by S L Shelton
Wolfe nodded. “That’s a good clue.”
“How—”
“Have you found a treatment for the sub-pathway scarring and my inability to heal it?”
Nance nodded. “I think I have. But tell me about your wound.”
“I have a hardened steel capped 10mm round embedded in my brain. Penetration to about six-point-nine centimeters.”
Nance’s eyes flashed wide. “It’s still in there?!”
Wolfe nodded.
Nance stood and stepped closer, examining the scar with more interest. “What’s the angle of penetration?”
“Approximately ninety-seven degrees from the plane of the skull.”
Nance narrowed his eyes to slits, digesting that bit of information—and its delivery—then turned abruptly and walked to his desk. “I’ll need to prep a surgical suite.”
Wolfe nodded.
“I’ll also need to be assisted by—”
“No,” Wolfe snapped. “Only you. I’ll assist you if necessary.”
Nance stopped flipping through his Filofax planner and looked up. “I can’t perform brain surgery on someone without assistance.” He stepped out from behind his desk and pointed at Wolfe as if scolding him. “And that bullet is in your frontal lobe. You can’t assist me because you’re going to be sedated and restrained, head and neck.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are, or I won’t do it.” He walked back over to Wolfe. “The process of moving the bullet will touch major motor cortex centers, and even your ‘on board demon’ won’t be able to manage the tremors that will set off. You need to be completely immobilized and anesthetized.”
Wolfe appeared to consider his argument for a moment. “Gallow?”
Nance nodded. The Chairman of GGP Labs lived as a hollow puppet, under Nance’s complete control. He would be the only person Nance could trust now that Wolfe had become one of the most wanted men in the country.
Wolfe nodded once again. “Okay. But only Roger Gallow.”
“You have my word.”
After making a few calls, Nance led Wolfe down the hall to a makeshift surgical suite. Countertops with supply drawers lined one side of the high ceilinged room, and placed prominently in the center of the space sat an ancient-looking restraint chair. This being a psychiatric facility, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to see such a device. Nance ignored it as he prepared his surgical tools.
Wolfe stood in a corner behind the door watching Nance closely—Nance could feel his eyes on him.
“I am taking a gamble here,” he said as he swung the arm of an oldish X-ray unit over the chair. “If I hit any trouble while we’re trying to extract the object—”
“Just do the best you can.”
Nance nodded. After arranging his surgical theater to his satisfaction, he motioned for Wolfe to take his seat. Wolfe complied but continued to watch Nance warily.
Once seated, Nance lifted the straps, slowly, nonthreateningly so that Wolfe could examine each of them as he put them in place and snugged them down. The wide strap across his chest was preceded by a nylon shell that allowed compression without cutting off lung functionality.
“When will Gallow be here?” Wolfe asked.
“He would have left his office in Potomac as soon as he hung up the phone with me.”
“That won’t raise eyebrows at GGP?”
Nance chuckled. “Nothing Roger does would surprise anyone anymore. I’ve sent him on wild tasks over the years just to throw the senior executives off-balance.”
“You’ve created quite a little empire since you ‘died’.”
“I started with good resources,” Nance said as he placed a circular, metal head restraint over Wolfe’s skull and swabbed the contact points with anesthetic. “It doesn’t hurt having a powerful, wealthy, government contractor as your own personal minion.”
Wolfe nodded, swinging the big headset forward a fraction.
“Okay, no moving while I set the head frame.”
Wolfe ceased all movement—all movement. Nance blinked in astonishment, unable to detect even the slightest rise and fall of his chest. After cinching the screws down on the head frame, Nance went to the cart that had been prepared for him earlier. There, he withdrew an IV bag containing the general anesthetic and a syringe.
“You aren’t going to wait for Gallow?” Wolfe asked as Nance slipped an IV needle into the back of his hand.
“I can start the incisions and set the optics,” Nance said as he started the IV drip.
He walked behind Wolfe and opened the latches on the table for the head cage. As he maneuvered Wolfe’s head into place to lock the cage down, Wolfe’s eyes came to rest on Nance’s face. Panic surged when Nance realized his deception was written across his face.
Wolfe tried to lift his head, but Nance clicked the first latch into place. As his nearly incapacitated patient struggled to move his neck, Nance leaned on the cage with all his weight and snapped the second lock in place.
“You’re not going to turn me in,” Wolfe said, calm and cold as he stopped struggling. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I almost didn’t see it,” Nance replied as he jabbed the syringe into the injection port of the IV catheter. “Is there any ‘Scott’ left in there at all?”
Wolfe closed his eyes as Nance bypassed the auxiliary clamp on his line and pushed the plunger down, sending the anesthetic into his veins.
“It’s not what you think,” Wolfe said. “The bullet penetrated the frontal lobe, premotor cortex, and came to rest breaching the primary motor cortex…if I weren’t rerouting impulses, he would be trapped in a completely paralyzed body.”
“Why isn’t he fighting you?”
Wolfe closed his eyes.
Nance jabbed Wolfe’s shoulder with his finger. “I asked you a question.”
