by Chuck Dixon
“All my life. But where’d you get greens way up here?”
“Cabbage will have to do. Hope you don’t mind a little Yankee food mixed in.” Danielle smiled, raising a lid on a large stock pot; a pork butt nestled steaming in chopped green and red cabbage.
“Damn Yankees.” Nate Fenton grinned as he entered the room from the rear of the cabin. His arms were loaded with neatly cut lengths of cord wood retrieved from the mud room. Levon helped him stack the split logs in a wrought iron cradle by the stove set in the stone fireplace.
“Warm fire. Cold beer. And football on the TV,” Nate said, crouching to poke a few logs atop the collapsing pile within the blazing stove.
Levon said nothing.
“You hunt much, Mitch?” Nate stood after closing the stove hatch, dogging it closed.
“When I was a kid. Not so much as I grew up,” Levon said.
“Me neither. Some small game with my dad. Birds mostly.”
“Uh huh,” Levon said. He watched the kids moving easy over the lake. He couldn’t pick Merry out for the three. She was moving like the Fenton kids, picking up skills.
“So you know guns, Mitch?”
“Some.”
In the kitchen, Danielle sighed.
“He wants to show you his rifle.” She smiled.
Nate grinned, coloring.
“Boys and their toys,” Danielle said as Nate led Levon from the room.
Nate drew the rifle from a canvas sleeve he pulled from the back of a closet in the largest bedroom. An SKS semi-auto rifle. Chinese manufacture. The yellow wood stock was heavy. The metal finished in a dull black. It was complete with the fold back bayonet with a wicked triangular blade secured beneath the barrel by a hinge. It was oiled and well-maintained.
“I have five hundred rounds for it. Picked it up at a gun show down in Augusta. Cleaning kit and everything,” Nate said.
“Not for hunting,” Levon said, running a hand over the smooth lacquered fore grip.
“For, you know, whatever. You never know, right?”
“You never know.” Levon handed it back.
“I mean, late at night, there’s only like eight state cops patrolling this whole state. From Moose Island to Portland. Eight cops.”
“You expecting trouble, Nate?”
“You must think I’m some kind of nut, right? I just feel better knowing this is here.” Nate shrugged and slid the rifle back into its sheath.
“You know how to shoot it?”
“I shot it some over the summer. I guess I’m good enough up close. You should think of getting something if you don’t already.” Nate closed the closet door.
“Maybe I will,” Levon said, following the other man back toward the smells from the kitchen.
Seventh entry
1/3
* * *
Moose in the woods today.
Went out to the truck for something and they were standing in the driveway.
A bull and cow. Quiet as statues. Watched each other a while. They moved off without a sound.
Quiet for animals that big.
I dreamt about them. I hope that means something.
13
* * *
Watching himself on the big screen was like an out-of-body experience for Kosai Duong.
Not a near-death experience. More like a near-sex experience.
From his place, naked and firmly strapped into an occasional chair with bands of plastic tape, he faced the two-meter wide screen with eyes wide.
There in radiant high definition was a video taken from a camera that had been obviously mounted in the ceiling of the master bedroom of this same hotel suite. Two slender young bodies, one a boy and one a girl, were gently touching the chubby body of a man tied by wrists and ankles to the bed posts by cording. The man was bathed in sweat and writhing; muted exclamations sounded from his nostrils since his mouth was securely fixed with a ball gag. The boy and girl worked over him using hands, lips and tongues with most extraordinary deftness.
The chubby man was Kosai. This was what he’d paid ten thousand Thai baht for just last night. About five hundred Euro. He had no regrets.
Not, at least, until he was wakened by two uninvited guests in his suite at the Bangkok Hilton.
One man, an enormous blond Viking bastard, plucked Kosai from the bed as if he was a child then placed him in the chair and wound tape about his torso, wrists and legs with practiced ease. The other man was smaller but frightened Kosai more. He was thinner with one milky, unmoving eye. The eye was a malignant, glittering jewel set on the plane of the man’s face that appeared to droop. It looked to Kosai like the flesh was wax and had been allowed to melt a bit and then set that way permanently.
The man with the white eye operated the DVD player to replay the events of the night before. Watching the man’s hands tab keys on the remote, Kosai realized that both men were wearing latex gloves. He looked down to see that their shoes were covered in white covers such as he’d seen surgeons wear in hospitals.
Kosai lost control of his bladder. The spray splashed the Viking’s pants, earning Kosai a sharp slap across the back of the head.
“You are the vice president of operations for the Cambodian firm of Meas Phy Holdings headquartered in Phnom Penh.” A statement rather than a question. It was spoken in competent French with an accent Kosai did not recognize. Kosai had learned French at university and spoke like a Parisian.
“I am,” Kosai said. His voice was made feeble by fear. He fought to keep a smile of professional interest on his face. This was, after all, a business deal in the end. And it was quite clear to him what the stakes were.
