Escape

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "Just because the quotations are old doesn't make them right," Dean Newbury said icily. "That might have been fine to say at the end of the eighteenth century; they didn't have a bunch of religious zealots blowing themselves up in public places and flying airplanes into buildings. I guess they might have had a few beheadings over in France, but it's a different world now. New problems require new measures."

  "Of course, of course," V. T. said, holding up his hands. "I wasn't trying to defend the remarks. Just recalling an old history lesson. New measures, indeed."

  The old man glared at his nephew. It was times like this when he had to admit that the others on the council were probably right. His nephew was never going to "get it." He was just like his father.

  He had no fond memories of his brother Vincent, V. T.'s father, not even from childhood. The truth was, he'd never liked him and all his whining about playing fair.

  Once, he'd witnessed his brother get into a schoolyard fight at the private academy to which they, like all the Newburys before them, had been sent. To his surprise, his mild-mannered little brother had prevailed against an older bully, bloodying the boy's nose, which pretty much ended the fight.

  Dean was furious that Vincent didn't press home his advantage. So he'd rushed in and kicked the other boy in the stomach, knocking him to the ground, and then continued to kick him again and again until someone shouted that the headmaster was coming.

  After they were released from the headmaster's office with a stem lecture—there were not about to be any real consequences for one of the Newbury boys—Dean had turned on his brother and berated him. "Never show mercy," he snarled. "Your enemies will only perceive it as weakness. Once you get him down, you keep him down so that he fears you and never dares to oppose you again."

  "But all I wanted was for him to stop picking on me. He gave up. You didn't have to hurt him so bad. You heard what the headmaster said; they took him to the hospital with a broken arm and cracked ribs."

  "Good, I hope he dies."

  "You don't really mean that."

  Dean had whirled and grabbed his brother by the front of his shirt. "Don't you ever believe that," he spat. "I mean everything I ever say." They'd both become attorneys in the family firm, though Vincent had never been trusted. Although a first-rate lawyer, he was too squeamish about doing whatever was necessary for their more challenging clients. They'd also argued frequently about Vincent's insistence on taking pro bono cases, especially when he went up against corporations or wealthy people who might have otherwise someday become clients.

  Vincent had never been taken into their father's confidence or been privy to the family's secrets, especially its place as one of the founding families of the Sons of Man. "It happens," their father, a cold, one-eyed pirate, believed. "Some just don't have the stomach for greatness."

  Dean, on the other hand, was his father's boy, groomed from childhood to take over the firm as well as the old man's seat on the Sons of Man Council. It had not earned him any more love from his father—the old man was incapable of such a worthless emotion—but it had earned him something he considered vastly more important. It earned him respect, and eventually the old man's chair.

  Good thing, too, as the Sons of Man needed the iron will of a Newbury at this critical time in their history. They had always prospered the most during times of strife and war. And they'd never been afraid of growth. Gun runners during the American Revolution and the Civil War, they were now international arms dealers, selling to whoever had the money. They'd smuggled alcohol during Prohibition, and drugs—heroin, cocaine, marijuana, you name it—while Nancy Reagan was urging everybody to "just say no."

  Their main money-maker at the beginning of the twenty-first century was dealing in black-market oil. With the complicity of officials at the United Nations, the Sons of Man had made hundreds of millions off of the "Food for Oil" program, under which Saddam Hussein's government had been allowed to sell oil in order to pay for food for the Iraqi people. Of course, very little food ever made it to anyone's table, and most of the oil had been shipped off to the black market.

  The Iraq War closed that nice little money pot but provided other avenues, including siphoning off oil and then having "insurgents"—actually mercenaries—blow up pipelines and refineries to disguise the theft. The war had also provided its own bump in the arms trade; the real insurgents needed weapons, too.

