“Are you by chance going to Dulles?” he asked with a huge smile and the pretense of being out of breath, as if he’d just sprinted to catch her.
“Yes,” she snapped. No smile. American.
“So was I, but my passport has just been stolen. Don’t know when I’ll get home.” He was pulling an envelope out of his pocket. “This is a birthday card for my father. Could you please drop it in the box when you get to Dulles? His birthday is next Tuesday, and I’m afraid I won’t make it. Please.”
She looked at both him and the envelope suspiciously. It was just a birthday card, not a bomb or a gun.
He was yanking something else out of his pocket. “Sorry, there’s no stamp. Here’s a euro. Please, if you don’t mind.”
The face finally cracked, and she almost smiled. “Sure,” she said, taking both the envelope and the euro and placing them in her purse.
“Thank you so much,” Marco said, ready to burst into tears. “It’s his ninetieth birthday. Thank you.”
“Sure, no problem,” she said.
The kid with the yellow headphones was more complicated. He, too, was an American, and he also fell for the lost passport story. But when Marco tried to hand over the envelope, he looked around warily as if they might be breaking the law.
“I don’t know, man,” he said, taking a step back. “I don’t think so.”
Marco knew better than to push. He backed away and said as sarcastically as possible, “Have a nice flight.”
Mrs. Ruby Ausberry of York, Pennsylvania, was one of the last passengers at check-in. She had taught world history in high school for forty years and was now having a delightful time spending her retirement funds traveling
to places she’d only seen in textbooks. This was the last leg of a three-week adventure through most of Turkey. She was in Milano only for a connecting flight from Istanbul to Washington. The nice gentleman approached her with a desperate smile and explained that his passport had just been stolen. He would miss his father’s ninetieth birthday. She gladly took the card and placed it in her bag. She cleared security and walked a quarter of a mile to the gate, where she found a seat and made herself a nest.
Behind her, less than fifteen feet away, the redhead reached a decision. It could be one of those letter bombs after all. It certainly didn’t seem thick enough to carry explosives, but what did she know about such things? There was a waste can near the window—a sleek chrome can with a chrome top (they were, after all, in Milano)—and she casually walked over and dropped the letter into the garbage.
What if it explodes there? she wondered as she sat back down. It was too late. She wasn’t about to go over and fish it out. And if she did, then what? Track down someone in a uniform and try to explain in English that there was a chance she was holding a letter bomb? Come on, she told herself. She grabbed her carry-on and moved to the other side of the gate, as far away as possible from the waste can. And she couldn’t keep her eyes off it.
The conspiracy grew. She was the first one on the 747 when they began boarding. Only with a glass of champagne did she finally relax. She’d watch CNN as soon as she got home to Baltimore. She was convinced there would be carnage at Milano’s Malpensa airport.
Marco’s taxi ride back to Milano Centrale cost forty-five euros, but he didn’t question the driver. Why bother? The return ticket to Bologna was the same—fifty euros. After a day of shopping and traveling he was down to around one hundred euros. His little stash of cash was dwindling rapidly.
It was almost dark when the train slowed at the station in Bologna. Marco was just another weary traveler when he stepped onto the platform, but he was silently bursting with pride at the day’s accomplishments. He’d purchased clothing, bought rail tickets, survived the madness of both the train station and the airport in Milano, hired two cabs, and delivered his mail, a rather full day without a hint of anyone knowing who or where he was.
And he’d never been asked to show a passport or any type of identification.
______
LUIGI
had taken a different train, the 11:45 express to Milano. But he stepped off at Parma and got lost in the crowd. He found a cab and took a short ride to the meeting place, a favorite café. He waited almost an hour for Whitaker, who had missed one train in Milano and caught the next one. As usual, Whitaker was in a foul mood, which was made even worse by having to meet on a Saturday. They ordered quickly and as soon as the waiter was gone, Whitaker said, “I don’t like this woman.”
“Francesca?”
“Yes, the travel guide. We’ve never used her before, right?”
“Right. Relax, she’s fine. She doesn’t have a clue.”
“What does she look like?”
