Sharon gave me a brisk hug and then held me at arm’s length. “You look good, Dan. Tan and fit, like always. All that sun and fresh air!”
“You guys look good too. You lose some weight, Mike?”
“Oh, maybe a few pounds.” After decades in Florida, they both retained vestiges of their Northeastern accents.
Sharon said, “It’s easy to lose weight these days. These are hard times. Hungry times, even.”
“That’s what I heard. I saw people scavenging dumpsters and crates behind the Winn-Dixie. I thought I was in South America.”
“That’s where you called from, the Winn-Dixie?” she asked. “It’s dangerous there.”
I lifted my shirt and let them see a sliver of my Glock.
Mike said, “Those are illegal now, if they’re not registered and licensed.”
“Isn’t everything?”
“Touché.”
I briefly introduced Nick Galloway to them, and we went through their screened Florida room and on into the kitchen. I was wondering if some law enforcement aircraft or drone had been following us from high above, if our presence was putting the Delaneys in jeopardy. Fort Lauderdale was a big haystack, but a twenty-four-foot speedboat was not an insignificant needle. Then there was the matter of the call to their landline from the pay phone.
Sharon seemed embarrassed. “I wish I’d known you were coming—we’re sort of overdue for a grocery run. Mike was forced to retire at the end of last school year. I’m the sole breadwinner now, and I’m on reduced salary. Half of his pension is paid in ‘recovery bonds,’ which isn’t real money. Supposedly we can cash them in after nine more years. With inflation and no COLAs…well, it’s getting harder all the time. If you’re hungry I’ll whip something up, but don’t expect too much. How do hot dogs and baked beans sound?” She steered us through the kitchen and into their living room.
“They sound fine. Just let me sit down before I keel over. We’ve been on that boat for a few hours, and before that I was folded up in the back of a Cessna. Let me tell you, driving that boat is not exactly relaxing. You’re standing the whole time, using your knees like a skier. And I’ve only had a few hours of sleep in the last couple of days. I’m running on empty, and so is Nick.” My new wingman yawned deeply and nodded his agreement.
We dropped into their L-shaped sectional couch, and Mike put cold blue cans of Busch beer into our hands. An overhead fan circled above us. Sharon noticed my upward glance and apologized for the room’s temperature. She said the thermostat was set at the minimum 85 degrees mandated by law. Their house was plugged into the “smart grid” and they couldn’t control the temperature. Even worse, Mike informed us, once your house exceeded its weekly ration of kilowatts your power was automatically cut off, so you had to pay very careful attention. Even with these measures in place, there were still rolling blackouts across South Florida and they lost power for at least a few hours every week. I was just glad that the ceiling fan above me was turning.
Some news channel was on the television with the sound muted. There had been an earthquake somewhere. Mike used the remote to click it off. I drained half the can of icy beer. Their couch was as soft as a cloud, and the downward breeze from the fan felt like heaven. It was a struggle to form coherent thoughts. Between yawns I said, “I’m not sure when I’m going to just collapse and I need to get some business out of the way first, but let me tell you guys what’s going on, why we’re here. Nick, if I lose the thread, go ahead and fill in the blanks.”
And I told our story, skipping around some but hitting the key points. Cori Vargas and Topaz. Richard Prechter and the conference in Miami Beach. I ended by saying that I needed a boat dock and a base of operations for maybe a couple of days, and I needed a ride to Miami the next day. And I also needed to change some gold coins for dollars at whatever the going rate was.
I used to know a jeweler on Las Olas Boulevard who was also be a coin dealer, back when the precious metals trade was legal. No doubt he would be closed for the evening by now, if he was even still in business. I had purchased ten of my gold Krugerrands from him a few years earlier. Now I was returning to Fort Lauderdale with the same round number. My hard rations, my hole card. The last to be bought, the last to be sold. So it goes. I pulled out the plastic tube, uncapped it, and let five of the heavy coins slip out into my hand.