  The organization that the Sons of Man had created and maintained over so many centuries was no mere crime syndicate. Early on, the leaders had realized that in order to obtain real power and protect their interests, they needed to divest. Their sons and nephews were steered into legitimate business interests, especially banking and finance, as well as careers in law, politics, the military, and journalism—after all, the public needed to be told what to believe.

  They moved in the best circles of society, model citizens with roots in the community and a history of public service—so long as it served the council's aims. In New York, they belonged to the finest clubs, contributed to conservative politicians, especially those in the family, and for more than two centuries attended old Trinity Church at Broadway and Wall Street in Lower Downtown. In fact, a number of Newburys and their relatives had been buried in the ancient graveyard there along with John Jacob Astor and Alexander Hamilton. Since 1842, when the old cemetery ran out of room, family members had had to settle for a mausoleum at the second Trinity cemetery at the Chapel of the Intercession at 155th Street and Broadway.

  As the families' influence grew, so did their ambitions—and their intolerance for weak-willed liberals, who, in their view, kowtowed to anybody who wasn't white. The Sons of Man were going to save the United States for white people, at least those who deserved it and were willing to leave the Sons in power. But it wasn't so much a matter of patriotism—Newbury could have given a fig about the Constitution. It was self-interest, fueled by racism and xenophobia, that motivated them.

  To Dean and the other members of the council, the country was being overrun with "mud people"—all the brown, yellow, semi-literate scum of the Earth. The thought of welcoming the world's "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" was pure stupidity. But that would all change when the Sons of Man wrested control of the economy from the hands of legitimate authorities and ran the government of the most powerful nation on Earth.

  And the best tool for that was fear. The American people needed to be frightened into giving up their so-called liberties and hand the reins of power over to the Sons of Man for the sake of "security." The Patriot Act had been a good start, especially as a means of keeping tabs on the American people under the ruse of fighting terrorism. That's why McCullum's harping and insistence on more stringent limits and increased oversight by Congress had been particularly irritating.

  Tyranny and oppression, my ass, Dean Newbury thought. Leadership and security. Get 'em scared enough, and the American public couldn't care less about privacy and the loss of a few liberties they don't need or use anyway. Too bad our guy messed up at the St. Patrick's Day parade and didn't kill Senator McCullum, that big, dumb bastard. We'll have to remedy that some other time.

  Soon Americans would welcome strong men with a clear vision who would protect them from themselves and all their altruistic intentions. Someday the border would be closed and the mud people—the niggers and the spies and the gooks and the Arabs, and toss in the Jews—would be kept out or pay the penalty in slave labor and death camps.

  In the meantime, keeping on track meant striking a deal with the devil, this so-called Sheik. It also meant putting his nephew to the test. Would he pass and take his place on the council? Dean Newbury hoped so. He wasted no energy on emotions like love and compassion: Even the death of his own son, Quilliam—who died in combat, a decorated hero—had only made him angry because he had disobeyed him. But he did believe in the family legacy, and unless V. T. assumed his seat, the name Newbury would disappear from the council, replaced by the name of some lesser family.r />
  Yet he would do his duty. If V. T. failed the test, Dean wouldn't mourn his death any more than he had his brother's. Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh, he thought. What must be, will be!

  "I'll tell you right now," Dean Newbury said to V. T., scowling as he walked toward the door of the office, which had been his brother's, "idiots in Congress like Tom McCullum will get us all killed. All this whining about losing civil liberties is nice to chat about in the halls of Congress, but we're in a war, and wars sometimes call for extreme measures."

  The old man saw that his nephew was looking out the window. "Enjoying the view?" He tried to make his voice sound friendly. Seeing him there with New York spread out below him, he thought there had to still be a chance that V. T. would grasp the benefits of money and power. Yes, he thought, all the little people of the world are living out there below you.

  V. T. turned toward him. "I was just remembering how my dad would stand here for the longest time looking at Central Park."

  "Ah, yes, Vincent was always one to watch the leaves grow on trees," Dean Newbury said. He caught the look of pain that crossed his nephew's face. "That didn't come out the way I meant it. I was just trying to say that he knew how to stop and smell the roses. Sometimes I envied him for that." Like hell I did.

