall. Fled because his CFO, who he learned too late had been cooking his fund’s books, had panicked, run to the Feds and blamed it all on Rudiger. Rudiger had taken $40 million with him, first heading to Brazil for weight loss and plastic surgery, then ultimately to get lost here in Antigua. Before he ran he hadn’t had time to retrieve $50 million in bearer bonds he’d stashed in a safe deposit box in a JPMorgan Chase bank branch on Pine Street in downtown New York.
That was Katie’s pitch. She’d said everyone in Holden’s office knew about the box, but because they’d uncovered its whereabouts in an improper search, no judge would give them a warrant to open it themselves. Katie had proposed she act as Rudiger’s ex-wife, the only other person with signature authority and a key to the box. She said if he tried to go in himself, Charlie’s guys would pounce on him. So she’d go in disguised as Angela Conklin and get the bonds for a $10 million cut. They’d rehearsed it, done a dry run, and then Katie walked into the bank branch to close the deal. But he’d never seen her come out again. After waiting around for three or four days, he’d finally flown back to Antigua. A week later a DHL package from a hotel in Cape Verde arrived with a note saying Thanks, partner. Good luck. Inside the envelope were $10 million in bearer bonds.
That made him smile again. He remembered telling her that he’d burned through all but $2 million of his $40 million. That if he had it to do over again, he’d figure out a way to make it work over the long haul on only $10 million. She’d taken him at his word.
But no matter how he looked at it, or how fond he was of her, Katie owed him $30 million. And an apology. The image of her in her navy-blue bathing suit came back to him. And then the image of her taking off that navy-blue bathing suit and showing him how energetic a 30-something Irish girl from Brooklyn could be in the sack.
Thinking about Katie, and with the way things were going around here, maybe it was time to start thinking about Cape Verde again.
Katie Dolan walked down the stairs to the first floor of her house on the island of Boa Vista in Cape Verde, her suitcase in hand. It was ten minutes before her car to Rabil Airport was scheduled to arrive; she wanted to check in on Daddy before she left.
As she reached the end of the stairwell, she could see the lights dancing from the television, hear the sound turned down low. Daddy had obviously fallen asleep in front of it again. She entered the first-floor great room, the floor-to-ceiling sliding doors open to the cool air and sound of the surf on Chaves Beach. She now saw Daddy asleep in his Barcalounger in front of the Vizio LCD. She’d had the 70-inch screen mounted on the wall on the other side of the room to keep from obstructing his view of the ocean in the rare moments his eyes weren’t glued to it.
She approached him. His deep breathing almost masked the hum of the top-of-the-line DeVilbiss 525DS oxygen concentrator on the floor beside him. Standing over him, she heard the hiss of the oxygen coming out of the prongs hooked under his nostrils. She kissed him on the forehead, then muted the TV sound.
He didn’t wake up.
She started across the floor toward the sliding door to the carport, then heard Styles’ tail thumping on the sofa. She walked over and stroked the pitbull’s head and the thumping accelerated.
“Go back to sleep, little man,” she whispered.
Katie rubbed his belly for a moment, then leaned over and kissed one of his ears.
She walked out the door and waited in the breeze off the ocean, the smell of salt in the air, daylight just beginning to show on the horizon. Xavier pulled up in his Range Rover a few minutes later. Katie hurried toward the SUV so he wouldn’t honk and wake up Daddy.
“Morning, Miss Katie,” Xavier said when she got in.
“Morning, Xavier.” She felt tense about leaving Daddy, even though she knew Flora would arrive in the next hour after finishing her shift at the ClubHotel Riu Karamboa a few miles up Chaves Beach. Katie would be gone for close to a week, and Dr. Dewanji had said that Daddy’s emphysema could cause him to deteriorate quickly, even in a dry climate like the Cape Verde Islands. Usually patients with emphysema would weaken progressively, lingering on for months, their lung function diminishing until they literally suffocated. But Dr. Dewanji said Daddy’s heart, liver and kidneys were also failing, so it was possible, without warning, he just wouldn’t wake up one morning.