“I can change them for dollars,” Mike said. “I can’t promise the best rate if I have to get the cash in a hurry, but I can do it.”
So I handed him the five coins. I couldn’t spend one-ounce Krugerrands to purchase what I’d require.
Cash wasn’t all I needed. “Can you get gas for our boat? It needs about forty gallons in the main tank and forty more for the fuel bladder, if you can find it. And I need to get on your computer, so I can figure out how I’m going to sneak into the convention in Miami Beach tomorrow.” That was the only place I knew for certain I’d find Richard Prechter. The only other target was Topaz itself, and I knew that security on Hibiscus Isle would be extremely tight. I would stand a better chance of getting a line on Prechter at the convention. I wanted to see him and hear him. I wanted to study him, and look for an opening.
My brain was going woozy and I was glad that Nick still sounded relatively alert. Being a passenger on the Pantera was not as tiring as driving it. A passenger could let his mind wander and almost relax at times, putting his balance on autopilot. But driving required perfect attention and concentration every second, mental energy in addition to physical energy. The combined effects were absolutely draining. We were both tired, but I was in worse shape.
It was amazing what we had accomplished just to be sitting in this house in Florida, considering that just that morning we had been on Castigo Cay, four hundred miles away. We had entered the United States without presenting our papers and bowing meekly before the TSA guards at an officially recognized international seaport or airport. We had not stood on the designated footprints and turned this way and that inside their full-body scanners and chemical sniffers. We had not been wanded, frisked, groped, patted down or felt up by uniformed federal employees with room-temperature IQs. We had not taken off our shoes for X-ray inspection. Our retinas, thumbprints and passport RFID chips were unscanned. We were not in the system. We did not appear on the official radar. I finished the beer and set the can on the table, then tipped my head back on the sofa and stared into the spinning fan, welcoming its breeze.
3
When I awoke it was fully dark. I pushed the illumination button on my watch. Almost ten-thirty p.m. Nobody was in the living room, but I saw a light in the kitchen and I headed that way. Sharon must have heard me stirring. She said, “You conked out, so we let you sleep. I put a plate aside for you. You want it cold, or should I zap it?”
“Cold is fine. I could eat my shoes.” I was still pretty out of it. Mike and Sharon had provided dock space and opened their house to us on no notice, after not hearing word one from me for over a year. They probably guessed that I was in the country on some kind of not-exactly-legal basis, but they didn’t pry. Helping me could have opened them up to some charges for sure. In my own mind I had not committed a crime in returning to my native land, but I was an American citizen who’d reentered the country without official permission. How big a crime was that now? A misdemeanor? A felony?
I sat at their kitchen dinette and ate without tasting, a process little different from filling a car’s tank.
Sharon said, “While you were sleeping we made a decision you might not agree with, but hear me out and I think you’ll agree with it.”
Oh, God. Now what? I chewed the franks and beans and washed them down with reconstituted fruit punch. “What decision?”
“Well, we know you need to get to Miami tomorrow, and we can’t do it, but we know somebody who can. Somebody we’ve known for most of her life.”
“Who is she?”
“Well, you’re going to meet her. She’s here.”
“She’s here?�
�
“In the office, with Mike and your friend Nick.”
“I guess I’d better meet her, then.” I really didn’t know what else to say. I momentarily wondered about trusting Sharon. She worked for the government, even if it was only the local government. What kind of rewards were the IRS paying snitches for turning in small-time tax avoiders like me? I forced the worry out of my mind. I trusted the Delaneys, and that was that. If you let it, paranoia would drive you down into complete paralysis. My old friends and my new wingman had taken the initiative and made an executive decision while I slept. Part of me wanted to scream and holler, but what good would that do?
After I finished eating, Sharon took my plate and then pointed me down the hall. I found three people in the office, with their backs to the door. In the middle swivel seat was a skinny girl in her late teens or early twenties. She had medium-brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, and was dressed in jeans and a tight black T-shirt. The three of them were staring at a computer monitor and the second screen of a laptop beside it. The electronics were on a long desk piled with books and papers.
