Stephen Frey

by Trust Fund

  Bo gazed at the bottle. “No, thanks,” he finally said. “You’re looking awfully fit for a man who is supposed to be clinging to life by a thread.”

  Mendoza chuckled. “There was a lot going on so we decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to look like a target as well. Just in case we needed to throw somebody off the trail.”

  “We decided?” Bo repeated. “Other than Gerald Wallace, who is involved?”

  “Did Trajak tell you about Wallace?” Mendoza wanted to know.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I still consider him a loyal guy,” Mendoza muttered, more to himself than Bo. “He put a tracking device on you at Great Falls so we could find you. And I imagine you can be a pretty effective interrogator when you want to be.”

  “Who else is involved, Michael?”

  “Several others, but I sit at the top of the cell. Only Wallace knows that I run the operation. And now you, of course.”

  “Which is basically an information network,” Bo said, standing up to stretch his legs. He’d been sitting for several hours, on the trip up from Washington to the estate in the helicopter. He moved to the window overlooking the lake and peered into the light of breaking dawn, then turned back to face Mendoza. “Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “A Big Brother infrastructure that allows you to conduct constant and widespread surveillance on the American people. A surveillance system that can be used as a weapon of intimidation when you so require by mining the data warehouse of individual files you’re probably storing in computers all over the country.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Mendoza admitted. “And it’s a damn effective operation.”

  Bo moved back toward the desk. “In fact, RANSACK allows you to make policy by circumventing the political process.”

  Mendoza smiled at Bo’s casual use of the top-secret project’s name. “In many cases we still use the political process.”

  Bo sat down before his old friend once more. “You mean you intimidate the process. You make people do what you want by scaring them, people like politicians and judges who are unfriendly to your way of thinking.”

  “We facilitate the process and enable those who have the wrong ideas to see the light. It can take years to enact legislation in our society because of all of the damn checks and balances built into the system. Justice is constantly impeded by bleeding hearts and whistle-blowers who don’t understand the bigger picture. RANSACK has addressed all of that inefficiency, and we don’t use our power indiscriminately. We let things function normally for the most part. We pick our spots and act only out of necessity.

  “We’ve talked about it so many times, Bo,” Mendoza continued. “About how often the guilty go free because we in this country seem to have a fascination with protecting the criminals, not the victims. About how a democracy is such an inefficient form of government.”

  Bo nodded. They had discussed and agreed on that fact many times. “What you’re doing sounds good in theory, but you know as well as I do that actually practicing that kind of vigilantism is an entirely different matter. We’ve talked about that too.”

  Mendoza took a deep breath. “Let me give you an example of why we need RANSACK, Bo. Not long ago we discovered that a defense contractor executive, just this one guy, had decided on his own to shut down a top secret project only weeks from completion. It was a new attack submarine the navy badly needed. The guy had decided to blow the whistle on some insignificant overbilling by his superiors. He was going to testify to the overbilling in front of a congressional committee, and you know what would have happened, Bo. They would have delayed the project, maybe even shelved it, over a measly twenty million bucks. I know twenty million sounds like a lot of money, but in a multi-trillion dollar budget with world peace hanging in the balance, it’s a pimple on the ass of an ant. Now we will have that attack submarine and it will prove itself invaluable. Without RANSACK, who knows what would have happened?”

  “Where does it stop?” Bo asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we had these discussions, that was the point we could never agree on. How far does this type of thing go? Immense power concentrated in a few people’s hands can easily spin out of control. Look at your history books. It has happened time after time down through the centuries.”

  Mendoza took a long puff from his cigar. “That’s one of the reasons I want you involved, Bo,” he said softly. “That’s what all of this is about. I know you will always act as a voice of reason. I’ve known you for more than forty years, and I have more confidence in you than I have in anyone other than myself. You always do the right thing, and you have more courage in your little finger than most people have in their entire bodies. I saw it on that mountain the day you saved my life, and you were just a teenager then.”

