Game of Greed

by Charlotte Larsen

  Francis hesitates for a moment. He hates sharing his hypotheses too early. “I have a hunch that Wharton’s disappearance is just Schwartz’s first move. That he is going to topple each key player of Smith, Turner, and Stevenson one by one. ‘Ten Little Soldiers.’” He looks inquiringly at Thomas, who just shakes his head in exasperation. “Or like dominos. Knock them over one by one, make them fall each by their own demon. That’s my current theory. But as you know, it may easily change before noon.” Francis glances at his watch. “Anyway, I am going to strengthen these little soldiers, so they won’t topple over quite as easily. It seems to me to be the simplest and most direct way to counter Schwartz’s vicious attack on a reasonable innocent firm.”

  Thomas takes the hint and gets up to leave. “I guess I can get ahold of you at the usual number?”

  Francis nods. They shake hands and Thomas leaves. And moments later, a tall, rather well-preserved woman enters the lounge. “Darling! So good to see you!” Her voice is seductively throaty, spiced with a posh New York accent.

  Francis gets up and kisses her on both cheeks. “Julia! You look amazing. Come sit down next to me.” He beckons the waiter and pulls the other lounge chair closer. Julia sits down, throwing back her long, reddish hair, crossing her legs in a studied move designed to give the briefest glimpse of what might follow. She is stunningly beautiful, although it probably is safe to say that in the past twenty years she has undergone more than a few surgical interventions to ward off the effects of time. Nevertheless, she has elegance, style, and the self-confidence that comes from having had the attention of men all her life, which likely will carry her through for some years to come.

  “So, darling, what’s the plan?” She sips her tea. “Are we still on for tonight?”

  Francis smiles at her. “Yes, we are on tonight. You are my excuse, my reason, my everything, Julia!” He smiles ironically and touches her cheek in a surprisingly gentle way. “I have secured tickets for the first night of Carmen, as you suggested. And then we need to go where all the right people might be.” He looks at her. “Any ideas?”

  She thinks for a moment. “You need to be seen?”

  “I need to be seen. And perhaps create a little excitement, yes.”

  “Well, there’s a late cocktail party at the Websters’. You know, the British ambassador? I believe that might just be the kind of scene you’re looking for.”

  “Sounds perfect. I’ll have the car pick you up at seven thirty. Now, do you need to be anywhere soon?” He strokes his thumb along her bare arm, his smile barely visible.

  “No.” She smiles. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Francis spends the entire opera going over the case in his head. Again and again. Julia is looking suitably bored, but his objective has already been met, as a couple of paparazzi took photos of them outside the opera. The photographers probably don’t know who Francis and Julia are. But Francis knows they look fantastic together as a couple. Reason enough to excite any paparazzo worth his lenses. And the twenty-year gap between them only excites the pedestrian curiosity. This is the very reason he loves Julia: He can count on her voluptuous six-foot frame and copper hair to generate attention. At least Copenhagen knows he is in town, Francis thinks. All he needs to do now is give them something to talk about, which will allow him some maneuvering room.

  Which he proceeds to do at the ambassador’s house a short while later.

  Julia and Francis arrive at the same time as a large group of people, some of whom they saw at the opera. The party is well underway, but nothing seems to be happening. It’s all stale splendor and well-mannered banalities. He offers his arm to Julia, who is wearing a bias-cut silk gown that hugs her statuesque body in a way that is a hair’s breadth from being indecent. Predictably, they cause a stir as they enter the ballroom. Julia is one of the richest widows in New York, who just recently buried her what is it? fourth geriatric husband. Not a shred of remorse in her green eyes. And Francis is of the Scott-Wren family with strong Danish ancestral links. Enough to cause attention. They are greeted by the host and hostess, a couple in their mid-fifties who might never have seen better days, but who likely serve queen and country with the same insipid attention as they pay their guests. Francis has never understood the English ruling class. They seem a relic from times past without realizing it, as if they’re still sipping tea in a tropical colony while dark-skinned beauties fan banana leaves for the white man’s comfort.

