Stephen Frey

by Trust Fund

  “They should be.” Wallace grunted. “It’s amazing how much the average person has to hide, to what lengths he’ll go to hide it, and how easily he can be manipulated if the damaging or embarrassing information is uncovered.” He shook his head. “It’s the opposite of conventional warfare. In the face of insurmountable military opposition, people will continue to fight. They’ll live like rats with bombs exploding all around them. Their resolve turns to steel. But in the face of humiliating personal information being widely revealed about them or their family members, human resolve disintegrates like sugar in coffee. Death is acceptable, honorable in fact, but public ridicule is intolerable, particularly for prominent people.”

  “I’m glad I’m on this side of the fence,” Scully admitted.

  “But, of course, the fence moves.”

  Scully glanced up. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means we monitor everyone,” Wallace snapped, his expression turning intense. “But I’m pleased to inform you that with no wife, no children, and no discernable vices you would appear to be untouchable, which is why we like you.” He held up his hand. “Except that at this point we have the ability to plant things on or about people as well. We can fabricate very credible wrongdoings about anyone based upon an individual’s personal data bank maintained in our files.” He let out a long pleased breath. “Of course, it’s still more effective to find an authentic skeleton in the closet. We would have to work very hard to manipulate you. Fortunately you are in the minority.” He gestured at the horizon. “Most people out there are vulnerable because they have done things in their past that their family, friends, or society in general would scorn them for. That negative history allows us to manipulate policy whichever way we choose. If someone is getting in the way of what we want, we pay him or her a timely visit.” He turned toward Scully. “As you have done with that bastard who would have killed the submarine project this country so desperately needs. As you have done with Dr. Silwa.”

  Scully shook his head. “It’s so easy. They give up so fast.”

  “I told you, people are weak when it comes to their personal lives being exposed.” Wallace ducked through a small side door of the barn and walked down a narrow passageway dimly lit by several dusty bare bulbs. “All of that computer storage capacity will cost a great deal of money,” Wallace said over his shoulder, thinking about numbers now.

  “Not as much as you might believe,” Scully disagreed gently. He was well aware that Wallace was conditioned to think about hundreds of billions. The price tag here would run into the billions, but not by as much as Wallace assumed. “Besides, we’ve already moved a great deal of money offshore. The green has turned black. It’s gone for good. Spirited off into the cosmos and impossible to trace. Even if someone sniffed something wrong, they’d never be able to follow the trail back to us.”

  “How much have we moved to date?”

  “Two billion.”

  “On top of what we already put into the cutout last year?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” Wallace unlocked another door and flicked on a light. “Wipe your feet, will you?”

  Scully wiped his shoes on a mat beside the door, then stepped into RANSACK’s brain—an immaculate room lined with the most technologically advanced supercomputers in the world, commercially unavailable even to the few companies that could have afforded their outrageous sticker prices. Available to Wallace through his contacts at the Pentagon and his years on the Armed Services Committee. “Jesus,” Scully whispered, gazing through the eerie blue light at the stacks of servers. Wallace had never allowed him in here. “This is incredible.”

  “Yes, and it’s directly linked to Online Associates in Virginia.” Wallace locked the door behind them. “Have a seat,” he directed as he sat down himself in front of a console. “What about Michael Mendoza?” he asked, typing on a keyboard. “What happened to him?”

  Scully sat down beside Wallace. “That was the only clusterfuck of the weekend,” he said hesitantly.

  Wallace stopped typing for a moment. “What do you mean?”

  “Apparently the incendiary device went off prematurely.”

  “Apparently?”

  “Mendoza was rushed to a New York City hospital by medevac helicopter.”

  “But he’s not dead, is he?”

  Scully shook his head. “Not yet. He’s hanging on.”

  “What about Bo Hancock? The initial report I received was that he was hit by the same blast.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is his condition?”

  “He was choppered to the same hospital.”

  “And?”

  Scully hesitated. “I received an initial report that he had died on the way, but I was informed later that the report was inaccurate. I don’t know the truth yet. I’m to receive an update in an hour.”

