The Devil on Chardonnay

by Ed Baldwin

  Joe said, “The notebook is gas sterilized. It’s harmless now. The body will be transported back to France in a sealed casket when you give the word.” He opened his briefcase and tossed the bloodstained notebook onto the table.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Paris

  “Jacques spoke English. I didn’t say he preferred it,” Henri said impatiently.

  Things had started amicably enough. Henri spoke perfect English, so Boyd had arrived alone, dropped off by the military attaché from the embassy. Henri had welcomed him into the small apartment with stiff formality. Henri was bulky but moved with the grace of an athlete. He was dressed in tight jeans and a black turtleneck shirt that seemed to accentuate the spread of his midsection. Boyd apologized for the delay in returning Jacques’ body and assured him that precautions were necessary as the disease Jacques was working with was so dangerous. Henri knew that already. Boyd had then asked why Jacques had written the note in French – a major blunder, as the French are very proud of their language.

  “I’m sorry,” Boyd responded to Henri’s flash of anger. “I’m working on this case and I’m not really a trained interviewer. I’ll just give you the notebook so you can read the message and then you tell me what you think I need to know.”

  Boyd opened his briefcase and handed the notebook to Henri.

  Wiping his eyes as he read, Henri was absorbed for several minutes as he read and re-read the note. Then he put the notebook on the table between them and walked to a window looking out on a tree-shaded street in front of his home and stood there.

  Boyd tried to imagine Jacques, as he was before the gulls got to his eyes and lips, here with Henri. How did that tattoo of the leopard fit into this overstuffed apartment with the modern art on the walls and the soft, muscular man sobbing at the window? Did Henri know Jacques had murdered two assistants –Willi in the village where he first captured Ebola, and Franz on the island? Was Jacques’ relationship with Henri spousal, business or revolutionary? It seemed spousal and, probably, business. Boyd was leaving the third possibility open until he heard more from Henri.

  Giving Henri some space, Boyd excused himself and went into the bathroom. Taking his time washing his hands he looked into the mirror and began to think about his own life. Certainly, there was nothing there to hold up as an example to young lovers. There was a woman in Colorado whom he’d asked to share his life. It never occurred to him that she might ask him to give up flying. She wouldn’t even consider leaving her tenured faculty position to take something in South Carolina so he could go back on active duty and have a better chance at getting into the next war in the first wave. When they recognized that neither would give up the one thing the other required, their interest waned. They still rang each other’s bells, but it was no longer music. He hadn’t even called to let her know when he’d left Shaw for Africa.

  “I have some pictures,” Henri said as Boyd re-entered the room. “The letters he wrote from Africa, some things we bought together, like that painting over there. And this,” and he laid the notebook back on the table between them. His eyes were red but dry.

  “So, he’d been gone for a while?”

  “Two years. He was a researcher at the Pasteur Institute. Jacques was working on a vaccine for some disease in swine and was invited to present part of his work at an Institute symposium on new vaccines. He’s not a full scientist, he never completed his thesis, but he was very good and always worked with the top scientists. At the end of the day, an American approached him and complimented him on his work. Jacques thought he was going to make a pass and was about to brush him off when he asked if Jacques would consider a job offer.”

  “Mosby?”

  “Yes. The man, Mosby, said Jacques would have to move to Africa for a year, maybe more. When Jacques expressed interest, Mosby made him pledge secrecy until they could meet again.”

  “And, did they?”

  “No. Mosby called the next day and offered Jacques three times his salary at the Institute plus expenses and a bonus if he was successful.”

  “Never met him again?”

  “Never. The money was wired into our account at the bank every month. While Jacques was in Africa, he lived entirely off his expense account. He came home for a few days every two months.”

  “What was the job? Did Jacques know what he would be doing?”

  “Oh, yes. It was clear from the beginning what he’d be doing. He was to move to Kinshasa and wait for an outbreak of Ebola. If he got there before the authorities and was able to get some blood without being detected, or traced, he would get a bonus of 500,000 Euros.”

  “What’s that in dollars?”

  “Six hundred forty six thousand at today’s exchange rate,” Henri said without hesitation.

  “That was fast.”

  “Sir, I’m a banker,” Henri said with a modest shrug.

  “Did Mosby pay up?”

  “Yes he did. Then he offered another 500,000 if Jacques could isolate the virus from the blood. He had Jacques travel to Victoria, Seychelles, from Kinshasa. From there a mysterious charter boat captain met him in the hotel bar, mentioned Mosby’s name and the next day he sailed out to the island. Everything was already there.”

  “There was another man on the island,” Boyd said, pausing to try to be as tactful as possible.

  “Franz.”

  “Yes.”

  “His assistant, a friend from the Institute. Jacques hired him to speed up the work.”

  “And one in Kinshasa.”

  “Willi. They were lovers,” Henri said darkly.

  “Did you ever go out there, to the Seychelles?”

  “Yes. Jacques isolated the virus quickly, in a few weeks. Then he separated RNA and freeze dried both. Then he had to infect monkeys with it and bring slides of monkey tissue along to prove it was Ebola. A boat picked him up and took him back to Victoria. Mosby called him at the hotel and told him to wait a month, so I came out.”

