Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (182 page)

“Put it down!” a voice shouted.

Ian hadn’t been armed since Markov took his gun outside the oil camp. And it was too late now. The house was overwhelmed. Trucks encircled the building with lights trained on all sides.

He crouched behind a bush, peered through. There had to be twenty, thirty men in and around the house, and he could hear trucks moving in the desert behind him. Backup. He couldn’t see if they were Blackwing or Namibians, or even CIA.

Julia,
he thought.

Markov could take buckshot in the crotch, for all Ian cared, but he had to help Julia.

But he couldn’t approach the house, not unarmed.

The trucks were the key. Maybe he could sneak up on one, overwhelm the crew, and then get close to the house and…what? He’d figure out something.

Ian turned and crept further into the darkness.

________

Malcolm Hathwell, senior partner of Hathwell, Ivie, & Goldberg, met with his partners in a wrap-around suite in a skyscraper that overlooked Wall Street.

These offices had been remodeled a dozen times, since early financiers built the skyscraper in the 1920s, but Malcolm could still feel the ghosts.

The infamous Bear Stearns buyout had originated in this room as Malcolm and his partner, Abe Goldberg, brokered a deal between JP Morgan executives and the humiliated Bear executives. It had been a fire sale, with Bear assets sold for pennies on the dollar, and it had only been the first wave of a financial tsunami that had washed over Wall Street. Malcolm had almost lost track of the number of frantic meetings in subsequent months as the titans of Wall Street alternatively tried to limit the damage of and profit by the death throes of Fannie and Freddie, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and many other venerable firms. And every time, Hathwell, Ivie, & Goldberg took their cut.

Most Americans would never know just how close the entire economy had come to total collapse in the later summer and fall of 2008. The crisis had left the financial system shaky, nervous, and ripe for manipulation.

For all the exploits, rumor, and innuendo, the building looked elegant, modern, and stately. As professional as a bank lobby, as hallowed as a temple.

The three men—Malcolm Hathwell, James Ivie, and Abe Goldberg sat on one end of the massive table. The table was fifty tons of Vermont granite, seamless. It had been in this room for half a century; all remodeling was done around the thing.

“Now, what’s the angle?” Goldberg asked.

Malcolm laid out the case.

He’d done his research since meeting with Terrance Nolan. ChinaOne Petroleum was the big prize. It was traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which had more relaxed rules for foreign ownership than mainland Chinese exchanges. The current market capitalization was just under sixty billion dollars.

The potential was something else entirely. Terrance claimed that this single field would give ChinaOne an extra three million barrels per day of production, giving it a total that would approach Exxon-Mobile, currently the world’s largest company by both revenue and market capitalization. This field alone would justify a six, eight, maybe even tenfold increase in the value of ChinaOne.

Taken as a whole, the other companies involved offered a similar potential. Total market capitalization of these companies was about one hundred billion dollars. When the dust settled, that number might reach a trillion.

The men listened to his presentation in silence. He could see the greed in their expressions, but also reservations.

Only one kind of person made it on Wall Street. It wasn’t enough to be smart or even smart and hard-working; someone else would always outwork you, or stab you in the back. Smart, hard-working,
and
ruthless was a good start, but even that wasn’t enough. Those guys usually burned out, took their hundred mil and retired to a beach house in Saint Tropez.

It was the guys like Malcolm and his partners, who commanded all three of those virtues, together with a nasty competitive streak, who owned the world of finance.

Boiled down to its simplest form, Wall Street was just a game of Monopoly with more elaborate rules and bigger stakes. You didn’t play to amass real estate, to collect the rents of the fools who landed on your properties. You played until your enemy drew the dreaded ‘Advance to Boardwalk’ card, a property you just happened to happened to own, fully developed with a hotel.

Two thousand dollars, please. What, you can’t pay? So sorry, I guess you lose.

Yeah, it was real money on Wall Street. No difference. Money didn’t matter, money was just the scoring system.

James Ivie tugged at one ear, the lobe of which was longer than the other side from decades of tugging while thinking. He was the cautious one; if Malcolm won him over, Goldberg would follow.

“Sounds dangerous. The current administration is not as likely to turn a blind eye, not with all of the scandals of the last ten years.”

“We’re risk takers,” Malcolm said. “And think of the rewards. Each man in this room will be richer than Buffett or Gates. What risk isn’t worth that kind of take?”

“The risk of spending the rest of my life in prison,” Ivie said. “Insider trading of this scale…”

“It’s not insider trading. We have no connection to any of these companies, not yet. And all we’ll do is position ourselves. Line up our assets, ready to spring when the news is leaked. When
we
leak it. We’ll take some modest positions now, lay a paper trail for what we’re going to pull off. It will look incredibly lucky, but it won’t look like insider trading.”

“And what about your friend?” Goldberg asked. “What did you promise him?”

“Terrance Nolan? One percent of the take, but I wouldn’t worry about that. We can easily throw him a bone, or cut him out entirely if we don’t want to bother.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Ivie asked. “He’s the one most likely to rat us out.”

“He’s CIA and this is CIA information. He rats us out, he’ll be facing treason charges. He goes down, his cell won’t be a country club prison in Greenwich. It will be Leavenworth. Or worse.”

They went around the table a few more times, but in the end Malcolm’s partners came around to his way of thinking.