  Bo hesitated. “You want me involved?” he asked, his eyes widening.

  Mendoza nodded. “I want to bring you into the inner circle. I want you to run Warfield Capital as a legitimate business and take control of the family empire. At the same time I want you to run cutouts through the firm for us. For those of us at the highest levels of the US intelligence structure.”

  “Cutouts?”

  “Like Online Associates,” Mendoza said. “Warfield will make the investment so that the government can never be linked to anything. We spin the money through a maze of money-laundering systems, then bring the cash into the private sector through an offshore vehicle that appears to be controlled by European or South American investors.”

  “Like you did with the original two billion into Warfield.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the five hundred million that came in after that.”

  “Yes.” Mendoza pointed the cigar at Bo. “I’ll give you a lot of credit on that one. You had me over a barrel and you knew it. You knew I couldn’t afford to have Warfield fail. You knew I’d send the money to prop you up.”

  On his way back to the mansion after putting Paul in the ambulance, Bo had called Allen Taylor. Taylor had confirmed on the call that the additional five hundred million Warfield had received that morning had ultimately been routed through the same Italian bank that the first two billion had come from. The two billion Ramsey had alerted Bo to the day Jimmy Lee had died. Once again, Taylor had been unable to follow the money any further back than Italy, but it didn’t matter to Bo. He had confirmed what he needed to know.

  “If Warfield had gone down, the federal regulators would have crawled all over the firm and dug through everything in detail,” Bo pointed out. “All of our records and all of our investments. They might have found Online Associates, and RANSACK might have been exposed. At the very least, damaged, and you couldn’t have that.”

  “It was a helluva bluff, Bo,” Mendoza agreed. “I thought about not sending the money, but my people checked out the Bloomberg and Reuters stories about Warfield being in serious trouble and the information was confirmed. Warfield had failed on a transaction with Stillman and the markets went crazy.” He puffed on his cigar. “How did you manufacture that whole thing?”

  Jack O’Connor had been hesitant to honor Bo’s request, but in the end had acquiesced. The fail on the fifty million in bonds had been arranged quietly and O’Connor had instructed his traders not to deal with Warfield at the open. Finally, O’Connor had called contacts at Bloomberg and Reuters to exacerbate the problem and accelerate the effect. “That was easy,” Bo said, not wanting to give away O’Connor’s identity. “And once a rumor gets started on Wall Street, it’s harder to stop than a nuclear reaction.”

  Mendoza tapped an inch-long ash into a tray beside the scotch bottle. “Well, it was a nice piece of poker playing.”

  “Where did the money actually come from?” Bo asked, curious how Mendoza could so easily and quickly manipulate such an immense amount of money.

  “The Energy Department,” Mendoza replied, allowing Bo the kind of high-level information that would make him feel right away like a
part of what was going on. “Energy has a huge budget with the least amount of oversight. A little-known and closely guarded Washington secret,” he added.

  “So you want me involved?” Bo asked, interested in where Mendoza was headed with all of this. “I assume I’m not the first civilian allowed inside.”

  “We do this kind of thing quite a bit, though rarely at this level,” Mendoza admitted. “You’d be surprised how many CEOs and general counsels of large corporations allow us to run cutouts through their publicly held corporations. It’s very effective.” He gestured toward the window. “As we expand our network, we’ll need to make more investments related to RANSACK. Warfield gives us a perfect platform from which to do so. We can do things quietly and quickly.”

  “Why did Jimmy Lee agree to set this thing up through Warfield in the first place?” Bo asked.

  “First of all, he was a patriot. Your father understood the need for this kind of operation immediately. Second, he wanted Paul elected president.”

  Bo smiled. That was the real reason. Jimmy Lee would never have done anything purely for the good of the country. There always needed to be a return on his investment. “So the understanding was that he would allow you to use Warfield as an investment vehicle in return for information on Paul’s political opponents.”