“Reasonably attractive.”
“Reasonably attractive can mean anything, Luigi. How old is she?”
“I never ask that question. Forty-five is a good guess.”
“Is she married?”
“Yes, no children. She married an older man who’s in very bad health. He’s dying.”
As always, Whitaker was scribbling notes, thinking about the next question. “Dying? Why is he dying?”
“I think it’s cancer. I didn’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Perhaps you should ask more questions.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want to talk about certain things—her age and her dying husband.”
“Where’d you find her?”
“It wasn’t easy. Language tutors are not exactly lined up like taxi drivers. A friend recommended her. I asked around. She has a good reputation in the city. And she’s available. It’s almost impossible to find a tutor willing to spend three hours every day with a student.”
“Every day?”
“Most weekdays. She agreed to work every afternoon for the next month or so. It’s the slow season for guides. She might have a job once or twice a week, but she’ll try to be on call. Relax, she’s good.”
“What’s her fee?”
“Two hundred euros a week, until spring when tourism picks up.”
Whitaker rolled his eyes as if the money would
come directly from his salary. “Marco’s costing too much,” he said, almost to himself.
“Marco has a great idea. He wants to go to Australia or New Zealand or someplace where the language won’t be a problem.”
“He wants a transfer?”
“Yes, and I think it’s a great idea. Let’s dump him on someone else.”
“That’s not our decision, is it, Luigi?”
“I guess not.”
The salads arrived and they were quiet for a moment. Then Whitaker said, “I still don’t like this woman. Keep looking for someone else.”
“There is no one else. What are you afraid of?”
“Marco has a history with women, okay? There’s always the potential for romance. She could complicate things.”
“I’ve warned her. And she needs the money.”
“She’s broke?”
“I get the impression things are very tight. It’s the slow season, and her husband is not working.”
Whitaker almost smiled, as if this was good news. He stuffed a large wedge of tomato in his mouth and chomped on it while peering around the trattoria to see if anyone was eavesdropping on their hushed conversation in English. When he was finally able to swallow, he said, “Let’s talk about e-mail. Marco was never much of a hacker. Back in his glory days he lived on the phone—had four or five of them in his office, two in his car, one in his pocket—always juggling three conversations at once. He bragged about charging five thousand bucks just to take a phone call from a new client, that sort of crap. Never used
the computer. Those who worked for him have said that he occasionally read e-mails. He rarely sent them, and when he did it was always through a secretary. His office was high-tech, but he hired people to do the grunt work. He was too much of a big shot.”
“What about prison?”
“No evidence of e-mail. He had a laptop which he used only for letters, never e-mail. It looks as though everyone abandoned him when he took the fall. He wrote occasionally to his mother and his son, but always used regular mail.”
“Sounds completely illiterate.”
“Sounds like it, but Langley’s concerned that he might try and contact someone on the outside. He can’t do it by phone, at least not now. He has no address he can use, so mail is probably out of the question.”
“He’d be stupid to mail a letter,” Luigi said. “It might divulge his whereabouts.”
“Exactly. Same for the phone, fax, everything but e-mail.”
“We can track e-mail.”
“Most of it, but there are ways around it.”
“He has no computer and no money to buy one.”
“I know, but, hypothetically, he could sneak into an Internet café, use a coded account, send the e-mail, then clean his trail, pay a small fee for the rental, and walk away.”
“Sure, but who’s gonna teach him how to do that?”
“He can learn. He can find a book. It’s unlikely, but there’s always a chance.”
“I’m sweeping his apartment every day,” Luigi said.
“Every inch of it. If he buys a book or lays down a receipt, I’ll know it.”
“Scope out the Internet cafés in the neighborhood. There are several of them in Bologna now.”
“I know them.”
“Where’s Marco right now?”
“I don’t know. It’s Saturday, a day off. He’s probably roaming the streets of Bologna, enjoying his freedom.”
“And he’s still scared?”
“He’s terrified.”
______
MRS.
