Girl of Vengeance

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  “Ambassador Thompson … I’d like to begin by recognizing that all of us on this committee are aware of your long and distinguished history in service to this country. And even if some other members of this committee have forgotten, I remember that the United States armed the mujahideen specifically to defend against the invading Soviet Union. That said, chemical weapons are a serious matter. Please answer for the committee the following question. Did you take part, in any way, in the provision of chemical weapons to the Afghan militia?”

  Soft ball, Richard thought. Perfect. “I did not, Senator.”

  Lewis nodded, his eyes scanning over a sheet of paper. Then he looked back up at Richard. “Do you know who did?”

  “Yes, Senator. I reported the crime in 1983. The perpetrator was Leslie Collins, the current Director of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  Julia. May 6.

  Martin Barrymore was the quintessential Long Island WASP lawyer. Five foot eight, grey haired, balding, and deep inside his very small heart, he had a little bit of murder in him. As general counsel of Morbid Enterprises, Inc., Julia and Crank’s holding company, he’d tackled a lot of issues. Copyright and trademark violation, contract negotiation, mergers and acquisitions. Taxes were never an issue, because the company was scrupulous about paying them. But now, he was heading up the team of tax attorneys who were preparing to deal with the Internal Revenue Service, and Julia was grateful for him.

  The two of them, along with two tax attorneys who reported to Barrymore, rode up the elevator to the ninth floor of the IRS headquarters in Washington, DC. Julia was relieved Crank hadn’t come—he’d have been far too likely to make flippant comments about how they might not escape from the building alive.

  All the same, he’d insisted on something useful to do.

  Look, Julia—I don’t feel like I’m pulling my weight. All I do is write songs and sing. You’re doing everything for us.

  But Crank, she’d said, that’s what we’ve always done. I’m okay with that, I want you to be able to write your music and not worry.

  He’d grinned and said, This is a crisis, babe. You take amazing care of me. But you gotta let me help.

  So they’d discussed it, and Crank had flown up to Boston first thing that morning. He would be meeting with the staff of the Boston office, and dispensing three weeks pay—in cash. It’s all they had in their personal bank accounts, and the possibility of checks bouncing had resulted in a large cash withdrawal. That might be all the staff would get unless Barrymore could get the IRS to agree to free up some money.

  Crank would be good at that. He didn’t realize it, but over the years, he’d become a natural leader. Confident, bold, but warm and approachable. Everyone felt comfortable approaching him—whether it was network anchors, overenthusiastic fans or roadies who’d been working for the tour for a week. Sometimes she had to step in the way just so he could get some songs written. He didn’t like to say no, didn’t like to disappoint people.

  For now, he’d be fine. A small pit of anxiety turned in her stomach. If she couldn’t get the money freed up, then their fifty employees and their families would be out of luck. No severance pay, no nothing. It was grossly unfair, and according to Barrymore, it was also likely illegal. She was counting on his ability to fix that situation quickly. He’d already drawn up papers to file suit in Federal District Court if this meeting didn’t go well.

  “This way, please,” said their escort, a youngish looking woman who had introduced herself as Jayna McCloud. An intern probably; Julia would have put her at twenty-one at the most.

  She led Julia, Barrymore and the tax attorneys to a conference room at the end of the hall. The conference room was cheaply appointed. Painted walls, a pressboard conference table (attractive and functional, but cheaply made), chairs that looked half decent but were not ergonomically sound. She guessed if the IRS used these chairs throughout the headquarters, there were a lot of people out with bad backs.

  At the table sat three people. The first, at the head of the table, Julia recognized. Emma Smith had been one of the agents who had questioned her in San Francisco what seemed like a lifetime ago, but was in fact just a few days.

  “Mrs. Wilson, thank you for coming today. Allow me to introduce Cliff Shriver from the FBI.”

  To her right, Shriver was a man in a decently tailored grey suit. His jacket was open, and his sidearm, a gleaming black pistol in a shoulder holster, was clearly visible. A badge hung from his jacket lapel.

