Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (54 page)

 
          
“Yes,
sir, ”
Harley said. “I’m on my way.
Thanks, Ian.”

 
          
New
York
City That Same Time

           
“Who the hell are you calling this
time of night?”

 
          
Ted
Fell nearly fell over backwards in his seat in surprise.
Harold
Lake
never prowled the hallways and never
stopped in Fell’s tiny office—until tonight. Fell could feel his heart
hammering away in his chest, and he had to fight to control his tone of voice:
“Jesus, Harold, what are you skulking around for?”

 
          
“I
needed the option contract summary on the Isakawa house holdings—the Japanese
markets open in thirty minutes. Who were you on the phone
with?”                                      
,

 
          
“Kim,”
Fell said.
Lake
briefly recalled that Fell had a somewhat
steady girlfriend whom he brought on occasion to a cocktail party—that must be
her. “Told her I wouldn’t be home tonight.”

 
          
“Thought
you called her after we got back from
Jersey
.”
Fell shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to make her feel included, I guess.” It was
ambiguous enough, and Fell hoped that would disinterest
Lake
enough to drop this line of questioning.
Harold
Lake
never showed an ounce of interest in anyone
else’s personal life—it was strange he was asking questions about it now. “I
put the summary in your E-mail folder. We’re looking good, as long as Isakawa
doesn’t think we’re on the ropes because we’re selling our portfolio. If he
does, we’ll be down around the fifteen-percent range again.” Fell remembered
when making 15 percent a day was considered incredibly good. Now it was
one-half to one-third of what they were making, and would be considered a very
bad day.

 
          
“We’re
liquidating, but it doesn’t mean we gotta take any bullshit from the Japanese
or from that asshole Quek Poh Liao in
Singapore
,”
Lake
said.
He studied Fell for a moment, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “That crazy
fucker Ysidro really rattled you, didn’t he?”

 
          
“I
don’t see how you could just sit there and watch him play with that. . . that
human heart,” Fell said, his eyes growing distant. “It was horrible,
disgusting.”

 
          
“You
gotta detach yourself from their world, Ted,”
Lake
said, but even as he said that, his mind’s
eye was obviously replaying that gruesome sight. “Forget about it.”

 
          
That was the understatement of the year,
Fell thought, remembering his bizarre encounter with the woman in Cazaux’s
place. She obviously got her kicks out of setting men up to die. “How did you
ever get involved with those animals, Harold?”

 
          
Lake
shrugged, then leaned against the door as
if the very thought had taken all his strength away. “The money, at first,” he
replied. “Cazaux had a guy on his payroll whose job it was to launder money,
except he was a jerk. He was openly skimming at least ten percent from Cazaux’s
funds, I mean, he didn’t even
try
to
account for the loss. Cazaux eventually caught him—you saw a heart, Ted, but my
first meeting with Henri Cazaux, he was carrying this banker’s severed fucking
head
in a bag. I got the old
‘ploma o plata'
offer then—lead or
silver, a bullet in the head or wealth beyond reason, if I joined him. It’s a
hard offer to refuse.

 
          
“Hey,
I
know
who I work for. A bigger
assassin than the Jackal, bigger terrorist than Abu Nidal, a bigger arms dealer
than Adnan Khashoggi. It’s like being the chief designer for Lee Iacocca or
Ralph Lauren. You’re working for the
best
—”

 
          
“Harold,
think about what you’re saying,” Fell interrupted. “You’re working for a
killer, a murderer, a terrorist. He kills without thinking, without caring. He
kills for money.”

 
          
“So
what? We all do something for money, one way or another. If I think about it,
I’ll go fucking nuts.” Fell noticed that
Lake
had all but lost his sophisticated accent
and speech pattern, and had digressed almost all the way back to his
New Jersey
accent. It was a fitting signal of how he
had slid into the depths of the criminal world. “Check on the plane and the
security setup again, Ted.”

 
          
“It’s
too early, Harold.”

 
          
“I
want them ready in twenty-four hours,”
Lake
said. “They’re ready when I say they’re
ready. And no more calling your bimbos. We’ll be out of the damned country and
out of her and everyone else’s life in just a few days. Ted ... get used to the
idea.” He stepped away from Fell’s door and back down the hallway, but glanced
back at his attorney. Fell was staring blankly at the telephone again, as if
trying to check on something—or someone—far away.

 
          
Lake
couldn’t stand it any longer. He charged
back into Fell’s office, reached Fell’s desk before the attorney’s eyes even
registered that he was back in the room, and hit the
redial
button on Fell’s phone. On the small LCD screen at the top
of the phone, a number with a 202 area code popped up. “All right, Ted, what in
hell’s going on? That’s
Washington
,
D.C.
Your girlfriend lives here in
Manhattan
. We don’t have any brokers in D.C. Whose
fucking number is that?”

 
          
“It’s
the forwarding number for the new deputy of the security team we hired, Ha—”

 
          
“Don't fucking lie to me!”
Lake
shouted. “What in hell did you do? Who did
you call, Ted?” Fell appeared as if he were going to try his story one more
time, but Lake grabbed his shirt collar in both hands and shouted,
“Answer me!
ⁿ

 
          
“Hardcastle,”
Fell said in a weak voice. “National Security Council... the guy on TV, in
charge of the air defense stuff...”

