by RD Gupta
“I’m a little fuzzy on what the issue is, Mr. Wheaton. Enlighten me.”
“Ah, well, I’m afraid Blackenford Capital Management is in arrears on its dues. Seven months, actually. And the twenty-five thousand a month slip fee for the Valkyrie—beautiful vessel by the way—which puts the total at eight hundred seventy-five thousand.”
Jarrod blinked. Clearly, this was the Wall Street version of the twilight zone and he hadn’t seen the memo. He would have to get on Gwen for not putting this on his calendar.
“I really wouldn’t impose,” Wheaton continued, “but the construction of the club, the reclamation of the dock area, the Port Authority licenses, the artificial island—all that was done on borrowed money, and the club has debt service and principal to pay. In view of Mr. Blackenford’s position as a former president of the club, I have kept this ‘off camera’ from the board, but I will have to make full disclosure if this is not brought current very soon.”
Jarrod let a twinge of indignation creep into his voice as he replied, “Mr. Wheaton, I appreciate your bringing this to my attention. Confidentially, I will share with you that Blackenford Capital Management just finished the best financial performance month in its history. I’m not aware of what the administrative hang-up is, but I will rattle our controller’s cage and get this taken care of.”
Wheaton beamed, his capped teeth framed by artificially tanned cheeks. “Thank you so much. That’s very good of you. I saw you were on your way out. Can I have the club limousine drop you somewhere?”
Jarrod smiled back. “No thanks. I have the company town car this evening.”
Assuming it hasn’t been repossessed.
CHAPTER FIVE
New York City
“Here we are, Mr. Stryker.”
A muted Jarrod Stryker said, “Thanks, Jimmy,” and exited the Lincoln. It was late morning. After returning home, he’d lain in bed, wide-awake for most of the night until a fitful sleep finally overcame him before dawn.
Jarrod Traynor Stryker had grown up as an air force brat, an only child to a senior enlisted tech sergeant who’d kept F-16s flying for thirty years. As a boy, he’d seen the world growing up—Germany, Italy, Japan, and Utah—but always from the cheap seats. His parents were solid folks, from Alabama, but the lack of money was always a pall that hung over them—a jalopy of a car, his mom wearing a humble wardrobe, slim pickings under the tree at Christmas. So it was early on that he decided he wanted more.
School came easy for him—effortless, in fact—as did sports. He landed a football scholarship to Auburn, but once he tried lacrosse, he switched. That and a summa cum laude in French catapulted him into a Rhodes Scholarship, and he was off to Oxford for a year.
To shore up the money issue, he figured he’d go to where the high priests of money earned their spurs, and that was the Harvard Business School, where a Rhodes Scholarship was an automatic admit.
He loved Cambridge and even toyed with the idea of hanging around for a doctorate, but Wall Street had beckoned all those years ago, and with it came the possibility of a comfortable existence—an attractive prospect for a former air force brat who grew up poor and wanted more early on. Investment banking seemed to be the ticket. He interviewed with all the big firms—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Lazard. Offers flowed in. But what caught his eye was a group of Goldman senior partners who had just split off to form their own firm—Ashford Capital—to do business with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. Trotting the globe looking for buy-side opportunities in the billions seemed like the ticket for him. And the money—155K right out of B-school.
He signed on with the new firm and helped them get settled into their new digs on the sixty-second floor in the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Then there was the abscess on a back molar. That morning he had to rush to a sunrise appointment with a dentist. The Novocain hadn’t even worn off when he was paying off a cab after the ride back to the office. He heard a droning sound before a cataclysmic explosion knocked him to the ground.
The shock of having his future wiped out in the blink of an eye was beyond the pale. He moved back to Alabama and lived with his parents—a twenty-five-year-old man with lofty credentials and dim prospects in the post-9/11 economy.
But as the shock gradually subsided, it was replaced with a deep, searing anger. And how—using nothing but box cutters—this extremist bunch of cretins had injured his country, murdered his friends, and robbed him of his future. He wanted blood for blood.
He dug out a box of Auburn stuff his mother had stored in the attic. Because of his facility for languages, he’d been interviewed at Auburn by a CIA recruiter. He’d kept the man’s business card and three years later, the man was still there.
Jarrod had signed on. He endured an agonizing training experience at the Farm, the CIA’s training facility in Virginia, where the only bright moment had been when he’d fallen for a raven-haired beauty named Sarah Kashvilli.
But then he’d taken the fight to the enemy, for five years in Afghanistan and Somalia, picking up a coveted Blue Heart medal along the way. Then in a moment of weakness in Beirut, when he’d learned her loss from 9/11 had surpassed his own, he’d fallen on his sword and taken the rap for Sarah, claiming he’d accidentally hit the detonation switch that had sent Ramsa al-Shehhi to hell. And doing that meant Jarrod lost the vital intel he might have provided.
