a few more cabinets?”
“I will not tolerate thisl”
“Men don’t. You go on your way, and I’ll simply report to my superiors that
Waterman Trust is in one hell of a pile of manure. Forgettin’ very sizable
commissions due the bank and puttin’ aside any thoughts of the companies
involved gettin’ nervous over who owns whatthere might even be a run on
some stocks-I possess knowledge which I should report immediately to the
au.thoritiesi”
“You can notl You mu t nod”
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“Why not?” Jefferson Cartwright held Gut the palms of both hands.
Elizabeth turned away from him and tried to marshal her thoughts. “Estimate
what!s gone, Mr. Cartwright. . . .”
‘I can estimate as far as weve looked. Eleven years, approximately -three
and a half million a year comes to something like forty million. But we may
have only just begun:’
‘I said prepare an estimate. I trust that I don!t have to tell. you that if
you say a word to anyone-I shall destroy you. We’ll arrive at mutually
agreeable terms.” She slowly turned and looked at Jefferson CartwrighL
“‘You should know, Mr. Cartwright, that through an accident you’re
privileged to information that lifts you far above your talents or
abilities. When men are so fortunate, they must be cautious.”
Elizabeth Scarlatti spent a sleepless night.
Jefferson Cartwright also spent a sleepless night. But it waset in bed. It
was on a monk7s stool with reams of papefs at his feet.
The figures mouated as he cautiously checked the file cabinets against the
Scarlatti trusts reports.
Jefferson Cartwright thought he’d go mad.
Ulster Stewart Scarlett had removed securities worth over $270 million.
He totaled and retotaled the figures.
An amount that would cause a crisis on the exchange.
An international scandal, which could-if known-cripple the Scarlatti
Industries. . . . And it would be known when the time came to convert the
first trusaing secunties. At the outside-. barely a year.
Jefferson Cammght folded the last of the pages together and stuffed them
into his inner jacket pocket He clamped his arm against his chest, making
sure that the prmum between his flesh was stopped by the paper, and left
the vaults.
He signaled the front guard with a short whistle. The man had been dozing
on a black leather chair near the door.
“Oh, m`God, Mr. Cartwrightl Ystartled mel”
Cartwright walked out onto the street.
120-
He looked at the grayish white light of the sky. It was going to be morning
soon. And the light was his signal.
For he-Jefferson Cartwright, fifty-year-old ex-football player from the
University of Virginia, who had married first money and then lost it–held
in his pocket carte blanche to everything he had ever wanted.
He was back in the stadium and the crowds were roaring.
Touchdownt
Nothing could be denied him now.
121
CHAPTER 13
At twenty minutes after one in the morning, Benjamin Reynolds sat
comfortably in an armchair in his Georgetown apartmeaL He held on his lap
one of the file folders the attorney general’s office had sent Group Twenty.
There had been sixteen in all and he divided the stack equally between
Glover and himself.
With congressional pressure, especially New York’s Senator Brownlee, the
attorney generars office wasn’t going to leave a single stone unturned. If
the Scarlatti son had disappeared into a void, at least the AG men could
write volumes explaining the fact. Because Group Twenty had
touched-briefly–on the life of Ulster Scarlett, Reynolds, too, would be
expected to add something. Even if it was nothing.
Reynolds felt a trace of guilt when he thought of Glover wading through the
same nonsense.
Like all reports of investigations of missing persons, it was filled with
trivia. Dates, hours, minutes, streets, houses, names, names, names. A
record of the inconsequential made to seem important. And perhaps to some-
one, somewhere, it might be. A part, a section, a paragrapk a sentence,
even a word could open a door for someone
But certainly not for anyone at Group Twenty.
Hed apologize to Glover later that morning.
Suddenly the phone rang. The sound in the stillness at such an unexpected
hour startled Reynolds.
“Ben? It’s Glover. . . .”
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“Jesusl You scared the hell out of me! What’s wrong? Someone call in?”
“No, Ben. I suppose this could wait until morning, but I thought I’d give
you the pleasure of laughing yourself to sleep, you bastard.”