  “And this is Scott Kelly from Diplomatic Security Services. Scott isn’t here on an official basis, but he’s asked to be in on this meeting because he said he has information that may be helpful to us all. It’s up to you whether or not he stays.”

  “Pleasure to meet ya,” Kelly said, his voice a clear Boston accent. He had dark circles under his eyes, the kind you got from years of sleep shortages. He reminded her a lot of her father-in-law Jack, a retired Boston cop.

  “I think that will be fine,” Julia murmured.

  “Julia?” Barrymore asked quietly.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I want to clear this up as quickly as we can.”

  Emma Smith nodded in approval. “Please have a seat then.”

  Julia sat at the end of the table opposite Smith and studied her adversary. Her two in the morning impression of the woman hadn’t changed—her skin was smooth, unblemished and free of makeup. She looked to be in her late twenties, or would, but her hair was white. Not bleached, not blonde, but prematurely gray and white. Interesting, Julia thought.

  Smith said, “Mrs. Wilson, this is an informal meeting. It’s not a hearing, and you’re free to go at any time. Your attorney is here to advise you on your rights, of course, but I want to make it clear that while you have the right to not say anything at all, if you do say anything, we might use it in our investigation.”

  Julia leaned toward Barrymore, who said, “It’s standard. I’ll watch out for you here.” She nodded.

  “Thanks,” Julia said. Barrymore responded to Smith. “We’re looking forward to clearing this up.”

  “All right. I want to start with the accounts in the Caymans.”

  Julia nodded, not saying anything. She’d heard the reports in the media, but that’s all she knew. “I’m not actually aware of any such accounts.”

  Smith opened a folder and slid half a dozen sheets of paper down the table. Barrymore retrieved them and showed them to Julia.

  “These are powers of attorney, registered with HSBC, Butterfield Bank, Cayman National Bank, First Caribbean and the Royal Bank of Canada, all operating on Grand Cayman. They authorize you to establish accounts on behalf of your father. Do you recognize them?”

  Julia shook her head. They were, in fact, powers of attorney. More disturbing, they all bore her signature. They were all dated December 19 and 20, 2013. Which was alarming. She and Crank had stayed overnight on Grand Cayman en route from Europe to Washington, DC.

  “I’ve never seen these,” she said. “That looks like my signature, but I didn’t sign these documents.”

  “Where were you on December 19th and 20th, Mrs. Wilson?”

  “I suspect you know the answer to that question,” she replied.

  “Were you on Grand Cayman Island with your husband?”

  “Yes. We were on our way to the States to spend Christmas with my sisters.”

  “How do you explain your signature on these notarized documents?”

  “I can’t explain them. This is the first I’ve ever heard of them.”

  Smith nodded.

  Kelly leaned forward and said, “Can you think of any reason why someone would go to this much trouble and expense? After these accounts were established, more than twenty million dollars was deposited into them. We haven’t been able to trace the source.”

  Julia frowned. Then she said, “Do you know when my father was first approached about taking the Secretary of Defense job?”

  The three federal agents
looked at each other, mystified.

  Julia nodded once. “From what I’ve been told, it was in December 2013. Right around the same time these documents were signed.”

  Bear. May 6.

  Neither Anthony Walker, not Bear Wyden were accustomed to staying in luxurious accommodations. So after they left the county jail, Bear suggested they check into the local Days Inn there in Bellingham and make that their base of operations for the next couple of days.

  “Sure,” Anthony had said. An hour later, they had checked in. Anthony went to work on his laptop, making phone calls and generally making a nuisance of himself.

  At one point, he looked up from his laptop, his eyebrows scrunched together and a line running down his forehead. “Didn’t you say you ran the security detail for the Thompsons in the nineties?”

  “Yeah,” Bear had replied.

  “What were the girls like? Julia and Carrie?”

  Bear shrugged. “Kids. Julia was the oldest; she was typical eighth grader. Pissed at the world and especially her mother. Carrie was a sweetheart. Why do you ask?”

