by Jim Magwood
Copies of false Social Security documents with copies of the actual birth certificates of the holders were brought to light.
Transcripts of dozens of meetings between Hammershed executives discussing the schemes were included along with copies of hiring papers attested to by the same executives.
While the company had been investigated before for claims of the same actions, they had skated out from under the charges with the help of certain well placed politicians. This time, the proof was too blatant and the company was immediately em-broiled in major government investigations. Documentation was included in the materials Henry received showing many of the same politicians with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar—pictures, copies of checks, printouts of bank deposits and so forth.
Within a week after Henry’s plane landed in New York and he shuttled back down to D.C., he heard news broadcasts of certain Hammershed executives and major owner/investors reporting unexplained losses in their personal banking and investment accounts. The CEO of the Hammershed Corporation was reported to have sold all his investment holdings and closed his bank accounts after hours on a holiday Friday, although he was protesting loudly that he had not sent in the closing orders. His various accounts were all being reported with zero balances, though, and it was being acknowledged that all closing orders had come through secure computer systems, with proper identification and pass codes. Final transfer orders directed the funds to several secure banks in the Baha-mas. From there they were transferred again and again and were quickly lost in the electronic ether.
It was also being reported that a major bank had already sent demand notices on the mortgages against the CEO’s home in Omaha and his townhouse in New York. The last payments had apparently bounced just a few days before and the bank had then heard about the company disasters and the reports of the CEO’s losses. The CEO’s two personal luxury cars, and those of his children, were quietly repossessed in the middle of the night. Calls to the CEO’s home by news organizations were not going through because the lines had apparently been disconnected.
At least seventeen of the senior owner/investors of Hammershed living in luxury homes around the world were reporting similar problems and losses and before the week was over had been reduced from millionaires to stunned paupers.
When Henry arrived in D.C. he had fallen into his bed until mid-morning, then hurriedly dressed and headed to his office. A large package had been waiting on his desk when he arrived and, as he began to review the materials, he saw name after name of the Hammershed executives and investors with details of the illegal activities they had been involved in.
Names, dates, places and dollar amounts, including signatures on illegal contracts and delivery receipts, copies of e-mail communications, and tape recordings of phone conversations.
He was amazed at seeing pictures of the whole event he had witnessed, from the first explosions to the final fireball that had collapsed the whole building. They appeared to have been taken from just behind and above the very spot he had been parked. And they were good pictures, obviously taken with excellent equipment.
By the end of the day, Henry had already filed stories with fourteen major news organizations around the world reporting the suspicions gleaned from the materials received. He sent copies of the documents detailing the activities and simply wrote about what was shown in the documents, so nothing libelous or slanderous could be claimed. Henry included his own story and pictures of the destruction of the Hammershed munitions warehouse. More detailed and very highly researched reports would come later, but the initial stories immediately caused green rivers to begin flowing toward his bank accounts.
One document that was included with each of the stories was an analysis of the Hammershed activities covering the past twenty years. It included a summary of all the activities at each of the Hammershed plants around the world, and of the men and women who had been involved. There were enough materials included detailing specific activities of the various plants, and by the specific individuals, that investigations were immediately launched and charges filed against many of the people by their governments and law enforcement agencies.
As Henry filed more and more stories, more documents kept being delivered to his office that named dozens of government officials that had also been involved, and accusations bounced back and forth like tennis balls. The government officials were quick to deny any wrongdoings, and tried to stay out of sight as investigations were rushed through against the Hammershed executives and owners. However, as the days wore on, more and more of the officials began to be caught like deer in headlights. Politics ran rampant, of course, and political parties around the world tried using the various investigations and lawsuits to feather their own nests—until people in their own parties starting appearing on news radar screens.
Interestingly, the summary document Henry included with his reports was not written by him. It had been included in the materials sent to him and needed no editing of its own.
Henry simply included backup documents that gave proof of the claimed events. At least enough proof to get the investigations rolling. At first, many of the people named as conspira-tors tried to disclaim the accusations. They claimed fraud, mis-representation, politics, and just plain old lies. But, as more investigators dug into the documents Henry filed, the proof of the accusations became stronger. It wasn’t long before the loud outcries and vehement denials were silenced, and early retirements and resignations became the talk of the town around the world.
CHAPTER 6
It started as just a tremor, a small movement that didn’t really register to the senses. For almost a minute, the tremor continued, gradually growing in intensity until people began to look up from their desks, feeling something and trying to identify what had stirred them. Then, from floors high above, alarm bells began to sound. People on the upper floors heard them first, recognized them as what had to be fire alarms (although they had never heard them before), and began to head for the elevators and stairs. The alarms gradually moved down from floor to floor and the people on each floor heard them and joined the rush of other people heading to the exits. At first there was really no alarm among the people leaving. Fire drill? Seems a little childish to fire drill a building of adults.