He’d been cashiered out of the Agency, so he migrated back to Wall Street. William hired him, and the bond between Jarrod Stryker and William Blackenford had been forged, and Jarrod had spent every waking moment for the last six years trying to prove William’s confidence was justified. It was an uphill battle to say the least, but finally, yesterday he’d exceeded everyone’s expectations, including his own.
He paused on the sidewalk and looked toward Ground Zero where the World Trade Center had once stood. It wasn’t far from here—over a decade ago—that he’d experienced a personal cataclysm. Now he wondered if a second one was in the making.
He didn’t know if he had it in him to climb out of that kind of hole again.
He entered the Arcadia Tower.
*
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
In all, twelve people were in the small auditorium located in the basement of the main headquarters building of the Central Intelligence Agency. Her section chief was there, along with the deputy section chief, a smattering of colleagues, the director himself, the deputy director for operations, and a lanky army major wearing his green uniform but no name tag.
The director called for everyone to be seated, and under the muted lighting, he took his place behind a lectern.
“Will Sarah Kashvilli please step forward?”
Wearing a navy blue dress with a small strand of pearls, she demurely rose and stood beside the director.
The former navy admiral intoned, “Sarah Kashvilli, in recognition of your extraordinary resourcefulness, sense of duty and disregard for your personal safety, the operation that was undertaken on the South Asian continent to eliminate a direct security threat to the United States was successful. As a result of your exemplary actions, the Central Intelligence Agency awards you the Blue Heart medal.”
The director opened the powder blue felt case and extracted a medal that looked identical to a Purple Heart—the kind the military awards to wounded soldiers—except the ribbon was powder blue, as was the heart-shaped stone behind the image of George Washington.
The director took the medal out of the case and carefully pinned it on her lapel.
She smiled in return, while the director allowed himself to partake of the French tradition and administered a kiss on each cheek. Then applause rippled through the small group.
“I might add,” the director continued, “that Sarah is the only dual Blue Heart recipient who has lived to tell the tale. That is, she would tell the tale if it wasn’t classified.”
Laughter.
“But seriously, Sarah, I am grateful this award was not made posthumously, for it certainly could have been.”
“God damn right!” chimed in the major. “I was there and saw it with my own eyes.”
If the director was miffed at this departure from the script, he didn’t show it, and continued. “As you know the protocol, this is the first and only time you will wear this medal. It will be placed back in the case and returned to the archive vault. You will be allowed to view them one more time at the point of your retirement. Part of the price we pay for living in the shadows.
“Now then, in celebration may your colleagues and friends join us in a toast to your achievement.” And he motioned to the buffet table in the rear that had been set up with hors d’oeuvres and a bucket of champagne.
Toasts were made and chitchat was exchanged until finally the major and Sarah found themselves one-on-one. Redigo pointed at the medal and said, “I’ve got one of those, except mine came in purple.”
“I bet there’s a story there.”
Redigo chuckled and said, “You know the difference between a war story and a fairy tale?”
She shook her head.
“A fairy tale starts off with, ‘Once upon a time.’ A war story starts off with, ‘Now, this is no shit.’”
She almost bent double with laughter, but after catching her breath asked, “So where do you go from here?”
“Probably Fort Bragg for a spell. Move a few paperclips around, watch Monday night football, and try and put on a few pounds. How about you? Or is that classified?”
She shrugged. “You get four weeks leave when you get one of these,” she tapped the medal. “I haven’t been home for a long time. Probably spend some time with family, I guess.”
“Do Mom and Dad have a clue what their little girl does for a living?”
“The official line is I work for the State Department, but I think my dad is a smart guy.”
The major nodded, then said, “Well, Sarah, I have to be going, but although this episode remains tightly classified, word still gets around. And seeing as this is your second time around the park on this Blue Heart thing, maybe it’s time you thought about joining one of those think tanks or some kinda gig like that. There are only so many bullets you can dodge.”
She stared at her champagne. “There’s still a lot of unfinished business.”
“I figured you’d say something stubborn like that. I must admit you’re the most attractive mule I’ve ever seen. Adios, compadre. Vaya con Dios.”
And he departed, leaving her to wonder if he might be right.
*
Jarrod entered the trading room and robotically went through the motions with his staff. For some reason, they suddenly seemed so young to him.
Then he made his way back to his office and motioned for Gwen and Sergei to join him. The secretary closed the door and took a seat across from her boss, saying, “You look like hell.”
A hint of a smile. “And top of the morning to you, too. I confess, I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I think no one did,” replied Sergei.
Jarrod nodded to Gwen. “Ladies first. You find out anything?”
Gwen pursed her lips. “I cornered Rosita in the break room. Again, she was white as a sheet. I asked her if there was something happening with her son. She would only shake her head. Then I asked if there was a problem with William. She wouldn’t look at me and said, ‘I have to go.’ I think she was about to break into tears. Then I heard a little grumbling.”
“Grumbling?” asked Jarrod. “Please elaborate.”
“Well, although there is nothing in granite, partner profit distributions typically come the week after the end of the quarter, which would have been last week.”
“And?”
“They have been conspicuous by their absence.”
Jarrod leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “This is a disturbing trend.”
