Sidney Sheldon's Reckless

by Tilly Bagshawe

  Cameron Crewe himself had been touched by tragedy. His only son, Marcus, had died from leukemia at fourteen—the same age as Nicholas. Crewe’s marriage had collapsed soon afterwards. Somehow these bald, sad facts served to humanize the billionaire in the public consciousness. People liked Cameron Crewe.

  Ironically, Hunter Drexel had been en route to an interview with Crewe in Moscow when he was snatched off the streets by Group 99 heavies. And the links didn’t end there. Henry Cranston was also a direct competitor of Cameron Crewe’s. In fact, Tracy read now, Crewe Oil had been the under bidder on Cranston Eneregy Inc.’s latest landmark deal to begin fracking for shale gas in Poland. In the wake of Henry Cranston’s death, they now looked likely to take over that contract. There were rumors that they’d already moved in behind the scenes on the original Greek deal that Henry had been working on, before Prince Achileas’s unfortunate suicide at Sandhurst.

  The lights in the cabin dimmed. Tracy’s fellow passengers began to settle down to sleep. Switching on her reading light, Tracy sipped her coffee instead. Pressing her face against the window for a moment, she looked out into the blackness.

  Thoughts of Nicholas came to her then. She could only ever hold them off for so long. Sleep was the worst. As soon as she let herself slip under, the dreams would begin. Strangely, they were never nightmares about the accident. They were always beautiful dreams, snapshots from the past. Blake was in some of them. Jeff was in others. But always there was Nicholas, smiling, laughing, his hand holding Tracy’s, their fingers entwined in love. In Tracy’s dreams she could hear her son, feel him, smell him. He was so real. So alive.

  And then she would wake up and the loss would crush her again afresh, like an anvil being dropped onto her heart. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken without screaming, or crying out, her hands grasping at the air in front of her as if she could somehow hold on to Nick, reach into her beautiful dreams and pull him back to her . . .

  She thought about Jeff.

  Did Jeff have dreams like that too?

  Was he out there tonight somewhere, soul-dead and hopeless like she was, clawing at the void that Nicholas’s death had left?

  Tracy had felt guilty, running out on Jeff. She knew he must be hurting too, desperately. But the truth was she simply didn’t have the strength to see him. Nick had looked so like him, had been so like him. It would be too hard. Besides, in Tracy’s experience, a grief shared was never a grief halved. Human loss was not a team game. Each person dealt with tragedy differently.

  Tracy Whitney dealt with it alone.

  Turning back to the CIA files, Tracy forced Jeff’s image out of her mind, along with dear Blake Carter’s, and her darling Nick.

  There would be time for tears later. A lifetime of tears.

  Right now Tracy was going to find the woman who killed her son.

  CHAPTER 11

  TRACY STORMED OUT ONTO the Rue de la Croix Rouge in a white-hot fury.

  A light dusting of new snow covered the sidewalk, and a bitter wind blew as Tracy stalked across the street towards the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre. But her blood was boiling so furiously, she barely felt the cold.

  Arrogant asshole! How dare he?

  Monsieur Gerald Le Doux, the managing partner of Ronde Suisse Private Bank, had been as sexist, condescending, superior and generally obnoxious as he possibly could be during Tracy’s brief meeting in his office. He reminded her of a Swiss version of Clarence Desmond, the senior vice president at the Fiduciary Bank & Trust in Philadelphia where Tracy had once worked as a computer specialist, a hundred lifetimes ago. Desmond had been seen as a dinosaur even back then, with his constant innuendos and knee patting and “harmless” in-jokes that were very pointedly only for the boys. Yet here was Monsieur Le Doux, at the pinnacle of banking’s new age of modernity and transparency, still flying the flag for entitled chauvinists everywhere.

  “How may I help such a beautiful lady?”

  “You ladies have your secrets, Miss Whitney, and so must we.”

  “I daresay you’re not familiar with our banking laws here in Switzerland, young lady. But I’m under no obligation whatsoever to provide you information about our private clients, still less with video footage.”

  “I assume you’ll be shopping while you’re in our beautiful city?”

  Hateful little man.

