The Insiders

by Craig Hickman

  Grappling with what Emily had said and how she’d said it, Wilson walked into the kitchen. “Either they’ve hurt her or she was trying to tell me that she expects them to,” Wilson said, feeling like a pinned wrestler.

  “Listen to this first. It might change your mind,” Hap said.

  Driggs pushed the lever to replay Emily’s words at a slower speed. “Dooon’t woooorrry … (break in voice and deep breath) … I’mmm jet … (whimper) … fiiinne.”

  “Play it again,” Wilson said anxiously, wanting to make sure he’d heard what he thought he had. After hearing it a second time, Wilson voiced what Driggs and Hap were now smiling about. “She said the word jet. It’s as plain as it could be at the slower speed, but I didn’t hear it when she was on the phone with me.”

  “Emily’s more calm and lucid than we expected,” Hap said, leaning on the kitchen counter. “She added the crack in her voice and the whimper to hide the word. Even then, I’m not sure it’s enough to raise suspicions. Smart girl. She’s going to get us one small piece of information at a time.”

  “She was flown somewhere,” Wilson said restlessly, looking at Hap for confirmation.

  “Right. It could also mean she’s being held near where the jet landed,” Hap said, raising his eyebrows and returning Wilson’s stare. Then Hap called to Jones in the back bedroom, “Did we get anything on the trace?”

  “They called from somewhere on the North American continent, but that’s all we got,” Taylor replied. “They were bouncing the signal.”

  “Bingo. I wasn’t sure we’d get that much,” Hap said, smiling at Wilson. “Now we can get even more serious about pouring over the details on those 153 private jets.”

  Wilson wasn’t sure how, but he believed Emily would find a way to give them more information each time she called. It was just enough hope to help him keep his torment at bay.

  43

  Wilson – Boston, MA

  It was just after seven o’clock in the morning when, from his father’s office, Wilson began making a series of pre-scheduled, international calls to acquisition candidates in Asia and Europe. By thirty minutes past eight, he’d talked to twenty-three firms and made arrangements to meet with six of them within the next month.

  At nine o’clock, he entered one of the conference rooms on the ninth floor to listen to the first of seven presentations from advertising and publicity firms. When the last presentation concluded at one o’clock, Wilson had boiled it down to two firms: BBDO, the first firm to present and the one with the strongest track record with professional service firms, and Tate Waterhouse, the last firm to present and the one with the best understanding of Fielder & Company’s history and current needs.

  Wilson wasn’t surprised when Wayland Tate himself attended his firm’s presentation but immediately sensed that Tate’s presence was more than a courtesy call in symbolic deference to his father. When Tate invited him to lunch, he was sure of it. Wayland Tate was there on behalf of the secret partnership.

  “I’m going to lunch at the Bostonian Club with two of our vice presidents. You’re welcome to join us,” Wilson said, kicking himself for not talking to Carter about Tate. But would Carter have told me the truth?

  “I know the club well. It was one of your father’s favorites. You go ahead with your vice presidents,” Tate said graciously, no longer in disguise. “I have a few things I’d like to share with you in private. I’m staying at the Westin for the next couple of days. We can set up another time to meet.”

  Tate’s words made Wilson’s blood run cold. There was no way he was going to postpone an opportunity to get Emily back. He immediately said, “Let me see what I can arrange with the vice presidents.”

  After conferring with Frank O’Connor and Bob Throckmorton, Wilson told Tate he would be available for lunch. He agreed to meet Tate at the Bostonian Club in twenty minutes. Selecting an advertising firm to handle Fielder & Company’s new publicity campaign had suddenly become a secondary issue.

  Wilson’s mind flew to memories about Wayland Tate and his firm. While it was true that Fielder & Company and Tate Waterhouse had long exchanged data and analyses on behalf of shared clients, he didn’t know any of the details. He repeated his father’s words again: the most brilliant advertising executive of his generation.