  "I understood what you meant," V. T. answered. "And anyway, you're right in both cases. Dad would have probably preferred to be a gardener more than a lawyer; watching leaves grow and smelling roses would have agreed with him, especially after Mom died. But that doesn't mean you and I have to get our hands dirty. Right?"

  Dean Newbury uttered what he hoped sounded like a proud-uncle laugh. That's more like it. There might be hope yet. "Right you are, my boy. To each his own, which is why I asked you to come in on a Saturday to meet a very important new client whom I'd like you to take on. We're going to meet him right now. So if you're done watching leaves grow ... ha ha ... let's go do a little business."

  "Let's," V. T. replied. "I've been admiring a certain little BMW, and I could use the cash."

  "Good, good ... plenty for that," Dean Newbury chuckled. "Oh, by the way, how's your French?"

  "Je parle français comme un indigene."

  "Like a native, eh? Très bon."

  Dean led the way down the hall and through a set of frosted double doors, bringing them to a small anteroom outside another elevator door, which V. T. understood led to a private underground parking level for VIP clients who did not wish to be seen. In front of them was another door, but this one was stainless steel and looked more like the entry to a vault than a meeting room. Dean Newbury pressed the palm of his hand against a panel and the door slid open.

  V. T. recognized one of the three men in the room. "Well, this is a surprise, Espey Jaxon," he said. "I'd heard you quit the agency and were working private security."

  "And it would seem that what I heard was true, too; you left the DAO," Jaxon said, crossing the room to shake V. T.'s hand. "Who would have thought that would happen?"

  "For either of us," V. T. agreed. "But I guess at some point public service salaries and hours lose their glamour."

  "Amen to that," Dean Newbury interjected. "You both did your part for the unappreciative public. There's nothing wrong with looking out for yourselves now."

  "Nothing wrong at all," Jaxon agreed. He turned to the two other men who'd remained talking over by the window. They both appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, but after that, they could not have been more different.

  The first man, obviously the one in charge, was tall and built like an athlete, with wavy black hair oiled back in jetsetter style. His face was tan, rather than swarthy, and a perfect smile radiated beneath the hooked nose and pencil-thin mustache and above a neatly trimmed goatee. His clothes were obviously expensive and perfectly tailored, accentuated by gold cufflinks with diamonds and a diamond stickpin in his tie.

  "V. T. Newbury, I'd like you to meet Prince Esra bin Afraan Al-Saud," Jaxon said in French. "And his administrative assistant and chief financial officer, Amir Al-Sistani."

  Al-Sistani gave V. T. an odd, appraising look and then bowed slightly. He was a small, slightly built man, dressed modestly in an off-the-rack business suit and thick, black-rimmed glasses that gave him the air of an accountant. He wore a ghutra, the all-white version of the traditional Arabic keffiyeh headdress.

  "Ah, Mr. V. T.," said the prince, crossing the room with his hand extended and a wide smile, the same one he probably employed at the net following the defeat of a tennis opponent. "I've heard so much about you from your uncle. I am pleased to make your acquaintance and trust that our time together will be mutually beneficial to myself and your law firm. I hope you do not mind that we speak French rather than English?"

  "Not at all," V. T. responded. "I rather enjoy the language and get so little opportunity to practice it."

  "Well, you speak it very well, and I'm afraid my English is poor. My associate, Mr. Al-Sistani, does not speak it at all," he said. "And unfortunately, I don't believe that any of you speak Arabic. Nor is our lovely translator, Marie Smith, able to be with us this morning."

  V. T. got the impression that the prince was not at all happy that the "lovely translator" was absent. He came off as another oil-kingdom playboy who probably wasn't entirely happy unless young women were fawning around him.

  "I'm afraid Mr. Al-Sistani also lacks some of the usual social graces," the prince added, nodding at his CFO. "However, he is an excellent money manager, and I couldn't do what I do without him."

