by Pat Young
‘What made you change your mind?’
She pointed at him. ‘You. But I have to tell you, I almost went, when I found out you were married.’
‘I’m glad you stayed. Might I ask what your plans are now?’
She tried to sound flirtatious. ‘Well, I guess that depends on you and how good you are at keeping secrets.’
‘I’ll keep your secrets if you promise to keep mine.’
‘You have more?’ She feigned shock. ‘How many secrets can one man have?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised.’
There was an edge to his tone she hadn’t heard before.
‘Go on then, Scott, surprise me,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
‘Now why would I want to do that?’
‘Because if I’m about to embark on an affair with a married man, I’m going to have to believe that I’m the only secret he’s keeping.’ She leaned forward and kissed the tip of his nose. She was playing for time, scared he’d try to take it to the next level before she was ready.
‘So,’ he said, spreading his arms wide, ‘why don’t you go ahead, ask me anything.’ He eased the front of his trousers, ‘but you better be quick about it. These pants are starting to feel a little tight.’
‘Okay, is this your first extra-marital affair?’
He sat upright, tense and alert. ‘What is this, a divorce hearing?’
In a deep, grave voice, like a judge’s, she said, ‘Just answer the attorney’s question please, Mr Millburn.’
He sniggered, indulging her. ‘Yes, your honour. This is my first affair.’
‘So you didn’t have an affair with Miss Charlotte Gillespie?’
All sign of tolerance vanished from his face. ‘What the hell are you talking about? I’d never even heard of Charlotte Gillespie until I met you.’
‘That’s not true, is it?’ She shook her head sadly, as if she were the wronged wife. ‘You and Charlotte go a long way back, at least five or six years.’
She could almost see his brain working, trying to select the best response to her accusation.
‘As business partners, yes.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘Nothing more, I swear.’ He was trying to look trustworthy and honest, she could tell. ‘Why on earth would you ask that?’
‘Oh, it was just something she said.’
Now he looked alarmed. ‘Said? Said when? Where? In the street? I thought you said she was dead?’
‘Did I?’ She was beginning to enjoy this, the sparring, the mental challenge of keeping one step ahead, the danger.
‘How much do you know, Lucie?’
‘About what? Your business? Enough to get you in trouble, I guess. If I ever told anyone. But why would I? It’s not for me to judge. My father’s a businessman. I imagine he’s been involved in some shady deals in his time. I admire a good business brain and I suspect yours is one of the best.’
She’d thought he’d be far too clever for flattery. But like the conceited crow sweet-talked into dropping the cheese, Scott Millburn dropped a bombshell.
‘Did Charlotte tell you about our joint venture?’
‘Some,’ she said, ‘but I’d rather hear it from the mouth of the master.’ She reached for her glass and made herself comfortable, as if she were looking forward to a good piece of gossip. ‘Go on, talk dirty to me.’
She tried to sound coquettish and enticing. She licked her lips and said, ‘Talk dirty, filthy lucre to me. Call it financial foreplay.’
Evidently it was working. He reached for her breast, but she drew back. ‘Uh-uh,’ she said, pouting, ‘not till I hear how brilliant you are.’
She touched and teased, posed and promised while he confirmed pretty much everything she’d found in Charlotte’s letter and her safe deposit box. He seemed, after a point, to lose himself in the telling, as if he were describing a holy mission or a crusade. Not one of the biggest, most ambitious stock market frauds in history.
When he paused for breath, she asked him, for there were still some gaps she needed him to fill, ‘How did you know the hijackers were planning to fly the planes into WTC?’
‘Well, sorry, little lady. That would be classified,’ he said in a corny, movie-style voice, with a smile to match. As if he couldn’t help showing off, he added, ‘But it helps to have friends in high places. No pun intended.’ He laughed at his unintentional joke.
‘How did you know what stocks to buy and which to sell?’
‘Remember, Charlotte and I didn’t actually buy or sell the shares, we bought options to buy or sell them. When their value fell or rose significantly.’
She wanted him to name the companies involved. ‘I get that, but how could you tell which shares to buy options on? It seems like a bit of a crapshoot to me.’
‘No, no, no,’ he said, patiently, as if she were his student. ‘It’s simple contrarian investing. Take the airlines, for example.’
‘Which airlines? There are so many.’
‘You’re right, and almost any airline in the world had shares worth buying a put option on. How many people do you know who were prepared to fly after 9/11? I mean, you don’t expect to get on a plane and have it fly you straight into the side of a building. But it happened. So people have developed a fear of flying which means losses for airlines, especially American Airlines and UAL, the ones whose planes were actually used in the attack on WTC.’
‘Okay, I understand. It’s not very ethical, is it?’
He spluttered into his champagne and choked out the words, ‘Ethics are a luxury I can’t afford.’
Lucie gasped. Then as if the idea had just occurred to her she said innocently, ‘Oh no, please don’t tell me you deal in arms too?’
‘Are you serious?’ He wagged his finger at her, teacher-like. ‘First rule of business?’
‘I don’t know. Supply and demand?’