  Tracy might have felt better about this fruitless meeting had the rest of her encounters in Geneva been more productive. Her visits to Henry Cranston’s widow, mistress and secretary had all contributed to a picture of a man so thoroughly unpleasant, it was a wonder no one had blown him to smithereens years ago. Between the women he’d betrayed, business partners he’d double crossed and employees he’d bullied, Henry Cranston had a list of enemies as long as both Tracy’s arms. And yet there was nothing, beyond the general nature of his business, to tie him to Althea or Group 99.

  However, the latter had now formally claimed responsibility online for his murder, although Althea herself had remained pointedly silent. No cryptic messages had been sent to the CIA, or to Swiss Intelligence. Tracy had done her usual trawl of hotels and guesthouses and a comprehensive computer search of airline, train and car rental records. But Althea, like Henry Cranston’s missing $4 million, had vanished into thin air.

  With Greg Walton’s words about “being resourceful” ringing in her ears, Tracy had reached out to two old contacts from her con artist days. Pierre Bonsin was an ex-banker turned occasional thief, although Pierre himself would never have used that word. A wizard with financial models of all kinds and a demon cracker of algorithms, Pierre saw himself as a sort of rogue chess player, outsmarting the machine that was the international banking system. Tracy had asked him to see if he could find any evidence of Althea having been in Ronde’s systems.

  She’d asked her other old friend, Jim Cage, a yacht broker and safe-blower by night, whether any of his contacts knew anything about a woman sourcing explosives in the weeks leading up to Cranston’s death.

  “She’d be American, educated, attractive and wealthy. Tall, with brown hair, although she may well have disguised her appearance.”

  To Tracy’s intense disappointment, both had drawn a blank. Ronde’s systems had indeed been attacked, and potentially compromised.

  “Unfortunately it happened four times in the last six weeks,” Pierre Bonsin explained. “Any one of them could have been your girl, but we’ve no way of knowing. This is the age of the hacker, Tracy. You know that. These kinds of cyberattacks are a part of daily life now, for all the big banks.”

  Jim Cage was equally downbeat.

  “No female of the description you gave me has been sourcing bomb-making equipment here,” Jim told Tracy, in his luxurious, modernist office overlooking the lake. “No female of any description come to that.”

  Jim Cage was handsome in a classic, aging matinee idol sort of way, tall and dark with a little too much tan and extremely white teeth. He’d always fancied Tracy, and was pleased to see how well she’d held up over the years. She was a bit too thin these days. The bottle-green cashmere dress she was wearing today showed her ribs, a look that some men liked but that was a bit too much for Jim. But Tracy was still a knockout. It was those emerald eyes that really did it. Or were they jade? Either way they were looking at him reproachfully now. She’d hoped for better news.

  “The thing is, Tracy, you and I are old school. We still like to do things in person. Talk to the experts, the artists. Group 99’s not like that, are they? They’re kids. Anything they need to build a bomb they can get online. There’s no romance anymore.”

  Althea’s not a kid, Tracy thought. And there was precious little romance in Henry Cranston’s death. But she took the point. Althea was too smart to risk being seen or leaving evidence when she didn’t need to.

  Now, drawing her fur coat more tightly around her as she approached the bridge towards Saint-Gervais Les Bergues, Tracy did something she hated doing: she admitted defeat. If eit
her Althea or Henry Cranston’s missing $4 million were still in Geneva, or even in Europe, she’d be very surprised. Monsieur Le Doux’s patronizing stonewalling back at the bank had been the bitter cherry on the top of an already thoroughly disappointing cake. Tracy’s entire trip had been a total waste of time.

  “Whoa there!”

  Tracy had been so lost in her own thoughts, she didn’t look where she was going and collided suddenly and forcefully with a man on the sidewalk. Losing her footing from the impact, she managed to drop her briefcase, which promptly burst open, scattering papers all over the place.

  “Let me help you,” the man said, as Tracy scrambled to retrieve them. His response in English was the first thing that threw her. The second was his smile. Broad and genuine, it lit up his entire face.

  “Thank you,” Tracy muttered, embarrassed. Between them they managed to pick up all the stray documents. “I’m so sorry,” she said afterwards. “I’m afraid I was miles away.”

