by Ben Mezrich
And then he saw her, the woman as she had described herself in an e-mail, dark-haired, respectable-looking, wearing a tailored suit-skirt combination—she looked like a schoolteacher or a businesswoman, and there was a nervous smile on her youthful face.
She immediately recognized him from the outfit he had told her he’d be wearing: a black shirt and silver necklace sporting a dolphin pendant. The pendant had sentimental value—Sonya had given it to him years ago—but he wasn’t sure why he had chosen it for this moment.
She shook his hand, introducing herself as Lynn Briley. Thad didn’t give any name himself, and let the woman lead him, with the help of the hostess, to a four-seater against the right side of the restaurant, right up next to one of the curtained picture windows. Thad didn’t see the woman’s husband anywhere nearby, so he assumed that she had wanted to meet him first—which made sense, since she was the American. Kurt, Axel’s brother, might not even have spoken English, for all Thad knew. Emmermann’s e-mails had always seemed to be written in that very staccato manner of foreigners who’d learned English in school, rather than on the street.
After they were seated, and a waiter took their order—a random and hastily constructed list of Italian appetizers and entrées—they went right to business. Lynn had obviously noticed that Thad wasn’t carrying anything with him; he was wearing shorts, sneakers, the shirt, and the necklace. So Thad wanted to quickly set her at ease.
“The samples are back at our hotel. After we’re comfortable with each other, we can go back and exchange the money there. Does that sound good?”
She nodded, taking a sip of her water. She seemed as nervous as Thad felt, and that actually made him calm down a little. She was pretty, in that slightly older-woman sort of way, and he noticed that she had left the top button of her dress shirt undone, revealing the angle of her collarbone.
“Okay, where’s your hotel?”
“The Sheraton.”
“If you’re more comfortable with that, we can do that. The Sheraton just down the street?”
“The big tall one,” Thad responded. The woman was talking fast, and Thad really wanted to make her feel comfortable enough to relax. “On the left. It’s been very nice. I’m telling you, this has been the most exciting event in my entire life, I think. Heck, I’m just hoping you don’t have a wire on you! Anyway, you know what my girlfriend said today? She’s like—they could make a life out of my movie.”
Thad knew he was talking too much, but he couldn’t help himself, he was starting to enjoy this, starting to really ride the adrenaline. The woman seemed to be easing up a bit also, and she seemed amused by his obvious enthusiasm.
“You sound very adventurous,” she commented, “and your girlfriend must be very adventurous, too.”
“What she meant to say is, they could make a movie of her life.”
It was an extremely surreal comment to make—both for Rebecca, back at the hotel, and for Thad, here in the crowded restaurant, speaking to a woman who was about to pay him a hundred thousand dollars for stolen moon rocks.
Thad was starting to feel a bit more in control as he took a long sip of his own water. But there were still plenty of loose ends. He asked her about Kurt, her husband, and she explained that he was waiting nearby for her to call, to let him know that things were progressing. In return, Thad told her that his own partners were on their way to the restaurant and would be there soon.
“Do you want to talk to your husband before you meet the others?” he asked, wanting to move this along. His ten-minute grace period was almost up, and he expected Rebecca and Gordon to walk in at any moment.
The woman seemed to think about it for a second, then nodded.
“I tell you what. The music in here is really loud. Let me step out. I’ll call my husband and get him on the way here, and while he’s on his way, you can call your friends, and we can all sit down and chitchat. Sound good?”
Thad was about to answer, when he saw them—Gordon and Rebecca, strolling into the place as if they owned it, actually holding hands, although Thad suspected that Rebecca was just trying to keep Gordon from toppling over. Just as Thad had demanded, they took a table across the crowded place and called over a waiter. Gordon was talking extremely loud—so loud that Thad could hear him ordering Heinekens over the din of the other diners.
Hell, the guy was really making a scene—but it didn’t seem like anyone else noticed, so Thad turned back to the woman.
“That’s fine. I’ll wait right here.”