“What difference does it make? If not for me he would have suffocated on the beach in the Caymans and be just another body in a mass grave.”
Nance glared at him, anger rising to his face. He could feel the heat of rage and guilt roll out of his mouth before he could stop himself. “I want to talk with Scott!”
“I’m sorry he can’t speak with you at the moment, but if you leave your message with me I’ll make sure he gets it at the earliest opportunity.”
Nance yanked the automated IV delivery stand closer and punched the button increasing the flow of anesthetic. After a few breaths to calm himself he backed it down a few clicks, realizing immediately he had set it too high in anger.
“Be aware,” Wolfe said quietly as his eyes fluttered closed. “Remove me and you kill us both.”
Nance stared at him for several seconds as the pulse rate fell on the monitor. He waited, tension growing as it continued to fall past safe levels. He realized Scott’s inner fracture had been correct—if Nance didn’t act quickly, Scott would die. Still, he watched the pulse drop.
“Maybe it would be mercy,” he whispered, “to let you both die.”
**
WOLF raced to reroute autonomic motor signals as darkness pressed down on him. He furiously willed pulses to heart and breathing. His grip began to loosen, and in what seemed like a week-long struggle to maintain simple cardiopulmonary control, he realized it had been a mistake not telling Nance what had become of Scott. His current crisis reminded him of the time following Hank Wolfe’s death—Scott’s father.
The injection given to Scott as a child, by the contractor who had been sent to kill his father, had scrambled all brain function as well. It took weeks to stabilize, and a lifetime to rebuild. As arduous a task that had been, the current crisis seemed exponentially harder—then, unlike now, Scott had been able to breathe on his own. Then, it had only been memory and cognitive infrastructure that needed to be rebuilt.
For the first time ever, Wolf began to despair. He had always felt like the pilot of a nearly indestructible vessel until moments ago.
In an instant, all calculation had ceased. An emotion worked
its way into his core as he felt his commands for breath go unanswered; Fear—he slipped into darkness encased in the cold grip of fear.
**
1:25 p.m. on April 28th— 33rd floor of Gigan Tesco Bank, Panama City, Panama
M.C. GOUGHIN stared out across Panama Bay as one of his auditors droned on about federal disclosure laws and FinCEN 105 compliance forms. He swiveled his chair so that his back was to her, and he gazed out of the floor to ceiling windows in his temporary corner office.
“…And I can’t with a good conscience process any more of these accounts until we know where the money came from and where it went,” she said sounding like an English teacher scolding a child for poor grammar.
He looked to the east and saw the bridge of a cruise ship slowly moving its way through the Panama Canal. Though too far away to see any faces, he could just make out the fluid line of passengers moving along the rails enjoying the spectacle of passing through the famous waterway.
He looked down at his hand and saw it quivering again. He flexed it into a fist and released it several times before holding it flat again—still trembling.
“So, what now?” she asked when he had been silent too long.
He shook his head and turned back around in his chair. “What now?”
“Yes! Haven’t you been listening? There’s no way, in good conscience, that we can simply close the books on this much money. It went somewhere, it came from somewhere, and the accounts are tied to numerous US banks. We need to report it before we do any more audits on the emptied accounts…it’s the law.”
He nodded thoughtfully and rubbed his chin as he stared at the report she had dropped in front of him. Aside from the computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, and cup of tea, the three pages of samples she had brought him were the only items on the thick glass desktop. “I see this has you worried.”
“Well, yeah,” she said, irony coloring her tone.
“I apologize for that. Had I known we would be dealing with this I would have approached the problem another way.”
She stared at him, obviously waiting to be vindicated in her position.
He turned his chair once more, his back to her and looking out toward the cruise ship in the canal. “Go ahead and book a flight for yourself back to the US.”
“What?!”
He turned sideways and looked at her. “And when you get back, you’ll have to make an appointment with human resources to clear your client list to another department.”
“But…I just spent the past three days compiling a list of violations.” She leaned toward him, her hands flat on the glass desktop. “This is your client. They need to have their books brought into compliance. I thought you’d be—”
“Obviously, this project was too complex for you to grasp. So instead of doing as you were instructed, you took flimsy circumstantial evidence and produced a preposterous conspiracy theory.” He put the report back into its manila folder and slid it across the desk.
It smacked her fingertips, eliciting a startled step backward. “I’ll still have to report my findings once I—”
“No. I’m sorry, but you won’t. I’ll have already filed my performance report and the threat you made toward Prince-Underthall’s largest corporate client,” he said, standing abruptly. “And I’ll remind you not only of the ironclad nondisclosure you signed to work for Prince-Underthall, but the additional nondisclosure to work on this project. To which, any violation, subject to mediation only by a firm of our choosing, results in fines not less than 1% of the total accounts affected by the breach.”
The color left her face. That would be in excess of one billion dollars.
He smiled and came around the desk, placing a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Or—” he rubbed her arm. “Alternately, you could go back downstairs and do the fucking job I brought you here to do.”
Her shoulders dropped in reflex and a sheen of wetness coated her eyes. She picked up the report, but M.C. put his hand on it, stopping her.