 
          
“Oh,
shit, tell me you’re fucking kidding ... oh, shit, oh shit,”
Lake
said. He unplugged the PBX cable from the
phone, dumping the phone log memory from the unit, then left it unplugged. “You
asshole—you didn’t use the secure exchange. Cazaux is bound to find_out.”

 
          
“I
am out of this, Harold,” Fell said. “I am out of this entire operation. I’m
getting the hell away from butchers like Cazaux and psychos like Ysidro, and if
you had any brains you’d get out too.”

 
          
“But
what did you say? What did you do?”

 
          
“I
was going to leave a message on the NSC’s voice mail,” Fell said. “Hardcastle
himself answered it. I told him the location of Cazaux’s mansion in Bedminster,
and I told him about the hostage he’s got in there.”

 
          
“What
hostage? What in hell are you talking about?” “He’s holding a woman in a
third-floor apartment, Harold. He’s beating the hell out of her.”

 
          
‘
“Dark hair, exotic-looking, kind of spacey?” Fell’s expression told
Lake
that he had guessed correctly. “That’s
Cazaux’s astrologer, you
idiot.
Varga, or Vega—I don’t know the bitch’s fucking name. She’s no hostage, Ted—
she
likes
getting beat up. She gets
off on it. You called the authorities to try to rescue
her?
She’s the one who’s probably been telling Cazaux to do all
this in the first place! She’s as weird as he is. They’re like both out of a
fuckin’ horror movie.”

 
          
“Oh,
God . . .” It made sense now—he thought he was helping her, while all along the
woman was going to get her kicks watching Cazaux slice him up into little
pieces.
Shit,
Fell thought,
what in the hell am I doing here?
“Well,
that doesn’t matter,” Fell said, thinking hard and fast. “I’m not doing this
for her—I’m doing it for me. I’m tired of standing by and watching Cazaux rip
this country apart.”

 
          
“So
you ratted him out,”
Lake
said. “Jesus, Fell, our lives aren’t worth
spit
anymore.”

 
          
“We’ve
got an escape plan worked out, Harold. Let’s do it. Let’s get the hell out of
here.”

 
          
“I’ve
got forty million dollars in options contracts being executed in the next six
to ten hours, Ted. I can’t leave. I’ll have to sign a proxy, pay someone to
execute the contracts, sign for the cash. I can’t risk this operation with any
of that.”

 
          
“Harold,
I’m out of here,” Fell said. He told him about the woman, about how she had
tried to get him to pull a gun on Henri Cazaux and then watch Cazaux kill him.
“I told the authorities about Cazaux and how they can find him. If anyone
escapes the raid, they’ll try to hunt us down. I want to be safely hidden long
before that. I’ll help you get out, too, but if you want to stay I can’t help
you.” ,

 
          
Lake
thought about it, but only for a moment—he
knew that Fell was right. Cazaux and his cronies were completely out of
control, and the slightest screwup would mean instant, deadly retaliation. Even
if Fell hadn’t already made the decision for them,
Lake
knew it was time to get out. “All right,
Ted, you’re right,”
Lake
decided. “Notify the flight crew and the
security detail—we leave immediately. I’ll execute the contracts and the cancel
orders and have the funds sent by the bank to Townsend at the mansion—he’ll
know what to do with the cashier’s check. Jesus, I hope the FBI nails Cazaux,
because he will hunt us down for sure.”

 
          
Bedminster
,
New Jersey

           
Three
Hours
Later                                               
.

 
          
The
first guard heard it while it was still a long way off, a heavy, slow rhythmic
beating against the sky. He raised his left hand to his ear until the cuff of
his left sleeve was even with his lips and said, “Station three, chopper,
south, big one.”                                                                                       
.

 
          
“Copy,”
the security shift officer responded. Everyone knew that Tomas Ysidro, the
chief of security, would be listening in to the guard’s channel, so responses
were quick.

 
          
The
first guard withdrew a Russian-made monocular nightvision scope from a case at
his side and scanned the sky. His line-of-sight visibility was extremely
limited, but his job wasn’t to scan the sky, but the treeline, about seventy
yards away, and the long gravel driveway leading to the main dirt road. The
rain had stopped, but the clouds were thick, scuttling across the sky on strong
low-level winds as the summer night storm passed. He could see the glowing
yellow eyes of a small animal, a raccoon or possum, scurrying from tree to
tree, doing some nocturnal hunting. The night-vision scope always revealed all
sorts of animals—deer, foxes, rabbits by the bamful.. .

 
          
.
.. and men. The guard chuckled as he watched one of the other guards emerge
from the trees, about a hundred and fifty yards away, zipping up his fly after
taking a piss in the trees. He saw a puff of smoke trickle from his mouth—the
asshole was smoking on duty with the brass in the house. He was using a light
shield around his cigarette so Ysidro or Cazaux wouldn’t see his glowing cig, but
the night-vision equipment clearly showed the smoke. If Ysidro saw that, he’d
kick his ass. It was a hell of a chance to take just for a lousy cigarette.