Reckless (24 page)

And who had put it all in play? A simple hog farmer’s son. Who had shoveled shit out of the pens until he was seventeen. Yes, he definitely took some pride in that. And at the same time he had carried his deception right into the bed of one of the most wealthy and desirable women in the world. He had used her to reach his ends, like he had used everyone and everything he had encountered along the way.

Now he was known in the most elite circles. The press referred to him as an “international financier.” It was just like that royal Belgian slut had done for him. Only better! Merrill had opened more doors for him than the head of a multinational corporation. Soon, he’d be moving on anyway. He had gotten about all he could out of her. And there were younger, fresher fields for him to sow.

Dani put his feet up on his desk. He couldn’t help but admire how it all had worked since, on the run, his path had crossed with that faggot Belgian banker in a bar in Lyon. How he’d driven out into the country on the pretense of finding a secluded spot to fuck him. Stopped the car along a lake, then smashed his head with a rock, with the guy’s pants down and his dick out and ready. Threw the body into a leechy pond. Driven in his own car back to his town in Belgium, copied his birth documents, falsified his history. Applied for a job at RezionsBank.

A new man.

Thibault watched as some hayseed congressmen who didn’t even know how to add raked the treasury secretary over the coals over monetary policy. Trying to assure the world it would hold together.

He laughed. They had no idea the disaster that lay ahead.

Thibault’s cell phone chimed, his private one. The one he used for only this purpose. He took it out, noticed the scrambled number from Dubai that was completely secure.

Dani answered. “I’m just watching the proceedings now. Have you checked out the markets? The Dow is down over seven hundred points…” He leaned back, looking over the view of Manhattan with satisfaction. He’d done so well, his employers might well double what they had paid him.

“Yes, an excellent job, my friend,” the caller acknowledged in heavily accented English. “You can be assured we won’t forget.” The man was one of the most powerful people on the planet. His backers controlled those who influenced the purse strings of billions. Behind the shadowy curtain that divided the highest levels of finance and those who had their own agenda to bring that same world down, his influence was unequaled. “But now there is something important that you should know.”

“And what is that?” Dani Thibault asked, barely noticing the shift in tone.

“You are presently under investigation, Dani. By the United States government. The Department of the Treasury.”

“What?”
Thibault sat up. What he was saying was impossible, of course, a joke. But he also knew the caller was not the kind to trifle with idle rumor or speculation. He turned down the TV. “Just what are you talking about?”

“They know your name,” the caller said. “They know you had dealings with both deceased traders.”

“That’s impossible!” Dani jumped to his feet. In that instant, he retraced every contact he had made on all his assignments. There was just no chance. Who would have connected him? He had covered every trail perfectly. He had left no link to himself.
“How?”
he asked, stammering in disbelief. “How could anyone possibly know that?”

“
How
doesn’t matter, Dani. What
does
is that you must become invisible to the world. And now.”

“You’re sure of this?” A tremor of concern pounded in his chest. “This information is one hundred percent reliable?”

“More reliable than even you, my friend,” the caller said, his tone unmistakable. “I warned you your prick was your Achilles heel. Apparently, the connection was revealed through your girlfriend.”

“Merrill?”
Thibault almost choked. How could Merrill know? She had never even met Glassman or Donovan. Their names had never surfaced. All the bitch cared about was passing herself off as ten years younger than she was or going to her silly garden club gatherings in Greenwich and Palm Beach. She was too busy combing Saks with her personal shoppers for Prada shoes.
How could Merrill know shit?

“You know how this has to be handled now, Dani?”

Thibault realized the man on the other end of the line was not someone to be fucked with. He had the network to do anything. He would already be dead if that was the man’s wish. “Yes, you’re right,” he acknowledged—what else could he do? “It’s time to disappear.”

“I can have one of my associates pick you up. I’ve already taken the precaution of having a jet at Teterboro that can take you out of the country, no questions asked.”