  “Yes.”

  “Other than Jimmy Lee, who within the family knew about RANSACK?”

  “Teddy.”

  “Not Paul?”

  “Paul knows very little. In case the thing ever blew up in our faces, Jimmy Lee wanted Paul insulated.”

  “What about Bruce Laird?”

  “He never knew anything about RANSACK. Paul told him only that it was imperative that you not be allowed back into Warfield, and he asked no questions. At the end Paul convinced Laird that you were attempting to get rid of him because you’d uncovered his problems at Davis Polk, which is why Laird tried hard to get you to accept Paul’s offer to manage a billion of the family’s money from Montana.” Mendoza chuckled. “He did, however, turn out to be quite a hero. He and a crew of men rescued Meg and your friend John Blackburn from a cave on the estate last night. Rest assured, Meg is fine. She is with her parents on Long Island as we speak.”

  Bo’s shoulders slumped and he felt himself choking up. He had not stopped thinking about Meg through everything. He’d truly believed that she was safer with Blackburn in the cave, but he had second-guessed that decision thousands of times since. “That was Laird who was chasing us?” Bo asked, trying to hide the emotion overcoming him.

  “Yes,” Mendoza confirmed. “Laird happened to see our people breaking into your mansion and quickly rounded up estate security. When you came out from under the deck with Meg and Blackburn, it was the estate security staff chasing you. They were trying to save you, not hurt you. But you couldn’t have known.”

  “But it was your people who broke through the door in the basement?”

  “Yes.”

  “You killed Teddy and Tom Bristow, didn’t you?” Bo asked. “Once Jimmy Lee was gone you saw the opportunity to consolidate power.”

  “Teddy, yes, but we didn’t kill Tom Bristow,” Mendoza replied, his voice dropping. “Teddy took care of that for us.”

  Bo glanced up. “What?”

  “Teddy and Tom were homosexuals. They were partners, though they kept it very quiet. Yes. We think that once Teddy saw he was going to be running Warfield, he panicked, understanding that his relationship with Tom made him vulnerable.”

  Bo was silent for several seconds, trying to comprehend what Mendoza was saying. “Tiffany was working for you, wasn’t she,” he finally said.

  “Yes, I was trying to find out if you intended to come back to Warfield. Jimmy Lee had mentioned to me that you were becoming very restless out in Montana and I was worried, so I manufactured my trip out there under the cover of being keynote speaker at the Jackson Hole trade summit. Tiffany planted a microphone in the dashboard of your Jeep and when you told her that you were definitely coming back, we went into action. I knew that if you ever discovered what was going on at Warfield without me having the proper opportunity to explain everything to you, you’d notify the authorities. It’s one of many things I admire about you, Bo. You are the most honest man I’ve ever known.”

  “So that’s why I was sent to Montana. To get me out of the way.”

  “And because Jimmy Lee was worried about you screwing up Paul’s campaign. Both factors were at work. No one has ever questioned that you were the right person to run Warfield. Now you can do so with no constraints.”

  “Then you did write the memo to Jimmy Lee suggesting the change in Warfield’s general partnership structure.”

  “Yes,” Mendoza admitted, “and if Paul had done even a halfassed job of hiding your father’s personal papers, you never would have known. Not that it matters now.”

  Bo pointed at Mendoza. “You had me attacked and drugged in the Jeep. You had the pictures taken of me with Tiffany in the motel.”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “Are there more than the one photograph I’ve seen?” Bo asked hesitantly.

  Mendoza let out a sigh. He had hoped to avoid this discussion. “Many more,” he said softly. “Some extremely graphic ones too. Ones that would make Meg’s stomach turn if she ever saw them,” he warned sternly. “But let’s focus on more important issues, of which there are many. There is a great deal more to tell—”

  “Did you go after Meg?” Bo interrupted, his voice hollow. “Were you behind the attacks at Penn Station and the parking garage near the hospital?”

