Hinds got up and headed across the lobby, past the carpeted oak staircase, and through a door on the other side. The sign overhead read: FEDEX OFFICE CENTER. As soon as he left, the woman got up from behind the desk. For a moment Ana thought she was going to follow him, then the woman turned and disappeared under a sign that said LADIES.
Ana got up and made a beeline for the desk in the alcove, with Hinds’s note and the printout spread out on top of it. When she got there she hesitated only briefly, looked around, then down at the desk.
The note said “Lucerne,” what looked like the name of a hotel and some dates. Ana lifted her cell phone from her pocket, made sure the flash was off, and with one eye on the reception desk and the other on the ladies’ room, snapped three or four quick pictures of the note and the single page computer printout.
Satisfied that no one had seen her, she drifted away across the lobby and toward the business center where Hinds had disappeared. Through the glass door she could see inside. He was seated at one of the computer workstations chipping away at the keyboard. Why would he come over here to use the computer? she wondered. Then she thought about the man going through their trash behind the office. The lawyers knew they were being monitored. Ana made a mental note to be more cautious.
The gleaming black Town Car with Senate plates pulled up in front of the low metal building at Reagan National Airport. They were only three miles from the Capitol. The driver and another staffer, each wearing stiff dark suits, opened the doors and quickly stepped out of the front of the car.
The driver ran to the back to get her luggage from the trunk. The other young man opened the back right passenger door. Grimes set one foot onto the sidewalk, a forty-five-hundred-dollar Christian Louboutin Croc pump, took the young man’s hand, and exited the car.
She took a couple of seconds to assemble herself on the sidewalk, fluffed up her hair and straightened the long cardigan scarf so that it draped properly down the front of her dress, a one-of-a-kind Dior casual fashioned exclusively for travel.
The driver hustled her luggage up the ramp and into the building. The two men had been to this place enough times by now, almost every Thursday afternoon, to know the drill. They would pick her up at the same location Tuesday morning.
Grimes’s Gulfstream, the one she and her husband owned, was parked in a hangar on the other side of the building. She walked up the steps while her assistant carried her briefcase and computer and held the door open for her.
There was no TSA screening here, nobody sticking a hand up your crotch or x-raying your body, and no lines, no screaming children or bumping up against the unwashed. Though today Grimes had to suffer the inconvenience of a late takeoff.
She was waiting for two House members whose session was running a few minutes late, people from her own party who were hitching a ride home with her. She had hoped they would be here by now. They would, of course, have to pay for the privilege, or at least the taxpayers would, this to keep the seam on their ethics straight.
Air travel on private jets for members of Congress had become an issue a few years earlier when corporations started using it to gain access. The way to avoid the conflict of a gift was to have the members pay at least part of the cost. Now for a few thousand dollars of the taxpayers’ money, funds from their office budget, they could party all the way across the country. No problem.
But today there was a problem. Her driver, coming the other way from delivering her luggage to the plane, stepped up close. “Senator. There’s someone waiting to see you.”
“Where?”
“Outside. He wouldn’t give me his name.” The assistant stepped off to the side so that Grimes could see past him through the glass door leading out into the hangar.
The Eagle was standing on the gleaming concrete just this side of the stairway leading up to the open door of the plane.
“He said that you would want to talk to him.” The look on Grimes’s face told the kid that something was wrong. “Do you want me to call security?”
“NO! It’s all right . . . not a problem.”
“Would you like us to stay?”
“Ahh, no . . . put my computer and the briefcase on the plane. Then take the car and go, both of you, back to the office.”
“Are you sure?”
Grimes snapped her eyes toward the kid and froze him with a cold look. “I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t. Now go!” One of them headed for the plane with her briefcase and computer in hand. The other one disappeared out the front door back toward the car.
She looked at the Eagle, who just stood there staring at her through the closing glass door, a simpering smile on his face. Whatever it was, he’d better make it quick. She wanted him out of here before her colleagues arrived. It wouldn’t do to have them seen together.
“What do you want?”
“Perhaps you’d like to talk up in the cabin,” he said.
“We can talk right here.”
“I could use a ride out to the coast.” He had his own plane, but he wanted to talk to her on hers.
“That isn’t happening!” said Grimes. “I have other passengers today.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Two other members.”
“That’s great. I’d love to meet ’em.” He headed toward the stairs and started to climb.
“And my husband’s meeting me at the other end.”
“You can introduce us,” said the Eagle.
She looked toward the building, hoping the other two members wouldn’t come walking through the door any second.
“Aren’t you coming?” He stood at the top of the stairs in the plane’s open door, looking down at her.
She had no choice. Grimes climbed the stairs as quickly as she could. Once inside, she was greeted by the copilot. “Hank, this is Mr., uh . . . Mr. Black. He’ll be flying with us today.” She looked nervously over her shoulder. “We should take off immediately.”
“I thought there were two today. Another passenger?”