“To where?” Suddenly the concern beating in Thibault’s chest became full-out panic. It occurred to him that
he
was the one go-between among all the connected parties.
He
had recruited Glassman and Donovan. He had paid them. The funds, however well hidden, originated from his accounts, where, through the maze of partnerships, counterparties, and countries, it would simply appear to be an investment in one of Thibault’s many deals.
Out of the country?
Thibault swallowed nervously.

There was no way he would ever make it through the Lincoln Tunnel alive.

“A stretch here in Dubai might do you some good about now, don’t you think, Dani? No worry over extradition. And I assure you, we have our own pleasures here too.”

“Yes,” Thibault said, his mind flashing forward. “I think so…”

They arranged for a car to pick him up at five that afternoon. At Dani’s apartment on Central Park South. In three hours. Dani knew he was one dead Serb if he ever got in that car.

As soon as he hung up, he ran over to his safe, hidden behind a false shelf in the bookcase. Fingers barely cooperating, he feverishly spun the lock open and reached for the thick folder of documents he kept inside for just this purpose. Passports. Each with an identity and destination he had worked out. He leafed through the stack and chose the one he wanted. And into the altered bottom of his alligator Hermès briefcase he stuffed several wads of cash, each more than ten thousand dollars in dollars and euros.

Most of what he had stored away was perfectly safe in various banks in Geneva and the Cayman Islands. The rest he would leave where it was, in his accounts in London and New York, so as not to attract attention.

He had rehearsed this moment well.

There was an alternate exit from Dani’s office building. It led straight to the Grand Central subway station. He had chosen the location for just such a situation as this. If the government was investigating him, they might be watching him as well.

He called Air France himself and made a first-class reservation on the seven thirty flight to Paris in the name on the new passport he had chosen.

Three hours
. Dani’s blood grew heated. As he thought of how he had somehow been exposed, it irked him more. Merrill.
How?
Dani Thibault was dead. He had reinvented himself before. Now it was time to do it again.

He just wished, in the time he had left, he could give that bitch one last lesson she would never forget.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

O
ver the past few days Hauck had done his best to put what happened at the rink behind him.

He put the finishing touches on a deal he’d been working on with the town of Milford police department. He gave a second deposition to the police, who were digging into James Merced’s contacts over the past weeks. He talked with Annie. She told him Jared was doing much better. That she might send him back to California to visit his grandparents until things settled down. He was still trying to figure out just how Tom Foley and Talon all fit in.

Wednesday he was coming out of a meeting when his cell phone chimed. He noticed the caller. The United States Government. He went into his office and shut the door and plopped in the chair behind his desk. “So—you made a decision yet?”

“On what?” Naomi Blum answered, acting coy.

Hauck leaned back, knowing his gift of Thibault’s prints and DNA was a game changer. “On whether I’m in or out.”

“In. Do you have lunch plans?” the agent asked totally out of the blue.

“I was just gonna have a sandwich at my desk.”

“Then how ’bout you have one with me?”

“Where are you?” Hauck spun around, looking out the window at the harbor and waterfront estates of Glenhaven, as if somehow she was watching him.

“In a car. Across the street from your office.” Her voice grew in excitement. “We know who Thibault is, Ty.”

“I’ll be right down.”

They bagged the sandwich and drove to the Boxcar Cantina, a Mexican place. He figured it was the most inconspicuous place they could find.

A few tables were filled with moms in yoga outfits and office types in casual business attire. He waved to the owner, Regina, who directed them over to a booth. Naomi was in a stylish brown pantsuit, her short, dark hair curled around her ears. And shades. She had a couple of freckles on her cheeks. Wide, gray eyes. Seemingly not an ounce of body fat on her. She wore a simple chain around her neck with some sort of pendant hidden under her top, which looked to Hauck like a military dog tag. There was something about her, her directness, her brains, that he couldn’t help but find attractive.

The waitress came up. Naomi ordered the tortilla soup and an iced tea, Hauck a chicken enchilada and a Diet Coke. When the waitress left he leaned back against the wooden booth. “So what do you have?”

