by Dan Ames
Henry Torcher’s biography was next. He’d been born in Germany, educated in London, emigrated to America over a decade ago. His academic record was peerless as was his performance, which saw him climb the rankings of every company where he’d been employed. He also had at one point been a competitive bodybuilder and mixed martial artist. There was a gap in his official record from his first foray into employment and his eventual position at Global Security Solutions. The researcher couldn’t find where he’d gone or what he’d been doing.
The rest of the documents provided more details but no breakthroughs. If Zeta Corporation was hiding something, so far they’d done a very thorough job of covering their tracks.
By the time Pauling finished the analysis, she’d lost most of the afternoon. So she showered, changed into a business casual outfit, and called her private car to whisk her to the convention – taking place in a modern, high-tech space that also featured as a contemporary art gallery and event space.
Pauling walked into the main entrance which consisted of towering tubes of white steel across which were strung silver cables. It felt like walking through a modern, high-tech highway overpass. She entered the main space. The floor was pickled hardwood, the walls were white and adorned with oversized modern artwork. Various sculptures were placed in the corners of the room. Most of them were made of metal and represented abstract versions of human figures.
A small orchestra played classical music and a small army of servers carried trays of appetizers and drinks. Pauling was offered a glass of champagne which she accepted.
Eventually, she spotted Karl Furlong talking to an Asian man dressed in a brilliantly colored blue suit and wearing eyeglasses with white frames.
“Ah, Lauren,” Furlong said. He gave Pauling a peck on the cheek and introduced her.
“Lauren Pauling, meet Charles Tse. Charles is Chairman and CEO of FlyWire, which I assume you’ve heard of.”
“Of course,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
FlyWire was one of the biggest and hottest companies in Silicon Valley and had maintained that status for several years, a feat unto itself. If her memory served her correctly, FlyWire was a conglomerate of multiple highly successful starts that spanned the spectrum of digital, mobile and computer technologies. Tse was one of the wealthiest people in the world.
“I understand Karl acquired your company recently,” Tse said.
Pauling was surprised. Compared to FlyWire, her company had been tiny.
“Yes, it’s in very good hands,” she said.
“So are you retired or do you have a new company?” Tse asked, making a vague gesture toward the conference. In essence, asking her, why are you here?
“Lauren is still a part of our organization and I invited her here to learn about some of our newest clients. Her insight is invaluable.”
“Yes it is,” a voice said behind her.
Pauling turned and came face-to-face with Henry Torcher. He shook Pauling’s hand but not Furlong’s or Tse’s. He must have been chatting with them previously, which made Pauling wonder if that’s how Tse had known about her.
“Hello Henry,” she said.
“Lauren, I’m so glad you could make it. I trust your travel and hotel have been acceptable?”
He gave her that same smile that was as cold as the ice bucket had been back in her room.
“Of course. Thank you.”
The four of them made small talk until the room began funneling into the auditorium at the back of the room. Pauling excused herself, went to the restroom and checked her phone.
For some reason, she was worried about Tallon.
Chapter 23
Leaving the dead man in the room but pocketing the man’s weapon, ammunition and cell phone, Tallon slipped out of the apartment building and walked back to his hotel.
He didn’t see the woman in the cream-colored pantsuit but he knew she was somewhere close by, watching.
Tallon took the elevator to each floor, peeking down the hallway. It wasn’t until the third floor that he spotted a couple of housekeeping carts. He walked toward them and spied a lanyard that matched the corporate colors of the hotel.
He walked past, saw the woman in one of the rooms spraying cleaner on a mirror and he reached out and lifted the lanyard with the keycard attached.
Tallon went back to the elevator and pushed the button for the floor above his own room. The doors opened and he stepped out onto the plush carpet. It was a dark red color like a cabernet wine and the walls were covered with a silvery wallpaper. A chair made of recycled twig branches sat to the left.
He turned and walked down the hall, following the signs to the room he wanted.
It had been Paco’s, according to the text messages he’d read on the now dead man’s phone. Part of their mission had been to keep an eye on Tallon, but also on Room 719.
Tallon slid the pistol from the back of his jeans into his hand and held it by his side. He used the stolen keycard to open the door.
He stepped inside and listened.
There was no sound.
He shut the door silently behind him and walked further into the room. He looked around the corner to the bed and was glad it was empty. Either the room wasn’t booked or its newest guest hadn’t arrived yet. Judging by the size and exclusivity of the hotel, he guessed it would be the latter.
Tallon was glad it was empty. He had been worried he would find some tired business executive had decided to take a catnap. Tallon put the key and lanyard on the desk and studied the room.
This was where Paco had been staying and where he might have been killed. He studied the carpet. It wasn’t the same color as the hallway, and it was different than the carpet in Tallon’s room. That, by itself, didn’t necessarily mean anything.
He studied it more closely.