“Tell us what you need,” Goldberg said, after it was decided.

“Liquid money. We each need to raise two billion dollars by opening bell day after tomorrow.”

Some hard swallows at that. Malcolm thought of his trades in terms of zeros. Fifteen years ago, most of his trades were six zeros, or even five. These days, a typical trade was seven zeros, with an occasional eight thrown in if something big came up. This was nine zeros, twice over. And it had to be liquid.

“I’ll get it,” Goldberg said.

“Me, too,” Ivie nodded. He tugged again at his earlobe. When he looked up, his face was serious. “You’d better know what you’re doing, Hathwell.”

Malcolm nodded. He, too, was thinking about how to raise those nine zeros. And wondering, too, if Terrance’s information was good enough to stake his life on.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Markov watched with grim satisfaction through one swollen eye as Charles Ikanbo’s men tried to put out the fire he’d started in the barrel to burn up the hard drives and other computer equipment. That fire was phosphorous. It would burn as long as it wanted.

Men dragged chairs into the basement and duct taped Markov and Julia, bound their hands and feet.

Ikanbo pressed a Glock to Markov’s forehead. He had taken off his pressed shirt to stand in a white tank-top undershirt. He was strong and sinewy in appearance. He leaned close and said, “Would you like to call the embassy?”

“Yes, please,” Markov said.

Ikanbo wrapped the gun against his skull, just hard enough to hurt. “I don’t think so. I don’t think you will ever talk to your friends again. And what if you did? Why would they bother with a spy like you?”

“I’m not a spy, I’m U.S. Foreign Service. A diplomat. And I wasn’t spying.”

“Not only are you lying,” Ikanbo said, “not only do I
know
you’re lying, but you know that I know that you’re lying.”

That was true, of course. Markov had been on the other end of this same kind of interrogation. It always struck him as a ludicrous game that both sides felt compelled to play.

Only Markov knew how the game would play out, because one player held the superior position. Ikanbo—if he were a competent player, and his opening moves were perfect, so that was a yes—would march his pieces across the board, break down Markov’s feeble defenses one by one. It would end with Markov broken, mentally and physically.

Unless, perhaps, he changed the rules. How would Ikanbo deal with a confession?

“Okay, I admit it,” he said. “I’m a spy. CIA. I entered the country under false pretenses. If I write out a confession, will you let me talk to the embassy?”

Ikanbo took a step backwards. A brief flicker of confusion flashed through his eyes. “Let you talk to the embassy? No, of course not.”

“Then what do you want? To torture me, to break me? You think you can do that? Go ahead and try.”

“You arrogant bastard,” Ikanbo said. He pressed the gun harder into Markov’s skull, then wrapped his other hand around Markov’s throat. “Do you know what it’s like for Namibia? To be surrounded by corruption—Angola, Congo, Zimbabwe—and have every tribal leader think he should be Big Man?”

“So Namibia is the virgin in the whore house, is that it?”

“So easy for you. You see one small advantage, you Americans, and you are willing to burn a country to the ground to get it.”

“I haven’t done anything like that.”

“The hell you haven’t. The number of countries you’ve sold out is almost too many to name—Georgia, Chile, Palestine, Rwanda, Sudan. Oh, and let’s not forget Iraq.”

“I mean that I haven’t. Personally, I’m not responsible for any of that.”

It was a small advantage, but Markov was no longer the one under interrogation. Instead, Ikanbo’s righteous anger had burned away his earlier motives. He was now interested in arguing with Markov, convincing him.

Markov decided to press his advantage. “Let Dr. Nolan go. She’s just a civilian contractor.”

Ikanbo turned and look at Julia, who shrank under his gaze. So far the men had not touched her, but Markov knew what she must be thinking.

“She’s not a contractor. She’s a spy, like you. I don’t know how, or why, but I’m going to find out.”

Ikanbo gave a little nod to one of his men. The man rubbed a big, rough hand down the side of her neck. “What a pretty woman,” he said to Ikanbo.

Julia cringed, started to cry. She wasn’t in any danger, not at the moment. The Namibian touching her was too deliberate. Ikanbo was in complete control of the situation; he’d told his man how far to go, what to say. They were just intimidation tactics. And they were working.

“You’ll be okay,” Markov told her. “Just keep your head down, think about…” He tried to think of something mechanical, distracting. “Walk yourself through a surgery.”

She nodded. But she let out a sob.

Ikanbo slapped Markov across the head with his pistol butt. “Shut up.”

“Just ask your questions,” Markov said. He had to get control of the situation again. “Get it over with.”

“Get what over with?”

“I have no idea until you tell me what you’re looking for.”

Ikanbo nodded. “How about this, to start. Why are you trying to overthrow the Namibian government?”

Markov blinked his good eye, astonished. “Why are
we
trying to overthrow the government?”

“That’s right. What is it about this oil find that’s so important?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

Ikanbo gave something that looked like a cross between a smile and a snarl. “I know, you idiot. I want to see if you’ll tell me the truth.”

“You
don’t
know, do you?”

Everything started to come clear. He’d assumed Ikanbo was playing from the other side of the board. That he was part of the group trying to undermine the Namibian government. Instead, this man was a patriot. His anger was legitimate. His security forces were as disciplined as they appeared. What he was trying to do was save his country.