  “I hope it’s good news.” Wallace punched the ENTER button on the keyboard. “Frank Ramsey reports that Bo has been rooting around in the Warfield private equity portfolio.”

  “I’m sure Jimmy Lee buried the cutout too deeply for anyone to find. It was there before Bo was sent to Montana, and he never found it.”

  “He wasn’t looking.” Wallace rubbed his pocked nose. “He could find the funding source as well, the investor link. That wasn’t in place until after Bo left. That’s partly why Jimmy Lee kicked him out.” Wallace typed another command. “He knew Bo would never go along with the program. He’s too smallminded to understand the incredible importance of what we’re doing.”

  “So we take Bo out if the news from the hospital isn’t good.”

  “We need to lay low for a bit. Someone might start piecing things together if Bo turned up dead too.”

  Scully frowned. “We’ll have to do something if Bo continues to dig.” He gazed at the blinking computers all around him. More than anything, he wanted to know who sat at the top of the cell. Who was running the show.

  “I guess you won’t need your update after all,” Wallace said, pointing at a screen.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Bo Hancock has been upgraded from critical to stable.”

  “How do you know?” Scully squinted at the screen.

  “It’s all right there.”

  “That information is coming from the—”

  “From the hospital’s mainframe computer,” Wallace explained triumphantly. “The people in Fairfax are good, let me tell you that.” He typed another command. “Looks like Mendoza might make it too,” he observed, as Mendoza’s update appeared on the screen. “There will be some unhappy people if he does,” he said, glancing at Scully.

  “We’ll try again. We won’t miss this time. I’ll give the order tomorrow.”

  Wallace shook his head. “You will wait for my orders before you try again. Are we absolutely clear on that?”

  Scully glanced up. There had been an unmistakable sharpness to Wallace’s tone. “Yes, sir.”

  Meg guided the Explorer into a narrow space between two economy-sized cars, hopped down from the cab, and walked quickly toward a stairwell located in a far corner of the midtown Manhattan parking garage. On her way into the city from the estate she had detoured to Long Island for a few minutes to see her mother, who had caught a cold over the weekend. After leaving her parents’ house for the city she had encountered unexpectedly bad traffic on the Long Island Expressway. Then she’d been forced to drive up seven levels of the garage before finding an open spot. So now she was late. As she broke into a trot, her hard-soled shoes clicked on the cement floor.

  At first she believed the second set of footsteps behind her was an echo, but as she reached the stairwell and glanced back over her shoulder, she realized she was wrong. The man wasn’t physically imposing, but the look in his eye brought terror to her heart. Somehow she knew he had come for her, and even as she tore down the first lonely flight of stairs, she was aware that he seemed vaguely familiar.

  Meg took two and three steps at a t
ime, racing downward in panic, but she sensed that he was gaining on her. She could hear his heavy footsteps churning after her. As she reached the fifth floor she caught sight of him to her right in her peripheral vision, then instantly felt talonlike fingers grabbing for her shoulder from over the railing. She screamed and careened into the wall to avoid him. He was only a few feet behind now.

  As Meg turned at the top of the stairs on the fourth floor, her foot slipped. For an instant she hung there, balanced precariously on the edge of the step. Then she pitched forward and tumbled down, her legs unable to keep pace with her upper body. Just before her head and shoulder slammed into the brick wall on the third-floor landing, she remembered where she had seen her pursuer. He had been behind her on the sidewalk outside Grand Central Station just before she had been pushed in front of the oncoming taxi. Then the world went dark.

  “Bo?”

  Bo looked up. An overnight bag was lying open on the bed. “Hello, doctor,” he said, smiling despite the dull ache that enveloped his entire body.

  “What are you doing?” Silwa asked, shuffling into the private room.

  “Packing.”

  The doctor rolled his eyes. “They brought you in here on a stretcher less than eighteen hours ago. Why don’t you at least stay tonight to be safe? I’d like to run some more tests on you.”

