The Takeover

by Stephen W. Frey

  Falcon raced across the empty parking lot, dodging empty beer cans as he ran. Broken bottles crackled under his feet like faraway machine-gun fire. Where the hell was the door? He searched the side of the huge abandoned warehouse as he moved. But his vision was very bad now. There was little strength left in his body.

  Grey noticed with satisfaction Falcon’s sluggish gait. The prey was weakening, and his own hunger was strong. It would be over soon.

  The door, where in the hell was it? There! Falcon moved along the wall of the building to the white wooden door. It would be unlocked. He had made certain. Falcon thrust it open and rushed into the cool, dark structure. It reeked of mildew. He climbed the black metal stairway to the second floor, leaping three steps at a bound. Strength was coming from somewhere, though he knew not where.

  Grey took the steps four at a bound. He was closing in. Falcon was done. There would be no escape this time.

  Falcon reached the huge open space of the second floor. It was as big as a football field. He sprinted toward the middle of the space. The pursuer was close now. He could feel it.

  Grey reached the top of the stairway, pulling the pistol from its holster as he ran.

  Falcon stopped suddenly in the middle of the huge room and turned toward Grey. He stood defiantly, arms crossed over his chest.

  Phoenix Grey stopped too. He was not more than fifteen yards from the prey. He drew the pistol in front of him. This would be an easy shot. What the hell was wrong with Falcon? Did he want to die?

  “If you kill me now, the Sevens will be revealed. The world will know about the conspiracy,” Falcon said firmly. His words echoed in the huge space. “You, Rutherford, and the rest will be hunted down like animals until the authorities find you. They won’t stop until they find you. The information they will get is detailed. I know everything. And all of that information is stored away. If anything happens to me, there are people who will know to recover it. And they will know if anything happens to me.”

  Grey stared down the barrel of the pistol at Falcon’s chest, still heaving from the chase. He moved slowly toward Falcon.

  “I want to talk to Rutherford. If I talk to him, the information is safe. If I don’t, the authorities will have it tomorrow.”

  Grey began circling slowly behind him now. Falcon stared straight ahead. He knew better than to move. “You kill me, and you’re as good as dead yourself.”

  The cold steel of the pistol pressed against the back of his neck.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I’m bluffing, pal.” For a moment Falcon wondered whether his strategy had been correct.

  And then everything went black.

  * * *

  —

  Falcon opened his eyes slowly. The world did not come immediately into focus. God, the back of his head was killing him. He closed his eyes.

  “You’ll be all right.” The voice was military and tough.

  Cigarette smoke reached Falcon’s nostrils. He opened his eyes again. The room was stark, lit by a single naked bulb hanging from a long, black cord like a man at the end of a noose. Falcon shivered. He could not see beyond the small arc of light.

  “You hungry?”

  Falcon shook his head slowly and stretched. He leaned back against the cinder-block wall.

  “Need to use the latrine?”

  Falcon shook his head again. He looked up. The man sat backward in the wooden chair and stared down at him. His elbows rested on the back of the chair.

  The man gazed at him for a few moments, then inhaled deeply from the cigarette, dropped it onto the cement floor, and stepped on the burning ash with a large black boot.

  Falcon’s vision cleared. The man was big. Very big. Arms of a blacksmith bulged beneath the cotton golf shirt. His head was huge, highlighted by a mammoth forehead and a Roman nose. His hair was clipped close to his scalp in a crew cut. Falcon could not tell the color of the hair because the light in the room was too dim. Somehow he was not what Falcon had expected. “William Rutherford?”

  “In person,” Rutherford said in a commanding voice.

  Falcon let his head fall back against the cinder-block wall. “Jesus Christ.” He touched the back of his scalp. There was dried blood. “Why the hell did your goon have to hit me so hard?”

  “He didn’t want you to get away again. He was pissed off. I have to hand it to you, Falcon. I’ve never known anyone to elude Phoenix Grey the way you have. And I’ve known Phoenix for a long time.”