Mike noticed me first and said, “Ah, he’s risen from the dead. Have you eaten? Is your brain functioning? We’re all moving pretty fast here.”
I nodded yes to all questions, still blinking and yawning.
Behind me, Sharon said, “Coffee’s made, who wants some?”
We all did.
Mike stood up to give me his chair and introduce the girl. “Dan, this is Kelly Urbanzik. She lives down the street, all the way at the river end. We’ve known her since she was a little kid, and now she’s in college.”
She spun around in her chair to look me over as I dropped into the seat beside her. “I’m off for the summer,” she said, looking me straight in the eye and briefly shaking my hand. My age of thirty-plus years put me at the distant end of her social horizon. “Hi, Dan. Mike told me all about you. Quite the adventurer—or so he says. He said you beat up a gang of kidnappers and saved his butt in Mexico. They had knives, and you did a kung fu routine on them.”
Her T-shirt said NORMAL PEOPLE SCARE ME across the front. She was not overly well endowed, but her figure was certainly female. Her face was not pierced, studded or lobe-gauged, and no tattoos were visible on her exposed skin—a plus in my book. Just silver rings on her fingers and matching silver earrings. Her face was narrow, with sharply defined cheekbones and a pointed chin. Attractive in an elfin sort of way.
Mike said, “I called Kelly because she goes to Florida International University and knows her way around Miami Beach better than I do, at least recently. Plus, she knows a lot more about computers. What I really mean is she knows how to do tricky things on the internet without getting caught.”
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Mike, practically anybody knows more about computers than you guys. I love you both to death, but you two are so last century.” She looked at me and said, “We’ve been busy while you were catching Zs. Nick gave me the background and we’ve gone from there. Where do you want to start? You want to hear what we know about Richard Prechter?”
My brain still felt as if it had wet cement in the gears, and I had to adjust to this hyperactive bird of a girl. She had a high-pitched but not unpleasant voice. I was still coming up to speed. It bothered me that Mike had brought her into our circle without consulting me, but what was done was done. I had no other offers of dock space and a place to crash. “Sure, let’s start with Prechter.”
“You’re going to love this. I’ve been cutting and pasting a master document while we’ve surfed around. You want to read it, or would you rather just hear the highlights?”
Mike was standing behind me and he said, “Guys, I’ll be in and out. I’m working on changing your gold for dollars. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”
I turned around and asked him, “What’s inflation these days?”
“Officially? Twenty percent a year—but the government numbers are a joke. Nobody trusts the banks either, so everybody keeps a lot of cash on hand. When you find something good for sale, you have to be ready to jump on it quick. That’s why it’ll be easy to change the gold—most people keep a lot of cash at home.”
“What about gasoline for the boat?”
“The gas is going to be a problem. Eighty gallons will be hard to find. You’re only allowed to buy ten gallons a week, and cash sales are illegal. They keep track by your credit cards. You can buy it for cash from the jug boys, but that’s not going to work for finding eighty gallons. Especially not if you’re in a hurry.”
“Jug boys?” I asked.
Kelly said, “They sell gas on the street in jerry cans.”
“Black market,” said Nick. “It was starting while I was still here. After the government started rationing gasoline. But you never know what kind of shitty gas you’ll get. Definitely not high-octane.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Something doesn’t make sense. We saw lots of boats when we were coming in. If fuel is rationed, how are they getting it? Ten gallons wouldn’t last ten minutes on some of the boats we saw.”
“Ten gallons a week is just for nobodies like us,” said Sharon. “There are ways around the ration system if you have the right connections. Like commercial use. People get charter licenses, or they say they’re doing charity work for government-approved nonprofits, things like that. You can get waivers if you know somebody.”
Mike nodded agreement. “That’s the way it is anymore. You have to know somebody. Well, I’ve got to go make some phone calls and visit a few neighbors. I’ll see you in a while.” He left the room.