  “I’m fine,” Bo assured Silwa. He had no intention of spending another hour in the hospital.

  “You’re being—”

  “Stubborn?” Ashley interrupted. “Was that what you were about to say, Dr. Silwa?” She sat in a chair by the window. “Are you surprised? Imagine, Bolling Hancock, stubborn. What a shock.” She stood up. “Just say the word, Doctor, and I’ll make him stay.”

  Bo flashed her a grin. They had spent the whole morning catching up on twenty years apart. He had missed her more than he’d realized. “Pay no attention to my sister,” Bo instructed. “She talks a big game but her bark is worse than her bite. I mean, look at her.”

  “I may be small,” Ashley warned good-naturedly, putting up her fists as if she wanted to fight, “but I can hold my own with anyone.”

  Bo chuckled. Five two and a hundred pounds dripping wet, Ashley had jet-black hair, dark eyes, full lips, and perfect, creamy skin. A natural athlete, she had captained the field hockey team in high school, then at Harvard. She had a feisty personality that never allowed her to let things lie. Good or bad, you always knew where you stood with her. It was a trait Bo had appreciated since their childhood. “Back off, little girl.”

  Ashley stuck her tongue out as she dropped her hands.

  “Let me see your arm,” Silwa demanded, moving to where Bo stood beside the bed.

  “I told you, I’m fine.”

  “Let me see it. If you don’t, I’ll keep you here for a week.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I most certainly can. I’ll have you quarantined. I’ll explain to the state board of health that you are displaying symptoms of an exotic virus.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me,” Silwa dared, rolling up Bo’s sleeve. “I know you’re hiding something bad.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is the first time I’ve seen you with your sleeves rolled down.” Silwa gingerly peeled back a bandage covering most of Bo’s left forearm, revealing a grisly mass of burned flesh.

  Ashley glanced at it, then quickly looked away. “Does he need to stay, Doctor?” she asked seriously.

  “That’s like asking a barber if you need a haircut,” Bo cut in, reattaching the bandage with a roll of medical tape he had picked up from the bed.

  “He should stay,” Silwa advised.

  “But I’m not going to.”

  “Mr. Hancock?” A nurse stood in the doorway, a wheelchair in front of her.

  “What’s this?” Silwa asked.

  “Transportation I don’t need,” Bo replied. “Thank you, nurse, but I’ll be walking out of here under my own power.”

  “Hospital rules,” the woman said firmly, rolling the wheelchair into Bo’s room.

  “I haven’t even signed a release form,” Silwa protested.

  “But I knew you would.” Bo pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and handed it to Silwa. “Get to it.”

  Silwa hesitated, then moved to the end of the bed, picked up a clipboard hanging from the bed frame, and scribbled his signature.

  “Good man.”

  “You’re lucky, Bo.”

  “Why do you say that?” Bo asked, tossing a shirt Meg had brought to the hospital for him last night into the bag.

  “Michael Mendoza is down the hall hooked up to all kinds of tubes.” Silwa pointed at Bo’s arm. “That burn you sustained is nasty as hell, but it isn’t life-threatening. When they brought Mendoza in here, they weren’t sure he was going to make it. It’s still touch-and-go for him.”

  “Why was I so lucky?”

  “The blast threw you back onto the lawn. It blew Mendoza against the side of the house. He has critical head injuries.”

  “Can I see him?” Bo asked, his voice subdued.

  “No visitors,” Silwa replied.

  “Have the authorities found out anything yet?”

  “I don’t know.” Silwa tossed the clipboard with the signed release form onto the unmade bed.

  “Ready to go?” the nurse holding the wheelchair asked.

  Bo checked his watch. “My wife was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago. I don’t want to leave without her. It’s not like Meg to be late.”

  “Well, I have other patients to attend to. Can you call her on her cell—”

  “Doctor!” Another nurse appeared in the doorway and beckoned to Silwa. “Please.”

  “Excuse me, Bo.” Silwa hurried from the room.