  Falcon continued to rub his head. “What time is it?”

  Rutherford checked his watch. “It’s six o’clock. It’s been about seven hours.”

  “That’s fitting,” Falcon said under his breath.

  “You’re a funny guy, Mr. Falcon.” Rutherford reached for a pack of Marlboros from the shirt’s top pocket, removed one, and lit it. He took a few more puffs, then pointed a finger at Falcon with the hand that held the cigarette. “What do you want? Why did you come to Boston?”

  Falcon sat straighter against the wall. “To get a few answers.”

  “Okay, the world isn’t really round; it’s flat. And I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but there is no heaven, just a living hell here on earth. And it’s going to get much worse for you, boy, before it gets any better. That about do you?”

  Falcon ignored Rutherford. “I know you killed Jeremy Case. You killed Carter Filipelli and Peter Lane too.”

  “And a few others.” Rutherford didn’t bat an eye.

  “How did you get Lane to invest the money on behalf of the President?”

  “Paid him half a million dollars. He was up to his eyeballs in gambling debts. He took off a little before we had anticipated, but we found him.”

  “But he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to write the memo the authorities found at Lodestar and put his fingerprints on it. Even for half a million dollars.”

  “Phoenix Grey, the gentleman who’s been bird-dogging you for the last week, tracked Lane down on a lonely beach in St. Croix. Before Phoenix threw him to the sharks, he got Lane’s fingerprints all over a memo that I put together on my computer upstairs.”

  “And of course you used the Financial Chronicle to manipulate the public and the other media types.”

  “Of course. The power of the press. Never underestimate it.”

  “And you leaked the information about Lodestar and the President to the DOJ.”

  “Actually, it was the FBI. We were already using the DOJ for something else, so we wanted to use another agency for that one.”

  “I thought Victor Farinholt, the senior partner at Lodestar, was involved too. The papers said he traded on the information also. Or did you set him up, just as you set me up?”

  Rutherford laughed deeply. “No, he wasn’t involved. And we didn’t set him up either. That was just good luck. Financial types kill me. They’d sell their mother for inside information.” Rutherford paused. “So you found out a few things about us?”

  “I found out everything. I found the wire transfers into NASO from Winthrop, Hawkins. I also found out about the insurance policy for Jeremy Case’s wife. I’ve got your telephone bills for the last six months. All of your telephone bills. Each Seven. And most importantly, I’ve got the files from Chambers’ office at Penn-Mar, which have some very incriminating handwritten notes in the margins.”

  Rutherford finished the cigarette, allowed it to fall to the floor, and put it out next to the first one. He smiled wryly. “How did you find out about us? How did you know where to look when you went to Toledo?”

  “Things struck me strangely along the way. Taken individually they were nothing, but in the aggregate I could not ignore them. There was the fact that the headhunter who called me about the NASO job knew about the position two days before the woman whom I replaced was actually fired. The f
act that NASO was willing to put so much money into one deal, which was so far overpriced. The timing of Filipelli’s death. The fact that senior officials holding the same job at NASO had been murdered. The fact that DuPont pulled out of the bidding for Penn-Mar at the eleventh hour, even though they had plenty of dry powder left.” Falcon glanced up at Rutherford. “You influenced that, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what we used the DOJ for. Wendell’s got a lot of friends over there.”

  “To answer your question, I went to Toledo with the intention of going through Chambers’ office. I didn’t think I’d really find anything. But I did.”

  “I suppose that’s also how you found yourself killing the security guard too, eh?”

  “Yes.” Falcon stared at Rutherford, grim-faced.

  Rutherford shook his head, but said nothing.

  Falcon pulled some of the dried blood from his hair. “It isn’t just the Sevens, is it? I mean, there are more than seven people involved in this conspiracy, aren’t there?”