  Anthony shrugged. “Just wondering.”

  “Yeah, well wonder quietly.” Bear, who had an incurable sleep deficit, lay down to take a nap. He closed his eyes, lulled by the clickety-click sound of Anthony’s keys on the laptop.

  It was tranquil for a change, and Bear found himself drifting off shortly after noon. That made it all the more alarming when the door to the hotel suddenly burst inward and someone shouted, “Freeze, FBI!”

  Bear froze. So did Anthony, his fingers still poised on his laptop, cell phone at his ear.

  Five seconds later the room was full of fully armed and pissed off federal agents. Bear was thrown rudely to the floor, where his hands were cuffed with zip ties behind his back and his sidearm was taken away. Anthony was also face down in the carpet, his cell phone beside him face down. Bear instantly found himself wondering—was it still connected to whoever Anthony had been talking to? Hopefully they were connecting a recorder.

  Footsteps. He craned his neck as far as he could, but he could only make out a pair of not very well polished wingtips and grey suit pants.

  “Let him up,” a voice said.

  He was hauled upward by his arms and came to rest face to face with a tall man with swept back salt-and-pepper hair and a hawk nose.

  “Agent Wyden,” the man boomed. “I’m Wolfram Schmidt. Internal Revenue Service—and I’m in charge of the Thompson investigation.”

  Crap. That was quick.

  “Hey,” Bear said, giving Schmidt a disarming grin. “Great to finally meet you!”

  Schmidt narrowed his eyes. “It’s not that nice to meet you, Wyden. You’re suspended. And no longer associated with this investigation. What brings you to Washington?” His eyes flitted toward Anthony. “And in the company of a journalist, I see.”

  “Well, you know, you can’t always pick your friends…”

  “Shut up. What the hell are you doing here, Wyden?”

  “Officially?” Bear asked.

  Schmidt rolled his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all, officially. I’m suspended. But, the thing is—”

  “Shut up.”

  “It’s hard to answer your questions if I shut up.”

  “Jesus,” Schmidt said. “Untie them. Wyden, sit down.”

  An agent cut the zip ties holding his wrists. Bear didn’t argue—he just sat down on the end of one of the beds. Anthony was maneuvered to sit next to him, and Wolfram Schmidt with his swept back hair sat down opposite them.

  “Seriously, Wyden. Quit screwing around and answer my question or you’ll find yourself arrested for obstructing justice. You showed up before anybody else to question Larsden, and now he’s dead.”

  Anthony. May 6.

  You showed up before anybody else to question Larsden, and now he’s dead.

  What the hell? “What happened to him?” he blurted out.

  Anthony’s mind crowded with questions. If Larsden was dead, then their only link to Oz was Marky Lovecchio, and they still hadn’t identified him. Was that actually the guy’s name? If so, they should be able to find him on Google or some public records. Facebook, some other social networking, credit checks. No one was completely invisible.

  Schmidt gave Anthony a withering look. “I don’t even know why you’re part of this discussion. This is an ongoing investigation and—”

  Bear interrupted Schmidt. “Yeah, I get it, ongoing investigation, can’t comment, yada yada yada. What the hell happened to Larsden? He was the picture of health four hours ago.”

  Schmidt said, “Off the record, someone shanked him, and naturally no one saw anything. He bled out in the county jail before anyone even knew what happened.”

  Bear looked at Anthony and both said the same word at the same time: “Oz.”

  Schmidt blinked. His response was sarcastic. “Oz? Are we going on a trip?”

  Bear looked at Schmidt. “I’ll tell you everything I’ve got. I mean everything. But I need you to know, I know for a fact the sisters weren’t involved in whatever is happening here. Their father is a complete slime bag, but they weren’t involved.”

  “Yeah? What about Julia Wilson? She’s got an enormous stake in whatever the hell is going on.”

  Anthony shook his head. He was certain Carrie and her sisters weren’t involved. “I’d stake my reputation on it. They’ve been set up. The question in my mind is when did you start your investigation? When did this whole thing kick off?”