“You’ve been drinking, Glover. Fight with your wife, not me. What the hell
have I done?”
“Gave me these eight Bibles from the attorney general’s office, that’s what
you did…. I found something!”
“Good Christl About the New York thingl The aocks?”
“No. Nothing we’ve ever connected with Scarlett. May~ be nothing but it
could be
‘INbat?”
“Sweden. Stockholm.”
“Stockholm? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know the Pond file by rote.”
“Walter Pond? The securities?”
“That’s right. His first memorandum arrived last May. The initial word
about the securities. Remember now?”
“Yes, yes, I do. So what?”
“According to a report in the sixth file, Ulster Scarlett was in Sweden
last year. Would you like to guess when?”
Reynolds paused before answering. His attention was riveted on the almost
unimaginable amount of thirty million dollars. “It wasn’t Christmas, was
it.” It was a statement spoken softlv.
“Now that you mention it, some people might have looked at it that way.
Perhans Christmas in Sweden comes in May.”
“Let’s talk in the morning.” Reynolds hung up without waiting for his
subordinate to reply or say goodnight. He walked slowly back to the soft
armchair and sat down.
As always Benjamin Reynolds’s thought processes raced ahead of the
information presented. To the complications, the ramifications.
If Glover had made a valid assumption, that Ulster Scarlett was involved
with the Stockholm manipulation, then it had to follow that Scarlett was
still alive. If that were true, then -thirty million dollars’ worth of
American securities had been illegally offered by him for sale on the
Stockholm exchange.
123
No one individual, not even Ulster Stewart Scarlett, could get his hands on
thirty million dollars’ worth of securities.
Unless there was a conspiracy.
But of what kind? For what purpose?
If Elizabeth Scarlatti herself were a part of it-she had to be considered
in light of the magnitude of the capital-why?
Had he misread her completely?
It was possible.
It was also possible that he had been right over a year ago. The Scarlatti
son had not done what he had done for thrills or because he’d met unsavory
friends. Not if Stockholm was pertirxenL
Glover paced the floor in front of Reynolds’s desk. “It’s there. Scarlett’s
visa shows he entered Sweden on May tenth. The Pond memorandum is dated the
fifteenth.”
“I see. I can read.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Do? I can’t do a damn thing. There’s really nothing here at all. Simply a
statement calling our attention to some rumors and the date of an American
citizen’s entry into Sweden. What else do you see?”
“Assuming there’s a basis for the rumors, the connection’s obvious and you
know it as well as I dol Five will get you ten that if Pond’s last
communication is right, Scarlett’s in Stockholm now.”
“Assuming he’s got something to seiv,
“That’s what I said.”
“If I remember, somebody’s got to say something’s
stolen before somebody else can yell thief I If we make
accusations, all the Scarlattis have to say is they don’t
know what we’re talking about and we’re strung up on a
high legal tree. And they don’t even have to do that. They
can simply refuse to dignify us with an answer — that’s
the way the old lady would put it-and the boys on the
Hill will take care of the rest…. This agency-for those
who know about it-is an abomination. The purpose we
ftrve is generally at odds with a few other purposes in
this town. We’re one of the checks and balances-~e
124
your choice. A lot of people in Washington would like to see us ouW,
“Then we’d better let the AG’S office have the information and let them
draw their own conclusions. I guess that’s the only thing left.”
Benjamin Reynolds pushed his foot against the floor and his chair swung
gently around to face the window. “We should do that. We will if you insist
on it.”
“What does that mean?” asked Glover, addressing his words to the back of
his superioes head.
Reynolds shoved his chair around again and looked at his subordinate. “I
think we ran do the job better ourselves. Justice, Treasury, even the
Bureau. Theyre accountable to a dozen committees. We’re not.”
“We’re extending the lines of our authority.”
“I don1 think so. And as long as I sit in this chair that’s pretty much my
decision, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Why do you want us to take it on?”
“Because there’s something diseased in all this. I saw it in the old