“He canceled at the last minute,” said Grimes. “I’d like to get moving as quickly as possible.”
“You got it.” The copilot whistled. Two guys came out and rolled the stairs away. He closed the door and threw the lever to lock the pressurized seal. Then went forward. A few seconds later the engines started.
The Eagle settled into one of the cream-colored overstuffed executive swivel seats in the cabin. It was a nice plane, but not as nice as the one he owned himself, which was a later model.
The Gulfstream moved slowly out of the hangar onto the taxiway and started out toward the runway. Grimes leaned over and looked back through one of the windows.
“You might want to sit down, buckle up,” said the Eagle. “But then I guess you own the plane, you make the rules. You wanna become jelly on the rear bulkhead, you paid for it, why not.”
She dropped into one of the chairs on the other side of the cabin, buckled herself in, crossed her legs, crossed her arms, and glared at him.
“Blue Crocodile.” He looked at her shoes. “Do they come that way? I mean snapping up out of the bayou? Or do they have to dye ’em?”
“What do you want?” She said this through lips stretched tight as a drum.
“I’ll bet those are a real hit with the green-granola set. But then they probably don’t know about the airplane either, do they?” He lowered his head a little and leaned forward so he could see out through the little porthole window just behind her. “Hey, isn’t that Jim Bellows? Maybe we should wave.”
She turned around in the chair. Bellows, a congressman from the Bay Area, was standing out in front of the hangar waving his arms frantically, motioning for them to come back.
Suddenly the door to the flight compartment opened. The copilot stuck his head out. “Looks like your other passenger showed up after all. You want to go back?”
“No!” said Grimes. “Just keep going.”
The guy shrugged his shoulder and closed the door.
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sp; “My attitude entirely,” said the Eagle. “Man wants to fly, he ought to be here on time.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to say to him next week,” said Grimes.
“Tell him he got bumped.”
“What do you want?”
“Oh, yeah, business. Well, let’s see. It’s going to be a long flight. We’ve got a lot of time. What is it, five hours?”
She ignored him. “I suppose the next thing you’re going to want is a drink.”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” he said. “Is there a flight attendant on board or will you be serving?”
“Get on with it.” One of the blue high heels was now tapping the floor.
“Well, if you’re gonna be that way, fine. Let’s talk business. I take it you took care of the two judicial vacancies? Called the White House?”
“Is that what this is about?”
“Among other things,” said the Eagle. He looked around, noticed the door at the rear of the cabin. “This thing got a bed back there? I could use some Zs later.”
“Yes, I made the call! Just like you asked.”
“What did they say?”
“They weren’t happy. I’ll tell you that. They wanted to know the names of the people I was leaning toward.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told them I’d let them know as soon as my staff was finished checking them out. Exactly what you said.”
“And?”
“What could they do?”
“Exactly,” said the Eagle. “See? You have more power than you think.”
“Against my better judgment.”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” said the Eagle. “It wouldn’t be the first time that let you down. Now what I want you to do . . . I think you know a lawyer out in L.A. by the name of Cletus Proffit?”
“Never heard of him,” said Grimes.
“Mandella, Harbet, Cain. You know, Serna’s old partners?”
“OK, maybe I know the name. I may have met him once or twice. I can’t remember.”
“Well then, it’s time to get reacquainted. I want you to call him, ask him for a favor.”
“I don’t even know the man.”
“That’s all right. He knows you. He was a giver to your last campaign. Of course, he gave to your opponent as well. What you call an equal opportunity opportunist. When you talk to him, use his first name. Call him Clete. When he calls you senator, tell him your friends call you Maya. You know, polish his apple. Get his head in the trough with you. Make him think he’s part of the club. He’ll do whatever it is you ask. Tell him you want him to act as an intermediary on some highly sensitive pending judicial appointments. If you do it right, he’ll be flattered,” said the Eagle. “Now here’s what I want you to tell him. . . .”
THIRTY-TWO
So what did you find out?” A half hour out on the flight and Harry and I settle into the coach seats and listen to the drone of the jet engines. We’re on our way to Amsterdam, the first leg of the trip.
“It’s a moving target,” says Harry. “Some of the numbers Alex gave us at his parents’ house that night are dwarfed by more recent news accounts.” Harry has been living at the Del’s business center for the last three days. Doing research.
“One Swiss bank alone claims there are fifty-two thousand Americans with secret numbered accounts.”
I shoot him a glance. “You’re kidding.”
“We’re obviously in the wrong business,” says Harry. “But I have to say, the IRS played hardball. They turned the screws on the overseas banks. Threatened them with heavy withholding taxes on their US operations if they didn’t cooperate. Threatened some of them with criminal sanctions for aiding and abetting tax evasion. Most of the banks were forced to make concessions to open their books. One bank alone paid fines totaling seven hundred and eighty million dollars to the US Treasury,” says Harry.
I whistle low and slow. This is probably a measure of the value of their American operations. The fine is likely a drop in the bucket compared to their US business.
