returned.
He was still dripping water, a towel draped loosely around his midriff.
His body was chiseled, heavily muscled in a way that once suggested
manual labor and now, she knew, suggested privilege–a personal trainer,
an active sports life. With a clinical eye, she surveyed the evidence
of his physical regimen–the washboard stomach, the pectorals like twin
shields, the swelling biceps. Water beaded on his tan skin. He’d
removed the dressing from his shoulder, where a small, angry red patch
was visible.
“You’re back,” he said, finally taking in her presence. “What’s new?”
“Here, let me take a look at the shoulder,” she said, and he walked
toward her. Was her interest in him purely professional? Something in
the pit of her stomach made her wonder.
“It’s pretty much healed,” she pronounced. She ran a finger around the
perimeter of the reddened area. “You don’t really need the dressing
anymore. A thin layer of Bacitracin, maybe. I’ve got a first-aid kit
in my luggage.”
She went to retrieve it. When she returned, he was wearing boxer
shorts, and had toweled himself off, but was still shirtless.
“Yesterday you were saying something about the CIA,” she said as she
fumbled with the tube of ointment.
“Maybe I’m wrong about them, I don’t know anymore,” he said. “Lenz had
his suspicions. But I can’t really bring myself to believe it.”
Could he be lying? Had he been deceiving her last night? It seemed
incredible. It defied every instinct, every intuition she possessed.
She could detect no bravado, no tension in his voice none of the usual
signals of deception.
As she rubbed the antiseptic ointment on his shoulder, their faces were
close. She smelled the soap, and the green-apple fragrance of the hotel
shampoo, and something more, something faintly loamy, which was the man
himself. She inhaled quietly, deeply. And then, abruptly beset by a
storm of emotions, she moved away.
Was her radar, her assessment of his honesty, being distorted by other
feelings? That wasn’t something she could afford in her position,
especially under the current circumstances.
On the other hand, what if the CIA officers had been misinformed? Who
were their sources, anyway? A caseworker was only as good as his
assets. She knew as well as anyone how fallible the system could be.
And if there were CIA involvement, would it be safe to remand him to
that agency? There was too much uncertainty in her world: she had to
trust her instincts, or she was lost.
Now she dialed Walter Heisler. “I need to ask you a favor,” she said.
“I called Hartman’s hotel. He seems to have left without checking out.
There was some sort of shootout. Evidently he’s left his luggage there.
I want to go through it, really take my time with it.”
“Well, you know, that’s actually our property, once an investigation is
started.”
“Have you started one?”
“No, not yet, but–”
“Then could you please do me a huge favor and have the luggage shipped
over to me, at my hotel?”
“Well, I suppose this can be arranged,” Heisler said sullenly. “Though
it is … rather unorthodox.”
“Thanks, Walter,” she said warmly, and hung up.
Ben wandered over to her, still wearing nothing but boxer shorts. “Now,
that’s what I call full service,” he said, grinning.
She tossed him an undershirt. “It’s a little chilly outside,” she said,
her throat dry.
Ben Hartman walked out of the hotel, glancing around nervously. Showered
and shaved, even though he was wearing the same now-rumpled clothes he’d
slept in, he felt decently crisp. He took in the broad, heavily
trafficked avenue and beyond, the green of the Stadtpark, feeling
exposed, vulnerable, then he turned right and headed toward the first
district.
He had spent the last half hour making telephone calls, one after
another. First he had awakened a contact, a friend of a friend, in the
Cayman Islands, who operated a two-man “investigative” service that
supposedly did background checks for multinational corporations on
potential hires. In reality, the firm was most often engaged by wealthy
individuals or multinationals who once in a while had a reason to
penetrate the secrecy of the banks down there.
O’Connor Security Investigations was the highly secretive enterprise of
an Irish expatriate and former constabulary officer named Fergus
O’Connor, who had first come to the Caymans as a security guard for a
British bank there and stayed. He’d become a security officer, then
chief of security. When he realized that his web of contacts and his
expertise were marketable–he knew all the other chiefs of security,
knew who could be paid off and who couldn’t, knew how the system really
operated-he’d gone into business for himself.
