The Trade (30 page)

"I know my son.”

"Someone set me up. They played me for a
fool. They killed all my friends.” Jay appeared ready to break
down.

"I know. I know,” the burly man soothed.

"But Father I
have
sinned.”

“
Confess your sins and you
shall be forgiven,” Father Dan recited.

Jay took a deep breath and then let it all
out. An hour later the priest knew everything that Jay knew,
everything that Jay had done.

"You are forgiven,” Fr. Dan said. “For your
penance you will live here in the mountains for the next year
helping me.” He made a sign of the cross over Jay's forehead. Jay
fell into the big man's arms. His lip started to tremble. He
sniffed back a tear. Jay lifted his head and looked into the
comforting eyes of the huge priest.

"How'd you know?" Jay asked.

"I told him,” Rick Hewlett said as he emerged
from the rundown backwoods church.

"Rick? How'd you? When did? I never….” Jay
could not finish a sentence. He was certain he'd never told anyone
about his rural pilgrimages. Tonia was the only person he'd ever
brought here.

"Nice to see you too,” Rick teased. "Come on
inside, I'll explain the whole thing to you,” Rick said. Father Dan
Brennan took large strides to keep up with the younger men.

"Hey slow down. I'm not sure I got it all the
first time Rick,” Fr. Dan said. "I want to hear all this
again.”

Chapter

"Why don't we all get a drink and sit down?"
Rick started. Fr. Dan Brennan got diet cokes for Rick and Jay, an
icy glass of water for himself.

"It's hard to know where to start,” Rick
said. He tugged at his beard in thought.

"The beginning my new friend,” the big priest
counseled, "always start at the beginning.”

"It could take a while,” Rick said.

"I've got nothing else planned for today,”
Jay said.

"Me neither,” Fr. Dan added.

"I think that the beginning must've been in
1968.”

"1968?" Jay asked.

"Patience,” Fr. Dan soothed.

"1968,” Rick repeated. "I was in the Army
Signal Corps. My unit was getting ready to ship out to Vietnam. I
was a green lieutenant right out of ROTC. Let me tell you I was
scared.”

"You were a lieutenant in 1968? That means
you're more like 45 than 35,” Jay injected.

"45 in July,” Rick said.

"That explains the 'premature grey',” Jay
said.

"Anyway…" Fr. Dan prodded.

"Anyway,” Rick continued. "When we got to
Vietnam the Army had just started to use some early computers to
help break codes. They found out that I'd had lots of math and
languages in college so they put me on the project. By '74 I was a
captain specializing in cryptography. I'd worked out some pretty
sophisticated algorithms.” Rick was obviously proud of his
achievement.

"So it's 1974 and I've got my six years in
and it's time to get out of the Army. I'm thinking maybe graduate
school but one day I get a visit from an army buddy. He asks me if
I'd be interested in working with computers for the
government?"

"The government?" Jay asked warily.

"That's what I said. I'd seen enough crooked
double dealing in Nam to know that 'the government' could mean just
about anything, and that anything was usually bad. Turns out it was
on the up and up. So since 74 I've been in the employ of what is
now known as the DEA.”

"DEA?" Fr. Brennan asked.

"Drug Enforcement Agency,” Rick expanded.

"I still don't see the connection,” Jay
said.

"Hold on,” Rick said. "It'll be clear in a
minute.”

"Okay.”

"Alright.”

"In 86 and 87 I got involved in some field
work in Central America.”

"The contras?" Jay asked. Rick shot him a
look that made it clear he wasn't going to answer questions like
that.

"So I'm in Central America. We're
intercepting radio signals and decoding messages. Our job was to
report on drug shipments, troop movements etc. etc... But we
stumbled on what turned out to be a major money laundering
operation that seemed to have links to elements of our own
government.

"Here's where you came in Jay. By 1987 we'd
implicated a middle ranking CIA man, Stan Krantz in the money
laundering operations of a Colombian drug cartel.”

"Holy shit,” Jay said.

"Ditto,” Fr. Brennan added.

"But by 1988 the DEA decided I was too old
for field work and brought me back into the shop. I had 15 years in
with them so we worked out a deal where I'd go back to school, get
my Ph.D. in computer science, specialize in computer security, and
then come back to the DEA as a senior technical guy.”