  “I can see that.” The man was still smiling. Handing her a sheaf of letters, he noticed the name on the top of one of them. Looking at Tracy astonished, he asked, “You’re not . . . Tracy Whitney, are you?”

  Tracy frowned. “Do we know each other?”

  “Not yet.” The man’s smile broadened still further. “But I believe we were supposed to meet next week in New York. I’m Cameron Crewe.”

  CHAPTER 12

  OVER DINNER THAT NIGHT at Rasoi by Vineet, the Michelin- starred Indian restaurant at Tracy’s hotel, Tracy learned a lot about Cameron Crewe.

  The first thing she discovered was that the beaming smiles he’d bestowed on her earlier were rare. Not that he wasn’t friendly, or kind or warmly disposed towards her. He was all of those things. But his default manner was definitely serious.

  Tracy opened with the obvious question. “What are you doing in Geneva?”

  Crewe had already explained how he knew about her. Greg Walton had called him a couple of days ago and suggested that they meet. But he hadn’t told her what he was doing here, in Switzerland.

  “I’m here for the same reason you are, I imagine,” said Cameron. “Or a related reason anyway. Henry Cranston’s death has serious ramifications in our business. There are certain deals that Cranston Energy have pulled out of, where my company may step in. I flew here to meet with Henry’s partners and discuss terms.”

  “No offense,” said Tracy, “but isn’t that a bit vulture-like? I mean, the man has just been murdered. What’s left of him is barely cold.”

  Cameron Crewe shrugged, not callously, but in a matter-of-fact way. “It’s business. Henry and I weren’t personal friends. Although to be honest, even if we had been, I would want to move quickly on the Polish deal. Fracking is a very fast-moving sector. If we don’t get in there, believe me Exxon or the Chinese will.”

  “It’s what got Henry Cranston killed,” Tracy observed.

  Cameron sipped his wine. “Perhaps.”

  “Doesn’t that make you nervous?”

  “No. Not really. To be honest, Tracy, not many things make me nervous.”

  They ordered and ate and talked. The food was exquisite—Tracy’s chicken dopiaza was the best she’d ever tasted, better even than in Delhi—but afterwards it was the conversation that she remembered.

  Cameron Crewe was a fascinating man, and not at all what Tracy had expected. In Tracy’s experience, most billionaires were conceited and arrogant men, even the philanthropic ones. But Cameron was neither of those things. Instead he was controlled, a little serious and extremely polite. He could be warm—his smiles, when they came, were like sunlight bursting through clouds. But the main thing that struck Tracy about Cameron Crewe was the haunting sadness in his eyes.

  It wasn’t as if he looked upset. Quite the opposite, in fact. He was clearly as engaged and interested in the conversation as Tracy was, especially when they began discussing Group 99, their involvement in Henry Cranston’s death and their apparently changing tactics. The sadness was simply there, a permanent fixture, like a black curtain at the back of a stage set. The actors might be singing or dancing or laughing. But behind them, always, the darkness remained.

  Tracy had that same curtain. It had come down first when she lost her mother to suicide. Then again, years later, when she thought Jeff Stevens had betrayed her. With each loss it had turned just a shade darker. Nick’s death had turned it midnight black.

  Was it his son’s death that lowered the curtain for Cameron?

  Instinctively, Tracy felt a connection with him, a common bond.

  The waiter started to pour more of the chilled Chablis, but Cameron politely put a hand on his arm.

  “I can do it,” he said. “We need to talk privately.”

  “Of course, Mr. Crewe.”

  They know him here. Tracy was surprised. But perhaps he came to town often on business? It was the business of expensive restaurants to remember patrons as rich and powerful as Cameron Crewe.

  “You asked my thoughts about Group 99,” Cameron said, refilling Tracy’s glass.

  “Yes.”

  Tracy had changed for dinner into a simple black shirtdress and pumps. On another woman the outfit might have looked boring and staid, but on Tracy it was wonderfully elegant, emphasizing her slender arms and smooth, alabaster skin. Her chestnut hair was loose, and she wore a small emerald pendant at the neck that seemed to glow the same green as her eyes. Cameron realized with a start that he was powerfully attracted to her. It had been a long time since he’d felt that for any woman. Too long.