  Then he recalled his own experience at the J. B. Musselman Company, where Tate sat on the board of directors. Wilson was certain that Tate had been the one who convinced David Quinn to launch the America’s Warehouse strategy. Tate was an unusually persuasive and driven man, a man his father had always liked. But Wilson could no longer deny the probability that Wayland Tate was part of the secret partnership. If he was being paranoid, he’d find out soon.

  Wilson returned to his office with nothing but vengeance on his mind. He immediately called Hap Greene.

  “We’ve been monitoring everything,” Hap said. “I have people inside and outside the Bostonian Club. Needless to say, we’re ready for your lunch. Are you?”

  “I’ve never been more ready,” Wilson said.

  “We’ll find her, Wilson. Just buy us some time. Like you said, let them think you’ll give them whatever they want.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Here we go,” Wilson said before hanging up. He then talked briefly to O’Connor and Throckmorton, who both agreed that BBDO and Tate Waterhouse represented the two best firms of the seven for Fielder & Company’s publicity initiative.

  Minutes later, Wilson walked into the Bostonian Club and was immediately escorted to a private dining room on the club’s exclusive third floor. The room looked like a nineteenth-century den with an impressive collection of classic and modern works, an Italian marble fireplace, glazed leather sofas and chairs, exquisite Persian rugs, and two Marsden Hartley originals. He focused on the décor to calm himself, musing on the irony of a beat generation socialist painter, like Hartley, supplying the backdrop for exclusive luncheon meetings among Boston’s elite. But the blue-blooded rich always ignored such contradictions. They bought whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, he thought, remembering detective Zemke’s comment about his father.

  Wayland Tate stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Wilson scoffed nervously to himself, knowing that this meeting would be far from private. Who else besides Hap’s team would be eavesdropping? It was a twisted spectacle of standard operating procedure in a postmodern corporate world.

  “You bear a striking resemblance to your father,” Tate said.

  Wilson smiled without commenting. How much gamesmanship do we have to go through before Tate gets to the real reason for his lunch invitation? He fought back his rising anger. He needed to remain calm and collected.

  “He was a visionary, your father,” Tate said, staring at one of the Marsden Hartley paintings. “I have no doubt, whatsoever, that he will go down in history as the man who launched the transformation of capitalism, and I don’t mean the revolution Marx and Engels imagined. Thankfully, the rich turned out to be too smart for that. But your father was smarter than all of them. How’s he doing?”

  Wilson placed his hands in his pockets. Tate’s candid comment had caught him off guard. “We hope he’ll regain consciousness soon.”

  “Believe me, we’re all hoping for that, Wilson,” Tate said. “Shall we sit down?”

  Wilson nodded, still surprised by Tate’s openness and candor.

  “How’s your mother?” Tate asked once they were seated.

  “She’s doing well, staying busy,” Wilson said.

  “Glad to hear it. Back in our college days, your mother and father were the envy of anyone seeking true romance.”

  Disarmed again by Tate, Wilson said, “I didn’t know you went to college together.”

  “Columbia University, Class of ’69—the last summer of love. We all expected your father to become the next Jack Kerouac. Have you read his poetry?”

  Stunned yet again, he’d never read his father’s poetry because he didn’t know it existed. Wil
son felt himself sinking fast. “No,” Wilson said, nervously picking at the seams of his napkin.

  “He always said he’d buried his literary past at the B-school,” Tate said while studying Wilson’s expressions. “But, luckily for us, he never lost his passion for changing the world.”

  “There are things I still don’t know about my father,” Wilson said, as the waiter entered the room with a bottle of Chardonnay, antipasti, fresh bread, and the day’s menu.

  After they had ordered and the waiter was gone, Tate picked up his napkin and carefully placed it in his lap. “I’m not surprised. Everything he was doing depended on secrecy.”

  “What was he doing?” Wilson asked, now becoming annoyed with the way Tate seemed to be toying with him.

  “Transforming capitalism.”

  “How?” Wilson said as he moved his chair closer to the table.

  “By documenting widespread abuses in the capital markets,” Tate said, pausing to take a sip of the Chardonnay. “Without noticeable failure, democracies rarely create change.”