“The prints you supplied us with came back. They were flagged by Interpol.” Naomi took out a file folder and placed two photos on the table. “You were right.” Her eyes twinkled. “He’s Serbian.”

The large black and white photos were police mug shots. Thibault, maybe ten years younger, his wavy, dark hair sheared close, military style. His meaty face more gaunt, hungry looking. A dark intensity in his brooding eyes.

The name underneath the photo wasn’t Thibault but Franko Kostavic.

And there was a number underneath that: K43750. A prisoner number. And a date, August 23, 1999.

“Kostavic?” Hauck said, studying the photo. The likeness was unmistakable. “These are mug shots?”

“NATO.” Naomi nodded. “You see the date? He was a major in the Serbian Army during the Kosovo War. He was part of what they called the Scorpion Brigade. Apparently, Thibault—
Kostavic,
” Naomi corrected herself, “was taken into custody after the war trying to make his way through the Italian border.”

“Make his way from what?”

Naomi put another paper in front of him. A report. “The Scorpions were a secret paramilitary offshoot of the Serb army that operated freely during the war and was responsible for some of the most brutal genocidal atrocities.”

“Atrocities?”
Hauck looked at the report. Thibault had boasted of how he had seen action in the war. Since he’d claimed to be Dutch, they had all assumed he was part of the NATO contingent there. Richard Snell had done the search, but his name was nowhere to be found. Now Hauck knew why. The scent of Dani Thibault’s secret past had just grown decidedly more rancid.

“Yes.” Naomi nodded.

Their drinks came and she passed over a new series of photos. What Hauck was looking at was completely stomach turning. A long maze of dead bodies strewn together in a deep ravine. Dozens. More than dozens. There was also a photocopied report from the UN War Crimes Commission.

“Franko Kostavic was being held by the new Serbian government in connection with his role in events that took place on the night of August fourth, in the village of Donje Velke in Kosovo. Sixty-seven townspeople, mostly women and children, were massacred in a Serbian raid.”

Hauck felt the moisture dry up in his mouth. He fixed on the grisly photos. Bullet-riddled bodies in nightclothes and traditional native garb, lying in a seemingly endless line at the bottom of a gorge. Old men and women. Kids. Painful as it was, it was hard to remove his eyes from them. It was one of the saddest things he had ever seen.

“Donje Velke is in the Drenica valley,” Naomi explained, “a region that was home to much of the Kosovan resistance. On August fourth, Serbian forces came in after midnight. The Scorpion Brigade was an unmonitored military arm. Its commanders were said to take their orders directly from Milosevic himself. It was filled with violent thugs and common criminals and led by zealots who committed the most brutal acts in the name of ethnic cleansing. From what I’ve learned, the village, mostly ethnic Albanians, was rousted up in the night from sleep. The men who came in went door to door. Some were in uniforms, others wore civilian clothes. They concentrated on women and children. Some were raped and then lined up against the walls of their own homes and shot in the head, right where they stood. The rest were marched up the trail to the gorge and flung in. Machine-gunned. The troops forced the remaining townspeople to fill the ravine with dirt. Lye was spread over it. Because the village was isolated, for years it was just a rumor that anything like that even took place. As you know, there were many such atrocities. The townspeople claimed they always feared the men would come back. After the war, NATO got involved, the UN War Crimes Commission. Witnesses finally spoke up.”

Hauck raised his eyes from the terrible photos. His blood was boiling.
“Thibault?”

Naomi nodded. “Never proven, of course. He was never brought to trial. It was his unit, the sixth regiment, that was proven to have been involved. According to the UN affidavits, he had boasted about leading the raid, along with several others. Some of the witnesses talked about a man who led the raid who matches up. He was being held in connection with it. In the aftermath of the war, with emotions still mixed on both sides and graft running high, he escaped from the local prison in Split where he was being held. That was 1999.” Naomi collected the photos. “Not a big fish,” she said with a shrug, “one of hundreds. According to the Council on War Crimes at the Hague, he was never seen since.”