by L. Todd Wood
No one had seen or heard from them since.
Many theories over the years emerged as to her fate. The most logical explanation was that the schooner was shipwrecked or attacked by pirates. Another possibility was that she was lured to the North Carolina coast by the “Breakers,” a group of criminals who would hang lights around an animal’s neck and walk the beach in bad weather. Ship captains would mistake the moving light for an anchored ship. The unsuspecting crew would draw close seeking shelter and be murdered for the ship’s goods.
This was the final straw for Burr. Tragedy had been a constant companion in his life, but this was too much to bear. Not Theodosia, not Theodosia, he cried. His body began to heave with convulsions as he wept. In Burr’s mind, all was lost.
A strong gust of wind chilled him to his core. His tears froze on the iron railing.
Chapter Thirteen
New York City
Connor was lost in thought as he walked down 47th Street. It was hot and he was sweating, even at this early hour in the morning. The back of his nicely starched shirt was drenched. The streets of New York were alive around him but he didn’t notice.
His whole world was turned upside down again. Who should he trust? Kate was not who he thought she was. Was her love real or just a pretense to get information? He was confused.
Alex was showing strange behaviors. That fact disturbed him even more. He had known and trusted Alex for years. Connor’s world was unraveling. Everything was becoming gray.
He needed to find some peace and clarity. The trading floor usually provided that. He found purpose in the work, and there was no gray area when it came to making money.
He rounded the corner to his building and entered the turnstile door accessing the lobby. The air conditioning was a welcomed relief. Slowly it began to cool the sweat he had worked up during his walk.
Streams of people ahead and behind him were attacking their day in New York City at six forty-five in the morning. Amazing, he thought. If any socialist could see this now, they would realize why capitalism will triumph; these people dressed to the nines determined to make their way in the world this early in the morning. A beautiful thing!
He reached the elevator still in his own world; however, the people inside were buzzing. Something was happening. He was tired, as he had been entertaining a client late into the previous evening, but he heard bits and pieces of things like, “bond vigilantes,” and “banana republic.” He was jerked out of his stupor and started to pay attention. After all, he was the boss. The small news screen on the elevator was silently flashing some important news, but he didn’t get time to read it, as his eyes weren’t focusing very well this early in the morning. He needed coffee in a bad way. The lift reached his floor.
The elevator doors opened. He exited and brought out his electronic pass to enter the trading floor; the door beeped and he was allowed access. He passed the receptionist desk and opened the double doors that served as the entrance. An area the size of a football field, the space was filled with lines of trading terminals and hundreds of people. The noise hit him like a ton of bricks.
He required his traders to be on the floor at 7:00 a.m., and at this time people were usually still straggling in. Not today. The floor was in absolute pandemonium.
“What do you mean you don’t have a bid for a U.S. treasury?” screamed one trader incredulously into the phone as Connor walked by on the way to his office on the side of the floor. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” the trader shouted.
“Oh my God,” said Connor to himself. “It's happening.”
He reached his office, and thankfully his sales manager was waiting there for him and closed the door behind him.
“Do you know what’s going on?” the man asked.
“No,” said Connor. “Tell me.” He was remiss in not getting up early as usual and reviewing world events, but the dinner the night before was a long one, and he had chosen to get some rest.
“The Chinese announced last night that they will not be bidding any U.S. treasury in the auctions to come this week or in the future for that matter─at any price.”
“Holy Shit!” said Connor, shaking his head in disbelief.
“The ten-year just hit eight percent.”
“Lord help us. Okay, we have to find a way to make money in this situation and not get killed. I want a meeting of all personnel on the floor in fifteen minutes. Get me our rates analyst in here now!”
Connor was angry, he saw this coming. Everyone saw this coming, but there was a denial of reality in Washington. There was for a long time.
Now there was no more denying anything. No, the shit had hit the proverbial fan; the United States would have to pay the consequences.
The demure, forty-year-old woman stepped into Connor’s office. She was shell-shocked.
“Well I knew this was coming, but now that it’s happening, it’s shocking,” she said as she took the seat in front of Connor’s desk. “I didn’t see it happening so quickly!”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Connor responded. “What matters now for me is that we save this firm in the face of this disaster and add value to our clients. Now what is your view?”
“I think this is an overreaction. The United States will never default on its debts. We should tell clients to buy. The new administration has shown real resolve in dealing with the spending problems.”
“Okay then I support you─put that call out to the floor!” Connor instructed. Now!”
The problem was that China was the biggest buyer of United States treasury bonds. They owned over ten trillion of United States debt at this point. Overnight they had told the world that they would no longer be a buyer in U.S. treasury auctions, which meant the United States had lost its biggest buyer of debt. Now the U.S. would have to offer a much higher interest rate on its new debt to attract buyers in the global market. The question was that no one knew if the United States could pay these new, much higher rates. United States treasury bonds were sinking in price like a lead balloon. It was like trying to catch the proverbial falling knife.