She looked back to see the flickering light of the TV in the house. “Okay, let’s go,” she said, setting her jaw.
Charlie Holden, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, sat at his desk at 1 St. Andrew’s Plaza in downtown New York City. He checked his watch.
11:56 a.m.
He slouched in his chair, waiting, then got a glimpse of his mid-50ish protruding belly, sucked it in and sat up straight. He burped, getting a repeat taste of the hot dog he’d wolfed down on the street in order to be on time for his noon conference call with Antigua’s Minister of National Security, Dr. Winston James.
He glanced at the file on James in front of him. Political appointee with higher ambitions, three months on the job. Not much to go on, he thought.
At noon the second line on his phone lit up, Stephanie dialing out to James’ office.
At 12:10 he got up and walked out to Stephanie.
“What’s going on?”
She was holding the phone to her ear. “What’s it look like? I’m on hold.”
Holden shook his head and walked back into his office, sat down. He glanced at the file again. Pissant little country of 171 square miles. The little bureaucrat’s got less cops and defense forces reporting to him than the New York police commissioner, and he’s got me holding like he’s the ruler of the British Empire.
A moment later Stephanie buzzed him on the intercom and Holden picked up the handset. “Minister James, thank you so much for taking my call.”
“My apologies for my tardiness, Mr. Holden. An unfolding crisis of major proportions. Unavoidable.”
“No problem, I know how it can be. You prefer Doctor or Minister?”
“Whatever you please, sir. I am as proud of achieving my doctorate as I am of my recent appointment as Minister of National Security of Antigua and Barbuda.” The guy talked in a grandiose version of that clipped Caribbean speech Holden heard in Canarsie.
“Very well, Minister. I called to ask your help in capturing a felon wanted in the U.S. for a $500 million securities fraud on his hedge fund investors. His name is Walter Conklin and we believe he is living in Antigua under the alias of John Rudiger.”
“My word,” James said.
“Yes. And I’ve had multiple conversations over the years, first with former Royal Police Commissioner Browne, more recently with Commissioner Benjamin—”
“Commissioner Browne? When did this man flee the U.S.?”
“Eleven years ago.”
“Mr. Holden, sir, this is rather surprising that you would call me about this now. In light of the fact that you’ve had conversations for over a decade with Commissioners Browne and Benjamin.”
What the—?
Holden sat up straight in his chair, clutched the phone handset tighter. “Minister, I think it’s surprising, too. I’ve been pursuing this matter on and off for, as you say, over a decade and gotten stonewalled at every turn.”
“Stonewalled?”
“Yes, to the point that I’m convinced that some of your people, maybe an entire group, are covering up for this man, probably because he’s paying them off.”
Holden waited for that to sink in.
James said, “Mr. Holden, those are serious accusations. Do you have any evidence of this?”
“Only that we were able to track Conklin, then traveling under his own passport, to Brazil immediately after he left New York. Then he disappeared. But in Brazil we were able to find a plastic surgeon who operated on him to change his appearance, and another surgeon who performed gastric bypass on him. A year later a Mr. John Rudiger surfaced in Antigua with no known prior background, and began building a $5 million house on Blue Moon Bay. We got a tip from one of Walter Conklin’s former investors who overheard John Rudiger talking at the Blue Moon Hotel, and swore it was the voice of Walter Conklin.” He paused to see if James would have any response. He didn’t. “That was when I started sending members of my staff to Antigua to check out this John Rudiger. Searches in the hall of records showed no microfiche of a birth certificate or any other documentation of his identity. Commissioner Browne was very cooperative and sympathetic. He had his men interview Rudiger, who professed to have been born and educated there. My people checked records in the public schools of Antigua for evidence of Rudiger. Nothing. Then, surprisingly, hard copies of records started popping up in the files. Birth certificate, grammar school registration and attendance records, a public health card, and even an Antiguan passport, supposedly issued five years earlier.”