‘Correct.’ He seemed genuinely pleased with her. ‘Supply and demand. America at peace is no good for business, is it?’ He waited for her answer.
‘You want America at war?’
‘Right again. Since we got all touchy feely with the Russians, our political masters have become complacent. Americans need a new bogeyman.’
‘Al-Qaeda,’ she said in a whisper.
‘Got it in one.’
‘A terrorist attack on American soil. Citizens terrified to sleep at night. The politicians need to keep them safe.’ She stopped, realising the implications of what she was saying, ‘Oh my God. You think America will go to war over this?’
‘I sure as hell hope so. Otherwise I’ve wasted an awful lot of money trading options in armaments.’
‘Profits of doom.’
He laughed. ‘Very smart.’
‘Let me take another wild guess, you own shares in insurance companies too?’
‘Reinsurance, to be precise.’ He nodded, smug and self-satisfied. ‘Millions of dollars on put options for shares in companies like Munich Re and Swiss Re. They’re bound to take a big hit when they have to pay out billions of dollars. Like the airlines.’
She shook her head in genuine astonishment. It was hard not to be impressed. ‘Wow, my father was never in your league.’
‘No, he wasn’t. But then, few are.’
‘Scott,’ she said quietly, ‘what about all the people who died when the towers came down?’
His head dropped. She felt a pointless pang of relief when he looked up at her and said, ‘Well, I feel terrible. Of course I do. I’m not heartless.’
She must have shown some doubt for he seemed compelled to explain. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I tried to keep casualties to an absolute minimum.’
‘But you lost your own employees. Wasn’t that why your wife was organising a benefit lunch?’
He nodded. ‘Regrettably some of my workforce had to be present in the North Tower, to avoid attracting suspicious attention. But don’t worry, Diane and I will make very sure their families are well looked after.’
&n
bsp; ‘You’re a regular Andrew Carnegie.’
‘What did you say?’ he asked sharply.
She mustn’t antagonise him. ‘Sorry, I’m just having a bit of trouble getting my head round all the dead people. I could have been one of them, you know. I was on my way to the South Tower.’
‘You were? Why?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes, I’d like to know.’
‘I had an interview for a cleaning job. If I’d been half an hour earlier, I’d have been dead. It’s like you were playing God. You knew this was going to happen and yet you did nothing.’
‘What was I supposed to do?’
‘You could have sent your employees home.’
He looked at her suspiciously. Had she said too much too soon?
‘Don’t you think that might have looked a bit odd? It could have started a panic. A mass exodus.’
‘Would that have been so bad? Saving all those lives. You could have been a hero.’
He shook his head as if she didn’t understand. ‘I couldn’t do that, Lucie.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would have compromised my source.’
‘So you preferred to let folk die?’
‘Collateral damage. Regrettable but unavoidable. Like the civilians unfortunate enough to die on the surrounding streets. Ever heard of Baron de Rothschild?’
She shook her head. ‘Why? Who’s he?’
‘He was the man who said: “Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even when it’s your own blood.”’
‘Or Charlotte’s.’
He didn’t answer, seemed to be reflecting. Although he made frequent use of words like unfortunate, she could see no regret in his demeanour. Wasn’t that the sign of a psychopath or a sociopath or some other kind of maniac you wouldn’t want to be sipping champagne with?
‘Listen, I might seem like a monster, but would you believe me if I told you there’s an altruistic motive behind all of this?’
‘That might be a big ask.’
‘I know, but it’s true.’
‘I knew all along you were really one of the good guys.’ She smiled quickly, hoping he hadn’t noticed her sarcasm. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’
‘Well,’ he said, his voice deep and serious, ‘I don’t think terrorism is the biggest threat to America. I believe it’s something much more insidious that will destroy this great country of ours.’
‘Drugs?’
‘They’re in the mix, but I think they’re a symptom of the ailment, not the cause.’
‘What is it then?’
‘It’s unemployment. If people have no work, they have no self-respect. If they have no self-respect, they don’t respect other people, or their property or their rights. Keep heading down that highway and you’re heading for hell. Have you ever seen pictures of the Great Depression?’
‘When Wall Street crashed?’
‘October 1929. Industrial production dropped by almost fifty per cent, building practically stopped. By 1932 there were thirteen million unemployed. You know how many unemployed we have right now, in 2001?’
Lucie had no idea. Even though her husband had been one of them. ‘Two, three million?’
‘Almost six million and that’s without a recession. What happens the next time the banks fail? And they will, you mark my words. We live in a boom or bust economy. There’s another collapse on its way. Can you imagine what that will be like?’
Lucie shook her head. He was really fired up now. Evangelising like a preacher. ‘Let me tell you. There will be anarchy. America has changed since the thirties and people won’t meekly accept their fate next time a depression comes along. They won’t be prepared to live in shanty towns like Third World folks. They’ve come to expect better and they’ll take what they believe is their right. Poverty won’t be a working-class problem next time around.’
He stopped for a minute, as if deep in reflection. ‘You ever been poor, honey?’
‘No, I haven’t.’ It was a lie, of course, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. She didn’t entirely disagree with his theory about unemployment. She’d seen the changes in Curtis when he got laid off.