“You don’t need that,” he said. “And you should delete all copies from your computer.”
She nodded and turned to leave.
“I trust you’ll find the error you made and proceed as we briefed you to proceed,” he added to her back.
Without turning, she nodded and left M.C.’s office. He watched her wipe her eyes as she passed his bank-provided temporary secretary. Once she walked out of sight, he took the phone from his pocket and dialed his assistant, Jim Garfield, who worked one floor down with the other auditors.
“Garfield,” he answered.
“Jim, that bitch who was just up here,” M.C. said as he returned to his chair and gazed out the window. “What’s her name?”
“Janet Foster.”
“Janet… Confiscate Janet’s computer, rescind her access to Underthall systems, and arrange a flight home for her…today…economy class.”
“Yes, sir,” Garfield replied. “I tried to warn her.”
“You should have warned me,” M.C. said looking at his hand and seeing the tremble had returned. “Make sure her betrayal doesn’t infect the others. Our window is closing, and we don’t have the luxury of delay.”
“Yes, sir.”
M.C. ended the call and breathed deeply several times, preparing for his next call. Phillip Collins may have been a more reasonable Combine board member to deal with than William Spryte had been, but he was still a hard and demanding man to please. It also worried M.C. that Spryte had been murdered just as Combine’s funds had gone missing—he suspected Combine had arranged for that.
What kind of power must they wield if killing a billionaire board member in cold blood is a viable executive policy?
M.C. breathed out and flexed his shaking hand several times before calling Collins’s assistant.
“Ann Rodgers,” she answered.
“Ann, this is M.C. Goughin. Is Mister Collins available.”
“I’ll check.” A moment passed before she returned. “Yes. I’ll transfer you to him now.”
“Thank you.”
“MacGoughin,” Collins answered—he never got M.C.’s name right.
“Mister Collins, how are you, sir?”
“No chit-chat, MacGoughin…have you found any leads about our money?”
M.C. turned away from the window so he could focus on his answer. It had to be very carefully worded. “We’ve discovered several hundred of the European accounts that Mister Braun emptied were reused as temporary holding accounts while the money was transferred. We have a forensic team working on the feeder accounts…it may take some time.”
“So, there’s a trail?”
“There could be, yes sir. That is an optimistic assessment though. We’ve identified many accounts that had their contents emptied, replenished, then emptied again but still don’t have any final receipt destination indicated.”
“In English.”
“It would appear those who stole our money were aware of our processes and used not only those procedures but our old accounts to make the money vanish.”
“That should be good news,” Collins replied, incredulous. “Are you telling me we can’t audit our own accounts?”
M.C. took a deep breath, conscious of the delicate line of questioning. “Our accounts weren’t exactly created with transparency in mind,” he said, also mindful of the fact he was on an unsecured phone. “To that end, no sir, an audit would be next to impossible.”
“Damn it. I thought you said there was a trail.”
“Yes, sir. There were a number of banks that flagged a high fund transfer rate immediately following the incident in the Caymans. But as expected, they aren’t being very forthcoming in revealing the data.”
“So, you need some pressure placed on those banks?”
“That would be most helpful, sir.”
M.C. took a shaky breath as short silence on the phone held him on edge.
“Very well,” Collins said. “Send me a list of the banks, and I’ll see
what my people can do.”
“Thank you, sir,” M.C. said, releasing his breath as he typed his password. “I’m sending them to your office now.”
“I’ll have the Department of Treasur—”
“Sir. Just a reminder that this call isn’t encrypted.”
More silence.
“Are you there?”
“I’ll take care of it,” Collins said then ended the call abruptly.
M.C. hit send on the list of banks he had just compiled. The message, encrypted and digitally signed, left with a whoosh sound from his computer speakers, mirroring his relief. His hands shaking, he sat back and stared at his screen for a moment before turning in his chair again.
The cruise ship had moved almost out of sight now. He wondered if anyone on that ship had any Combine money in their pocket—how many trinkets had they purchased with it in their last port of call, or how many fat, spoiled, children were having their boarding school tuitions paid with it. His stomach growled, and it reminded him of another delayed gratification.
As if prodded, he stood and walked out of his office.
“Order some soup for me,” he said to his secretary as he walked past her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“What kind of soup?” the woman asked with a thick Spanish accent.
“I don’t care…bean soup.”
“Yes, sir.”
He stepped into the elevator and listened to his stomach as he rode down one floor. Delaying his meal, as with any delayed gratification, sharpened his purpose and mood.
When he stepped into the large conference room that had been converted temporarily into an auditing command center, Garfield stood at the far end of the room blocking Janet Foster from entering. Two security men in black suits stood behind her waiting patiently as she protested the circumstances of her removal.
“That’s enough of that,” M.C. called across the large space.
All eyes turned to him.
“Yes, sir,” Garfield said, then nodded to the two security men.
As they led her away by the arms, she looked back over her shoulder, tears streaming down her cheeks.
M.C. shook his head sadly. “Too much stress,” he said sympathetically. “She began seeing spooks and demons in her paranoia.”