  There was no more holding back, Wilson told himself. “You mean he planned all along to expose Fielder & Company’s insider’s club?” Wilson asked as the tablecloth moved under his tensed elbows, almost spilling the glass of wine in front of him.

  “At the right time and in the right way, yes,” Tate said slowly, continuing to study Wilson over the rim of his glass of Chardonnay.

  “When?” Wilson demanded. He wasn’t about to sit there chatting amiably while Emily was still being held hostage.

  As Tate put down his glass of wine, his face took on a solemn and serious expression. “Our original plan was to document ten years of stock market abuse and then disclose everything. The idea was to galvanize public opinion against capitalism in its current form. The insiders club, as you described it, was created so CEOs from the world’s largest corporations could get anything and everything they wanted by trading on each other’s company secrets. But the real purpose behind our web of insider trading was to force fundamental changes in the way capitalism is practiced. Ultimately, we wanted to supplant the big money interests, who manipulate the global financial system and crush whoever gets in their way. They’ve killed four American presidents and bought the rest. They murdered your great-grandfather Harry Wilson Fielder, after killing two of his closest associates, Congressman Louis T. McFadden from Pennsylvania and William Tate Boyles from New York. They were eliminated to keep them from exposing generations of concealed corruption. William Tate Boyles was my grandfather. Your father and I shared a common vow to avenge their deaths.”

  Wilson’s head was imploding. Was Tate telling him the truth? Had this been his father’s ultimate agenda? He couldn’t wait any longer. “Where’s Emily?”

  Tate leaned forward, peering into Wilson’s hazel-green eyes for several moments before responding. “I’m aware that she’s been kidnapped, but I didn’t have anything to do with it, Wilson.”

  “Who, then?” Wilson said in exasperation, as the waiter entered the private dining room and placed house salads in front of them.

  Tate picked up his fork and held it over the top of his salad. “Does the name Davis Zollinger mean anything to you?”

  “Of course,” Wilson said, put off by the condescension. “My father has been charged with the murder of his two daughters. Zollinger was found dead in his Boston office six months ago.”

  Tate took a bit of salad before proceeding. “Zollinger was a partner with Damien Hearst, the well-known corporate attorney and dealmaker in Chicago. They were both clients of Fielder & Company and Tate Waterhouse, until they started making deals on their own, most of them illegal. Zollinger got smart and wanted out, but Hearst blackmailed him into staying. When Zollinger threatened to go to the FBI, Hearst had him killed and made it look like suicide,” Tate said, taking a sip of his Chardonnay. “Zollinger’s daughters began their own investigation, which could have compromised everything we were doing. That’s when your father decided it was time to accelerate disclosure.” Tate paused again. “He invited Zollinger’s daughters to White Horse, so he could convince them of our commitment to avenge their father’s death. He succeeded. But we failed to protect him from Hearst.”

  “Hearst shot my father?” Wilson asked, captivated by this smooth-talking, well-heeled man who claimed to share his father’s lofty goals for societal reform.

  “A contract killer hired by Hearst killed the Zollinger women—your father was shot to make it look like a murder-suicide. Hearst was invited to White Horse with a group of current and former clients who were ignoring our guidelines. He was one of the partnership’s legal resources. We threatened to blow the whistle on all of them, if they didn’t conform. You have to understand that each of them was a walking time bomb. They still are. If one of them gets caught, it could still jeopardize everything,” Tate said, hesitating a moment. “We don’t know how Hearst found out about our ultimate plan, but he did. Ever since then, he’s been enticing and coercing members of the partnership to join him. He’s taken your father’s maxim to a whole new level. His latest victim was David Quinn.”

  Wilson froze. “Why?”

  “You remember how obstinate and pious Quinn could be. He couldn’t wait to get rid of you. You challenged his vision of the future. He used me to exploit the uncertainty surrounding your father’s shooting and the murder charges to discredit you and Kresge & Company. I never should have allowed him to manipulate me, but I honestly believe in the America’s Warehouse strategy. I think you knew that all along.

