He’d been receiving phone calls from angry peers all morning and had sold out of his substantial position in the company when the stock had cratered twenty-seven percent. Many of his colleagues hadn’t been so lucky, and losses of fifty percent or more were common. Winters did his best to dodge the accusations of complicity in the company’s scheme, but he was able to point out his own substantial losses to prove that he’d been taken as much by surprise as anyone.
His aide knocked on the office door and then entered, his expression somber.
“Still a bloodbath,” Winters announced. “And getting worse by the minute.”
“Nobody’s got any shares to short,” the aide said. “I called all the usual suspects.”
“Damn,” Winters said, muting the television with the remote. As soon as he’d sold his shares, he’d asked his broker to short sell as many as he could locate – short selling being the practice of selling shares he didn’t own, hoping to profit when he later bought them back at a lower price, with the spread between the sale price and his later buy price being his profit. The problem was that the law required that traders borrow the shares they sold, and if none were available to borrow, they couldn’t legally sell short. Of course, that didn’t stop the big brokers from engaging in “naked short sales,” where no shares were borrowed, but ordinary speculators couldn’t break the rules with impunity, and on a hot issue like Ravstar, nobody would risk getting caught to help a congressman out.
Winters had gotten a call from Angelo an hour earlier, and he’d been summoned to lunch at one of the mobster’s restaurants. He checked his watch and struggled to his feet, feeling ten years older than when he’d arrived at the office that morning.
“I’ve got a lunch appointment. I’ll be out for the next…two hours.”
The aide looked surprised. “I didn’t see anything on your agenda…”
“It just came up.”
“Very good. I’ll block out the time and juggle anything that arises.”
“I don’t want to be interrupted,” Winters warned.
“Yes, sir.”
It was a blustery day, and Winters decided to walk the six blocks to the restaurant, his doctor’s cautions about his weight and drug use goading him to at least that much of a concession to fitness. He arrived fifteen minutes later, heart hammering in his chest, and a pair of seedy-looking thugs in ill-fitting blazers nodded to him as he approached. One of them opened the restaurant door for Winters and he stepped inside, the dining room empty except for a single table at the back, where Angelo was sitting.
“Come on in,” the mobster said, waving to him.
Winters crossed the empty floor and took the offered seat across from Angelo, who looked as untroubled as ever.
“You want some coffee?” Angelo asked. “Or something stiffer? Anything, just say the word.”
“I could use a Scotch on the rocks,” Winters said.
“Done,” Angelo said, and snapped his fingers. A server materialized by his side within moments, and he ordered the congressman’s drink and asked for a bottle of mineral water for himself, his espresso cup empty in front of him. The man rushed to get their order, and Angelo eyed Winters for a moment and then shook his head. “What a train wreck, huh?”
“Unbelievable,” Winters agreed.
“Don’t need to tell you this wasn’t a good day in the market for me.”
“Join the club.”
“We had hundreds of millions riding on these pricks, and they screwed us. All of us. Stupid. I mean, seriously. How did they expect this not to come out?” Angelo fumed.
“I don’t know. I just did as you requested and got them the contract. But now? Not going to happen, obviously. Every agency involved is going to do a proctology exam on them before they allow anything to be acquired.”
“I don’t have to tell you how unhappy I am. It’s not your fault, but still, I hate losing.”
The drinks arrived, and Winters drained half his glass in a swallow. “You’re not the only one who’s taken a hit.”
“I can imagine. But don’t worry. We’ll make it back.” Angelo glanced at the menu. “The cannelloni is amazing. You should try it. The chef is a magician.”
“Sounds good,” Winters said, his interest in food nil at the moment but not wanting to offend the mobster. Angelo held up two fingers and the server nodded and left with their menus.
Angelo sat back and regarded Winters. “So this one’s dead, but we’ll have something else. We always do. And you’re going to help us make it all back, as well as help yourself. One hand washes the other, am I right?”
Winters frowned and looked down. “I thought this was it for us. A one-shot deal.”