Of course we can’t service this debt! thought Connor to himself. We have got to get it under control, or we are ruined.
But today he could only save his firm, not his country. Volatility provided opportunity to do this. Clients would remember who made the right call in this panic. He picked up the phone to call some of their best institutional customers.
Nassau, Bahamas
Alex reached his car in the parking lot across the street from the Atlantis complex after a five-minute walk from the marina. The lot was relatively empty at this time of night. The nightlife had started to die down. His only company was the occasional drunk couple staggering back to their hotel room from the casino. With privacy assured, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed.
“Connor,” he spoke as the line answered. His friend sounded frazzled. “You need to come back down as soon as possible. I think I’ve found another site to explore that has promise.” He put on his best face on the phone. It took a few minutes before he could get his full attention.
“Alex, it’s going to be a few days, I’m in the middle of a major crisis here if you haven’t heard. Plus they all have been empty, mate.”
“Yes I know they have all been empty, but I have a feeling about this one. Come down at once and bring Kate with you. I’ll meet you at the boat in two days in the afternoon. Ciao.”
Alex hung up. He hated betraying a friend.
Kate was still in the Bahamas. She had returned to the institute on Eleuthera. Although she kept up the routines of her cover as best she could, there were too many moving parts to this story for her to do so with precision. She was starting to get questions from the rest of the staff on her comings and goings.
Well I only need to keep it going for
a while. Let them wonder, she thought.
One thing was for sure, she was in love with Connor. That had complicated things. She could possibly be fired for allowing this, but so far the situation had not been discovered by her superiors. Fraternization with a person of interest was strictly prohibited.
She had uncovered many suspects in this investigation but kept most of this information from Connor. She started to feel bad about this deception.
Hence the rule about fraternizing with the subjects of an investigation, she thought to herself. “What a predicament you have got yourself in now, Kate,” she said aloud.
Her current thoughts, however, centered not on Connor but on Alex. She knew Connor trusted him, but she didn’t.
She had been betrayed before in this life and could smell a rat. Her father left her mother when she was a small child, and she missed him terribly. Her mother never recovered, and probably neither had she.
For her part, Kate never forgot the horror of that feeling of abandonment. There was a string of unstable relationships since in her life. She was an expert at discerning the true intentions of people, the result of living betrayal firsthand. Her senses were fine-tuned. She had spent her life attempting to glean people’s true motives. Her experience as a child had taught her that. Perhaps she questioned too much sometimes, but with Alex she had no doubt there was more there than meets the eye. She just didn’t know the whole story yet.
Kate didn’t want Connor hurt. Therefore she had been looking into Alex on many levels.
The results were not pretty. He obviously led multiple lives. Drug running, money laundering, and other serious crimes were suspected of him but were never proved. He was another person of interest in her current investigation.
He’s a bad guy, she thought to herself. And Connor has no idea.
She read through more communications from her intelligence group regarding the alliance and the findings on Alex.
“I’m going to have to protect him and not allow my feelings for him to interfere. This is going to be a tough balancing act to walk,” she said aloud.
Kate could tell Russian involvement when she saw it. It was the raw brutality that always struck her. The Machiavellian tactics were usually unmistakable. It was the centuries of dictatorships and a history of a cruel life. Suffering was a Russian pastime. It was an art form. The past continued to influence their behavior and probably always would.
The centuries of experience with authoritarian regimes and Russian respect of raw power had created their way of conducting business. There was a unique sadness to Russian society. A sense of expectations of greatness forever wasted and tied to the boot on the throat. They were forever practicing the art of war. She wondered what could ever change the Russian status quo.
It was the way they treated the girls. Of course they were young and beautiful, stunningly so. However, you could sense the fear lurking behind their eyes. The way they were just sitting quietly and waiting for instructions from their companions, not even talking to each other. It was sad. She had seen it all before. In many ways, the feminist revolution had not made its way to Eastern Europe. Sometimes she wondered if that was a good or a bad thing, but what she was seeing was bad.
Kate took a break from looking through her binoculars at Alex sitting on the deck of the Cricket Club down below. Her eyes were tired. She was mingling with the tourists on the walls of Fort Charlotte. The view overlooked the harbor and the buildings below her, perched as they were on the sloping land towards the fort.
She knew Alex would be there drinking at this time. It was like clockwork. He was Russian. So she had decided to take a chance and do some surveillance. Her luck had been good. He showed around five and drank by himself for a while. He occasionally would have a flirting discussion with one of the native waitresses. However, she could tell he was anxious. He was waiting for someone.