  The ambassador’s young daughter is standing next to her parents. Not a pretty young woman by any stretch of imagination.

  Suddenly, Francis knows what he will do to draw attention.

  Over breakfast the next morning, Francis enjoys the headlines of the tabloids: “Young Daughter of Ambassador Webster Seduced!” “Bachelor Heir Takes Full Advantage of Embassy Hospitality,” and his favorite, “Father Helpless as Daughter Succumbs to Charlatan Charm.”

  Nice pictures, too.

  At least he’s done what he can to create the illusion that he is in Copenhagen for fun and mischief. His cover complete, he finishes breakfast and calls for the car to be ready. Half an hour later, he is at the very humble address where the research team is doing its finest.

  The derelict building in Nørrebro, the toughest part of town, behind a house with a rubbish-strewn yard, is the unlikely location of what resembles a war room. On the fourth floor, access to which is granted only after a terminal at the steel-enforced front door accepts one’s retina, is a large sunlit room filled with the most expensive technological toys any computer geek could desire. It resembles the inside of a NASA control room. Six young men and women wearing headsets, each at a station, stare into screens of various sizes and formats. Francis stands at the door for a short while, taking in the scene. His heart quite embarrassingly swells with pride: My guys! He checks his exuberance. Well, they are Thomas’s guys, actually…

  Thomas has handpicked every single one of them. Mostly dropouts. Kids too bright and too independent to accept the rigors and bureaucracy of universities. Kids who move freely in cyberspace, who understand and master the digital rules of conduct better than they do the ones in the real world. Kids with very limited social skills or needs. The brightest and least socially adjusted of their generation.

  Two teams of six work in twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week, during operations. They are paid well but not extravagantly, because Thomas realized long ago that these kids get high on the sophisticated gear and on the smell of the hunt, not on the money. They live to uncover hidden stuff, to break covers and find routes nobody has trod. They breathe smokescreens, immense and confusing details, and diversions…anything that exercises their analytical minds and challenges their ability to come up with creative ideas in less time than most.

  Francis holds out the bag of breakfast rolls that the cook made this morning, and says, “I brought breakfast!”

  A clatter of eager voices greets him, and before long, everyone is seated around the conference table Thomas at one end, Francis at the other.

  “Impress me, guys,” Francis says. “Give me an overview of what you’ve got so far.”

  One by one, the researchers offer their insight. Some proudly, others more reluctantly, clearly not satisfied with what they have been able to come up with in the twenty-four hours since they got the briefing.

  When they all have given a status except Thomas, whom Francis plans to grill in private Francis grabs a pen from the table and starts scribbling on the huge whiteboard that covers one wall.

  “So here is what we know: Schwartz Corp. is doing absolutely fine. Best financial results ever, which is quite something in the midst of a financial crisis. Their staff turnover is at the same level as the two previous years if we adjust for increased staff size. Their share of new and repeat business is quite similar to those of previous years. They are still strong on all continents, relatively speaking. And the amount of press they have generated is proportional to their market share.” He looks around the table,
his eyes lingering on each researcher in turn. There is an anticipatory stillness in the room. Nobody moves.

  Francis continues, his voice suddenly booming out, “You have uncovered exactly nothing, boys and girls! Nothing. The picture you are giving me is the blueprint of a great company. What am I supposed to do with that?” He hits the table with the palm of his hand. “I want more! Now!” Everybody scrambles out of the room. “And, guys! Do check something other than Google, please!” he calls after them.

  Thomas starts apologizing, but Francis quietly stops him. “They’ve done fine, Thomas. Just needed a little pep talk to get the creative juices flowing. I need them to work outside the parameters.” He pours himself some coffee. “Anyway, how is your part coming along?”