Can’t smell any smoke. Is it just a false alarm? Then as the alarms caught up with them on each floor and became clang-ing, screaming demons, fear and panic began to set in and the people lost all sense of orderliness. Get out of my way. Me first. What’s happening? Help me.
It wasn’t a very tall building, only twenty floors, but the people found the elevators had dropped to the main floor and locked in place because of the emergency signals. The halls began to look like cattle chutes at a slaughter yard as the people rushed for the stairwells; people began to get hurt and general chaos ensued. No one had ever suffered through an office building fire before and the worst visions of a hellish end began to work its way into hearts and minds. But still, no one actually smelled smoke or had any real knowledge of fire. It was just the alarms.
David Westing’s office was on the nineteenth floor and he was one of the first to hear the alarms. He was, though, one of the last to begin to move. He was on the phone finalizing another multi-million dollar sales deal and nothing was going to stop the deal from going through. Until the phone simply went dead! He had been in the middle of his prepared spiel and kept talking for almost twenty seconds before he realized there was no sound in the phone.
“Ambassador? Ambassador?” He couldn’t understand why there was no response for several more seconds until the pounding of the alarms began to penetrate his mind. Even then, it was at least another minute before he really began to waken to the fact that the phone was dead, people were shouting outside his door, and there appeared to be some sort of emergency. Slowly, he put the phone back into the cradle, seemed to shake some of the cobwebs out of his head, and stood to walk to his office door. It was only when he actually opened his door an
d heard the clamor of the alarms that he really understood what was going on. Even then, still slightly dazed, he walked haltingly across the almost empty central office and toward the hallway. Halfway across, he stopped and turned to go back to the phone. What about the deal? I was about to get his okay. I can’t just let… At that moment, Jennie Pride, one of the sales agents, grabbed his arm as she rushed by and almost dragged him down the hall to the stairs.
Westing had made his career and his fortune in this building. He had started as a junior partner, had rapidly become one of the major rainmakers for the firm, and had gradually bought out (forced out?) the other partners. It was now his building and his business, and his name on the marquee proved it. Westing Sales and Supplies. While the firm bought and sold almost anything in the large equipment genre, from construction and mining to agriculture, earthmoving and shipping, the product that brought in the most profit (and was the best of the repeat sales) was weapons. Illegal weapons. Westing only trusted one other agent to be involved in the weapons dealing. He handled most of the deals himself and was able to secrete most of the income and profit from the deals away from anyone’s view. The weapons profits that did come directly to the company came mostly from the other agent Westing had allowed into the action. The big deals, which he handled himself, went out the back door and into his own accounts. Only last year, Westing had done a 963-million dollar deal with little Ambassador Kamal, and the company had seen none of that.
As Westing and Jennie got halfway down the stairs, they ran into the back of the crowd, but the people were moving.
They gradually got to the ground floor and outside, and the fire personnel were beginning to move past them and into the building. As Westing reached someone who looked like a Fire Captain or something, he heard the man saying, “What do you mean you can’t get up? It’s only been a few minutes.” Then,
“Fully engulfed?” Then, “No sprinklers running?” Just then, a fireman ran up and said, “Chief, the fire’s moving down faster than we can get up to it. It seemed to explode just as we were getting up there. There’s a sprinkler system, but it’s not functioning. There has to be some kind of accelerant involved to have the fire moving this fast. It’s coming down the shafts and wells and whipping through the offices before we can get into position. I don’t think, unless those sprinklers start running, we’re going to stop this one.”
The Chief listened, then thought for a moment before getting back on the phone set. “Tony?” “Yes, Chief,” a raspy voice came back. “Get the men back out of there. It’s completely out of control and we’ll have to try to work it from out here. Get them out right now. I don’t want anyone caught in it.”
“Coming out, Chief.”
Minutes later, the first of the men started coming out the front doors, pulling hoses behind them, and within five minutes, they were all out and counted. Even then, that early in the event, they could hear floors starting to collapse behind them.
Windows were blowing out on almost every floor and fire was shooting out the windows and bursting through the roof. The building was going down. They knew it and were glad they were out. Nothing was going to stop this one. Their job now was just to keep it from spreading.
Westing caught snatches of conversation from several people around as they talked with some firemen. He heard,
“But I didn’t smell any smoke when I was up there.” “I was near the end of the people coming out and didn’t hear about any actual fire until we got out here. We just heard the alarms, but there wasn’t any fire.” One puzzled man said, “There was no sign of anything until we all got out here, just the noise, then whoom, the top floors just seemed to explode. Almost seemed like somehow it got triggered after we got out.”