No signs of bloodstains. In fact, there weren’t any stains at all. He knelt down and smelled the carpet. It didn’t have an odor like the obnoxious cleaners hotels use to disguise smell. It smelled like a carpet store.
Because it was brand-new.
Tallon was now convinced Paco was dead and that he’d been killed right here.
But why?
He didn’t know.
Quickly, but thoroughly, Tallon searched the room. He found nothing.
His eyes fell on the small in-room refrigerator tucked discreetly inside a cabinet underneath the television. Tallon smiled.
During a raid in Mexico, Tallon and Paco had been tasked with finding the kingpin’s secret stash of bank codes. They’d searched everywhere and in desperation, had torn apart the mini-fridge in the kingpin’s home office. There, taped to the wiring on the fridge’s back, was a file containing the codes.
From then on, Tallon and Paco had made jokes about whenever they were looking for something; drugs, stolen guns, contraband, they always said: don’t forget to look in the fridge.
Now, Tallon pulled the little unit out of the cabinet and heard the mini bottles of wine and beer crash around inside. He would have to hurry as he was making a lot of noise.
He ripped the fridge out and it tumbled forward, exposing its back.
At first, Tallon saw nothing. He grabbed a handful of cables and popped them loose. The action caused the refrigerator’s rear plate to separate. Tallon knew it had done so not because of the force involved, but because someone had loosened the screws keeping the sheet of metal secured.
He pulled the metal further apart and glanced inside.
There, taped to the inside of the thin metal was an object.
A memory stick.
Chapter 24
“There is a threat to humanity,” Charles Tse told the packed auditorium. Behind him on a white screen was the FlyWire logo.
“Some of you may think it’s a global warming. Others, fundamentalist terrorism. Or overpopulation. Global hunger. Disease.”
Tse paced the stage in his electric blue suit. The overhead lights imbued him with an energy and the reflection of
f of his white eyeglasses captivated the audience. The room was eerily silent and no one was looking at their phones. Charles Tse was in complete command.
“While I don’t deny that these are all real issues. If any of these thoughts popped into your head, I may even be inclined to agree with you.” He held out his hand as if he was ordering someone to stop. “But only to a point.”
He put his hand down and resumed his pacing. “I believe there is something much more dangerous at work in the world today, something so nefarious that it may signal the end of civilization as we know it and doom our future generations to a hellish existence.”
Tse paused for maximum effect.
“What is it that keeps me up at night? What is it that I fear may be the undoing of everything we and our ancestors fought for?”
He waited.
Finally, he spoke.
“Income inequality.”
A buzz among the audience came to life as people leaned down to whisper to those seated next to them.
Tse held up his hands.
“Trust me, I know what you’re thinking.” He smiled as his teeth glowed under the lights. “What kind of joke is this, right? Here I am, talking to a room full of the one-percenters. Or more accurately, the quarter percenters.”
The audience chuckled as one. Pauling thought it sounded like self-serving laughter. She was wondering exactly where Tse was going with this.
She knew he was a multi multibillionaire. For him to be talking about the income gap? Hell, he could give all of his money away for starters. That would put a good dent in the discrepancy.
“But hear me out,” he continued. “The current situation is simply not sustainable. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and I say that as a man worth many billions of dollars. But if you look back in history and examine points in human civilization when the disparity between the haves and the have nots grew to an extreme – what happened?”
A few people shouted answers but Tse ignored them.
“Conflict. You had conflict. The kind that does irrevocable harm to our society and changes the world forever.”
Pauling was intrigued. She happened to agree with Tse. In terms of personal wealth she was nowhere near the same ballpark as the chairman of FlyWire, but she’d done okay for herself.
The fact was, she probably qualified as a one-percenter.
However, she was intrigued to hear if Tse had any solutions because so far, at least in the U.S., varying degrees of discussion were taking place in DC, but as usual, politics meant each side had its own solution and no interest in working out a compromise.
“Politicians can solve this problem, but they won’t,” Tse told the audience. “So where does that leave us?”
The room was silent now, everyone waiting for the solution from the man many believed was one of the smartest in the world.
“We have to be the leading edge of the sword,” he said. “We cannot wait for governments to hammer out a compromise because we all know they won’t. While I am advocating for change, I am not advocating for working outside of the system. Because it simply can’t be done. We have to voluntarily seek taxes on the wealthy. It is the only way.”
A negative ripple made its way through the crowd.
Pauling had to smile. Verbalizing the T-word in a room full of mega millionaires was pretty damn gutsy, she had to admit.
“Taxation on the rich and wealth redistribution is the only solution,” Tse said. “Instead of paying lobbyists to restrict taxation, we should do the opposite. We should hire lobbyists to push for legislation that taxes the wealthiest among us. We should also back candidates and governments who are willing to take on the richest among us. We need serious, fundamental change in our society or our society simply won’t survive.”
He stopped pacing and stood front and center. He looked somewhere above the center of the audience.