  Al-Sistani inclined his head at the compliment. "Mera," he mumbled, looking back up at the prince like a dog hoping for a bit of praise.

  "Social graces are fine, but this is a business meeting, so perhaps it's just as well," Dean Newbury said and invited the others to sit down at the large circular table.

  This was the second time V. T. had been in the room—the first had been to meet a dozen or so of his uncle's "friends and trusted advisers"—and he noted again the unusual gold inlay work in the wooden table. The symbol matched the one on his ring, or more accurately, the ring Quilliam had once worn that his uncle had given to him as a "family heirloom."

  After they were seated, Dean Newbury turned to his nephew. "Prince Esra is essentially here for two reasons, in addition to a little nightlife," he said with a chuckle. "One is to present a $1.3 million check to build a religious school on the grounds of a mosque in Harlem. A very commendable thing to do. However, he is also the president and chief executive officer of Kingdom Investments, Inc., one of the largest hedge-fund companies in the world. I assume you are aware of what a hedge fund is?"

  "My understanding is that hedge funds allow more aggressive strategies than, say, a mutual fund, and aren't as regulated," V. T. answered, "and because they only allow a maximum of a hundred investors, the minimum buy-in can be in the millions."

  "Exactly," Dean Newbury said. "Prince Esra's company is one of the top five hedge funds in the world. As such they have billions of dollars invested, but perhaps more importantly, that money allows them to leverage many times that.... We're talking hundreds of billions."

  V. T. looked properly impressed as he glanced over at the prince, who was studying his own immaculately manicured fingernails. When he looked, however, at Al-Sistani, the little man was staring at him. As you'd expect of the man who actually has to look after all that money, he thought.

  "Anyway, to date, Prince Esra has been content to deal with the banks and trading firms he uses from afar. However, now he's decided to meet with them and actually get them to compete against one another for his business. I'm afraid there's some concern that they've been taking him for granted," Dean Newbury continued. "As you might imagine, there are enormous commissions in these transactions; we're talking millions in a single trade. So the incentive to compete is strong, and the prince wants to meet face to face with them and hear who's going to put the best plan together."

  "Sounds logical," V. T. said.

  "We've ag
reed that you will be chief counsel for the prince while he's in this country."

  "Well, I'm flattered," V. T. replied. "But I'm afraid that my experience as a business lawyer is negligible. I'm sure the firm has more qualified people."

  "Perhaps for the detail work and for drawing up contracts," Dean agreed. "But as I've explained to the prince, you have considerable background in ferreting out and prosecuting white-collar criminals. He doesn't want to run afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and very much wants us—you—to protect his interests from unscrupulous bankers and stockbrokers."

  Dean Newbury waited for a beat. "Besides, a lot of this business will transpire in a social setting. These people will wine and dine the prince and his entourage. I know that you're not unfamiliar with this set, and I think you're the man to guide the prince through these shark-infested waters. You'll act as the lead representative of our firm, and we can have some of the associates worry about the nitty-gritty paperwork."

  V. T. thought about the offer for a moment. "Sounds exciting. I'm in," he said. "And I'll do my best on both counts."

  Prince Esra smiled broadly. "Good ... excellent. You'll keep an eye on those criminal bankers and stockbrokers for me. Mr. Al-Sistani will give you my itinerary and plan on joining us as we are 'wined and dined,' and," he winked, "perhaps there will be time for exploring a city that never sleeps at night."

  "I'll try to keep up," said V. T.

  "Well then, that settles it, 'Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh',"Dean Newbury said.

  "I'm afraid I do not understand," the prince said.

  "It's something we like to say around here," Dean replied. "It's Manx ... from the Isle of Man, which is where our family originated. It means, 'What must be, will be.'"

  "Ah," the prince replied. "We Muslims have a similar sentiment, 'Inshallah.' It means, 'as God wills.'"

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