“This better be bloody important,” Fergus had growled into the phone.
“I don’t know about that,” Ben replied. “But it will be awfully
lucrative.”
“Now we’re talkin’,” Fergus said, mollified.
Ben read a list of routing codes and wire-transfer numbers to him, and
said he’d call back at the end of the day.
“It’ll take me a hell of a lot longer than that,” Fergus objected.
“Even if we double your usual fee? Does that speed things up?”
“Bloody well right it does.” There was a pause. “By the way, you do
know that they’re saying the most appalling things about you, don’t
you?”
“What do you mean?”
“A whole load of bollocks. You know how the rumor mill goes. They say
you’ve gone off on some murderous rampage.”
“You’re kidding.”
“They say you killed your own brother.”
Ben didn’t respond, but felt sick. Was there not a sense in which it
was true?
“Just crazy stuff like that. Not my specialty, but I know a thing or
two about how people spread rumors in the financial world, just to stir
things up. A load of bollocks, as I say. Still, it’s interesting that
someone’s decided to put it out.”
Jesus. “Thanks for the heads-up, Fergus,” Ben said, sounding wobblier
than he would have liked.
He took a few deep breaths to steady himself, and placed a second call,
to a young woman in the New York office of a different sort of
investigative firm. This company was large, international, legitimate,
staffed with ex-FBI agents and even a few ex-CIA officers. Knapp
Incorporated specialized in helping corporations conduct “due diligence”
on potential business partners and solving white-collar crime,
embezzlements, inside thefts a gumshoe agency on a global scale. From
time to time it was hired by Hartman Capital Management.
One of Knapp’s star investigators was Megan Crosby, a Harvard Law grad
who did corporate background checks like no one else. She had an
uncanny knack for rooting out and then untangling Byzantine, heavily
cloaked corporate structures designed to escape the scrutiny of
regulators, wary investors, or competitors, and was as good as anyone at
flushing out who really owned whom, who was behind what shell company.
How she did it she never divulged to her clients. A magician must not
divulge his tricks. Ben had taken Megan out to lunch a number of times
and, since he sometimes had occasion to call her from Europe, she had
given him her home phone number.
“It’s three in the morning, who’s calling?” was how she answered the
phone.
“Ben Hartman, Megan. Forgive me, it’s important.”
Megan was instantly alert for her lucrative client. “No problem. What
can I do for you?”
“I’m in the middle of a big-deal meeting in Amsterdam,” he explained,
lowering his voice. “There’s a small biotech firm in Philadelphia
called Vortex Laboratories I’m intrigued by.” Anna, wanting his help,
had mentioned Vortex to him. “I want to know who owns them, who they
might have quiet partnerships with, that kind of thing.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she said, “but no promises.”
“End of the day possible?”
“Jesus.” She paused. “End of which day are we talking? Yours or mine?
That extra six hours will make a difference.”
“Then make it the end of your day. Do what you can.”
“Got it,” she said.
“One more thing. There’s a guy named Oscar Peyaud, based in Paris, that
HCM has used for French due-diligence. Knapp has him on retainer. I
need direct contact info for him.”
By ten o’clock the Graben, one of Vienna’s great pedestrian
thoroughfares, was bustling with window-shoppers, business people,
tourists. He turned onto Kohlmarkt and passed Cafe Demel, the renowned
pastry shop, where he turned to look at the lavish display windows. In
its reflection, he noticed someone glancing at him and then quickly
looking away.
A tall, thuggish-looking man in an ill-fitting dark blue raincoat. He
had a thatch of unruly salt-and-pepper black hair, a ruddy face, and the
heaviest eyebrows Ben had ever seen, a veritable wheat field of brow
almost an inch thick, mostly black but salted with a little gray. The
man’s cheeks were covered with gin blossoms, the spiderwebs of broken
capillaries that come from heavy drinking.
Ben knew he had seen the man before. He was convinced of it.