Angelo laughed. “Seriously? Come on, get real. We’re married now. You’re in this as deep as we are. The good news is we’ll help you dig out. Within a year this will all be forgotten, and we’ll have made it all back and more.”
Winters was clearly uncomfortable when he returned the mobster’s stare. “I don’t know. They’re going to be looking at me pretty hard after this. I burned a lot of bridges ramrodding it through.”
Angelo waved a hand. “Nonsense. There’s money to be made. I’ll let you know how as soon as I know myself. I got guys working on it. This is just a bump in the road.”
Winters swallowed dryly, the single malt Scotch suddenly tasting like turpentine. He hadn’t honestly expected the mobster to let him off the hook, but he’d figured it was worth a shot. Unfortunately, his worst suspicions had been correct, and there was no way the mob was going to allow him to wriggle out of helping them.
He sighed and drained his drink. He supposed there were worse things than being the mob’s bitch. At least he’d get rich helping them. In the end, as long as the video never surfaced and he made out like a bandit, was he really so badly off? So he did Angelo a favor now and again. It wasn’t like his peers didn’t do the same for a host of special interests. It was the Washington way – you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
Winters held up his glass, and the server was by his side in seconds, taking it wordlessly. “Make this one a double,” he said, which brought a grin to Angelo’s lips.
“We’re going to get along fine, Congressman. Just fine. You’ll see,” he said, and took a swig of his water, his eyes dancing with good humor in spite of the financial goring he’d suffered.
Winters nodded. “Might as well enjoy the ride.”
“That’s right. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll see that you make out like a bandit by the time we’re done.”
Winters managed a tight smile and nodded again. “Works for me.”
Chapter 44
Ambergris Caye, Belize, Central America
Leah ambled down the white sand beach, a gentle wind from the Caribbean stirring her hair, the sun hot on her skin. She’d arrived the prior day and had spent the evening walking along the waterfront streets of San Pedro, talking to bartenders and the clerks at internet cafés that dotted the strand, showing them the photograph she’d brought from California.
Adam had been able to track the IP address of the Ravstar report to Ambergris Caye, and Leah had flown in to spend a long weekend following a hunch that had grown when she’d received another anonymous email from a different address than the first, containing a summary much like the original report but lacking most of the measurements and a great deal of the detail. She’d naturally assumed that the original report had been sent to her by Rayansh; but if so, then why send her the later email containing a poor imitation of the first? Given the amount of time between when she’d last spoken with the engineering director and when she’d received the first email, it would have been logistically improbable for him to make it to Belize and send her the file, which meant either he’d been able to spoof a Belize IP to mask the sender’s location, or someone in Belize had sent it to her, and the second file was actually from Rayansh.
If that was the case, there could only be one person who could have sent th
e original.
And that person was dead.
Leah had gotten her first lead that morning when she’d stopped in at the southernmost internet café on the waterfront, owned by a friendly Russian man who hadn’t recognized the photograph, but who’d told her that his morning girl worked the first half of the day and might be able to help her. Leah had spent the night in a weathered hotel on the beach and had been up early, eager to test her theory, painfully aware of the passage of time given her flight home, scheduled to depart that late afternoon.
The woman was a local and had grinned when Leah had shown her the photo.
“Oh, ya. He look a little different with da beard, but ya, he come here now and den,” she’d said.
“When was he last here?” Leah had asked, trying to contain her excitement.
“Oh, I don know. Maybe couple a days, ya?”
“Do you know anything about where he’s staying?”
The woman’s eyes had narrowed. “What you be wanting wit him, anyhow?”
“He left me at the altar,” Leah had replied, saying the first thing that popped into her head.
“Did he now? Well, dat ain’t none of my business, fo’ sure. But maybe you should talk at some a da dive shops on da beach. I seen him wif some fish da odda day. Look like he spear ’em, he did.”
“That’s great,” Leah had said, and was now working her way along the beach, showing the photo to anyone who would look.
