Death of a Pharaoh

by Death of a Pharaoh (mobi)

  A year later, he bought a condo in one of Pittsburgh’s finest buildings and paid cash. He even had a NFL player as a neighbor. He drove a sleek high-end sports car and was shopping around for a sailboat. It all seemed too good to be true and that is when he received his first visit from Jeffrey Stevenson.

  He showed up without an appointment; something that Dmitri despised and his gut reaction was to tell his secretary that he was busy.

  “He insists on seeing you Professor Sonkin,” his secretary assured him over the intercom, “and he says that he won’t leave until you agree to talk to him,” she reported with just a little too much glee in her voice.

  Dmitri paused for a moment wondering how best to gain back control of the situation. He pushed the button, “Alright, tell him that I’ll see him in five minutes.” That will teach him. If he walked in unannounced then he could just cool his jets for a while.

  Some dust on the face of his very expensive Cartier watch occupied most of his attention while he timed the five minutes to make certain that he didn’t admit his visitor a second too soon. He had just licked his fingertip in order to remove a particularly stubborn smudge when the door to his office burst open and in marched a tall heavyset man wearing an exquisite bespoke suit, followed by his very flustered secretary mumbling apologies.

  “It’s alright Gertrude. That will be fine, just shut the door and hold my calls,” Dmitri instructed before turning to address his appointment. “Mr. Stevenson I presume, please….” he pointed at a chair.

  His visitor sat down and waited, staring directly at Dmitri.

  “How can I be of assistance?” Dmitri asked after a very uncomfortable ten seconds.

  “Very kind of you to make time for me Professor Sonkin, I must apologize for arriving without an appointment,” he remarked then continued without waiting for an acknowledgement. “I am an attorney and I represent a group of companies that have recently formed an association to pursue mutually beneficial goals,” he announced. “I am certain you understand that the names of these businesses need to remain confidential but I can tell you that many of them are already subscribers of your very successful trends newsletter,” he assured Dmitri.

  “Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Dmitri interjected.

  “Professor Sonkin, please do not interrupt,” he responded curtly and Dmitri sank back in his chair like a puppy who had just been scolded for peeing on the carpet.

  “My clients, against my better advice I might add, have asked me to present you with a very attractive offer of collaboration that will make your current income seem like mere pocket change,” he boasted.

  Dmitri couldn't help but laugh at the audacity of the statement. “I don’t mean to sound professorial Mr. Stevenson but I think that you should have done your homework before bursting in here making outlandish statements,” he scolded his visitor. “Although my accounts are not a matter of public record, I can assure you that my current activities are making me a millionaire and….”

  Stevenson cut him off before he could continue. “Professor Sonkin, I have copies of your income tax returns for the past ten years and I can tell you the current balances in your checking and savings accounts to the penny,” he spate. “I also know how much you are paying that big-assed hooker that you have set up in an apartment so that you can knock her around every week in order to get a hard-on and feel like a man again after your wife demonstrated who really had the balls in the family.”

  His words impacted like automatic gunfire and Dmitri’s head spun while he tried to figure out how this perfect stranger could know so much about his private affairs.

  “Now that I have your undivided attention,” he stated, “please allow me to explain my employer’s very generous offer.”

  Dmitri coughed nervously. He was certain that Stevenson was used to getting his way in most situations. “Of course, please continue.”

  “The Consortium, as we shall call it from now on, is grateful for the profits that they have made as a result of your advice. However, my employers have developed a very ambitious investment plan over the next few years. It requires..,” he paused a few seconds searching for the correct term, “…a stable economic situation that can be guaranteed to last for a minimum of two years without significant changes in a series of market parameters that I shall outline shortly,” he smiled at Dmitri as if he had just agreed to sell him a used car.

  “If you are able to guarantee these conditions, we will deposit the sum of $75 million dollars in an offshore account in your name as well as make twenty-four monthly payments of $5 million as long as you stay within the agreed parameters.”

  Dmitri felt stunned. He didn’t have to be a mathematician to understand that this guy was offering him almost two hundred million in just over two years. It was beyond his wildest dreams. Even with his current income, he could never earn that amount in a lifetime.

  “I’m all ears, Mr. Stevenson.”

  “It is quite simple Professor Sonkin. What my client wants is chaos, after all that is your specialty is it not? Chaos?”

  Sonkin tried to hide his annoyance as the attorney repeated the same error that most people made regarding his area of expertise.

  “They want a bear market that will last a total of eight quarters and a significant enough drop in global GDP to qualify the period as a recession,” he stated bluntly as if he had just finished reading his Christmas list.

  “That is a tall order Mr. Stevenson," yet even as he spoke the words, Sonkin knew that he could deliver with time to spare and he was already thinking of how to spend some of the money.

  That meeting was fourteen months ago and the payments piled up in the Cayman Islands with breathtaking regularity. Everything chugged along according to plan; the Consortium was on track with their goal for global economic domination and Dmitri's fabulous new sailboat neared completion in Norway.

