CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Their food arrived, but neither of them felt particularly hungry.
“He told Merrill he had been in the Kosovo War,” Hauck said. “He claimed he was Belgian and Dutch. We thought to look only among the NATO forces.”
Naomi nodded. “And he’s been hiding under the radar ever since. Ten years. Right in plain sight. Building a new life. Not so prominent a case that anyone was really looking for him. Christ, he was right there in the European gossip columns, clubbing around with cousins of Princess Beatrix of Belgium. But Donje Velke was just one of many such incidents in that war. He was never even a priority on the UN’s list. Bigger fish to fry. It would have gone on indefinitely if-”
“If Merrill Simons hadn’t come to us to look into him,” Hauck said, finishing her thought.
Naomi nodded with a smile. “Or until some midlevel magistrate in the Hague who happened to have a fetish for the party-hopping friends of the Belgian royals finally made it to the bottom of his open files. And even then, he barely looks the same and operates under a new ID.”
A surge of anger started to burn in Hauck’s chest. Merrill Simons’s instincts had been right from the start. Dani was never who he claimed, not the freewheeling financier, not the attentive boyfriend. But how for a second could even she have suspected this? A wave of sadness for her came over him.
“So now you have a reason to pick him up,” Hauck said. He dropped the UN report back in front of her. “I assume there’s a valid Interpol warrant outstanding against him?”
“There is,” Naomi said. She leaned forward and looked him firmly in the eye. “But I think you can understand how the people I work for aren’t altogether keen on cleaning up the files for some bureaucratic war-crimes commission in the Hague with all that’s going on. What’s pressing today”-she tapped her nail against Dani’s photo-“is to find out what Thibault’s role was in the deaths of Marc Glassman and James Donovan and, even more important, where that might lead. Later, we can always hand him off to the UN to answer for what he’s done.”
“So then pick him up.” Hauck shrugged. “You have sufficient cause. There’s nothing stopping you now.”
“Yes, there is.” Naomi looked at him directly. “Just one thing…”
Suddenly Hauck started to wonder why they were even meeting. Why she was sharing all this with him.
“Thibault’s missing.”
“Missing!”
Naomi nodded. “He’s gone underground. We were keeping tabs on him-loosely, until we could fill in the details. He went into work in his office two days ago. According to the agents tracking him, they haven’t seen him since.”
“Someone doesn’t just completely disappear!”
“That’s exactly what he did. He never came back out. According to his secretary, he told her he had a sudden trip that had come up and he’d be back in a few days. So far, he hasn’t called in. We executed a warrant and impounded his computer. We found a wall safe in his office, cleaned out. We think he may have kept alternate passports in there.”
“He knew you were onto him,” Hauck said, putting it all together. “He fled.”
“The agents who were watching him claim there’s no way they could have been made. If he fled, it wasn’t under his own name. I don’t know if he got tipped off, but there’s no record of Thibault leaving the country. There is, however”-Naomi reached inside her case and pushed across a series of new black and white photos-“this.”
The photos showed a bearded man in a black leather jacket with a baseball cap drawn over his eyes passing through an airport security station. “It’s at Newark international. Last Tuesday night. The same day he went missing. It could be him. We’ve interviewed various gate agents and they seem to recall someone similar boarding an Air France flight for Paris.”
Hauck stared closely at the photo. He felt a fist clench in his gut. “It is him.”
“How can you be sure?”
“That’s the same satchel he had with him the night I followed him to the restaurant and got his DNA.” He passed the photos back across to Naomi with a shrug. “That’s him.”
“Look, until we know for sure what the hell is going on, all of this-Thibault, Kostavic, whatever he may have done-is not to be shared, you understand?” She tapped her nail and it brushed against his hand. “Especially when it comes to other investigative arms of the government. Or Merrill Simons, for that matter. That’s clear, right?”
Hauck met her round, gray eyes. “It’s clear.”
He had known for a time this would lead somewhere. When he first had doubts about Talon. When he pressed Naomi to let him remain involved. Maybe that day when he first saw April Glassman’s face on that screen.
“You believe Thibault recruited these traders, don’t you? To go off the reservation, so to speak. To drive their firms under.”
“It all fits.” The Treasury agent’s eyes shone with the same intensity. “Both of them were used to earning millions; both were bonused largely in their own company stock, stock against which they had borrowed heavily to cover their lifestyles and that was now underwater. Both had margin calls against them just a few days away.”
“So where’s the money trail?” Hauck asked. “If Thibault bribed them, it had to be for something big.”
“It was something big.” She grinned. “Depending, of course, on your definition of big.” She reached back inside her case and this time came back with a photocopied, handwritten note. The stationery letterhead read James Donovan. She slipped it across the table to Hauck. “Leslie Donovan came to me. A couple of days after you went to see her. She didn’t know what to do with this. She had no idea what it meant, only that her husband was seemingly into something she couldn’t explain. She said you had asked her if she honestly thought he had taken his own life…”
Hauck read it. The note was written in an awkward, harried script.
Les, my love, I’ve asked Bill to give you this in the event anything should happen to me and I’m not there. Not being with you and Zach is the most painful thing I can ever imagine. Not seeing him grow into the person I know he will become. Not being there to take care of you. Listen-I’ve managed to put away some money. Money that can help take care of you, in the event I’m not around. It’s in an account that no one knows about at the Caribe Sun Trust on Grand Cayman Island. The account number is 4345672209. The account is in both of our names. You may remember, I had you sign something once. The pin code is Zachy. (Corny, I know!) Your signature is on file.
Whatever you do, this is money that must not be explained and cannot, cannot be brought back to this country. I can’t go into it other than to say it’s all a measure of my love for you. I’m hoping this is a letter you will never have to read, but if you do, don’t tell anyone. I’m not proud, but it’s to protect you when I’m not there.
The letter went on to talk about his love and it was signed Jim.
Hauck put it down. “So what’s your definition of big?”
Naomi pushed him another photocopy. This time, it was a bank statement, from the Caribe Sun Trust.
Hauck scanned down the list of deposits until he hit the bottom. It showed over eight million dollars in the account.
Hauck whistled. “Works for me…”
“It was probably only a down payment,” Naomi said. “This is a guy who was teetering on the edge financially. A guy with a six-thousand-a-month apartment in New York and two vacation homes who had leveraged himself heavily against his company stock, which in the near term had no prospect of ever coming back. A guy whose future earnings flow was up in the air. Why would I not be surprised to find a similar account somewhere when we dig into Marc Glassman?”
Hauck nodded. He would definitely believe it. “But you think there was a full-out conspiracy here. There’s more?”