Late in the morning, she hit the jackpot, and one of the clerks at a dive shop nodded in recognition. “Oh, ya. He out wit da captain, he is. Be back quick time, I ’spect.”
Leah had settled in on the veranda of the clapboard building, sipping a soda in the shade. She’d sent Adam a text sharing what she’d learned, and his response had sounded guarded.
Be careful. You’re playing with fire.
She supposed that she was, but she had to know the truth. All through her investigation, she’d felt like she’d been missing some key puzzle pieces, and the internet clerk’s recognition of the photo had knocked several into place. So her hunch had been right, but she didn’t know the whys or the hows, and it wasn’t in her nature to leave loose ends hanging. Leah traded in facts, and if she’d overlooked any, she’d never be able to live with herself, especially given that this was personal – Heather, with all her faults, was her friend, and Leah owed it to her to get answers.
She sat up when a thirty-foot skiff roared toward the small wooden pier in front of the dive shop, with only two men aboard: a man with a stained captain’s hat cocked on his head and skin the color of coal operating the outboard motor, and a white man in the bow, his linen shirt flapping in the breeze, wraparound sunglasses masking his eyes. A small boy ran from the shop, caught the bow line, and expertly tied off the boat as the captain reversed thrust and drove the boat’s stern against the pilings. The boy took the rope the captain handed him, and then the engine died, leaving the area silent.
The white man climbed a rusting steel ladder mounted to the pilings and stepped onto the pier with a stringer of fish in hand. Leah stood motionless on the deck, waiting for him to approach. He spotted her when he was halfway down the length of the pier, and his pace slowed as he held her stare. When he was only footsteps away, Leah set down her soda on the table and spoke.
“Hello, Richard.”
Richard’s expression faltered, and then the wan smile that had been in place as he’d approached returned. “Leah, right? How did you find me?”
“IP.”
He grunted. “Damn. Sloppy of me.”
“It was,” she agreed.
“So now what? Is Heather with you?”
Leah shook her head. “She doesn’t know I’m here.” Leah studied his face, noting the week-old beard and the dark tan that lent him the air of a beachcomber or a smuggler. “I want to hear it from you. The whole thing. Where the money went, why you did this. Everything.”
He flashed white teeth at her and held up the fish. “I better put these on ice. This could take a while.”
“You’re not giving me the slip, Richard,” Leah said.
He laughed. “Hard to do that in a place the size of San Pedro. Come inside with me if you want. The dive master has a fridge.”
Richard gave the clerk his stringer and told him he’d be back for the fish later. He turned to Leah and slid his sunglasses onto the top of his head. “You hungry? I’m starved. I know a great place one block off the main drag. Cold beer, and the blackened fish is incredible.”
“I could eat,” Leah said.
“Great. Follow me.”
The restaurant had a white sand floor and a rowdy local clientele, and the waitresses seemed to know Richard, who greeted the women like they were family. They took seats on one of the picnic benches that served as the dining area and ordered blackened fish, Richard drinking a Belikin beer, Leah a diet Coke. When the waitress left, Leah considered him with a neutral expression.
“So how does it feel to be dead?” she asked.
He grinned, but the humor never reached his eyes. “Never better. I should have done this years ago.”
“How did you pull it off? Couldn’t have been easy.”
“If you know the right people, anything’s possible.”
“Explain.”
He regarded her, his face now serious. “You can’t print a word of this.”
“I’ll decide what I can and can’t do.”
“You do and you’ll never be safe.”
“From who?” she fired back.
“Let me tell you a story. We’ll call it a hypothetical.”
“I don’t deal in hypotheticals.”
“Humor me.” The drinks arrived, and after he took a sip of his beer, he set it down and asked the waitress for a glass with ice. She left to get the glass, and Richard’s gaze lingered on her before returning to Leah. “Did you know that the DOD and the CIA are involved in venture capital?”
“The DOD and CIA? No. Are you going to try to tell me that you’re CIA?”