Westing had heard the word accelerant when the Chief was speaking and had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Accelerant meant arson. It had to. And arson had been excluded in the insurance policy he had just converted to. Accepting that exclusion, among others, meant saving hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. And he had not had the sprinkler system tested the way he had claimed. The inspection he got was from a non-existent firm. All his records were in the building in cheap filing cabinets and in computers that weren’t backed up. If the building went down, it would all be lost. It would take a lifetime of work to recreate everything and be able to move forward on deals that had been in the works. If the building was gone, as the Chief was saying, so was the business. He would have to start from the beginning and, even if he did that, all the funds he had put into forcing out the partners and buying the building would be lost.
Even though he felt sick about the prospects, he realized that although everything he had put into the business would be gone, all the profits from the arms deals he had personally brokered were in his own accounts, and the regular company accounts were housed in nice, safe banks downtown. Maybe, he thought, it was time to retire and go fishing. Or go buy an island. Or move to Switzerland. He had lots stashed away. His wife didn’t know about any of his personal accounts. And she would not be going along if he left. Leave her to her clubs and parties. There would always be someone new wherever he went.
Just then his cell phone rang and guess who was on the other end. “Julie, what do you want? I have a little emergency here.” He told her about the fire and received her quick ex-clamations of shock and solace, but she quickly got to what her real problem was.
“David, I was just wondering if you had moved the bank accounts to someplace else. I was downtown getting some things ( How many thousands this time? he wondered), and the American Express wouldn’t work. I was really embarrassed, but switched to two other cards, and they wouldn’t go through, either. What should I do, honey? I’ve got these dresses all packaged but don’t know what to do. They called the bank for me, but then they wouldn’t take my check, either. And Barney at the bank wouldn’t talk to me. He just said to have you call him.”
Westing didn’t even say goodbye. He just hung up on her and called the bank. All Barney Harper could say was, “But, David, you moved everything out three days ago. We transferred it to the accounts you gave us. On the computer. Yes, we confirmed back to you because it was unusual. Yes, it was everything. You closed the accounts. But, David, there’s nothing more I can say. I have the computer records. They all check out okay. My god, what do you mean? I have the passwords and everything. David, it was all legitimate. We double-checked like always, and you approved…” Westing had hung up.
He made three more calls to banks throughout the city, and then to two more across the country. The results were all the same: all accounts were zeroed. All funds had been transferred out by computer as requested. All passwords had been verified. When he asked for status reports on his credit cards, the answer was the same for each: closed.
His last call was to the bank that had the corporate accounts. “Yes, Mr. Westing, I’ve checked all the accounts and they are on hold, as we notified you earlier. Yes, on hold against the mortgage and supply loans. But, Mr. Westing, we sent you the notice two weeks ago that you were overdue and there was no cash flowing. But, sir, I have the notices here in my file. Yes, they were sent registered and were signed for by you. It’s your name here on the receipts, sir. I’m looking at them right now. Mr. Westing, please hold on one moment.”
In about two minutes he was back on the line and said,
“Sir, it is your signature. I just matched them against your cards. And I have the note of when you talked to Virginia.
Virginia, your account officer? Yes, sir, dated last Tuesday. It says you would have certified funds to cover the missing payments by the next day. Three missing payments, Mr.
Westing. Yes, sir, they’re totaling almost 3.8-million dollars.
And tomorrow, another payment comes due for another almost 1.5-million. With the payments required placed against the present account balances, there is actually a large deficit…
Mr. Westing? Mr. Westing?” The phone was silent.
David Westing sat on the curb in front of the burning building, staring at his cell phone. His head was spinning as it had been in his office a few minutes ago when his desk phone had gone dead. He simply couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Nothing left of any of the accounts. My records are being burned or buried under the rubble as the building comes down. Julie is standing downtown somewhere with a store full of clothes with no way to get them home…can’t even get them out of the store. No money anywhere? It can’t be.
A young man, looking like a bicycle-courier, trotted up to him and asked, “Mr. Westing? David Westing?”
When he acknowledged the courier, the young man gave him a special delivery envelope and said, “That fire guy over there said he thought you were him, sir. This is for you, sir.
Sorry about your building. Bye.” And he trotted back off.
Shaking his head at the craziness of the fire, the banks, and now the delivery, Westing opened the envelope. Inside on the top was a single sheet of paper, typed in large letters. It said simply, “Goodbye, Mr. Westing.” Enclosed behind the letter were about twenty more sheets of paper documenting his arms trades over the last three years, in detail. Included were many that were photocopies of the illegal sales, with his signature. The first of the documents, he noted, was a copy of a special delivery receipt to a Mr. Henry Baxter, purportedly a newsman located in Washington, D.C., that seemingly meant all the documents had also been sent to him.