  Thomas pulls out a sheaf of printed pages. “Quite well. It turns out an old friend used to work at Smith, Turner, and Stevenson, but quit because he didn’t make partner fast enough. He feels slightly misunderstood and was only too happy to give me a view of the inside. So, what I have here is at least something to start from. And it might even be enough for your purpose. The next step will require more intimate research on each partner, which might include putting a tail on them.”

  Francis pulls his chair close to Thomas’s, and they go through the list together. Aside from the biographical data and the more mundane circumstances, such as family and education, the list represents a very broad spectrum of human foibles, fears, and desires. Francis feels he is sitting in front of a secret catalog of human baseness. A few of the top twenty partners at Smith, Turner, and Stevenson are lily white. The rest, between them, cover everything from pathological tightness and unimaginable greed, to mental illnesses, incest, and various sexual deviancies. Francis reads about investments gone terribly wrong, ugly divorces, bizarre plastic surgery. There is even one partner who keeps two apparently similar families a few miles apart. The list contains everything somebody like Georg Schwartz would ever need to send each one of the key players of Smith, Turner, and Stevenson a one-way ticket into public scrutiny.

  Francis suddenly feels certain that this is exactly what Schwartz intends to do. He himself would do just that. Rake out little stories and quietly feed them to the press or, in some cases, simply present the bastards with the best of their febrile imagination and let them dig their own graves. Quite easy. Not very labor-intensive. He guesses that smearing just six or seven of the naughtiest people on the list would do the trick. It wouldn’t be long before clients started to pull out, at least the more salubrious ones. And once the big and shiny clients went, the rest would soon follow, thereby reducing the world’s largest and most prominent legal firm to just another midlevel operator.

  Chapter 4

  From the outside, it looks like any other monastery in that country. Once you enter the gate, a narrow dirt road slices the area into two parts, one much bigger than the other. On the left are the small huts for the few women who stay at the center temporarily. On the right and much bigger side are huts for the men, more than the eye can count. And in the far distance, at the end of the yellow dirt road, is the temple, if morning mist or blankets of rain do not hide it.

  The temple is a simple construction in the classic form of an anteroom, with an open back and front, as if to indicate the transience of life and the fact that there really is nowhere for one’s mind to hide once one has learned to apply the spotlight of meditation. It is merely a place to visit, not to linger. At the back of the temple is an atrium with a flagstone floor surrounded by a tall balustrade. Off the balustrade, doors open into the master’s bedroom and his attendants’ quarters.

  All the buildings are of the same curry color as the dirt road, as if they’d risen out of the yellow mud that splashes one’s robes when the rains come thundering down. Dirt roads, dirt houses, dirt robes when it rains. Which it does. Often and heavily.

  Abundant against the tall trees and heavy foliage of the evergreen forests, temple trees shyly offer their delicate flowers some white, and some pale pink or pale orange, sending their seductive fragrance across the land. Much more outgoing are the extroverted and flashy hibiscus, their voluptuous yellows, reds, and pinks out of place in this beautiful but austere setting. There is nothing restrained or humble about the hibiscus. They glory in their finery, mocking the monks and nuns who dress for humility. In the late afternoon, a laywoman wanders around, collecting a basketful of flowers to arrange in intricate and stunning patterns for evening Puja.

  Old and rain-beaten walls covered by moss surround the temple grounds. The walls seem impenetrable, protecting the enormous trees outside as well as the peaceful life inside. The more restless of the congregation often use the paths just inside the walls for walking meditation. At a brisk pace, one can cover the perimeter of the grounds in a little less than two hours. But doing it as walking meditation that is, in a pace so slow that one has time to feel the movement of each individual muscle can take forever.

  A net of pathways crisscrosses the grounds. One can walk everywhere, as long as one ducks every so often to avoid the dense foliage that overhangs the trails. But best of all, one may happen across a little pond, home to hundreds of frogs and hence a feeding ground for snakes and to the gorgeous lotus flowers. The white of innocence, the pink of temptation, the purple of longing. Long stems float, some with upturned heads seeking the light. Large leaves rest on the surface of the water, supporting the flowers and being bitten by presumptuous frogs. As the sun sets, the lotuses gracefully pull their petals tightly together, as if too modest to go out at night.

