DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3) (29 page)

A ghost
, Brendan thought, and splashed water on his face in Greta’s lavish bathroom. There was a vanity with a basin sink and blackened brass features. Lantern-style sconces on the wall. Wicker baskets piled with pristine white towels. In the center of the room was an antique copper tub. They were the kind of touches he remembered from the newly renovated room at the Bloomingdale house where Rebecca Heilshorn had been slain in her bed.

There was a noise downstairs. He listened and heard Leah playing the piano. A moment later it stopped, and then there was thudding across the floor. More bounding around the place like all six-year-olds probably did. Then the muffled call from Santos, more thumping, and the piano playing resumed. Leah had seemed healthy enough, normal enough, but there was no doubt in his mind that whatever Greta Heilshorn had been cultivating the girl for, it wasn’t a normal life filled with piano lessons and tap dance recitals. There were these things, but then there was the darkness of the life Greta Heilshorn was running. A brothel madam — XList — and the legacy of Titan.

A few moments later, slightly spruced up and feeling a little more together, Brendan stood in the living room as Leah played. She glanced at him, giving him a quick once-over. She didn’t know who he was, nor would she ever. She would come to know her father, though. Philip Largo would be the only one who would have the chance at custody now.

Brendan left the main room and went out the back door, through which Staryles had marched him an hour ago, towards his death.

The rain had slackened off some, but the men were drenched as they dug into the wet heavy earth. It might take hours with only the five of them working. Brendan found a shovel and joined them. Dutko followed suit a few minutes later, leaving Greta behind with Chris Kelley. A half an hour later, and they had found their first body. Dutko was able to ID him as a medical examiner from Westchester County.

Twenty minutes after that, and the second body was found. Brendan knew who it was. Though significantly decomposed, Brendan was sure the buried man was Wyn Weston, the Justice Department agent missing for months.

They unearthed two more, one nothing more than bones and cloth. It would take time in the lab to verify dental records, but Brendan was sure the corpse would be revealed as Damon Cosgrove, the truck driver who’d killed his wife and daughter. The other, a more recent addition to the cemetery in the garden, was sure to be Lawrence Taber. Brendan recognized the body type, the man’s size and athletic build. His heart was heavy with the family’s loss; Taber left behind a wife and son.

Russell Gide turned to Brendan, smiling in the rain. His anxiety seemed to have worked itself out through the hard labor. His gaze wandered over the graves. “Crazy. Right on their own property. Why not burn them? Sink them in the lake?”

Brendan didn’t know. Heilshorn had always been right out in the open. Hiding in plain sight. Maybe Greta was the same way, with a macabre twist. Growing food from dirt holding the dead.

The men gathered around and looked down at the shallow graves.

There was one more body to add.

Staryles didn’t exist. Not on paper. He was designed to disappear. But his body was here.

Gide handed Brendan the package Brendan had sent him from the Sheraton in New York. Brendan opened it and took out his old identification. His wallet with his ID — even his badge from Oneida County. He placed these in Staryles’ pockets. He dragged Staryles’ body into one of the graves recently emptied. He held a gardening tool from the basement in his hand.

He thought about Argon as he knocked out Staryles’ teeth. Argon’s body had been tampered with as it lay on the morgue slab. The anger helped Brendan keep back the gag reflex as he removed one of Staryles’ fingers, snapping the digit like a twig.

He thought about the near future, how money would pass between key hands, and how nearly all of the individuals Alexander Heilshorn had ever marked for death would be accounted for. At least in the eyes of the law.

At last he climbed out of the grave and gazed down through the rain at Staryles’ unrecognizable face.

Gide passed Brendan the can of kerosene.

* * *

Brendan rode in the ADK Taxi to the small airport. He smoked a cigarette with the woman driver, the same one who had picked him up from the train.

The airport was tiny, out in the middle of nowhere. Commercial flights were grounded due to the total disintegration of the internet. Air Traffic Control wasn’t allowing charters until further notice. But, as Lazard said, money talked. A lone Cessna commuter plane sat on the tarmac in the sheets of rain. From inside the lounge, looking at the plane through the glass, Brendan spoke on a payphone to Russell Gide.

Gide described the scene at the Heilshorns. The police had arrived — both local and state — and exhumed the remaining bodies from the garden. Prior to their arrival, Argon’s men had taken video of the entire scene, and then placed their anonymous call, taken Leah, left Greta Heilshorn in the basement, and disappeared.

Within a short time, as expected, the whole property became the exclusive domain of the feds. There would be nothing in the papers about Wyn Weston’s body, or any of the others, or of the Heilshorns. Maybe the local paper, the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, would try to write something, but the editor would receive a call from a no-nonsense FBI agent issuing a gag order. The editor would probably put up a fight, if she had any salt, about the right to free speech, and the federal agent would remind her,
this is a matter of national security
.

But Philip Largo would get his daughter back, and XList would be soon be over. The internet wouldn’t be down forever, and even if Altnet emerged and was everything CSS hoped it would be — a completely regulated and government controlled internet, there was no way the people could be silenced, no way the truth could be stopped. Brendan felt like he was proof of that. He felt like Argon’s men were proof of that.