"Nice career path,” Jay said dryly.

"Anyway. Right before our last year, I
started back part time for the DEA. I was shocked to learn that 4
years had gone by and they still hadn't nabbed Krantz. His network
had grown and they figured he was responsible for laundering up to
a billion dollars a week for the Colombians.”

"How'd he do it?" Fr. Dan asked. "That's a
lot of money.”

"We still couldn't figure it out at that
point,” Rick answered. "We suspected that he'd gotten inside a
large brokerage house or a large check clearing house where there
are thousands of electronic transfers an hour. We figured that's
the only way he could have distributed that weight of illegal
currency and not drawn suspicion. But we couldn’t figure it
out.”

"Electronic transfers?" Jay asked slowly. He
thought he knew where Rick might be headed.

"Right,” Rick answered. "91 came and went and
we were no closer. We were almost ready to drop the theory. You and
I graduated in 92 and I went back full time with the DEA.”

"Small environmental outfit in Oregon eh?"
Jay teased.

"Depends on your point of view,” Rick
answered. Jay pondered the response. It was a good riddle, well
told.

"Okay, okay I see your point,” Jay said. "So
that's why you didn't want me to mention you to the CIA?" Jay
asked. "You were investigating some of their people?"

"Right. Not that it would have really
mattered. They probably checked me out and I've got a complete
electronic and paper history as Rick Hewlett anyway.”

"You mean?” Jay and the big priest asked at
the same time.

"Right. Don't ask. I wouldn't tell you
anyway,” Rick answered the unasked question about his real
name.

"So anyway, you went off to New York and I
went somewhere else. We still didn't have anything in November when
we met in Tennessee. In fact we were looking at some other angles
by then. But then, you remember those people who were following
you?" Rick asked Jay.

"Yeah.”

"They were CIA.”

"CIA?"

"Right. Working for MacKenzie Lazarus.”

"Why would MacKenzie Lazarus have CIA
watching me?"

"To make sure you weren't FBI, CIA, DEA,
Treasury, or any other nasty agency.”

"I'm really confused,” Jay said.

"Me too,” Fr. Dan added. He went back to the
cooler and got a soda for himself. "Wouldn't they already know if
he was CIA if they were CIA?"

"You'd think so. However, Stan Krantz'
private network had expanded by this time to include FBI and DEA.
Nobody could trust anybody. They had plans for our boy genius here
and needed to make sure he was clean and exploitable. They also
needed to make sure he wasn’t working for the ‘good guys’ and
trying to infiltrate their network.”

"I think I see it now,” Jay said.

"I'm still in the dark,” the burly priest
added.

"Well it was the fact that I saw CIA agents
trailing a MacKenzie Lazarus computer guy that broke the case wide
open for us. Once we had an idea that it was MacKenzie Lazarus that
Stan Krantz had infiltrated we could focus on it and my little
buddy over there,” Rick said.

"You thought I was in on it?" Jay asked
timidly.

"Not even for one second Jay,” Rick answered
immediately. "Not even for one second. We knew you were as pure as
virgin snow. And besides, we kept our eye on you to make sure that
we knew whatever MacKenzie Lazarus and Stan Krantz knew.”

"You were watching me?"

"Sure! And it wasn't always easy. Let me tell
you. If we hadn't already known you were going to spring training
in Florida you'd have lost us at the same time you were dropping
Angus' men. Remember when you said you dropped three agents in
NYC?"

"Yeah.”

"It was six of theirs and three of ours.”

"Wow.”

"Yeah. Not bad for a rookie,” Rick
teased.

"I still don't get it,” Fr. Brennan said. His
face was turning red in frustrated concentration. "I still don't
see how it all fits together.”

Rick carried on. "Stan Krantz was using
MacKenzie Lazarus to launder his drug money. They could easily hide
ten thousand transactions a day in MacKenzie Lazarus' million
transactions. Stan Krantz and Angus MacKenzie were in it together,”
Rick said.

"So what happened in Panama?" Jay asked.

"This last deal with the Panamanian currency
was used to get $700 billion in drug money laundered all at once.
They figured if they staged a coup non-one would notice the money
laundering,” Rick explained.

Jay and Fr. Dan looked at each other.

"What was in it for Angus MacKenzie,” Jay
asked.

"Yeah?" Fr. Brennan asked. "It seems to me he
was risking an awful lot for a man in his position.”

"How do you think he got that position?" Rick
asked. "Angus MacKenzie had a long and sordid history of illegal
activity before he ever met Stan Krantz. Those two were made for
each other. Good old Angus has his hands in everything from drugs
to arms to organized crime to union control to influence peddling
all the way to the Supreme Court. I figure he's one of the ten
biggest crooks on the planet.”

"So why doesn't someone take him down?" Jay
asked.

"Patience,” Rick said. "I think we may
finally have him. I doubt if there's a judge he can't get to but if
we try him in the press first there'll be enough public pressure to
put him away.”

“
Why try him at all?” Jay
asked.

The three men fell silent pondering the depth
and breadth and the scope of the Angus MacKenzie and Stan Krantz
enterprise, and Jay’s proposed solution. After a while Jay looked
up from the table. His eye's caught Rick's. Rick knew what he was
going to be asked but let Jay do it in his own time.

“
There’s more,” Rick
said.

“
More?”

“
Not only did they launder
the drug money, but Angus was also hedging on the Balboa to dollar
conversion. Normally the Balboa is pegged at 1:1 to the U.S.
dollar, and both currencies circulate freely in Panama. The surge
of buying put a tremendous amount of currency in Angus’ control.
But, the buying had gotten the 1:1 peg out of whack. So when,
conveniently, the US government had to intervene and realign the
currencies, Angus made another fortune.”

“
Damn,” Jay
said.

Fr. Dan Brennan’s eyes were beginning to roll
up into his head.

Rick paused to let everyone catch up.

"So where does Tonia fit into all this?" Jay
asked, trying to sound objective and detached but failing in the
attempt.

"Tonia's involved in this?" Fr. Dan asked.
"That nice girl you brought to help on the last house?"

Rick sat bolt upright. "You brought Tonia
Taggert here?" he demanded.

"Yeah. You didn't know?" Jay asked.

"No I didn't know. When did you bring her?
No. Wait. It must've been Thanksgiving. You ditched all of us at
Thanksgiving. No-one knew where you were. You brought her
here?"

"Yeah.”

"Shit,” Rick snapped. He got up and looked
around like he was expecting Panamanian hit squads to materialize
out of the woods at any second.

"Relax,” Jay said. "She could never find it
in a million years. I brought her in after dark and she slept most
of the way back. I never told her where we were. She never
asked.”

"But Jay. If she told Angus or Stan they
could be scouring the area right now. It's very dangerous for us
here.”

"Rick,” Fr. Brennan started. "It’d be more
dangerous for them than you. These are my people. I knew you were
coming at least an hour before you got here and I know you were
trying to be sneaky. These good ol’ boys know a thing or two about
keeping to themselves. You're as safe here as if you were in Fort
Knox. Probably safer.”

Rick thought about it for a minute. "An
hour?" he asked.

"At least,” Fr. Dan replied. "And in that
time you passed through the sights of two squirrel guns, one
shotgun, and one particularly nasty muzzle loader...”

Rick nodded, he tugged at his beard. He
believed it. After what he'd seen of the locals in Central America
and their ability to melt into the countryside, he respected the
ability of a home grown to know what was what on his own
ground.

"So back to my question,” Jay said. "Where
does Tonia fit into all this?"

"Yeah,” Fr. Dan prodded.

Rick spread his hands on the table. He knew
what he was going to say was going to hurt his friend. But he had
to tell him.

"Tonia Taggert was used to spy on you, to
manipulate your emotional state. Her job was to get you
romantically attached to her for the expressed purpose of keeping
you isolated and becoming your one and only confidant. She was
supposed to know your every thought before you even had it. You
were supposed to fall in love with her and worship the very ground
she walked on. If it came to it, she was going to coerce you into
doing the dirty work for Angus on the trades.”

“
But she didn’t have to,”
Jay said. He looked down at the ground.

“
For that sin you have
already been forgiven,” Fr. Dan reminded him.