****
Sharon handed out mugs of black coffee. I sipped mine; it was already loaded with sugar. Cream was neither mentioned nor offered. I figured they didn’t have any, so I didn’t ask. Obviously, times were tight in the Delaney household if hot dogs were the best they could offer me for dinner.
Kelly said, “Okay, here’s the thumbnail on Richard Prechter. He’s English by birth, but he’s an American citizen now. Or maybe he’s a dual citizen—his legal status is sort of undefined. His mother was American. He was born in England, raised in America, then he got a Rhodes Scholarship to study back in England. Made the U.S. Olympic team for rowing. Graduated from Oxford, then he came back and picked up an MBA from Wharton.” She glanced at me doubtfully. “That’s a business degree.”
Her condescension burned me. “Kelly, I’m not quite as dumb as I look.” I sometimes felt self-conscious about my lack of even a bachelor’s degree. Was this skinny college girl sizing me up as ignorant, or merely uneducated? Was my tan too deep, were my hands too callused for me to be anything but a construction worker or a beach bum? A former Marine enlisted man who was good with his fists in a street fight in Mexico, but maybe not all that bright? Well, to be fair, nobody would ever mistake me for the average Ivy League grad.
“Sorry, Dan. You don’t look dumb to me at all.”
“Forget it. Go on.”
“He also has a PhD in oceanography from the University of Miami. So Richard Prechter is a very bright boy. And besides the brain, there’s plenty of brawn. He climbed the highest peaks on all seven continents before he was thirty. Ten years ago he did the Hawaiian Ironman triathlon, and he still runs marathons in under three hours.”
To show that I already knew a few things about Prechter, I mentioned, “And he owns three companies.”
“At least three,” Kelly replied. “If you can call them real companies.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked her.
“Well, they don’t make any products that anybody actually buys. At least, not yet.”
“Then what do they do?” I asked.
“It looks to me like they specialize in getting federal grant money. Mostly, they come up with ideas for renewable energy. You know, ‘green jobs.’ Then they get the government to pay for them. Money goes from the federal government to foundations in the form of grants. A lot of these foundations are private…sort of. I’m not a
lawyer or an accountant, obviously, so I can’t really tell you how it works. The money gets all switched around and mixed up until you can’t figure out what money went where, or where it came from.”
“So, where does GORP fit into all of this?”
“Oh, the Global Ocean Research Partnership. I think GORP is a big part of their financial matrix. Prechter’s companies are partnered with GORP, but I still don’t really understand how it works. In most of the documents I’ve been able to find, GORP is called a ‘public-private partnership,’ if you can figure that one out. I can’t tell how much is public, and how much is private.”
Sharon was standing behind me, sipping her coffee. She said, “They used to call it fascism. Public-private partnership sounds a lot nicer. It’s fascism with a smiley face instead of a swastika. On a green flag, instead of a red and black one. And it’s a very handy way for politicians to funnel millions of dollars to their friends.”
Kelly continued, “GORP is one of the big vacuum cleaners for that federal grant money. GORP doles the money out, including R & D money that goes to Richard Prechter’s companies. Then on the flip side, GORP companies make campaign contributions to congressmen to keep the money flowing. It’s basically a feedback loop for legalized corruption. There’s billions in it, if you have the right connections. And the media love GORP because their corporations buy lots of commercials promoting ‘clean, green energy,’ so you won’t ever see a news report exposing it.”
“Did you find anything tying GORP to Castigo Cay?”
“No, but they have some other projects in the Bahamas. Tidal energy is getting big. Aquaculture, salt water desalination, and, of course, wind farms. Prechter’s companies run the projects, but I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve only checked open-source documents. It’s complicated as hell, and I’m sure it’s meant to be. But some of it’s fairly easy to figure out. Like buying a brand-new hundred-twenty-foot-long motor yacht for over a hundred million dollars and listing it as a research vessel. You gotta love that one. That’s really in-your-face. If you could trace the money back through all the grants and foundations and GORP partners, you can bet that Italian megayacht was bought with tax money.”
Castigo Cay Page 19