“Plus the disclosure of forty-five hundred names,” says Harry. “American depositors and their account numbers to be drawn at random and delivered to the IRS. That’s intended to scare everybody else into disclosing offshore assets on their tax returns.”
“That would do it for me,” I tell him. “But then I wouldn’t have enough money to open a numbered account in the first place. What about this guy, Korff? Any lead on him?”
“I have a few addresses in and around Lucerne. It’s not an uncommon name. Strange thing is,” says Harry, “Lucerne is not a big banking center. Zurich, Bern, even Geneva, but not Lucerne. There are a few of what they call cantonal banks, local provincial institutions. But why this one, Gruber A.G., is in the middle of Graves’s story, I don’t understand. Doesn’t make sense.”
“We’ll have to ask the man when we find him,” I say.
“Also the whistleblower, Betz. There’re a number of articles about him online. And it’s true what Alex said. He did claim to have information about American politicians with secret numbered accounts in Switzerland. I printed some of the stuff out. It’s in my briefcase. What’s more,” says Harry, “there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in finding out who they are.”
“Don’t you think that’s strange?” I ask.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Then again, not necessarily,” says Harry. “Powerful people in D.C. are often allowed to skate. We always think of ourselves as head and shoulders above any banana republic. In the end, are we really that different? Human nature being what it is,” says Harry.
“Never thought of it that way.”
“You should. That’s not to say everybody’s corrupt. There are, no doubt, a lot of good people there. Like everywhere else, about five percent of any population account for most of the problems,” says Harry. “Usually the same five percent, and they’ll do it over and over again if you give ’em a chance. It’s just that people with power have a much greater opportunity for mischief, and they probably get away with it more.
“Every once in a while they’ll nail some guy in Congress, indict him, convict him, and send him away just to let the rest know that there are some limits. It hasn’t happened for a while. Probably overdue,” says Harry.
“For years there have been stories of insider trading by members of Congress,” he tells me. “You have to figure these people are privy to a lot of secrets. Potential investments nobody else in the world could get near. The temptation would be great to pass the information on to friends, and relatives. The last time they bailed out the banks,” says Harry, “word is that there were key members of Congress who knew who was getting what and when, long before it was ever made public.
“Later there were charges that family and friends, distant relations went out and jumped on the stocks for the banks getting the money. If so, some of these people could have made a cool killing on the back of the taxpayers who picked up the tab,” says Harry. “I’m not saying it happened. Nobody was indicted. But there were accusations.”
“Sounds like you think Martha Stewart ought to complain,” I tell him.
“I would if I were her,” says Harry. “Not that it would do her any good. It’s what I told Alex that night, remember? Prosecutorial discretion? Nothing you or I can do about it.
“But here is something I do want you to think about. And when you do, I want you to worry,” says Harry. “Promise me?”
“Ok, I’ll worry,” I tell him.
“I’m reading between the lines, so take it for what it’s worth. Remember the term Alex told us about, PEP—politically exposed persons?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s a term of art. It’s all over the literature on private numbered accounts. And it’s highlighted in red letters. It’s a major cause for concern,” says Harry. “Everybody from the UN on down.”
“Go on.”
“There’s an article, I printed it out. Accordin
g to this piece—and I can’t vouch for its accuracy, it’s from one of the US financial networks—they’re reporting an undisclosed number of US political figures, maybe past, maybe present, they don’t know for sure. But it’s pretty certain that they are account holders who possess offshore numbered accounts and who have not disclosed or paid taxes on the funds in those accounts.”
“How do they know?”
“Because some information slipped out in the random selection process. If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably a mistake. And it’s certain that there are more.”
“Why doesn’t the IRS go after them?”
“They don’t know who they are,” says Harry. “All they know is that they are sufficiently prominent to show up on the bank’s PEP list, not by name, only that they are American political figures who have undisclosed accounts. Worse than that. The IRS can’t be sure how deep the swamp is. Or for that matter what’s swimming in it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bits and pieces of information,” says Harry. “But if you put it all together you get a mosaic.”
I start to smile like he’s putting me on.
“Listen to me. I spent three days looking at this stuff because you asked me to. I looked at the tea leaves and now I’m telling you what I read in them. No one knows how much money is on deposit in individual accounts for these so-called PEPs, or how many officials are involved. Nor do they know where the money came from. And that’s the key, the source of the funds. IRS and Treasury tripped over this when they started shaking down the foreign banks. And now they can’t be sure how bad it is.”
“Go on.”
“There’s no way to know,” says Harry. “But according to one of the articles, a scholarly piece, that’s one of the major fears. It’s why PEP deposit holders, politicians, their family members are great big red flags for these private banks. And the banks don’t always know because the account is probably opened in the name of some other straw man. This is not money these politicians would want the world to know about.”
I sit there listening, my brain reeling like an empty spool, to what Harry is saying.
The Enemy Inside Page 21