The private charter plane descended over the Cayman Islands on a Sunday morning. Brendan looked out the window at the bursts of palm tree tops and turquoise water with its frothy white fringe.

Lazard met him at the gate. He looked completely at home in a short-sleeved shirt and linen pants, and sandals. He greeted Brendan warmly, shaking his hand with both of his large mitts. Then he stepped back, his eyes lingering over Brendan’s pale complexion.

“You need some sun,” he said.

Outside, the heat was like a sudden hug. The tropical breeze ruffled the Cape Rush surrounding the tiny airport terminal. He watched the birds cut silhouettes through the blue sky. He turned his head in the direction of the surf. He gazed out at it as they walked, Lazard chatting away about the weather and the sights.

Brendan realized he’d never been to a place quite like this. He’d never even been to Florida. He’d spent his entire life in the north, even those four years he’d checked out of society, he’d never wandered south.

“Hey,” he heard.

They were in the parking lot, shining cars lined up. Lazard was standing by a convertible.

“You good?”

Brendan nodded.

* * *

They drove down the road with Lazard’s dark hair blowing about his head. He finally took to clamping down on it with one of his hands.

Brendan looked over. Three days of beard stubble matched his shaved head. “Too much wind?”

Lazard grinned. “I love it,” he called back.

“How far is it?”

“Couple more miles,” answered Lazard. He then cut Brendan a sideways glance, taking in his altered appearance. “What do I call you now, huh?”

Brendan stared up at the blazing sun. “William Chase.”

“William Chase? Can I call you Billy?”

“No.”

“How about Will. ‘Will Chase.’ That is appropriate, huh?”

Brendan smiled, but his mind was elsewhere. He thought of Donald Kettering, the hardware store owner from Boonville, father of Rebecca’s one other child. Rebecca Heilshorn had named their daughter Aldona, which was an anagram of Donald.

Ever since he’d first laid eyes on her, Brendan knew Rebecca had had something to tell him.

* * *

The Ugland House was a building containing thousands of safety deposit boxes. Over 18,000 corporations from around the world were registered. Many of the corporations would claim to have offices on the premises, though there was no economic activity at The Ugland House. It was a place solely for the books.

“The bulk of corporations in the registry are your US corporations,” Lazard said as they neared. “Using the international tax rules to shift profits out of the US, a high tax rate country, into this, a low tax rate country.” He glanced at Brendan. “The tax rate here is zero percent.”

Lazard’s large fingers wrapped around the steering wheel at 10 and 2. “You allocate as much as possible of your income to low rate countries, keep as much of your expenses on the books in your high rate countries, and hey, bingo. Or is it Yahtzee? But by any reasonable standard, when most of your business is in the US, most of the know-how, the research, the production is there. The profits that are taxed should also be there, yes?”

“Yes,” Brendan said. It wasn’t a political answer. With everything he had seen over the past ten years of his life, it was the only answer.

“Seventy billion a year in potential revenue lost to offshore tax shelters,” Lazard said. “And the CEOs come down here and eat dinner at the Westin Grand and look out at the ocean like gods.”

They turned into the parking lot outside The Ugland House. The space was surrounded by Royal Palms, tall and bent, like sleepy sentinels. The high sun hit the fronds and threw long, crisscrossing shadows over the weather-bleached pavement. There were only a few cars in the lot, parked far away.

“But,” said Lazard, “there’s no real money here. From a few private individuals, yes. But the corporate dollars, any physical dollars, are in the US onshore.”

He zipped into a parking space, put the convertible in park and seemed to sink into his seat, the engine still purring beneath the expansive hood.

Lazard settled into a contemplative silence, rubbing at his face. Then he killed the engine and turned to Brendan and smiled, his jowls lifting into creases of skin. “What’s here is even better.”

* * *

Lazard had a key to one of the boxes. He withdrew the contents and brought Brendan into a small room designated for box owners to view their inventory in private. Along the way to the room, a pretty, dark-skinned clerk smiled at Lazard, who grinned back and gave her a full up-and-down appraisal with his eyes.

Once in the room, Lazard stood in front of a wall of security boxes with a certain reverence, as if the boxes themselves were holy artifacts.

“There was a finite supply of bitcoin to begin with, but it is expansionary,” Lazard said. “Just like the money we spend every day that we think runs the world, it is completely faith-based, imaginary; it only has value based on the value that we give it. As long as people believe in it, whether it’s paper or it’s digital, it’s a viable means of commerce. But, by hiding your online transactions, being able to do whatever you want without Uncle Sam, the IRS, or the banks involved?”

He reached up and ran two paw-like hands through his thick hair.

“‘Oh boy,’ you say. That is terrifying to your US Government, more of a threat than they would ever let on publicly.” He dropped his hands to his sides and turned to Brendan. “So, what do they do? How do they stop it? Take out the new libertarian frontier? But the internet is not something you can just unplug, yes? Not unless there is a major attack. Something to blow it up and chop it up. And then, all of the executive orders kick in. The country is yours to control without anyone saying differently.”