“I am going to repeat a list of names. You will explain your relationship with these persons and organizations.”
“As best I can.” Helpful smile.
“Roostook Ltd.”
“Yes. A South African law firm we do business with on that continent.” A matter of public record.
“Scotiabank, Nassau.”
“Ah. Our accounts in the Bahamas.” Not a matter of public record.
“Banco Centro Internacional.”
“Caracas. We do transfer funds through them.” Funds no one but a handful of people know about.
“Standhope Securities.”
Kosai swallowed hard. He nodded.
“Courtland Ray Blanco.”
Kosai fought to keep the smile on his face. His face resembled that of a fish lying on ice at a market stall. Frozen and without joy.
“That. That is very privileged information,” Kosai managed.
“Which is why we come to you. You will allow us access to files on your network. Files that have so far defeated our efforts to decrypt them.” The man with the half-melted face held Kosai’s smart phone up to him in latex encased fingers.
“Or what?” Kosai regained some of his composure.
“Or this will be more than just a private show for the three of us,” the wax-faced man said, gesturing to the big screen where the naked and sweating Kosai was arched, straining against his bonds like a wild thing with the two wickedly inventive children bringing him to ecstasy.
Kosai laughed at that. His restored composure turned to confidence. The world was a board room. They were negotiating. He had what they wanted. And, even from the weak bargaining position of being helpless in the hands of rough men, he had the upper hand. He had the keys to the encryption they sought to break.
“Who will you show it to? Members of the board? They will laugh. They will see me as a stallion. You think that they do not know what a business trip to Bangkok really means? That they have not come here for just this sort of adventure?”
The not-French man’s functioning eye showed no more change than its dead white counterpart.
“Or my wife? You think she has a right to judge me? To embarrass me? Divorce me in Cambodian court?” Kosai spoke in a mocking tone. He would give these men nothing.
The man was poised before Kosai to tap the keyboard on the
smart phone.
“Who will you show it to?” Kosai’s professional smile turned to a grin.
“Your mother.”
Kosai’s face fell.
The sixteen character pass phrase tapped onto the tablet by Kosai’s shaking fingers activated an algorithm that opened the secret world of Meas Phy Holdings’ transactions and communications. Further passwords opened gates in firewalls to reveal a tapestry of foreign bank transactions leading, finally, to real estate properties held around the world under the name Rio Plaza del Rey—the code word the corporation assigned to the holdings of Corey Blanco.
Kosai’s body was not found for three days. He floated up onto the banks of a canal off the Chao Phraya. Hauled from the muddy water and placed at the morgue for a week before he was identified as a major player in the cutthroat world of business in Southeast Asia.
And that is precisely how he ended his career. His throat cut.
Official reports in the media blamed his death on the many dangerous street gangs that prowl Bangkok preying on tourists and visiting businessmen.
No mention was made of the shining DVD disc that hung from a piece of cording about his neck or the missing fingers and toes obviously removed by a mechanical device. And nothing in the reports mentioned the television remote found inserted deep in his rectum.
His mother burned joss sticks and prayed before his picture in the family shrine.
His wife salved her loss in the comfort of a luxury condo in Singapore, purchased with the insurance settlement left her by Kosai.
Ninth entry
1/6
* * *
Keeping promise to myself to make an entry every day.
Work going slow on kitchen. Have till spring to finish. No need to rush it.
M doing well with schoolwork. Might have to skip her a grade in Sept.
Snow stopped for a while.
Tenth entry
1/11
* * *
Summer residents are gone but we still have neighbors.
The woman at Moulsons.
The artist couple in the bungalow behind the Christophers.
The Fentons.
The Espositos. He’s a retired contractor. She’s a talker.
They tell me it’s too cold to snow any more.
14
* * *
“I hope you didn’t pack for Fiji,” Bill Marquez said from the monitor via Skype.
“Yeah. Treasury’s not going to spring for tickets either.” Nancy Valdez shrugged.
It was weeks since she’d woke him up with news of the break-in and murders in Fiji. They’d put their heads together and came up with the skeleton of a report using the evidence from both crime scenes to prove beyond any doubt that they were the work of the same crew. Nancy wrote hers up for her supervisor at Treasury, emphasizing the big boodle of stolen funds still lying out there somewhere forgotten and untaxed. Bill wrote up his own file, highlighting the heinous nature of the crime and even managed to put a national security spin on it for the Bureau.
Both reports drew scant interest and both agents were reassigned. The Costa Rica file was still active at the Bureau but in a kind of bureaucratic limbo, getting colder all the time. The Fiji crimes were treated as a non-incident because no American citizen was involved—conveniently ignoring the connection to Corey Blanco that Nancy firmly established.
Her digging established that the construction of the Fiji house was financed by the same Cambodian corporation as the house in Costa Rica. The land it sat on was leased in perpetuity by a corporation registered in Delaware through a post box in Amsterdam. The financing was handled by the same two banks involved in the Costa Rican house except this time it was the Bahamian bank that secured the loan and an account at the Venezuelan bank that made the pay off. And both accounts were held by Roostook Ltd in Johannesburg. Cute. The cards were reshuffled but it was the same deck of cards.