‘Well, I have. And I’m never going back there.’
‘I appreciate that, but I don’t understand how something as awful as this can help the economy.’
‘America didn’t recover from the Great Depression until December 1941. Any idea what happened then?’
‘If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say something to do with the Second World War?’
‘And you’d be right. It took a war to help this great nation make a recovery. The United States entered the war in Europe at the end of 1941 and the economy recovered soon after.’
‘So you and your people in high places are starting a war?’
There was a messianic fervour in his voice and his eyes. ‘Not so much a war as a period of economic growth. America will become strong enough to withstand any attack from terrorists, should they be foolish enough to try. But they won’t. Terrorists are like bullies. They pick on the weak. They attack countries that don’t have the wherewithal to defend their citizens.’
‘And what about New York and its citizens?’
‘New York will recover. A new, better WTC will rise from the ashes, creating jobs and manufacturing opportunities for years. Can you imagine how many workers and how much material and investment a building project this size will involve? How much wealth it will create?’
‘For you and your cronies?’
‘Please, I prefer the word associate or fellow investor.’
‘Okay,’ she said brightly, ‘which brings us neatly back to Charlotte.’
‘Yes, lovely Charlotte. Pity she lost her nerve, or got religion or some damn thing, I don’t know what the hell happened. Anyway, she begged me to evacuate our own people.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I agreed we should.’
‘So why didn’t it happen?’
‘I told you, we couldn’t do anything suspicious. It would have compromised my source.’
‘That source must be pretty well connected. Who is he? Or she?’
‘I can’t tell you that. Anyway, no one knew for sure the attack was going to happen.’
‘And yet you invested millions of dollars in the possibility.’
‘It was a bet, a gamble, like all investments. Some pay out, some don’t.’
‘And this person, your contact, really meant more to you than Charlotte?’
‘Charlotte brought it upon herself. She made me choose.’
‘Between her and your contact?’
‘Between her and Diane.’
Lucie sipped at her champagne. She was getting close, but not close enough. ‘This is delicious,’ she said, for want of anything safer to say.
‘Moët. Glad you like it.’ He took a mouthful and swallowed. She watched his Adam’s apple move up and down. ‘Now,’ he said, replacing his glass on the table, ‘it’s time for us to talk about Lucie. I assume that is your real name?’
‘I’ve just told you Lucie’s story, my story,’ she said with a little smile, hoping she looked trustworthy.
‘It seems to me you’ve missed out some of the best bits. Like why you’d want to steal someone’s identity. You do know that’s breaking the law, don’t you?’
‘So is insider trading, isn’t that what they call it? But unlike you, I haven’t done any harm, have I?’
He laughed, dismissing her plea. ‘I don’t think the law will see it that way, Lucie.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Why didn’t you want to go home?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I mean, home to your husband.’
Lucie felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. This was getting scary. How could he know that stuff? ‘Who have you been talking to?’
‘Oh, it’s amazing what you can find out if you have the right contacts in the right places.’
&nbs
p; ‘Such as?’
‘Such as the rehab centre your poor husband was living in after you crippled him. And the nine one one team who found him almost dead on his kitchen floor.’ He looked around. ‘I can see why you’d prefer it here, Lucie. Much nicer than your old place.’
‘It was self-defence. I thought he was going to kill me.’
‘What did actually kill you, Lucie?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Lucie Jardine, née McBride, is officially dead. Did you know that? I’m just curious about what happened. I thought you’d be the ideal person to tell me.’
This was not on Lucie’s plan. She decided the best thing would be to remain silent.
‘Taking the Fifth, are we?’
Lucie said nothing.
‘Probably wise. Fraud, identity theft, assault, faking your own death. I hope you know a good lawyer, Lucie. You’ll need one. I would say you’re looking at ten to fifteen for that lot. Quite the little felon, aren’t we?’
He started to edge closer to her. ‘Any more secrets you’d like to share before we get down to business? I think that’s probably enough foreplay, don’t you? Enough for me, anyway.’ He took her hand and pressed it on his erection. She tried not to snatch her fingers away or let her revulsion show. The last few years with Curtis had prepared her well. She moved her hand firmly back and forth till he groaned, eyes closed.
Lucie slid backwards an inch or two and removed her hand. ‘You won’t get away with it, you know. Charlotte left evidence.’
His eyes flew open. ‘Spilling her guts to some stranger in the street before she died? That isn’t evidence.’
‘You didn’t expect her to die in the street though, did you? Your plan was to send her to her death with all those other sad, unsuspecting souls in the North Tower.’
He laughed. The most sinister sound she’d ever heard, like something from a horror movie, only far more credible. ‘Oh, Lucie. You’re so naïve. Not only did I expect Charlotte to die in the street, I made it happen.’
‘No. You’re lying.’
‘Charlotte died in the street because I planned it that way. I paid someone to kill her. Then, when I found out he didn’t do the job the way I asked, I killed him.’
Lucie tried to slide away from him but he grabbed her by her forearms and trapped her.