Thad realized he was sweating as he watched her go. All of his bravado from the moment before was gone, his nerves firing off, his entire being shaken by the sight of Gordon and Rebecca sitting there, across the way.
He took another sip of water, trying to compose himself.
…
Lynn Briley—aka Special Agent Lynn Billings—waited until she’d moved out of earshot of the suspect, whom she knew only as Orb Robinson, before pulling her cell phone out of her front pocket and placing it tight against her ear. She was breathing hard, though she wasn’t particularly nervous; as an undercover agent with the FBI, she had conducted numerous missions in the past. Certainly, this was not the first time she had worn a wire, but there was always that special feeling you got when you strapped the electronics to your body—especially when you weren’t certain what sort of environment you were getting yourself into. But Orb Robinson seemed pretty harmless. Of course, that didn’t make him any less guilty.
“Kurt.” She spoke rapidly into the cell phone. Even though she was out of earshot, she never broke character during a mission. “Things are going very well. His other two friends are here, um, that are involved in this as well. He does not have the samples on him right now, so they want to go to their hotel room. Which is the Sheraton just down the road by I-4. He said it’s the big tall one. So his two friends are already in the restaurant. They have not sat down at the table yet. They want to get comfortable with you, and then we’re gonna go and everything should be in the hotel room at the Sheraton; just advise—advise our friends. You know, why don’t you do that right now. Um, well, go ahead and do that. I think that might help. Okay, and, um, just come in and we’ll be waiting for you.”
With that, she hung up and deftly slid the cell phone back into her suit pocket. She did a mental check, making sure the digital recording device was still well hidden beneath her clothes. Pasting a calm, collected smile back on her lips, she headed back to the table.
…
The woman was already talking, before she even fully settled back into her seat.
“I forgot to ask before I left,” she said, and she seemed to be more relaxed after her phone call, “if you wanted him to bring the money. So, he’s going to. Just, I figured that was the safest thing to do.”
“Can we leave it in your car?” Thad didn’t like this development at all. A suitcase full of money did not belong in this restaurant, and it seemed like an unnecessary danger. After all, they were going to all have to go back to the hotel anyway, to look at the moon rocks.
“You don’t want him to bring it in?”
“No.”
“It’s up to you; I can tell him not to.”
Thad took a breath. He didn’t want to fuck this up by being too paranoid.
“Okay, I don’t want to open up a briefcase full of money in here. But he can bring it in.”
He wanted to keep the woman happy, and comfortable. Especially because he could really hear Gordon now, over the din of the restaurant, saying something to the waitress, something about some huge tip he’d obviously given her. Thad wasn’t sure, but he thought Gordon was on at least his third Heineken. Which was kind of a terrifying thought, considering how high the kid already was.
“It doesn’t matter,” Thad quickly added. “I’ll follow him out to the car afterward, and look inside real quick—”
He had barely gotten through the sentence when he saw a man approaching the table—tall, square-jawed, maybe a
little too thin, wearing a somewhat stiff-looking blue blazer and a tie. Kurt Emmermann certainly looked European. And he was holding a briefcase in his left hand.
As he introduced himself, shaking Thad’s hand and giving Lynn a little kiss on the cheek, Thad couldn’t keep his gaze off that briefcase. Sure, he had no intention of opening it here in the restaurant, but he knew what was inside. More money than he had ever seen in his life. More money than he could imagine in one place. Enough money to change everything.
“Unbelievable,” he said, realizing he was saying it out loud, but not really caring. “You spend so much time thinking about it. I mean, you see it in a movie in your mind, and then it happens. It’s happening right now. It’s weird. I almost feel like I’ve lived over the last two months, you know, this whole ordeal, I don’t know how to feel. I really don’t want too much more.”
Both the woman and her husband were looking at him, maybe trying to decipher what he was saying, maybe just wondering what was going to happen next. The woman’s eyes still seemed kind of amused, but the man was much more about business. Thad didn’t care. He felt like he had one foot in the fantasy world he had been building for the past year, and one foot in reality. It was a wild sensation.