“Trend?” asked Sergei.
He took a deep breath and began. “I took your advice and went to the Bridgemount last night. Ran into a couple of William’s bridge-playing buddies who said he’d missed the last couple of rubbers or whatever the hell you call those things.”
“Well, in itself that is not particularly significant.”
“My view as well. But then I took a walk down the pier to have a look at the Valkyrie. I happen to arrive just as the new owners are walking down the gang plank.”
“New owners?” Gwen was slack-jawed.
Jarrod nodded. “A couple named Portmann. He sells half the sausage consumed on the East Coast. Seems he and the Missus are going to take their new toy on a world cruise.”
“William Blackenford selling the Valkyrie?” Gwen was incredulous. “He’d rather sell his firstborn.”
“And did I mention he threw in the Pissarro with the deal? All in, it was ninety-seven million.”
Stunned silence.
“But I saved the best for last. I’m headed back to the car when the executive director of the Bridgemount intercepts me and asks if he could have a ‘private word’ with me. Felt like I was going to the woodshed, the prick.”
“So what did that prick want?” asked Gwen.
“Seems Blackenford Capital is arrears on its dues to the Bridgemount—to the tune of 850K.”
“Now we have trend, a bad one” replied Sergei.
“How so?”
He opened his portfolio, extracted a few pages, and then placed them in front of Jarrod.
The younger man scanned the header. “This is an e-mail from Arcadia Property Management to Don Pippin, our esteemed controller.”
Sergei nodded.
“How the hell did you get this?”
Sergei shrugged.
“You hacked it?” Jarrod said. “As in you hacked into our e-mail servers?”
Sergei remained silent, but there was the tiniest hint of a smile as he raised his eyebrows.
Jarrod was incredulous. “That’s impossible. That system was constructed by a bunch of NSA alumni with that quadruple independent, redundant, something-something firewall and intrusion prevention they swore up and down was absolutely impregnable.”
Sergei shrugged again. “I break NSA stuff before.”
Jarrod stared at the Russian. “So in your former life you were reading State Department cables?”
“Da. Quite boring for the most part, I must say. But I digress. The e-mail you read, please.”
Jarrod put his nose down, and Gwen watched as his ears turned red while he read the e-mail aloud. “We have to advise you, Mr. Pippin, that if lease payments are not brought current within thirty days we will be forced to commence eviction procedures against Blackenford Capital!” Jarrod put the pages down. His head was spinning. “So that’s why Pippin was so flushed yesterday. He’d just been chewed a new one by the landlord.”
No one spoke for a few seconds in apparent befuddlement, then Sergei said, “The firm make over 100 million last month. The Valkyrie sell for 97 million. That over 200 million.”
“Yet we can’t pay the rent, our club dues, or the partners.”
Jarrod felt like the earth was opening up to swallow him.
“So that would explain William’s behavior yesterday,” offered Gwen.
“The question is, what trigger this?” said Sergei. “How do you 200 million dollars lose?”
“That is the sixty-four-dollar question,” replied Jarrod. “Or maybe the six-hundred-forty-million-dollar question.”
There was silence among them until Sergei finally asked, “What you going to do?”
Jarrod took a deep breath. “Well, I can continue on in a fool’s paradise until the landlord padlocks the office, or I can go confront William and find out what the hell is going on.”
Sergei nodded. “I know what you will do.”
Then he and Gwen rose to leave. On their way out, Jarrod closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose—something he did in times of high stress—and said,
“Gwen?”
She turned. “Yes?”
“If somebody named Jonathan from Excelsior Yachts calls, tell him I’m on assignment in China and will be overseas for at least six months.”
CHAPTER SIX
Russian Province of Stavropol Krai
North of the Chechen Border
Shamil Basayev peered through the night vision binoculars at the pumping station below. On this isolated stretch of Russian real estate between the Caspian and Black Seas, the oil pipeline snaked across the Russian steppe north of the Caucasus Mountain Range like a never-ending eel.
Elevated on vertical scaffolding, the 940-mile pipeline was built from the Tengez field on the northeastern shore of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan, to the Black Sea oil terminus at Novorossiysk, where massive oil tankers took on their loads of crude to fuel the economies of the world.
The only pipeline on Russian soil not wholly owned by the state company called Transneft, the CPC pipeline’s stakeholders were, as its name implied, a consortium of oil companies and the Russian and Kazakh governments. It carried 32 million metric tons of oil per year from the rich Kazakh field, feeding the coffers of governments and their oligarchs.
Basayev lowered the binoculars, leaving only the moonlight to illuminate his face. For the first time in years, his beard was growing back, but the once-dark hair was now flecked with gray, the result of aging, stress, and a life on the run for many years. But now, all the torment he and his people had endured at the hands of his country’s oppressors would soon be avenged beyond anyone’s imagination.
“How long?” he asked Lemontov, who was his right hand man.
“The truck left Tbilisi this morning. It will use the pass and enter North Ossetia tomorrow. Then three days by back roads to us.”