If that incredible flock of coincidences didn’t tie both places to Corey Ray then the personal items found at the Fiji house solidly confirmed the identity of the owner. Photos, a child’s crayon scribbles, and some sex tapes that featured the Blancos in happier days and were quite frankly boring.
All received the big ho-hum at each of their respective agencies.
“Too bad we couldn’t turn up anyone named Muhammed,” Bill said more than once.
They were both assigned to other cases but stayed in regular contact over the Blanco case. Several times a week, on off-duty hours or when they could snag some time at their offices when the time zones overlapped, they compared anything they may have found. As time passed the discovery of new evidence petered away and the theorizing increased to form the bulk of their conversations.
“There’s no video of anyone who might be in this crew anywhere. Not at airports or sea ports or anywhere. No rental cars. No nothing that can’t be accounted for,” she said.
“I know. I’ve watched the videos. Hours of surveillance videos looking for the same faces in both places,” he said.
“They entered both places illegally. Easy peasy since the target houses were on the water.”
“And in areas thick with pleasure craft.”
“But that still begs a question,” she said.
“It does, does it? Begs?” he said laughing at her turn of phrase.
“Sorry. I binge watched two seasons of The Tudors over the weekend.” She smiled.
“So, you do have a life.”
“Such as it is, smartass. Back to my question. These guys just don’t paddle ashore and wander around. They go right for their target by the shortest route, do their business and get out the same way. A few hours in and out with the bulk of that time spent torturing anyone they come across.”
“Someone does their prep work. An advance man already on the island.” Bill nodded.
“Someone who cases the place. Checks for alarms. Police presence. Who’s home and who’s not. Comings and goings. Other relevant data. The skids are greased for the team when they arrive on the scene like a rock band to take the stage,” Nancy said.
“They also need to locate the targets, right? They’d need to do the same kind of digging you did to find any real estate holdings that Blanco finagled.”
“I don’t think so, Bill. Maybe for the first house but not the Fiji house and not any others.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Blanco died taking his secrets with him. But the wife was still alive and I have to think she’d share anything she knew to make them stop doing what they were doing to her kids.”
“Like tell them about any other possible hiding places.”
“That’s probably the only thing she knew. Blanco kept everything else a secret from her. But she damn sure knew where they lived, what houses they owned,” Nancy said.
“And she traded that,” Bill said.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“If I had kids. Yeah.”
“So, the villains have a treasure map. They just don’t know where ‘X’ is.”
“Villains? Is that more of The Tudors?”
“Just something I picked up.” She smirked.
“Well then I beg the question, is there a next place and, if there is, where is it?” he said, rubbing his chin with his fingers.
“Beats the shit out of me, G-man.”
Fourteenth entry
1/15
* * *
Still dreaming. Same shit. More recent stuff mixed in.
Stuck here with no distractions.
Had a movie night last night at the Hofferts.
Just the two of us in a media room bigger my parents’ old house in Needham.
Something with raccoons.
M liked it. Laughed a lot.
She’s tough. I know she misses her mother. She never talks about her.
Maybe I should start talking more.
But I can’t.
Wind’s picking up.
They tell me that means more snow.
15
* * *
“Don’t you have any more Archies?” Merry said.
“Just what’s here. The Greenbergs gave them to me before they left for Florida,” Carl Fenton said.
The kids, including Giselle, were in the great room of the cabin that the Fentons called home. It had high ceilings and everywhere Merry looked she saw gleaming yellow wood. It was like a place where a hobbit might live.
“This one continues next issue and you don’t have the next issue,” Merry said, putting the comic back atop the short stack.
Giselle lay back on a daybed, engrossed in something on her tablet. “Is it the one where Archie can’t decide between Betty or Veronica?” she said without looking up.
“That’s the one. You read it?” Merry said.
“I don’t have to. That’s what they’re all about,” Giselle said, rolling her eyes before turning them back to the screen in her hands, thumbs working furiously.
“I have lots of Spiderman,” Carl offered, shoving a cardboard box stuffed with comics across the table.
“Does he have a girlfriend?” Merry said, inspecting the cover of one she pulled from the upright stack.
“Sure. He’s even married in some of them,” Carl said, riffling through copies.
“Get me those ones,” Merry said.
“Sure, Moira,” Carl said and began assembling a selection for her.
The younger kids read while Giselle, far too mature for comic books at fourteen, texted friends and cursed the slow wi-fi she was borrowing from the nearest house, a Swiss nightmare of a place owned by some Wall Street guy.
A whining sound off the lake broke the muttered silence.
Merry broke off reading to go to the bay window through which she could see past the bigger house to the lake surface. It was blinding white even in the muted glare from the overcast sky.
“There’s someone on the lake,” Merry said.