He quickly glanced at Rebecca, catching her eye. He was glad to see that Gordon was too busy with his Heineken to notice. Rebecca separated herself from the table and headed over by herself. She had to weave between a pair of diners being led by the hostess to their table—and as she passed them, Thad noticed something for the first time, something that seemed the littlest bit peculiar.
Other than the hostess, the other people in the restaurant—and there had to be at least fifty of them—all seemed to be middle-aged. No kids, no teenagers, no families. Nobody that was in their twenties, other than Thad, Rebecca, and Gordon.
Well, maybe there was some sort of convention nearby. Or maybe it was just Florida. Thad filed it away in the back of his mind. He stood as Rebecca reached the table, introducing her to Lynn and Kurt.
“You’re really close to what I was expecting.”
Thad wasn’t sure why Rebecca had just said that, but from her voice, he could tell that she was really nervous. He gestured for her to take a seat, next to him. Kurt and Lynn were across from them. Lynn turned toward Thad.
“I don’t even know your—Orb? I was going to say I don’t even know your real name, but that’s all right. You have one more friend coming, too?”
Thad shrugged, because he was really hoping that Gordon would just pass out at his table. Then, without warning, Kurt broke into the conversation for the first time, his words barely audible through a thick European accent.
“Now, this is exciting. I’m betting you will think about this for the rest of your life. You guys will be off to some beach somewhere, and you’ll remember this day, this life-changing event. Very fun.”
Thad glanced at Rebecca, who seemed to be put slightly at ease by the man’s happy comments. Maybe she was picturing that beach. Thad looked toward the briefcase full of money, then back at the couple across from him. A ship in a storm that seemed to be settling, he’d pitched back to some level of confidence; he was ready to move this along.
“Well, we’ve talked quite a bit. I feel very comfortable. I think it’s a good idea not to open the briefcase in the restaurant. And all of the samples are in the hotel.”
He was squeezing Rebecca’s hand under the table, and he felt her leaning into him, feeding off his renewed confidence.
“Oh, and tell them about the Antarctic meteorite,” she burst in, her voice filled with energy.
Thad felt himself smiling. Rebecca was right. Why not have some fun with this? There was nothing he loved more than an enrapt audience.
“Have you heard of the ALH meteorite? It was collected in Antarctica. We have a NASA team that goes down every year. It’s a great place to find meteorites.”
The woman and her Belgian husband were leaning in over the table, obviously intrigued. Thad felt like he was back at the JSC, speaking to new co-ops, always the center of attention.
“Anyway, they bring them all back to NASA and start cataloging them. The first one they said, this looks so weird, so they called it 84, in the dilute form 001. They just put it in a big freezer, so it wouldn’t be contaminated. They started studying it and noticed really strange stuff on it. It looked like microfossils. So they studied it more in depth and verifiably proved it’s from Mars—”
And right in the middle of his lecture, suddenly there was Gordon, leaning in over the table, his breath stinking of alcohol. Before Thad or Rebecca could say anything, he was sliding into the seat next to them, his hand shooting out toward the couple across the table.
“Gordon,” he said, by way of introduction. Kurt and Lynn shook his hand, and then he was shouting toward the waiter.
“Heineken!”
Thad felt his face getting red. But the couple seemed to take it all in stride, and they had already turned their attention back to him. He decided to just ignore Gordon as much as possible, and continued his story.
“So everyone also agrees that the stuff is actual microfossils. The question is, since it is here, what does that mean? Anyway, needless to say, it’s one of the most famous rocks on the planet. I didn’t put that in the list originally. Quite a find, huh?”
Lynn looked at her husband, then back at Thad.
“Isn’t it in something to protect it, and keep it from being exposed?”
Thad nodded. She really seemed interested. Maybe she’d want to buy that, too. Maybe there were more briefcases full of money to be had. And maybe he would sell it, if the price was right. Hell, he was beginning to feel loose, like anything could happen.