  “Look, I’ll be fine,” Bo said, turning to the woman behind the wheelchair. “I won’t tell anyone that you—”

  “Bolling!” Silwa reappeared in the doorway, a grave expression on his face.

  “What is it?”

  “Come with me quickly. It’s Meg. She’s in the emergency room.”

  They had arrived six weeks ago in a sealed brown envelope. Inside there had been no note claiming responsibility for the hideous contents—two graphic pictures which, since the day they’d been delivered, had accompanied him everywhere. Constantly buried in a pocket because he was too afraid to let them out of his immediate control. Even as he campaigned more successfully each day, they lay nestled close to his heart. As he shook hands with blue-haired ladies at auxiliary luncheons and kissed babies at hospitals. As he smiled sincerely at future constituents and promised to do good work.

  Paul sat behind Jimmy Lee’s desk gazing vacantly at the photographs that lay before him. He had his own study in his own home just over the hill, but he found that it gave him comfort to come here and sit in his father’s chair. It gave him a soothing sense that Jimmy Lee was still looking over his shoulder and that everything would eventually be all right.

  He put his wineglass down and picked up one of the photographs. It was a picture of Melissa’s battered face and bruised neck as she lay on the sand, eyes wide open, her corneas a ghastly red. He dropped the picture and picked up the second one. The same image stared back at him, except that in this photograph there were hands grasping Melissa’s neck. His hands. Paul could see the unmistakable brown birthmark on the third knuckle of his left hand.

  Paul shut his eyes, churning in his mind, through the events leading up to Melissa’s death, as he had so many times over the years. They’d been swimming in the playhouse pool when she had impulsively decided to go to the lake, pulling him through the mansion and down the hill by the wrist, both of them naked. At the bottom of the hill he’d fallen to the sand in a drunken stupor and closed his eyes for what seemed like only seconds. When he had awakened, she was facedown in the water. She must have drowned, he reasoned, but there were those marks on her neck and the blood-filled corneas. Sure signs that she had bee
n strangled. He grimaced and looked away as the photograph began to tremble in his hand. Then he stuffed both photographs hurriedly into the top drawer of the desk at the sound of a rap on the study door.

  “Come in.”

  Frank Ramsey entered the room.

  “Sit down,” Paul ordered.

  “What can I do for you?” Ramsey asked, sinking into a chair on the other side of the desk.

  “I want an update on Bo.”

  “We could have done that by phone.”

  “You and I will not use phones to communicate important information from now on,” Paul said quickly. “Not even land lines. Do you understand me?”

  “All right.”

  “We will arrange meetings by phone and that will be all.”

  “All right,” Ramsey agreed again, trying to understand what was going on. Paul seemed distracted, almost to the point of panic.

  Ramsey was certain that the full scope of Warfield Capital’s business had never been made clear to him. Upon joining, his primary assignment had been to run the firm as Bo had, following the strategies and disciplines Bo had implemented. Ramsey would take no major risks, and under no circumstances would he allow anyone to uncover Warfield’s massive investment in Online Associates, a year-old Internet-infrastructure company based in Fairfax, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. That was all they had told him. It was mysterious, but he hadn’t cared. The investment bank he’d been working for had been about to fire him for exceeding his trading limits and losing the firm a significant amount of money. The position at Warfield allowed him to keep his situation quiet and maintain the lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. Jimmy Lee would pay him two million a year and give him an interest, albeit tiny, in the fund. But even a tiny interest in a fund the size of Warfield could be immensely valuable.

  Ramsey’s immediate superior would be Teddy, but he was also to maintain close contact with a man named Joseph Scully—something that hadn’t made any sense to him. Scully didn’t appear to be connected with Warfield in any way and was even less numbers-oriented than Teddy. However, Ramsey had complied with his orders, working closely with Scully when Warfield had quietly transferred vast amounts of money down to the little firm in northern Virginia. And then he had learned that Dale Stephenson had somehow become aware of Online Associates.