  The frogs, the birds, the jungle cats, and the insects all do their noisy best to make sleep nearly impossible. It is incredible how a small frog can make such a loud noise, and for so long. The huge jungle cats, which only come out at night, love to jump from tree to tree and run along the sheet-metal roofs, really making a racket. Even the birds don’t sleep. Or at least some of them don’t. They rather enjoy engaging in long, tragic arias during the night. And the insects! They’re everywhere. The smallest crack and something will find its way in. Mosquitoes, spiders, beetles, moths, fireflies, and myriad insects too small to name.

  But the worst Jo had had to combat was her insane and out-of-proportion fear of snakes. Ever since childhood, she’d had a phobia about snakes. Any snake. And when she went to her first meditation retreat in the Blue Mountains of Australia, she knew her greatest test was not sitting for hours or living under very basic conditions but combating her debilitating fear of snakes. She had done just that, using the meditation techniques she’d learned to understand the associations her mind was making when she encountered snakes. She went deep into her subconscious and learned that it was not a fear of death or pain, but a primal disgust for the slithering and silent way they moved. To her, she learned, snakes represent the ultimate betrayal. The knife in the back. The treachery of a friend. The one thing you can’t protect yourself against. So much for the apple and the wisdom. Once she understood that, she gradually started to expose herself to snakes first in her mind, imagining them on the ground from a distance, then later allowing them around her, and finally on her body. Then she went on to deliberately seek them out, and she could hardly contain her pride when, one day, a brown snake two meters long and as thick as a man’s arm crossed her path just a few meters in front of her. She felt the need to respect its right to pass and stood still while it slowly, languidly crossed the path and disappeared into the undergrowth.

  When she told him, the master had smiled and asked, “Why did you need the fear?”

  By now, she has come to accept snakes, even though she takes precautions by closing the snake gate at night and tucking her mosquito net tightly around her mattress. But conquering so strong a fear solely by using her own mind has been a deciding factor in her wanting to continue with meditation. Imagine what else the mind is capable of doing!

  The place is, indeed, wonderful. The grounds spacious, the flora amazing, the wildlife an added spice to an otherwise peaceful life.
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  It is an enchanted place.

  And not quite what it seems.

  Those who are not invited won’t get past the gates. Two sturdy monks politely and respectfully turn away the very few stray visitors. On closer inspection, the two guard monks look as if they are not only able but also willing to administer more persuasive means, should they be required.

  Some of the younger monks move with a deliberation that hints of controlled violence, a sense of immense anger held in check by strong discipline. Jo knows by now that they’d been trained to do just that from an early age. That self-discipline and emotional control is a key element of their training and considered at least as important as their technical martial arts skills in bando. Not many people know about bando, the ancient martial art of Burma, which has been kept a secret among monks for thousands of years. Even today, it is much less known than its cousins tae kwon do, karate, and judo.

  And even less known is the existence of Buddhist warrior monks. The tradition of warrior monks is very old but has always been guarded with secrecy. Nowadays, it seems unlikely to Western people that Buddhism, which the West has come to consider the most peaceful of all religions, would harbor a tradition that combines training of the mind and training of the body and the latter for offensive as well as defensive strategies. One of the few Sanghas to be known in the West for its close association with martial arts is the Shaolin Monastery of the Mahayana tradition in China.

  But in this monastery, the tradition is not Chinese, but Burmese. And hardly anybody knows about it.

  These young boys, some of them hardly more than sixteen, are highly dangerous weapons fueled by hate so deep that they probably don’t even have a word for it, but only know it to be a constant force and source of energy in their lives. Jo feels certain that these boys are picked precisely because something happened early in their lives that instilled in them a deep need for revenge. But their lifelong training had succeeded in turning this revenge and hate into a potent fuel to be released on command, rather than by a chance provocation. They are young, and they are lethal. Far more dangerous than they are likely to realize themselves.