  Sonkin understood that for the market to change she had to travel to Senegal. He didn’t know why and didn’t really care. He just knew that if she went to Africa before schedule, he would be a dead man.

  He wondered why she so drastically deviated from the norm after ten years of remarkable predictability; until now, there were always at least five years between trips. Based on her history, he hadn’t anticipated her to return to Senegal for eighteen or twenty months. Two days ago, she booked a flight to Dakar scheduled to leave in less than three weeks. It was an unmitigated disaster. He promised the Consortium that the current market conditions would remain conducive to their business plan for at least another year. They had invested hundreds of billions and in the process, making him wealthy beyond all his dreams. Now everything was at risk.

  For a brief moment, he thought of taking all his money and escaping to some remote island but he knew that they would find him. The members of the Consortium might well be highly respected captains of industry with refined country club manners but if he screwed this up, they wouldn’t hesitate to have him killed. And that is precisely why they insisted that 80% of his earnings from them be placed in escrow on the condition that everything would revert back to the Consortium should he meet an untimely death before completion of his contract.

  The problem was that up until a week ago, Dmitri had never explained to his employers that all of his success depended on following the lead of a retired office manager from Philadelphia who seemed to have a direct link with the powers of the universe. Call her whatever you may: clairvoyant, an angel or God’s CEO on earth! All he knew was that she had never been wrong. Every five years or so she would travel to Senegal for a month, always preceded by a sustained period of economic instability coupled with an increasingly accelerated occurrence of natural disasters that only exacerbated the underlying economic weakness. The last earthquake in California only killed a few hundred but it put the world's stock markets on life support.

  Whenever the planet was on the brink of natural and economic meltdown, this tiny frail woman disappeared for a month
to Africa and then as if by magic the earthquakes, droughts and tsunamis abated and the economies of the world soon entered a period of sustained and bullish growth. Dmitri Sonkin had no idea how this phenomena occurred. His mathematical mind refused to contemplate the possibility of divine intervention. All he knew was that someone was screwing with the laws of the universe and it wasn’t fair to people like him who worked so hard to do the same thing but failed.

  Five days ago, he lunched with Stevenson and revealed the full extent of the dilemma. If the Consortium’s pit-bull attorney was surprised by the knowledge that Sonkin cribbed all of his success he didn’t mentioned it. It was no secret that he never had been a big fan of Dmitri’s. Still he was surprisingly understanding and supportive. As usual he ordered an absurdly expensive wine, in this case a bottle of Romanée-Conti 1990 from Burgundy that didn’t even make the maitre d’ blink despite the almost $7,000 price. Dmitri had grown accustomed to Stevenson’s vulgar excesses. This one galled him even more since he offered to pick up the tab just a few minutes earlier in order to ingratiate himself with his lunch companion.

  It took the sommelier more than five maddening minutes to decant the wine then offer a taste for Stevenson’s approval. The lawyer merely waved his hand dismissively and waited for the man to leave.

  “Do you have all the information?” Stevenson asked as he swirled the wine in his glass before taking a deep whiff of the bouquet.

  Dmitri nodded yes.

  Stevenson slowly replaced the wine glass on the table and scrutinized Dmitri’s face carefully. “Are you certain that she is the problem?” he quizzed the professor.

  Dmitri didn’t even hesitate, “Of course! I’d bet my life on it.” He instantly regretted using the phrase. He knew that Stevenson would take full advantage of the slip.

  Stevenson remained silent for a moment before posing a question.

  “My dear Dmitri have you ever tried a bottle of Romanée-Conti 1990? He didn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “Some connoisseurs suggest that if you can only have one more glass of wine before you die then it should be this one.”

  A wave of nausea hit Dmitri and he started to sweat profusely.

  “May I pour you a glass while you tell me what my employers want to hear?” Stevenson added with an unctuous smile.

  Dmitri knew only too well what they wanted. In previous meetings, Stevenson outlined in exquisite detail the staggering sums of money that the Consortium had invested based on his predictions. Their strategists needed at least twelve more months under current market conditions to complete the takeover of global petroleum production and refining capabilities. Currently, the group manufactured over 70% of the world’s steel and refined almost 60% of its aluminum. They controlled all of the major sources of such vital commodities as copper, zinc, nickel and silver. Although no one could prove it, the consortium counted on a majority of the voting shares at more than half of the Fortune 500 companies. Lately, they focused their interest on nuclear power plants and promising diamond plays in the Canadian Arctic.

  In ten short years, the consortium became the largest multinational in the history of the world but only a handful of people even knew it existed. Economists around the world began to warn of dangerous levels of corporate concentration in key sectors and watch-dog agencies fretted that they could no longer guarantee that the world’s major commodity and stock markets traded under free market conditions. If anyone asked the experts who was behind it all, they only shook their heads and rambled on about the need to strengthen anti-trust legislation.