  “Why wait a month?”

  “To see if he got sick. Jacques thought Mosby was staying nearby, watching. Mosby was very careful and very patient. He called the hotel every two weeks. Coffee?”

  “Yes, thanks,” Boyd said, contemplating that Henri was involved in this from the beginning. “Then what?”

  “Mosby wanted Jacques to take some of the RNA, cut it up and splice part of it into something else and try it as a vaccine. He offered a million Euros for that. That was much harder to do, so Jacques hired Franz to go out there and help him.”

  “That’s when trouble started?”

  “Yes, he was there for a few months and then I got a call from your embassy that he’d been killed.”

  “Did he get the first two bonuses, a million Euros?”

  “Yes. It came by electronic transfer just like the monthly expense money.”

  “Any way to know where it came from?”

  A grin crossed Henri’s face as he poured boiling water into a shiny glass vacuum-filter coffeemaker.

  “I was wondering when we’d get to that. The money came through Citicorp in New York City. I talk to someone there every day in my job at the bank. My contact there knew where it was coming from. I just casually asked one day and he told me. The money originated from the Planters National Bank in Charleston, South Carolina.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Pamela Prescott

  “Boyd, we’ve got an FBI agent on the way down. She just called from the airport. Could you guys clean up just a bit and, check in the bathroom, she might need to, ah, whatever.” Ferguson rushed into the office from the Pentagon, speaking as he tossed his briefcase onto his desk.

  “Right, boss,” one of the officers said as they began stuffing donut bags and pizza boxes into the wastebaskets in the meeting room.

  “She has a law degree, and the Director’s office said she was the best they have at finding money that people want to hide,” Ferguson said, picking up coffee cups and taking them to the sink in the corner. Boyd had
never seen him do that.

  The front door opened and they hurried as conversation indicated a visitor at the reception desk.

  “Miss Prescott,” the receptionist opened the door.

  All eyes were on the door. All activity stopped.

  “Smells like a fraternity house.” Pamela Prescott stood there smiling. Her brown hair was braided into a businesslike bun and she wore an expensively tailored business suit. She carried a small, discrete briefcase.

  “Ah, Miss Prescott. Thank you so much for coming,” Ferguson said, wiping his hands and rushing to meet her. “I was on my way to meet you, and the Joint Staff went into special session and called me. Please forgive me for asking you to take a taxi.”

  “It’s quite alright, general. I was flattered by the appreciative glances of yet another Nigerian taxi driver.” She set her briefcase down and surveyed the room.

  Introductions were made. Joe and two other lieutenant colonels were in uniform. Boyd was not because his hair was now longer and not within standards. Pamela was “read in” to their project, meaning that she knew what was involved and acknowledged that it was classified and signed a statement as such.

  “We were here all weekend,” Ferguson said, sitting after collecting the security paperwork and nodding at the food packaging stuffed into the wastebaskets. “We’re on a short schedule, and we’ve hit a dead end. Boyd and Joe have just come back from East Africa with some very disturbing findings. Joe, could you show Miss Prescott what we’re up against?”

  Joe plugged in his computer and activated the flat-screen on the wall. He gave a slight wink at Boyd as the first picture came up. It was the picture the World Health Organization had sent them. Joe’s dry commentary quickly told the story of Ebola, the frantic radio transmission and the fire, and their visit to the island.

  “I’ve seen autopsies before, gentlemen,” Pamela said icily as the picture of the charred skull was replaced by the open chest and the bullet holes. Her initial irritation at having to endure what she thought was a boyish prank dissolved into interest as the show continued. She nodded her appreciation of the situation as Boyd related the events in Paris with Henri.

  “The Director’s office sent me the files on the Planters National Bank. I went over them on the plane. Pretty straightforward stuff,” she said, opening her briefcase. “Could you load this for me?” She handed Joe a flash drive.

  “Planters National is a small regional bank with a dozen branches in South Carolina and Georgia. Total assets last year were $2.2 billion.”

  “A billion dollars? That’s small?” Boyd broke in.

  Joe, too, looked curious.

  Pamela furrowed her brow and looked at Boyd, then Joe and Ferguson. She seemed to be weighing a sarcastic response, then lay the remote control on her briefcase.

  “You guys are not, uh, familiar with the banking industry, I take it. Shall I start with something a bit more basic?”

  “A billion dollars seems to be quite a lot of money,” Ferguson said. “You might characterize this bank in comparison with other regional banks and go on from there. If we need any remedial work we can get it later.”

  Even a mediocre general can control a meeting, Boyd thought.

  “Yes, well, the bank is a small player in the Southeast, maybe 20th. By contrast, Bank of America, headquartered in Charlotte, has $2 trillion in total assets, third in the nation.”

  Looking around at the room she added, “Assets include all their deposits. That isn’t all their money. Planters National is traded on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, so they’re also overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Directors own 20 percent of the stock, which is a lot for a bank holding company of their size. Their last audit was squeaky clean, and their profit and loss statement corresponds well with the shareholder’s report.”