  “Conspiracy is such a nasty word, Mr. Falcon. Cause. I like the word cause a lot more than I like the word conspiracy. Let’s use that word. Yes, there are more than seven people involved in the cause. Some of them know they are involved. Some of them don’t.”

  “You all made a lot of money on the Penn-Mar transaction, didn’t you? You traded ahead of the announcement, right?”

  Rutherford nodded. “Of course. Through various on- and offshore accounts. In total we netted a billion-dollar gain on our investments. We lost a billion in the LBO, but we made two billion buying before the announcement. I’ll take a six-month, billion-dollar, one hundred percent profit any day. Of course, that wasn’t the primary motivation.”

  “I know,” Falcon said calmly.

  Rutherford sat up in the chair. “Look, Falcon, what do you want? Clearly you came here for something.”

  Falcon made it to his feet. His head throbbed. He rubbed his hands to his eyes. He felt as if he was going to throw up but managed to continue. “Rutherford, it seems to me we both have problems. There ought to be a mutually agreeable way of solving those problems.”

  “I’m listening.” Rutherford lit another cigarette. “Don’t expect miracles.”

  “I’ve got enough information to put you and your friends away for life. If what I have stored away in a remote safe-deposit box ever became public, the disclosure would destroy you and probably a lot of people in addition to the Sevens.”

  “Perhaps,” Rutherford acknowledged.

  “If something happens to me, I’ve got friends who know where to go to look for everything I’ve put together. They don’t know what’s in there, but they know to go for it if they don’t hear from me on a regular basis.”

  “Pretty basic plan, Falcon.”

  Andrew shrugged. “Maybe so. But I think it works. Your goon could have killed me at the warehouse pretty easily, but he didn’t.”

  Rutherford glanced away.

  “But I’ve got some problems too.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “First of all, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to find a job after what happened at NASO. At least in this universe. Second, you could make things pretty bad for me as far as the investigation into the death of that guard at Penn-Mar.”

  Rutherford’s eyes became nothing but slits. Falcon had it all figured out. “So, what’s your proposal?”

  Falcon’s throat was dry. He coughed. “First, I want ten million dollars. You made a billion dollars on Penn-Mar. You can spare a dime. I don’t think that’s a lot. Second, I want you to buy me this farm up in Vermont too. I mean, I’ll have ten million dollars to spend, but it would be such a nice touch for you to get the farm for me. I always did want to live in Vermont. And it will give the authorities one more trail to follow if anything ever happens to me. Third, I want you to take care of that wire transfer at NASO that might make someone believe I was guilty of insider trading. And fourth, I want you to lead the authorities away from my involvement in the guard’s death at Penn-Mar. Not that you probably care, but I didn’t murder him. It was an accident.”

  “I’ll have to check with the others,” Rutherford said.

  “Don’t pull that pass-the-buck crap on me. The others will do whatever you say. You can do it and you will do it. You are the bottom line.”

  “No, I’m the bottom line.” Granville Winthrop moved smoothly out of the shadows.

  Falcon recoiled involuntarily against the cinder-block wall.

  Winthrop continued to walk slowly across the cement floor until he was only inches from Falcon’s face. “I should have had you killed a long time ago.”

  Falcon regained his calm quickly. “You tried. You sent a professional assassin after me and he couldn’t kill me.” His eyes narrowed, then he flashed the crooked smile. “Don’t you get it, Granville? You can’t beat me. You’ve tried to kill me. You’ve tried to hang an insider-trading charge on me. You made it so no one on Wall Street would hire me. You probably even put that bug in the software at MD Link, didn’t you? Didn’t you, Winthrop?”

  Winthrop nodded.

  “But here I am.” Falcon’s voice was dead-sea calm. “And I’ve got you and your blue-blooded buddies over a barrel. A very big barrel. I could put you away for good if I wanted to. If I wanted to, Winthrop. I’m in control. How do you like that, Granville? It burns you, doesn’t it? But there’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

  Winthrop stepped back as though punch-drunk. He stared at Falcon for a few moments through glazed eyes, then reached beneath his long raincoat and withdrew a .44-caliber Magnum. He trained it on Falcon’s chest.