  Dmitri chose his next words carefully. He took a sip of the wine. It truly was magnificent he thought to himself as he turned and looked Stevenson directly in the eye. “As I reiterated in our telephone conversation yesterday, I have studied this woman for over ten years. If we delay her trip to Senegal there is no threat to your plans,” he stated with great conviction.

  "Most interesting, indeed, Professor, I am certain that someday it will make a fascinating book. But for your sake there had better not be anything else you have failed to tell me."

  Stevenson reached into the left breast pocket of his impeccable silk blend suit and removed a white business card. He slid it across the table toward Dmitri who put on his reading glasses before picking it up. It had two telephone numbers printed on the front, both with New Jersey area codes. There was no name on the card. Dmitri looked up at Stevenson and waited for the explanation that he knew was coming.

  “When you get back to the office, fax the contact information and a photograph of the woman to the first number. Wait exactly one hour then call the second number to confirm receipt and to relay your instructions.”

  The rest of the lunch consisted of remarkable food in frustratingly small portions and equally parsimonious snippets of banal conversation that belied the momentous events that they were both about to set into motion. The bill with a second bottle of a more modest vintage and with the tip included was $11,000.

  Dmitri still fumed over the expense two hours later when he sat at his desk and dialed the second number. Someone answered on the third ring.

  "Yeah?"

  "Did you get the fax with the picture and contact information?"

  "Yeah."

  Not a very talkative fellow, Sonkin thought. "Make it look like a mugging, maybe a broken hip or a badly fractured leg. I need her out of commission for at least a year."

  The person on the other end hung up without saying goodbye. Sonkin replaced the receiver like he suspected it of harboring bubonic plague then sat staring at the phone. He felt sordid like when you wake up with a terrible hangover and discover that the whore you hired was much uglier than either of the two women you rejected in the bar hours earlier, had cigarette burns on her butt and smelled like the bum you almost tripped over on the way to the car. Dmitri felt an overwhelming urge to wash his hands.

  Stevenson told him that it might take several days for the right opportunity to arise.

  “One can’t rush these things,” he assured him.

  He advised him to be patience, to lay low and most of all to keep monitoring the trading activity to make certain that nothing changed. With all the waiting, Dmitri’s paranoia got the best of him. He poured through the newspapers every day looking for any reports about a mugging while he waited for a call from Stevenson. Today was no different. Somehow he managed to pull it together long enough to brush his teeth then called the concierge desk to ask them to bring him the morning papers.

  “Just leave them at the front door,” he snapped. He hated how they were always holding out their hands expecting a tip. For what he paid in condo fees every month they should suck his dick for free. He fixed himself a coffee with his fancy espresso machine while he waited.

  He heard the thump of the bundle four minutes later. He sipped on his coffee for a moment so that whoever was outside would have enough time to give up. There was no one in the hallway when he bent down to retrieve the packet but he thought he heard a door close a few yards along the corridor. Dmitri believed his neighbors spied on him.

  He was still trying to figure out who it might have been when he started to flip through the morning edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He spotted a short article buried deep in the local section that chilled his blood. It mentioned the death of a senior citizen in the Cedar Park neighborhood at the hands of an unidentified assailant. Even though the motive appeared to be robbery, investigators were baffled since there had been few indications of a struggle and the murder had all the hallmarks of a professional hit, rather than a robbery gone awry. The report identified the victim as Fannie Carter, 75 years of age and a retired office manager.

  Dmitri’s face turned as white as the milk in the jug just to the left of his shaking hand. How could she be dead? He specifically told the contact he only wanted her out of commission for a few months. He started to feel sick to his stomach when the telephone rang suddenly. His jangled nerves made him jump enough to spill half his cup of c
offee on his expensive beige carpet. The caller ID indicated it was Stevenson.

  “Seen the papers yet?” the lawyer inquired with a chill in his voice.

  Dmitri was right, they were watching him. Fuelled by caffeine, fear and anger, he exploded at the lawyer. “That was not our deal. It was supposed to be a broken leg or a fractured hip. Murder was never on the table. I have my limits.”

  “So do I Professor and your self-righteous indignation is testing them. Be very careful what you say because no one is indispensable,” he threatened. “Did you think that I would be willing to risk a rapid recovery? Get real, Professor. This is the big time. No room for the tender-hearted.”

  It suddenly dawned on Dmitri that he used the phone at his office to call the murderer.

  “What if the police start nosing around?” he sniffed.

  “Pray that they don’t. But just in case, I have a recording of your incriminating conversation with our mutual friend.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Dmitri screamed.

  “Tusk, tusk Professor; no use dragging my dear dead mother into this. Just hunker down for a few weeks and keep a close watch on the trading activity of the fund. We won’t tolerate any more surprises. Is that understood?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Palace of the Holy Office, Vatican City: 17:28 CEST September 13, 2016