“Of course not. This is hypothetical. But let’s say that the CIA funds a who’s who of technology companies that are instrumental to emerging areas deemed to be of national security interest. And let’s say that along the way, our paths cross, and I attract their attention as someone who can help them move money with deniability. Nothing super spy like, just funding companies that strike their fancy, that’s all.”
“You expect me to believe you were running money for the CIA?”
The waitress set his glass on the table and departed. Richard poured the glass full and took a cautious sip. “It’s so hot here that the beer gets undrinkable in a few minutes. This way it stays cold.” He took another sip and smiled. “So anyway, I do them favors. Fund companies I normally wouldn’t, a few things like that. Everything works out well, and nobody’s the wiser. Then I run into some trouble with the feds. Apparently a few of my investors might be, how shall I say it, not the most reputable sorts, and a handful of them have landed on the feds’ radar. So they come after me, thinking they’ll get to my investors through me.”
“You mean Marco. I know about him.”
Richard’s eyes widened slightly and then returned to normal. “Great. Then I can cut to the chase. Marco is…he’s not someone to mess around with. Anyway, his people must have heard that I was being investigated, and that set them on edge. Then the engineering guy from Ravstar approached me when I was playing golf with Marco, and handed me the file you received – stupid move, because Marco was already suspicious because of the investigation, which at that point I knew nothing about. Anyway, he must have smelled a rat, because the next thing I know my car blows up, and I know something’s badly wrong. So I go dark until I can figure out what’s going on, and the next day the feds are tearing apart my office. I put two and two together and figure out that Marco’s people want me out of the picture – and they never let go once they’ve earmarked you for extermination. That leaves me two choices: get killed or
commit suicide. Only way they quit is if you’re dead. So I called my CIA buddies and told them I wanted out, and that they needed to help. Which they did. End of story.”
Leah thought for a minute. “The timeline’s all wrong. You started liquidating assets months ago.”
“That had nothing to do with this.”
“Then why? Your girlfriend?”
Another laugh. “Not at all. I needed to raise some serious money so I could trade options on Ravstar without violating the SEC regulations about having to disclose positions, much less have them accuse me of trading on inside information. I knew from Marco that the company was going to land some big contracts, and I figured I could turn three million into twelve if I played it right – all offshore and off the radar.”
“So it had nothing to do with Heather?” Leah asked.
He shook his head. “That was just a fringe benefit. Did she tell you that she was banging Marco? Oh, that’s right. Of course she did. I forgot.”
Leah’s mouth flopped open, but she recovered quickly. “How can you know that?”
“The CIA is an amazing group. If you ask them to help you, oh, I don’t know, turn on the mic on a cell phone without the user knowing it’s on so you can listen in on them? Easy as pie. I did that with Heather once I committed suicide.” He paused. “Don’t look at me like that. I wanted to make sure she was going to be okay. I don’t have anything against her, but I was afraid maybe Marco would get suspicious and go after her to see if she knew anything about what I was involved in.”
“You stole her money,” Leah said.
“Is that how you see it? She’s going to get a ton from the insurance. More than she would have gotten if I’d left the money in place. So in my own way, I took care of her. Besides, she’s better off with me dead – unless you screw it up for her and tell her I’m still alive, in which case she gets nothing from insurance and nothing from me.”
“You lost the money? All of it?”
He laughed again as the fish arrived. He speared a forkful and munched on it, rolling his eyes in approval. “I lost some, but when I read the report, I knew that the company was going to take a bullet to the head. So I unwound my positions and took a massive short position using put options. Of course I couldn’t do that with the fund, and I sure as hell couldn’t tell Marco what was up or he would have sold his holdings and tunneled the price, messing it up for me in the process. So the best solution was to jump off the bridge and then take care of business out of the limelight.” He smiled again. “I did very well with that play. Not Gulfstream well, but well enough so I’ll never have to worry about money again.”
A Girl Betrayed (A Leah Mason suspense thriller Book 2) Page 25