  “Granville!” Rutherford barked. “Put that down!”

  Winthrop ignored Rutherford. “I’ve always wanted to kill a man, Andrew. Putting a very big bullet through your chest seems like a pretty good way to satisfy that urge.”

  Falcon stared into Winthrop’s eyes. He had seen that look before, in Reid Bernstein’s eyes. Winthrop wanted to pull the trigger badly. Unlike the guard in Toledo, Granville wanted to kill.

  “You pull that trigger, and it’s all over, Granville,” Rutherford whispered. “Everything. You’ve told me you admire my dedication to mission. The fact that I am perfectly rational. It would be completely irrational to kill Falcon. He could destroy us in death. He would not have come to Boston unless he was certain he could take us down. He arranged this meeting. He allowed us to find and catch him.”

  The gun began to shake violently in Winthrop’s hands. He cocked it and turned his head slightly to one side.

  Falcon stared down the gun barrel into the old man’s eyes and didn’t like what he saw.

  Suddenly Winthrop pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into the cinder block next to Falcon’s head and ricocheted around the room.

  Falcon dropped to the floor and covered his head instinctively. Rutherford dove at Winthrop, knocking the older man to the floor and taking control of the weapon quickly.

  “Get off me, Rutherford! I wasn’t trying to kill him! If I was trying to kill him, he’d be dead!” Winthrop yelled.

  “You could have killed all of us, you idiot!” Rutherford yelled back.

  All three men staggered to their feet. Falcon and Winthrop stared at each other. The hatred in their eyes surprised even themselves.

  “You will meet my demands,” Falcon said icily.

  “What makes you so sure?” Winthrop hissed.

  “Rutherford said it. I arranged this meeting. I allowed you to catch me. Why would you blow everything you’ve worked for just to kill me? I’m chicken shit in your grand scheme of things. I’m giving you life, and you’re giving me life.”

  “I’m giving you a pretty damn good life, I’d say.”

  “My silence is worth ten million dollars.”

  “You keep forgetting, Mr. Falcon,”
Rutherford interjected. “I’ve got you here in my custody. I’ve spent the better part of my life prying information out of people. And prying is the operative word. You see, I know just how much pain the human body can withstand before it expires.” He brandished the .44. “I could very easily find out where that information is.”

  “Do you really want to gamble that you can get the information out of me? If my friends don’t hear from me by eleven o’clock tonight, they will be at the location to retrieve the information at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. I can hold out until the morning.” He shivered again. This place was cold.

  Rutherford stared at Falcon. “Yes, I suppose you could.”

  “Then we have a deal?”

  Rutherford stood in silence for several moments and then glanced at Winthrop, who, after several moments, nodded.

  “In principle we do,” Winthrop whispered. There was no choice. He turned to go.

  “There’s one more thing. One more condition to my silence.”

  Winthrop turned back to face Falcon. “What now?”

  “I want to be a Seven.”

  Winthrop and Rutherford looked at him in disbelief.

  “And just to show you that it will be worthwhile to have me as a Seven, chew on this, Granville. Boreman’s supposed to be dead, right? Burned up in a fiery automobile crash?”

  “Yes, God rest his soul.”

  “Happened Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why didn’t the Harvard chapel bell ring seven times at seven minutes before midnight on Friday night? And why isn’t Wallace Boreman’s name on the plaque? That’s supposed to happen within forty-eight hours of a Seven’s death. His name isn’t up there. I checked. And his name isn’t there for a reason. He isn’t dead.”

  The two men said nothing. They just stared at Falcon.

  34

  The couple walked hand in hand through the darkness. They were both graduate students, he in anthropology and she in law. They were returning from a small dinner party on the other side of the campus. The woman pressed close to her lover for warmth. The air was crisp, and the smell of chimney smoke wafted through the fall evening.