  Mendoza puffed on the cigar.

  “Michael!” Bo shouted, standing up.

  The study door swung open quickly. The man who had removed the hood and handcuffs appeared in the doorway. “Everything all right, sir?” he asked gruffly.

  “Fine,” Mendoza answered. He waved his hand. “Leave us.”

  The man glanced menacingly at Bo, then shut the door.

  “Sit back down, Bo,” Mendoza ordered, waiting until Bo had complied before speaking again. “This gets to the heart of the matter, my friend.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think it would have been easier for me simply to have you killed and let Frank Ramsey continue to run Warfield, than go through all of this? Ramsey was a puppet, a man I could control very easily, and you were a damn bull in a china shop. I could have had you capped so easily that night in Montana and been done with you. It would have been so much cleaner than bribing Tiffany and taking those pictures, and losing sleep knowing that you were closing in on what was going on at Warfield. Don’t you see how much easier that would have been for me?”

  “I suppose it would have been.” The thought had occurred to Bo several times.

  “I love you like a brother, Bo. I couldn’t kill you.”

  “But you could kill my wife.”

  “No.” Mendoza pursed his lips. “However, I made you think she was in danger to distract you and make you vulnerable. I could have killed her in that parking garage, but I didn’t. I wanted you to recognize that you needed to back off, but you didn’t. You kept charging forward. I should have known you would. It’s what I love about you, and what I hate.” He leaned forward on the desk, gritting his teeth. “RANSACK is the most important intelligence initiative our government has ever embarked upon, and I have allowed our personal relationship to cloud my judgment. Gerald Wallace has questioned my commitment to RANSACK several times because of my decisions regarding your safety. But make no mistake, Bolling, I will not let that happen again. I have pictures in my possession that would destroy your marriage to Meg, and from this point on I would not hesitate to use them or to use excessive force if necessary to protect the sanctity of the operation.” He leaned back slowly in the chair. “But there is no need for all of that, Bo,” he said, his voice softening. “Come and be my partner, not my adversary. RANSACK represents an incredible opportunity to clean up this country once and for al
l. You know down deep you believe strongly in what I’m doing. You hate seeing criminals go free as much as I do. You hate seeing the bleeding hearts win.”

  A long silence ensued, both men deep in thought.

  “What about Dale Stephenson?” Bo finally asked.

  “He went to Montana to warn you about what was going on. Somehow he found out more than he should have. We killed him,” Mendoza admitted matter-of-factly, “then told people he had died in an accident in Colorado.” Mendoza tapped the desk. “I’m not proud of some of the things I’ve had to do, Bo, but to make RANSACK a reality I agreed to go to any lengths necessary to succeed. Dale was a good man and I’m sorry about what happened to him. I’m sorry about Richard Randolph and Harold Shaw too, but—”

  “But you had to have your people in charge of Global Media and AFG,” Bo finished the thought.

  “Of course we had to have our people in charge. It’s terrible and I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out a better way, a solution in which men did not have to die. But they did have to die, and I’m comfortable that ultimately I have followed the honorable course of action to protect my country. Sometimes individuals have to be sacrificed for the good of the colony.”

  “What will happen now that Jimmy Lee is gone?”

  Mendoza cleared his throat. “As I said, I want you to run Warfield and take control of the Hancock family empire. If not, I will appoint someone who will do exactly as I direct. What I have sacrificed for this operation will not be in vain.”

  Bo’s face contorted. “How the hell would you appoint someone?”

  “Catherine and I are to be married. Through her, I will control the family if you choose not to.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “I couldn’t be more sane.” Mendoza laughed. “Right now Catherine is being ‘held captive’ at my farmhouse in Middleburg, Virginia. She thinks we both are. The truth is that I wanted her protected through all of this and the best way to accomplish that was to make her think she had been taken hostage. You never know what may happen to your loved ones at critical times in this business,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “When this is over, we will marry. I want you to be our best man.”