  “What you didn’t know was that Quinn had a ruthless, unpredictable side. He was having a wild affair with one of our associates and pocketed a cool half billion while manipulating his company’s stock. Don’t get me wrong, the partnership has made billions on Musselman’s stock in recent weeks, especially the Hearst contingent, but it wasn’t enough for Quinn. All of a sudden he got righteous and began mourning his lost soul. I tried everything to convince him to be patient, but he didn’t trust me anymore. I’d become one of the evil ones who’d corrupted him. He went to the FBI in return for his and Musselman’s immunity. Damien Hearst went ballistic. You know the rest of the story,” Tate said, his eyes communicating sadness.

  Wilson was dumbfounded. Tate was either the best liar Wilson had ever met or a victim just like his father. He remained silent, waiting for Tate to continue.

  “We believe Damien Hearst is the one who kidnapped your girlfriend. He knows you’re in charge of the company now, and he’s made a pre-emptive strike to manipulate you with Emily’s life.”

  “Do you know where she is?” Wilson asked frantically.

  “No,” Tate said, pausing. “But, I think we can persuade Hearst to give her back. If we can convince him that he and his clients won’t be included in any disclosure.”

  “You’re still planning to disclose the abuses and manipulations?” Wilson asked, hoping for the first time since they’d sat down that Tate was telling him the truth.

  “Absolutely. But it can’t happen piecemeal. We have a lot of work to do before we’ll be ready to disclose everything,” Tate said, taking another bite of salad. “Your role is crucial, Wilson. That’s why I’m here.”

  “So your publicity proposal was a ploy?” Wilson asked, debating with himself about what to believe.

  “Not at all; we want your business. We understand Fielder & Company better than any of our competitors, but that’s not why I’m here,” Tate said as he leered at Wilson. “I’m here to ask for your help in modifying our plan.”

  “Which plan?” Wilson asked, feeling toyed with again.

  “Your father’s.”

  “Was it part of my father’s plan to have Daniel Redd killed?”

  “Of course not,” Tate said, looking indignant. “That was Hearst and the partners he’d persuaded to join him. Don’t worry, we have all of them under surveillance and we won’t back off until Emily’s returned.”

  “If you have them under surve
illance, why don’t you know where she is?” Wilson demanded.

  “We don’t know which contractors they’re using. The only thing we do know is that she was flown out of Venice on Saturday.”

  Just then, two waiters entered the room, removed their salad dishes, placed their main dishes in front of them, and poured more wine.

  “I’m sorry,” Tate continued. “I know this isn’t easy for you. Why don’t you eat something? I’ll start from the beginning.”

  44

  Emily – Eastern Seaboard, North America

  Emily immediately stopped breathing when someone touched her and then gently raised her from the cot. Whoever it was had the touch and scent of a woman, probably the same woman who’d worn the Venice carnival mask on the plane, Emily thought.

  “Do you need to use the bathroom?” an automated voice said into Emily’s earphones.

  Unable to speak because of the tape on her mouth, Emily nodded her head.

  The woman untied Emily’s legs and hands. Another person, a man, joined the woman and the two of them lifted Emily from the cot and walked her to the bathroom. Once inside the small bathroom, the woman removed Emily’s blindfold and the tape from her mouth. It was the same woman from the plane with the same mask. “I’ll wait for you outside,” the automated voice said into the earphones as the woman’s lips moved. “Knock on the door when you’re finished.”

  Alone in the bathroom, Emily relieved herself while frantically searching for something, anything, that would identify her location. Her eyes darted to every nook and cranny in the four-foot square space. Then she saw it. She lurched forward, then stopped. They could be watching her. Please God, let it be something I can use. It was the corner of a moldy, water stained match cover folded into a wedge between the floor and the toilet stand to keep the toilet from moving. She leaned hard to one side of the toilet, and then with her arm behind her, she discreetly removed the match cover, trying desperately not to destroy it. When it was free, she buried her head between her legs as if cramping and unfolded the aged match cover. Thank you, God. The printing was barely legible but she could read it: