Utopian Day (10 page)

“
What is going on, J.T.? You said
you didn’t have any of the money this guy was after.”

J.T. sat down at the table and looked over at James
and Laura.

“
I know. I had hoped to keep that
hidden from these guys in case they were listening in on our
conversation back on the other boat, but Nick already figured that
out.”

“
So just who is this guy?” James
asked.

“
His name is Nick Bartonovich. He
and I met in college when he was running bets for the college
sports games. We hit it off and started working together once we
were out of college. We raised money to take over vulnerable
companies, then sell off assets and unprofitable business units. We
would create shell companies – companies that only existed on paper
– to hide the losses from some of the legitimate businesses, which
we would then sell for far more than they were worth. The new
owners would think they were buying a solvent business, only to
find out that what they’d actually bought was a bankrupt company.
The people working for these companies would then lose their jobs
when the new owners had to liquidate the company assets to pay off
their creditors. Often, the retirement plans the company had
invested in relied heavily on the same company’s stock, so most of
the people who lost their jobs also lost their retirement
money.”

“
One of the lawyers we used to
help set up the shell companies was arrested for having sex with a
minor and decided to spill the beans on our operation in return for
leniency from the judge. The lawyer didn’t know Nick, but I’d had a
meeting with him once and he knew I was in on the scheme, so he
gave the prosecutor my name. The prosecutor had a field day, and I
was convicted and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, but
before I left, I created my own insurance policy. Nick and I had
this offshore account where we had kept the operating funds that we
used to conduct all of our under-the-table deals. We had a hundred
million in it. Right before I went to prison, I had eighty million
dollars of that moved to a bank here in the Cayman Islands, and
left twenty million for Nick. I hoped he would be satisfied with
that and leave the rest alone, considering I’m the one who went to
prison.”

“
O.k.,” Laura finally responded,
“but that doesn’t explain why James and I are here. He only needs
you for this deal to work. Why bring us, too?”

“
Leverage,” J.T. responded. “If I
don’t go along with it, you two get squeezed.”

“
You mean tortured… or worse,”
James replied.

“
But why us?” Laura
persisted.

“
He needed someone close to me –
that’s why you’re here Laura. I don’t have any family left alive,
so people close to me in the program are the closest thing I’ve got
to family. As to why James was picked, I don’t know. He’s new in
the program, so it doesn’t make sense to me from that perspective.
But one thing I’ve learned over the years is that Nick has a reason
for everything he does. I’m sure he will use James as leverage, I’m
just not sure how he plans to do it yet.”

That night, the three companions went to sleep in
paradise, wondering what their fate would be at the hands of their
new jailer.

The next morning, one of the guards came to unlock
the door and led everyone up to the dining room, where a sumptuous
breakfast was served. Nick was reading the news on a tablet
computer while he finished his breakfast, which consisted of a
bagel, a poached egg, and a glass of freshly squeezed orange
juice.

“
Have a seat and enjoy some
breakfast,” he said as they entered the room. After everyone was
seated, he continued. “It seems you have made front-page news in
the
Nevada Free Press
, and even received a mention on the
nightly news, J.T. You are a wanted man.”

“
Did you think breaking me out of
prison was going to go un-noticed?” replied J.T.

“
No, not at all, but you should
consider the situation you are in. No one knows that I kidnapped
you against your will. For all they know, you three planned the
whole thing together. Do you really think that anyone will believe
the truth?”

“
What’s your point?” James chimed
in.

“
The point is that, should you
choose not to cooperate with me, all I have to do is drop you off
anywhere in United States jurisdiction and make a call to the FBI
for you three to be sent back to prison with a long extension to
your current prison sentences. Sentences not likely to be served in
the same cushy circumstances that I found you in, I might
add.”

James’ appetite was suddenly much smaller. The
thought of spending even longer than his current sentence in a
regular prison was something he didn’t think he could face. He
would rather die. He stared at his plate, unwilling to take the
next bite of food, temporarily frozen in contemplation of the
possibility of going back to a regular prison.

“
What exactly do you want each of
us to do?” asked Laura.

“
Well, that’s the easy part,” Nick
proceeded. “All you and James need to do is behave yourselves and
enjoy a two-week vacation here on the yacht. You can eat great
food, entertain yourselves in the library – fishing, swimming,
sun-bathing, whatever you like, so long as you follow a few simple
rules.”

“
J.T. will have the slightly more
demanding task of accompanying me to the bank every day to withdraw
the money. You see, he had a provision put in when he set up the
bank account that he could not withdraw more than one tenth of the
cash balance from the account on a given day unless the account was
going to be closed out. In that case, the balance could only be
withdrawn in ten equal amounts over a ten day period. Evidently, he
anticipated that such a day as this might eventually come.” Nick
looked directly at J.T. as he spoke the last sentence.

“
And it’s a good thing I did,
too,” J.T. replied.

“
Mia,” Nick said without taking
his gaze off of J.T. “Please give J.T. a change of clothes. He will
be accompanying me to the bank shortly.” Addressing J.T., he
continued. “We leave in an hour; don’t be late.” With that, he
returned to reading the news on his tablet computer and finishing
his breakfast.

A few minutes later, Mia arrived with a tailored
suit on a hanger. “I have your suit, J.T.,” she said. “Time to get
dressed.” J.T. stood up from the table and began walking back to
the cabin they were assigned to stay in. When he reached the door,
he turned to take the suit from Mia, but she held on to it when he
tried to take it from her grasp. “Nick wants you to shave your
beard off, so you’ll look more business-like.”

“
Do I have a choice?” J.T.
retorted.

Mia raised one eyebrow to let him know that he did
not.