Expectedly, an hour later four table guests showed up, two older, hard-looking men and two beautiful young women on their arms. The men were engaged in serious talk now for some time while the girls just sat there looking pretty.
Kate could tell they were Russian, as she had lived in Moscow for three years following graduate school, where she earned a degree in international relations with a focus on Russia. She was hired by a clandestine branch of the U.S. government focusing on combating international financial threats to the United States. She learned a great deal during her time there. In fact she cut her teeth in the business there. Her experience would come in handy, and she now relied on those honed instincts.
She had now seen enough. The sun would be down soon and her visibility would be gone. She knew what she had to do. She had to go to Moscow. She walked casually back to her vehicle with a throng of British sightseers and disappeared into the crowd.
They sat on the stern drinking wine as the sun set over the ocean, creating a fiery scene. The boat rocked slowly as the waves lapped against the sides gingerly, occasionally splashing up the side over the rail. The sound was soothing, and Kate wished she could just be alone here on this boat for a week with Connor. But that was not to be, it was not reality.
Kate wondered if this is where the Caribbean people picked up their patented pastel hues as the pinks and yellows blasted the heavens off the setting sun. The colors were spectacular. A warm breeze bathed them from across the waves.
They had spent the day since arriving back in Nassau driving the Soulmishka, Alex’s boat, out to the Exuma Cays again, searching for the spot that Alex had found. They anchored off the Cay towards dusk and decided to wait for the dive in the morning. Connor felt naked here without his phone but had access to the net from the equipment on Alex’s boat. He wasn’t totally cut off. In a few minutes he could be in touch with the desk in New York if need be. He was happy he hadn’t been interrupted so far. He had missed Kate, more than he expected. It felt right to be with her.
Alex seemed to be in a better mood than usual. He had surprised them with several bottles of very expensive wine and other goodies.
They dined on cheese, crackers, fruit, and sausages until the sun set. They enjoyed the evening together. Kate was her usual jolly self in spite of her fears about Alex. They ate and drank into the wee hours of the morning.
Eventually she and Connor retired to the cabin while Alex slept on a cot on the stern in the open air. The waves sloshed against the hull, and they all, one by one, drifted off to sleep.
He was there again. Looking out across the seemingly small distance and staring at her in the window of the other tower. It seemed as though he could reach out and touch her face, but the length to the other tower was just too great. He couldn’t quite remember what she looked like, the face was blurry. It had been so long.
She was pleading at him with her eyes. He could sense her fear and horror.
“Please, Connor! Help me! Help our son!”
Connor looked beside her and saw the small boy holding his mother’s hand. A boy he would never meet.
“Please, Daddy! It hurts!” the boy cried.
Then the fire crept into the office where they were standing.
They started to burn.
She looked at Connor one last time, grabbed her boy’s hand tighter, and they both jumped into the abyss.
Connor awoke violently, emptying his lungs in pain. Kate had to struggle to hold him as he thrashed in bed.
“Connor!” she screamed. “Stop! You’re with me!”
He slowly got his bearings and calmed down.
A few minutes later he began to speak. His body was shaking.
“I received the lab results a week later in the mail. She had been to the doctor for routine tests. There was a message on the machine asking her to call the doctor’s office. She was pregnant for God’s sake! I had a son!”
His voice started to break.
“I think she knew and was waiting to tell me. I
found baby clothes in the closet.
He broke down.
“It’s haunting me,” he finally said.
“Connor,” she said after holding him for a while, stroking his hair. “I had a dream last night too. It was Emily. She asked me to take care of you and to tell you she loves you and your son loves you. I love you too.”
Connor pulled her close and kissed her softly. He rolled on top of her and entered her forcefully, so much that she screamed. They made love violently. Connor released all of the hurt, frustration, and pain that had been building up for years. They melted together.
The nightmares ceased.
They drifted off again to sleep.
Later in the blackness, he awoke with her naked body next to him spooned closely. She was still wet from their lovemaking. He entered her again from behind. She was still asleep but welcomed him. He was very hard and she pulsated around him as he again took her. They fell asleep again together.
Nassau, Bahamas
The Chinese man sat in the conference room at the far head of the table. Coffee and several varieties of tea adorned the credenza against the window, along with bottled water and other drinks. A dirty hot plate sat discarded against the window. There was no one else in the room.
He was not accustomed to being kept waiting, and he had been waiting for fifteen minutes.
The carpet was stained, and the table and chairs were old, but there was an attempt at formality and pomp and circumstance in the room. The Formica was chipped off the table, and books were strewn around the back of the space. Several of the chairs around the table were broken and wobbled when sat on.
The man wasn’t impressed but he continued to wait.
A few minutes later there was movement from a door almost hidden in the wallpaper across from where the man was sitting. He stood up as the prime minister of the Bahamas and an aide walked into the room.