Hannah nodded. “Okay, what was the other scenario?”
“Much simpler. Someone saw him make the big win at the casino and abducted him off the street hoping to get the money.”
“And the burns to the foot?”
“Same motive as the first; when he didn’t have the cash on him, they tried to use torture to find out where it was.”
“How about just modifying your scenarios. They’re just crazy, sick, and weird. They use a stun gun to aid in the kidnapping. If you search the APA list of mental disorders, you will probably come up with a multisyllabic, multiword Latinate definition for this type of behavior.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. Finally, Hannah asked, “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make breakfast.”
“And if I weren’t here?”
“I might start by splitting wood. Then I’d go to the office and try to make something happen. I’d create diagrams and lists, look through old files, think about our usual cast of characters. There would be no breakthroughs, but somehow just being active makes me feel better. Then I’d go for a long, fast paddle until I was totally exhausted.”
“So is that what you want to do?”
“The office part, no. It’s a waste of time. It’s just me trying to cope.” He smiled at her. “And I’m glad that you’re here. What would you like to do? It’s really blowing outside. I think kayaking is out.”
Hannah spooned the last of the foam out of her cappuccino cup. “How about taking Simone for a really long walk on the beach and then going shopping.”
“Shopping? I didn’t think you…?”
“For food. You know the right places. We could get a duck or a chicken or a pot-roast, something that takes hours to cook. Vegetables or squash, and we’ll bake something. We fill the house with lovely aromas, we drink tea or maybe a little wine, and we listen to some quiet music to go with the day, things like the Goldberg Variations. I’m sure you have a good….”
“Yes.”
“Do you think we can survive a slow day together, a slow day of doing normal kinds of things?”
Ray smiled, “I’m sure that after a three hour walk on the beach I could settle into this very nicely.”
24
It was mid-afternoon, and Mackenzie was sipping her first cup of coffee after an hour of yoga and 40 minutes of meditation. Behind her great room’s expanse of titanium-tinted glass, she peered across the bay through her powerful telescope. Heavy rain and mist were being pushed off the big lake into the bay by a strong northeast wind, but she could see the back of a figure moving on a treadmill framed in the center of a large HDTV, the jogger almost in proportion with the soccer players in the background.
Plato’s cave, she said, making the figures larger and sharpening the focus as the scope cut through the haze. Her concentration was suddenly shattered by the vibration and techno music beat of the ringtone Ken Lee had installed on her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Watching Sabotny on his treadmill.”
“Is he fit?”
“I’ve only been watching a few minutes, but he’s moving fast. My guess is that he’s in good shape.”
“File that away. Might be an important bit of info. Listen, I’ve been thinking about your encounter last night. We need to get some things in place. Also, I’ve got additional info on Sabotny. You may want to make notes.”
“Give me a few. Let me get to a keyboard.”
Mackenzie hit a switch on the wall, and the floor-to-ceiling drapes started to close. When the whirling noise of the electric motor stopped, the room was left in almost complete darkness. Mackenzie navigated her way to her desk and touched the space bar on her keyboard, bringing the screen to life.
“Okay,” she said, “ready to make notes.”
“First,” said Ken Lee, “we need to start tracking Sabotny. I’d like to get a GPS transmitter in his car. You said he had a Land Rover. What year?”
“I have no idea; looks new. How do you tell?”
“Get me a photo. I’ll e-mail you a diagram of where to place the unit. It’s held by strong magnets, and it just takes a few moments to get it in place. I’ll send you two in case he has a second vehicle. They should be in your box at the UPS Store by Tuesday. Also, I want you to have a personal locator beacon with you before you go on any more jaunts. I’m researching what’s out there. I should have that unit in your hands before the end of the week.”
“Ken Lee…I don’t want to be weighted down with extra gear.”
“These things are tiny, about the size of a small cell phone. And I need to know where you are. If things go south, just pull the tab, and I’ll direct law enforcement to you. Now, let’s move on to Sabotny,” he said, cutting off any further protest on the PLB. “I talked to two people—an ex-marine friend, and a foreign service officer—who were in Baghdad early on after the invasion.”
“And?”
“Sabotny was career military, a high-ranking noncom. But something happened during the run-up to the Iraq war. My friend doesn’t know what. There’s no record of a court martial, but Sabotny was separated from the Corp. It was all hush-hush.”
“Your friend, does he have a name?”
“Yes, ‘X,’” came the response. “The next time X saw Sabotny was in Baghdad right after the liberation. Sabotny was in command of a group of contractors. X said they looked like they came from central casting. Everything new and clean: clothes, weapons, and vehicles. He said they were all in black, not desert camo. Scuttlebutt was these guys were getting $1,000, $1,500 a day. That’s about what the troops at the bottom get a month. X said what really pissed him off was the contractors hadn’t done any of the fighting, but there they were collecting the big bucks escorting diplomats and civilian employees through corridors that regular troops had secured and were defending. X said he quickly learned to hate them for other reasons.”
“Like what?”
“First, he said it was their swagger and their high living, the single malt Scotch and young Eastern European whores that were smuggled in on private jets. And they were answerable to no one. And they used the anarchy of a war zone to enrich themselves. Most were ex-military: Russian, South African, Israeli, French, and American. But here’s the big thing: that first year after the invasion, $12 billion in C-notes were shipped from the U.S. to start the rebuilding effort. Most went missing. That and billions of dollars worth of oil, loaded on tankers and shipped who knows where. X says he doesn’t know what scams Sabotny was running, but he does know that Sabotny soon parted company with the original contracting group and started his own operation. X says Sabotny came into a lot of money, big money, fast, and set up a shipping business. He says he heard Sabotny laundered the profits through an offshore corporation.”
“And that’s a lot of hearsay,” observed Mackenzie.
“Yeah, well, I next called this woman who was there the first year. State Department. She’s in Thailand now, still has a 202 area code. She confirmed most of the story. Said the loss of the money and Bremer’s total incompetence was reported long after the fact and never seemed to get any traction in the press. She said she heard that in addition to the no-bid contracts and lack of oversight, some contractors and/or their employees just helped themselves to pickups filled with boxes and bags of bills. And they did it with impunity because there could never be any prosecution. There was no accounting, no tracking of serial numbers. No doubt some of the money was used to pay for legitimate expenses, but most was stolen, and there is no way to trace any of it.”