“
Do you really think this is going
to work, Mia?” J.T. asked.

“
Yes,” Mia replied with a
determined look that J.T. knew well. “I intend to see that it
does.”

J.T. looked at himself in the mirror as he shaved
off the last remnants of his beard. He was racking his brain,
trying to decide how to get out of this situation without getting
himself, or James and Laura, hurt. The one thing he had on his side
was time. If he kept calm and looked for an opportunity to get a
message out, he might be able to pull it off. He might be able to
get Nick’s tablet for a few minutes and send an email to alert his
lawyers and have them contact the FBI.

He bolstered himself with that thought as he dressed
in the suit Mia had brought for him. It felt nice. He hadn’t been
in a suit since his last appearance at trial seven years before.
This was a nice Italian suit with Gucci leather shoes. He wondered
where they had picked it up and how they had gotten his size
right.

When he opened the door of the cabin, he encountered
one of the guards, who motioned for him to go in front of him. Up
on deck, Nick was waiting, similarly dressed.

“
Shall we?” he said as he motioned
to the awaiting fifty foot cigarette boat docked at the back of the
yacht.

J.T. got into the boat along with Nick and two of
the commandos, who were suitably attired for the occasion. One of
the commandos took the controls and began to pull the boat away
from the yacht. J.T. thought to himself that it was a beautiful day
in a beautiful place, and in other circumstances, he would have
been able to enjoy it, but his mind quickly returned to what they
were about to do. He and Nick had made a lot of money, and
needlessly hurt a lot of people in the process. Many of those
people had lost everything they had. He had begun the process of
making amends to those he had wronged, starting to restore what he
had taken, but now all of that was being put in jeopardy. He prayed
a silent prayer as they sped towards the island. “God, somehow,
someway, please get us out of this.”

Chapter Eighteen

Mia explained the rules to James and Laura, and
posted a copy of them on the inside door of their cabin:

1. Stay away from any navigational or
   communications equipment, including computers, tablets, phones, or
   the yacht’s radio.
   

2. Stay away from the other
   watercraft, such as lifeboats.
   

3. You must be accompanied by a guard if you go
   anywhere except your own cabin.
   

4. If you go swimming, you must stay
   within sight of the yacht.
   

5. All other cabins but your own are off-limits.
   

6. After dinner each night, you will
   be escorted to your cabin where you will stay locked in until
   someone comes to get you for breakfast.
   

“
Beyond these rules,” Mia said,
“you can do pretty much anything you want.”

Later in the morning, Laura decided to make the best
of their captivity in paradise and do some sunbathing. She found a
suitably sized swimsuit in their cabin and, after changing, she
went to lay down in one of the lounge chairs on the deck of the
yacht. James came and sat down in the chair beside her a few
minutes later, and pretended to be focusing on the ocean view. He
spoke quietly, hoping that the nearby guards wouldn’t hear too much
of their conversation.

“
Laura, what are you going to do
when this is all over?”

Laura didn’t open her eyes as she responded.

“
I’m still just trying to process
everything that has happened. To tell you the truth, I’ve never
been too much of a planner. That’s kind of why I ended up in
prison; I just flew by the seat of my pants. Right now, I’m just
trying to enjoy the sun. We’ve got almost two weeks to figure out
what we’re going to do, right?”

“
That depends on whether or not
this Nick character is telling us the truth or not.”

“
Well, he has treated us pretty
good since we arrived here. Why wouldn’t he keep his
word?”

“
A better question is why would
he? We know what he is doing, what he looks like, what his name is.
We know everything the FBI would like to know about this guy, and
with J.T.’s testimony, this guy could go to prison for a very long
time. Dumping our bodies somewhere in the ocean seems like a simple
solution to that problem.”

“
Yeah, but like he said, who’s
going to believe us if we talk? We’re just a bunch of convicts.
Anyway, if he keeps his word, I’ve got about a million reasons to
keep my mouth shut. J.T.’s the one who should be worried. He’s the
one with the real details that could sink this guy.”

James sat quietly for several minutes, thinking
about the whole situation.

“
What if he does keep his word and
pay us, and let us go like he said he would? We couldn’t go back to
the states without going back to jail, and serving out the rest of
our sentences. That’s 13 years for me, longer if I get convicted
for breaking out. And like Nick said, that could be back in a high
security federal penitentiary.”

Laura pushed herself up on her elbows and turned to
look at James.

“
You’re really worried about this,
aren’t you?”

“
And you’re not?” James
replied.

“
It’s on my list, but right now,
I’m just going to enjoy the moment,” Laura responded as she smiled
and faced towards the sun. “The sun feels too good to worry. Cheer
up, we’ll think of something.”

With that, she lay back down and closed her eyes.
James couldn’t stop thinking about their situation, but with Laura
obviously not in the mood to talk about it more at the moment, he
sat there in silence.

J.T. Thornbacker and Nick Bartonovich entered the
lobby of the Grand Cayman Central Bank along with their escorts and
made their way up to the circular desk in the middle of the atrium
where a young dark-skinned woman was seated, staring at a computer
terminal. As they arrived in front of her, she stopped what she was
doing and looked up to address them.

“
Welcome to the Grand Cayman
Central Bank. How may I assist you today?”

“
I’m Mr. Bartonovich. I have an
appointment with Mr. Takata.”

“
One moment please,” the young
lady responded. She picked up the phone and dialed a number. “Mr.
Bartonovich is here to see you.” After hanging up the phone, she
turned back to Nick. “He will be down momentarily, please have a
seat.” She motioned to her right where there were a number of
leather couches and chairs. The group moved over and everyone took
a seat.