“The sharing of wealth. We can either figure out how to do it now, peacefully. Or we can wait and watch it happen violently. Where everyone will be victims, not just us.”
He gave a slight bow and walked off the stage to less than thunderous applause.
Pauling wondered why everyone was so vigorous in their appreciation for the speech because the last time she checked, Tse hadn’t offered a single concrete solution.
The man sitting next to Pauling leaned over and spoke softly to her.
“What’d you think?” he asked.
Pauling glanced at him. He had sandy brown hair, a T-shirt with the Kings of Leon logo, blue jeans and Chuck Taylor tennis shoes.
“I think he made some valid points. Realistic implementation of his theories? Not likely.”
He gave her a tired smile.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think there’s a lot more to the story,” he said.
Pauling heard what he said but she was distracted by the tattoo on his hand that ran the length of his arm.
It was rather elaborate depicting the body of a snake.
And on his hand, the head.
With oversized, hinged fangs.
A viper, Pauling thought.
Chapter 25
Tallon took the stairwell back down to his floor, unlocked his room and went inside. He inserted the memory stick into his laptop and double-clicked the files.
The first file, labeled “Mikael Gladhus” showed an image of a man of vaguely European bearing wearing a suit and carrying both a briefcase and a laptop bag. Two more images were close-ups of the briefcase and laptop bag. The last image showed Gladhus at his desk, in a very impressive office, with the laptop open before him.
The next image showed a blonde woman.
Tallon studied the image.
“Holy shit,” he said.
He clicked so the image filled his screen.
“Hello Sonia,” Tallon said.
There was a knock on his hotel room door and Tallon quickly shut the laptop. He stood to the side of the door with the gun by his side.
“Vegas PD,” a voice said. The voice was male.
Not the other watcher.
Tallon knew better than to use the peephole which was an easy way to take a kill shot in the eye.
Instead, he said, “What’s your badge number?”
“1, 2, F U,” the voice responded.
The tinny voice of a dispatcher matched with the creak of gun belt leather made Tallon confident they were the real deal. Plus, the attitude sounded just like a cop.
A visit from the local cops made perfect sense to him and he knew exactly how they’d found him so fast.
Dale.
Tallon cracked the door, standing sideways and using the internal metal tab, instead of a door chain, to guard against someone trying to throw open the door.
He saw two cops. They were both men and he knew right away they were the real deal, not impostors sent to finish the job that had been started with Paco.
There was no sign of the woman watcher.
Tallon didn’t move to open the door all the way.
“How can I help you officers?”
“Can we come in or do you want to step out?” the first one asked. He was a heavyset black man with a tired expression on his face.
“Hold on,” Tallon said. He ducked back into the room, set the gun on the bed, and grabbed his key card.
He then went out into the hallway and shut the door behind them.
“Okay,” he said.
They held up a photograph of Paco. His military picture.
“Know him?”
“Sure do,” Tallon said. “He and I were in the military together. He said he was going to be here in Vegas around the same time I was. We planned to meet up but he hasn’t answered my calls. Why?”
The other cop, young white guy with a crewcut answered. “He’s dead. Hikers found him in a canyon north of the city.”’
“Shit,” Tallon said. “How?”
“Not sure. May have been foul play,” the black co
p said. “Any reason you were down at the coffee shop asking around, showing pictures of him?”
“Yeah!” Tallon said, trying to play the part of a former military guy looking for a good time. “He’s a good dude. We were going to party down, man. He recommended this hotel, so I figured he might have already been here.”
“What’s your name? And you have an ID?”
Tallon gave them his information.
“So what happened, anyway?” Tallon asked. “I heard there was some kind of weird scene down by that coffee place. And then some big shot Silicon Valley guy got murdered? What’s that all about?”
The black cop handed Tallon back his ID.
“Couldn’t tell you, sir. Above our pay grade.”
“A detective may follow up with some questions,” his white partner said. “You going to be around for awhile?”
“Probably another day or two, unless the casino takes my money sooner.” He offered a hearty chuckle but the cops simply glowered at him before walking away.
Tallon went back into his room and started packing his bag. He couldn’t leave right away as he had to let the cops leave the area. It hadn’t really surprised him that Paco was dead. It pissed him off, for sure. He was mostly glad that he’d killed at least one of the people responsible. Maybe he’d find out more.
Because he had a good lead.
If the blonde was involved in Paco’s death, that was good news for Tallon.
Because he knew her. Sonia. A relatively low-level hitman with a shady past.
Even better, Tallon knew her boss.
He intended to have a word or two with him.
And get some answers.
Chapter 26
Pauling was seated next to Karl Furlong for dinner. Across from them at the table was Charles Tse, along with a beautiful slender Asian woman he introduced simply as Hazel. To Furlong’s right was Henry Torcher and seated next to Torcher was a woman with long brown hair tinted with highlights. She had slate-gray eyes and a classically beautiful profile. She looked like a supermodel, Pauling thought.