Ruby Ausberry took a mild sedative and slept for six of the eight hours it took to fly from Milano to Dulles International. The lukewarm coffee they served before landing did little to clear the cobwebs, and as the 747 taxied to the gate she dozed off again. She forgot about the birthday card as they were herded onto the cattle cars on the tarmac and driven to the main terminal. She forgot about it as she waited with the mob to claim her baggage and plod through customs. And she forgot about it when she saw her beloved granddaughter waiting for her at the arrival exit.
She forgot about it until she was safely at home in York, Pennsylvania, and shuffling through her shoulder bag for a souvenir. “Oh my,” she said as the card fell onto the kitchen table. “I was supposed to drop this off at the airport.” Then she told her granddaughter the story of the poor guy in the Milan airport who’d just lost his passport and would miss his father’s ninetieth birthday.
Her granddaughter looked at the envelope. “Doesn’t look like a birthday card,” she said. She studied the
address: R. N. Backman, Attorney at Law, 412 Main Street, Culpeper, Virginia, 22701.
“There’s no return address,” the granddaughter said.
“I’ll mail it first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Ausberry said. “I hope it arrives before the birthday.”
17
AT TEN MONDAY MORNING IN SINGAPORE, THE MYSTERIOUS
$3 million sitting in the account of Old Stone Group, Ltd, made an electronic exit and began a quiet journey to the other side of the world. Nine hours later, when the doors of the Galleon Bank and Trust opened on the Caribbean island of Saint Christopher, the money arrived promptly and was deposited in a numbered account with no name. Normally it would have been a completely anonymous transaction, one of several thousand that Monday morning, but Old Stone now had the full attention of the FBI. The bank in Singapore was cooperating fully. The bank on Saint Christopher was not, though it would soon get the opportunity to participate.
When Director Anthony Price arrived in his office at the Hoover Building before dawn on Monday, the hot memo was waiting. He canceled everything planned for that morning. He huddled with his team and waited for the money to land on Saint Christopher.
Then he called the vice president.
It took four hours of undiplomatic arm-breaking to
shake the information loose on Saint Christopher. At first the bankers refused to budge, but what small quasi-nation can withstand the full might and fury of the world’s only superpower? When the vice president threatened the prime minister with economic and banking sanctions that would destroy what little economy the island was clinging to, he finally knuckled under and turned on his bankers.
The numbered account could be directly traced to Artie Morgan, the thirty-one-year-old son of the former president. He’d been in and out of the Oval Office during the final hours of his father’s administration, sipping Heinekens and occasionally dispensing advice to both Critz and the President.
The scandal was ripening by the hour.
From Grand Cayman to Singapore and now to Saint Christopher, the wiring bore the telltale signs of an amateur trying to cover his tracks. A professional would’ve split the money eight ways and parked it in several different banks in different countries, and the wires would’ve been months apart. But even a rookie like Artie should’ve been able to hide the cash. The offshore banks he selected were secretive enough to protect him. The break for the feds had been the mutual-fund crook desperate to avoid prison.
However, there was still no evidence as to the source of the money. In his last three days in office, President Morgan granted twenty-two pardons. All went unnoticed except two: Joel Backman and Duke Mongo. The FBI was hard at work digging for financial dirt on the other twenty. Who had $3 million? Who had the resources to get it? Every friend, family member, and business associate was being scrutinized by the feds.
A preliminary analysis repeated what was already known. Mongo had billions and was certainly corrupt enough to bribe anyone. Backman, too, could pull it off. A third possibility was a former New Jersey state legislator whose family made a bundle in government road contracts. Twelve years earlier he’d gone to “federal camp” for a few months and now wanted his rights restored.
The President was off in Europe, in the middle of his get-acquainted tour, his first victory lap around the world. He wouldn’t be back for three days, and the vice president decided to wait. They would watch the money, double-and triple-check the facts and details, and when he returned they would brief him with an airtight case. A cash-for-pardon scandal would electrify the country. It would humiliate the opposition party and weaken its resolve in Congress. It would ensure that Anthony Price would head the FBI for a few more years. It would finally send old Teddy Maynard off to the retirement home. There was simply no downside to the launching of a full federal blitz against an unsuspecting ex-president.