  Schmidt looked back and forth between Bear and Anthony. Then his posture changed, very subtly—his shoulders lowered just a fraction of an inch, as if he’d relaxed just slightly. His eyes darted back and forth between Bear and Anthony. “For the record, our investigation began officially in January.”

  “What kicked it off?”

  Schmidt said, “Banks are required to report suspicious activity. We received a notice in January of what looked like a strange pattern of activity in a set of corporate accounts in Atlanta. We followed up and what we found was money churning. Small deposits and withdrawals, all of them less than a few hundred dollars to a few thousand, but many of them a day. Someone was funneling a busload of money through these accounts. The company we were looking at didn’t even really exist. Shell company, owned by another shell company, and none of the officers and directors were real people.

  Bear asked, “When were these accounts opened?”

  “All of them in December and January.”

  “And how did it lead back to Thompson?”

  “Stock transactions. There were half a dozen equity sales in one of Julia Wilson’s accounts, which had already been flagged by the IRS, but only for verification. But then we saw a large cash transfer from one of Wilson’s corporate accounts to the Caymans. That led us to pull records there, and they matched up. The accounts in the Caymans were the destination of the cash transfers out of Atlanta. But the only link we had was to Julia Wilson. And there wasn’t enough there.”

  Anthony asked, “How do you get from there to seizing their assets?”

  “No more,” Schmidt said. “I’ve got questions for you. What is Oz? Or who?”

  Bear said, “Oz is British or Irish. We don’t know anything else about him, except that he hired Larsden.” Bear summarized the questioning for Schmidt, including the news that Oz had been introduced to Larsden by an Army buddy named Marky Lovecchio.

  “That ought to be easy enough to follow up,” Schmidt said. “We know when and where Larsden was in the Army—process of elimination from there. He can’t have served around many people with a name like Lovecchio.”

  Bear said, “So, now that we’re working together—”

  Schmidt shook his head. “Nobody is working together. I’m conducting an investigation. You’re obstructing justice.”

  “Bullshit,” Bear said. “You haven’t even looked at why. Why would someone with a forty million dollar successful company get involved w
ith cheap money laundering? Or for that matter, why would Richard Thompson?”

  “Greed. Simple as that. Who the hell knows why any people do this stuff?”

  Anthony shook his head. “Not Thompson. He’s greedy for power—not money. I think you need to ask what happened here. Because it looks to me like someone duped you in an effort to discredit Thompson.”

  Schmidt shook his head. “I don’t buy it. I’m willing to explore it, but I don’t buy it. What I do know, Wyden, is that you aren’t on this case anymore. And I don’t want to get wind that you’re going around questioning my witnesses, or butting your fat head into this investigation. Larsden was an essential witness and now he’s dead. I’ve got half a mind to arrest you right now.”

  Bear growled, “You’d be better off putting your resources into finding out who the hell had him killed.”

  “I intend to do that. But you stay a thousand miles away from this investigation. Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah, Schmidt. I get it. Just tell me one thing first.”

  “What?”

  “What was your mother thinking when she named you?”

  Schmidt stood up, irritation on his face. “My father and grandfather were named Wolfram, thank you. Once again, Wyden, I’ll thank you to mind your own business.” He looked at his compatriots and said, “Let’s go.”

  Schmidt and his bevy of IRS and FBI agents left the room. One overenthusiastic FBI agent gave Bear the finger on his way out. Bear shook his head.

  So much for interagency cooperation, Anthony thought. “Was that smart?”

  Bear shrugged. “It’s the IRS. What else can you do?”

  Anthony chuckled then shook his head. “What now? Larsden was our best lead. Who the hell is Oz?”

  Bear sighed. Then he said, “I think we go see Adelina Thompson now. Otherwise, I’m out of options.”

  Anthony thought about how Carrie and her sisters reacted every time their mother was mentioned—an almost palpable tension. He hadn’t been able to work out why they were so sensitive about their mother. But now it looked like he was going to get the chance.