  She paused. They all stared blankly at the screen.

  “You’re wondering how we get them to tell us where that money came from,” she said, putting the remote control back on the desk.

  “Yes, that’s why we called on the FBI,” Ferguson retorted.

  “It’s not that easy. They’re just a bank – a well capitalized, honestly run, regional bank. There are no signs of fraud, though this is just a preliminary report. If you have some indication, we could begin a full scale audit. The question of whether the bank is involved in those cash transfers as an agent or as a principal cannot be answered from information available publicly.”

  “Can’t we just subpoena their records?” Joe asked.

  “Sure, we can go to the U.S. Attorney and show him our information, and he could ask for their records. You’d get 10 gigabytes of data. Then what?”

  The officers had a pretty good idea who might have to sort through that 10 gigabytes of data. They were silent.

  “So?” Ferguson, as usual, jumped right in.

  “That means it’s their business,” she snapped. “What a bank is, and who owns it, and who makes how much from it, is public. Individual services for a client are not. We can ask them, of course. If they are in a mood to cooperate with the government, they can tell us. If they even know. A wire transfer of less than a million dollars, and now almost half a year ago, is going to be like a needle in a haystack, even for a small bank like this.”

  “A customer list might be enough,” Joe said. “I’d recognize any major viral research or pharmaceutical companies.”

  “They’ve broken no laws?”

  “Murder, times two. At least,” Boyd said.

  “Murder is not a crime a bank can commit. A customer list goes into the area of their proprietary interest. We’d have to show the U.S. Attorney that a crime has been or is being committed.”

  Pamela sat back, seeming confident the next step would take this investigation into someone else’s arena, leaving her to either play a peripheral role or bow out altogether.

  ”Miss Prescott, this is a matter of national security,” Ferguson said. “I explained that to the Director. We need to get to who sent that money, and we need to do it now, and we need to do it without them knowing we’re looking. Now, how can we do that?”

  Ferguson had pulled the general officer’s favorite trick; they must learn it charm school right after their promotion is announced. Challenge. Push. Break down the façade, then skewer the responsible officer in front of their peers. Humiliate. Create a reputation that makes people wet their pants at the mere thought of not having a complete answer. It didn’t work with Pamela Prescott.

  “You can’t force them to tell you their private business unless there is some evidence a crime has been committed. You can ask!”

  The rising crescendo of anger left the room in silence as her final word reverberated. Not content to leave it at that she stood and faced the general.

  “You guys have me in here on some sort of half-baked scheme that has nothing to do with bank fraud, which is my field. You should just go down to Charleston and ask the banker who sent that money to Paris. If he knows, and isn’t involved, he’ll tell you. Why would a bank be into something this weird anyway? You don’t need me.”

  She held her ground, standing at the head of the conference room table red-faced and glaring at Ferguson.

  Boyd suppressed a grin as he stole a glance at Joe. It was fun to watch someone take on a general. Being only a captain, he’d never seen that before. He noticed that Pamela was a robust girl, and the top button on the worsted wool suit she wore was under some tension, like the middle button on a man’s sport coat when the belly gets out of hand.

  Ferguson stood, his height immediately dominating.

  “No need to get excited here Miss Prescott. Perhaps we’ve all had enough today. I have to go back to the Pentagon. Let’s break for today and we’ll pick this back up tomorrow.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He walked to the door, opened it, turned and added, “Right after lunch.”

  When the door closed the silence lasted a full minute. Each seemed to be listening to be sure he
was gone.

  “Well,” Joe said, packing up, smiling. “See you guys tomorrow.”

  “Two years in Oklahoma,” Pamela erupted, as she threw the remaining papers and her flash drive into the briefcase and slammed it shut. “The heart of the ignorance belt. Bad food, bad hotels, hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and I catch the slickest thief in the 10th Federal Reserve District.” She slammed her chair back under the table. “I get home and the telephone rings. Ah, I think, someone calling me with a word of thanks, an ‘attagirl.’ ”

  The officers sat in awe. The force of her anger animated her features, giving an intensity of feeling to what had seemed a mask when she first arrived.

  “But no! Your general, living up to the worst of the military stereotypes, a pea-brained martinet, somehow gets my number and gets me sent to Washington in August. Great!”

  She scanned the room as if she expected one of the surprised officers to respond.

  “How about a drink?” Boyd asked.

  “Yes.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Black Ops, Off the Books

  “Double Jack Daniel’s, on the rocks, water by,” Pamela said, not waiting for the waitress to speak, slamming her briefcase into the booth in the bar atop the Sheraton hotel overlooking the runways at Reagan National Airport.

  “Bud. Longneck if you have one,” Boyd said, amused at her anger and her coping mechanisms.

  “That man, the sheer arrogance,” she said as she slid her briefcase to the back. “The most intensely unpleasant person I’ve ever met. Who does he think he is?”

  “My boss,” Boyd said quietly, sliding in across from her. He looked out at an American 737 on final, approaching from the east, appreciating its controlled descent to touch down with a burst of smoke as all the tires hit the runway at the middle of the dense white stripes. “Navy landing,” he added, nodding at the plane.