He stepped in so close that Brendan could smell the suntan lotion on his skin, the sweet
café con leche
on his breath.

“But really you have generated this attack yourself,” Lazard said. “You have a frame-up for a group of hackers, libertarians with high digital IQs, but not actual terrorists. So what? You say they did it; they did it. Meanwhile your own Cyber Division under the CSS has been running around sabotaging the data centers and cutting the sub-oceanic cables and setting C-4 explosives and leaving behind the clues that Nonsystem is responsible, killing anyone who knows otherwise.”

Lazard then held up his hands in mock alarm, making his eyes wide for effect. “‘My God. Look what these cyber terrorists did! But don’t worry.” Then he reached out and threw an arm around Brendan, miming a good buddy, lowering the pitch of his voice. “Don’t worry everybody, rest assured, because we, your government, we have a surprise for you. We have a backup internet! Well, it’s completely regulated by us. But, you’ll be able to do all the things you love to do like shop Amazon and check your email and post pictures on Facebook and go to Etsy and get knitted booties for baby. This is going to be a lot better for you. A lot safer. Because it’s your safety we have in mind.’”

Lazard stepped back and shook his head, incredulous at his own words. Then his eyes, dark around the edges, but afire in the center, homed in on Brendan.

“But that’s just the icing on the cake, you see. Because really in doing all of this you’ve managed to spoil all the encryption applications which have been developed over the past twenty years for civilian privacy.” He slapped the back of his hand into his palm with a loud crack. “You’ve eliminated privacy in the digital world. Gone. There is no more
Silent Circle
or
HTTP Everywhere.
Project Bullrun becomes a success by default. There’s no more deep web, no Dark Wallet, nothing left enciphered or stealthy. It’s total exposure for the people, complete access for the government. The exact, and I mean
exact
opposite of how it was intended. Congratulations, Mr. William Chase, your country has come full circle.”

Lazard walked to one of the boxes and slipped a key from his loose pants. He opened the door and withdrew a long slender metal box. He brought the box to the table in the center of the room and set it down. The room was refrigerator cold.

“Of course, you’ll never be able to prove that,” Lazard said. He looked from the box on the table to Brendan. “No one can. Some cases, as your US Attorney General might say, are too big to prosecute.”

Brendan folded his arms in the cool air. “But Greta Heilshorn will go down. That’s what you wanted, Didier. You’re not a martyr. You wanted the Heilshorns trashed, XList revenue clamped off, and Titan to take a blow because they’d been moving in on your own turf with bitcoin enterprises. And you want to watch the global petrodollar fail.”

“I’m not hiding it.”

Brendan stepped away from the table and dropped his arms. Suddenly he wanted a drink. He hadn’t felt such a craving since he’d been at Rikers. It was sudden and powerful, rolling up through his nervous system like a flash fire. But then it dissipated as he brought himself under control.

He had to make peace with this. Within himself. It was hard to love your country and to see the truth behind the lies at the same time. But, it was possible. They didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Since he’d looked Heilshorn in the eyes that day at Roosevelt Hospital he’d understood that he was looking into the face of something which had taken seed in the country a century before. An exploitation of the love and faith of the people, a manipulation of the system that cost lives. He’d known even then, without proof, Heilshorn had been working with the government. He’d almost blurted it out to Jennifer Aiken when she’d come to Rikers. But he hadn’t. He’d tried to keep her safe. It hadn’t worked out too well, but at least she was still alive. And Sloane? There were mixed reports. Some indicated she’d been captured. Others speculated she was still at large. If Lazard knew, he wasn’t saying, not even to Brendan. If Sloane was free, she’d be deep underground. Never to come up again.

There was some strange relief in that.

Lazard had fallen silent. It was all on the table now, like the security box. Out on the table, but enclosed in this room, within the walls of The Ugland House. Where the world kept its secrets. While the titans dined, as Lazard had said, at the Westin Grand.

“Like we discussed,” Lazard said finally, opening the box, “Philomena Argon and Sloane Dewan were always working with me. I was personally helping to finance Nonsystem. Even now there are Nonsystem hackers all over the world learning the protocols of the Altnet, how to get past the firewalls and logins. But, I’ve come to know you, Mr. William Chase. You don’t care about any of that. You want this. More, you want this because
she
wants this. Aiken.”

He pulled a smooth, black storage drive from the box and held it in the air in front of Brendan.

“But you also know, as does she, that proof of a private equity firm funding the collapse of American freedom, and the rise of totalitarianism, will never see the light of day. How does the government prosecute itself? This is your American conundrum, yes? But, all that said, this I give to you. The backup of all Philomena’s data. Everything she was working on while with me at the IMF, and with her brother, and with Sloane. You can send it to your friend in the Justice Department, to Ms. Aiken. But, like I said, it won’t do you any good. You’d be better off dressing in some cargo pants and going door to door with a fine-toothed comb, Mr. Chase, and going down this list one name at a time. Maybe that’s the only way left.”

He paused for a moment, giving Brendan another look. “Keep you from drinking, anyway.”