“Yes, it’s in a vial. Oh, you’re gonna love it. This is like an extra bonus. We were very happy when we found it. At least, as a scientist, this—this one specimen is the most famous rock on the planet. Wow.”
And then suddenly Gordon was butting in, his voice way too loud.
“Remember, you just saw something the other day about it on TV! He shows me it—remember this? It was on TV!”
Thad stared daggers at him. What the fuck was he even talking about? Gordon’s eyes were totally bloodshot, his eyelids at half-mast. He was royally fucked up. But the couple still didn’t seem to be bothered. The woman cleared her throat, drawing Thad’s attention back to her.
“So, are you all mineralogists?”
“I’m actually into bioengineering,” Rebecca butted in. “We go to school together. I’m biology.”
“Are you really?”
“Bioengineering.”
“Mineralogy, well, geology,” Thad said, pointing to himself.
Gordon coughed.
“He’s got three degrees he’s working on. Yeah. He’s a freaking genius.”
Thad smiled thinly.
“I can pick between the three.”
“The Cayman Islands!” Gordon suddenly shouted, taking them all by surprise. “Isn’t that where we’re trying to get anyway, with school? Sit on the beach and enjoy it! It’s the Bible that’s worked for us!”
Christ, he was really losing it. Thad glanced at Rebecca, and he could see she was thinking the same thing. They needed to wrap this up, and quickly. Thad lowered his voice, speaking directly to Lynn.
“Do you wanna just go ahead and get the check?”
Gordon butted in again before she could answer.
“I gave that girl back there a thirty-dollar tip!” he exclaimed. Thad wished he would just shut the fuck up, but Lynn seemed amused, rather than afraid.
“Are you kidding me? Dude, you’re crazy.”
“It was her first, I was her first table, ever. Aw, it was her first table. I said I’m gonna make your night. Belgium, eh, how is Europe now?”
This last was to Kurt. The guy seemed not quite to know what to make of Gordon, but he gamely tried to answer. For Thad, it was like watching a train wreck in progress.
“Europe is
well. It’s still Europe. It’s home.”
“Did Belgium go over to the euro?” Gordon shot back. What the hell was he going on about? “Your brother’s Web site,” he continued, now obviously drunk as well as stoned. “It was the first one. I’m like, wow, the guy just e-mailed me. He e-mailed me. Hey, did you tell him how many grams we have?”
Thad’s teeth clenched as he glared back at Gordon.
“No, I think we’re gonna get into that later. Just relax.”
And he quickly made a signal to the waiter, who hurried over. Lynn reached for the check, stopping Thad before he could offer to pay. Gordon seemed to find this immensely amusing.
“Wow, you’re competing now. You can always win on that one.”
And that was all Thad could take. He stood, gesturing for the rest of them to do the same. Lynn put a couple of big bills down on top of the check, indicating that she didn’t need to wait for the change. And then they were all heading across the restaurant toward the front door. Lynn suggested that Thad ride with her and Kurt, and that Rebecca and Gordon follow behind in the other car.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Thad responded, liking the idea of separating the couple from Gordon as much as possible. “Um, which room are we in again?”
“We’ll meet you in the lobby,” Rebecca quickly responded.
“We’re going to the Sheraton at I-4, right?” Lynn interjected.
“Yes,” Rebecca said, hitting the door first. Gordon was staggering behind her, but he made it through the open doorway without losing his footing.
“Wait for us in the lobby,” he called back, slurring his words, “if you get there before us.”
Thad nodded, but Gordon and Rebecca were already out of the restaurant and hurrying across the parking lot toward her car. He looked at Lynn, who smiled amiably back. Kurt was already reaching for his car keys; his other hand still gripped the briefcase, which swung heavily by his left thigh as he exited through the open doorway. Somehow, its rhythmic, pendular motion helped quiet the thoughts racing through Thad’s head. Gordon was out of control—but the situation wasn’t. Actually, things seemed to be going very smoothly.