  He must be careful.

  “To tell you the truth, I’m fascinated by Group 99,” he told her. “In some ways they’re different from any terrorist threat we’ve seen before. Yet in other ways they’re as old as the hills.”

  Tracy waited for him to elaborate.

  “I mean, on the one hand, their ‘model,’ if you can call it that, is unique. There’s almost no bureaucracy. No official hierarchy or leadership. No barriers to entry. They took a simple idea, and they spread it around the globe. Very quickly and very effectively.”

  “And the idea is?”

  “That the world is unfair,” Cameron said. “That a system that allows one percent of the population to control well over fifty percent of the world’s wealth and resources is inherently a broken system. It’s tough to argue with that.”

  Yes, Tracy thought. It is.

  “Group 99 told people that they, the ninety-nine percent, didn’t have to sit back and take it. That people could do something about the injustice. All they needed was a computer screen and a little ingenuity and to stick together. That’s a compelling message. And it worked.”

  “And that’s what’s new about them?” Tracy clarified.

  Cameron nodded. “That and the technologies. I mean think about it. With a computer these days, the possibilities are just about limitless. Anything with a computerized element can be hacked. Anything. Intelligence agencies. Nuclear weapons systems. Banks. Governments. Armies. Disease control facilities. There are satellites out there, not just predicting weather but affecting it, that are vulnerable to attack. Imagine that.” His eyes lit up. “Being able to control the weather, to harness natural disasters, say, or control the flow of water. What if terrorists could unleash floods or tsunamis? Or spread bubonic plague?”

  Tracy frowned. “Come on. That’s a bit sci-fi, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?” Cameron raised an eyebrow. “Ask Greg Walton about the CIA’s program on weather terrorism. I’m serious, Tracy. And we aren’t the only ones looking into this. Everyone’s thinking about terrorism 2.0. It was Group 99 that brought that agenda forward, pretty much single-handedly.”

  “OK,” Tracy said, nibbling thoughtfully on her poppadum. “So let’s say you’re right. Let’s say all of that is possible, at least theoretically, and Group 99 were on the front lines of that change. Why go back to the old-school stuff? Kidnap. Execution. Car bombings. I mean, if they have all this potential power at t
heir fingertips, isn’t that a retrograde step? Not to mention a major PR blunder. They’ve gone from heroes to villains overnight.”

  “Exactly!” Cameron slammed his fist down on the table. The smile was back. “And that’s the paradox. Group 99 are new and different, but they’re also not new at all. Forget tactics for a moment—although that’s important—but let’s look at their motivations. Strip away the Robin Hood, social good, eco-warrior façade and what have you really got? I’ll tell you what. You’ve got envy. And you’ve got anger. And you’ve got testosterone. Young, impotent, dispossessed males, spoiling for a fight.”

  “There are plenty of women in Group 99,” Tracy countered. “Just look at Althea.”

  Cameron waved a hand dismissively. “She’s one. The only senior woman, as far as we know, in that group. And senior in the loosest sense as they have no central leadership.”

  “Even so . . .”

  “Even so nothing.” Cameron was firm. “That’s like pointing at Benazir Bhutto and saying ‘Wow, a woman president. Pakistan must be a great place for women’s rights!’ Make no mistake, Tracy. Group 99 is all about men. It’s the same phenomenon you’ll see in just about all terrorism of the last hundred years. Maybe thousand years. Think about it. The Islamists, the IRA, the Basque Separatists, even the Black Panthers. They all hide behind some ideology or other—religious, nationalist, racial, it doesn’t matter. With Group 99 it’s economic. Not important. What they really are, in all these cases, is a bunch of young men at the bottom of the economic ladder. Men who feel powerless and angry. Men who feel they have no future. Maybe they can’t get a job. Maybe they can’t get laid. Doesn’t matter. They aren’t fighting for a cause. Fighting is their cause. They turn to violence because it makes them feel good. Simple as that. I call them the Lost Boys.”