The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller (36 page)

W
ASHINGTON
, DC, J
ULY
11, 11:25 A.M.

G
arrett caught the 11:30 a.m. shuttle to Washington, DC. At the airport, he called Alexis on her cell, but got no answer. Then he tried her office at Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling. A secretary said there was no record of Captain Alexis Truffant working for the DIA and hung up on him.

He called again, asking for General Kline, but was put on hold and the call was never answered. But he knew where Kline lived—he’d been there before—and so he rented a car and drove to a quiet neighborhood in Bethesda, Maryland, and parked in front of Kline’s house and waited. Kline drove up around 6:00 p.m., saw Garrett, and walked up to his car.

“We don’t speak anymore,” Kline said without a hello or even an acknowledgment that Garrett was parked in front of his house. “And I can’t tell you where she is. It’s classified.”

Garrett thought about this.

“She went out on a limb for you, Reilly. Many times. You should know that and appreciate that.” A warm rain had begun to fall. Kline hiked a Windbreaker up around his collar. “I gotta get inside. Late for dinner.”

“Was she working for Homeland Security the entire time?”

Kline shrugged. “We all work for Homeland Security. Whether we know it or not.” He gave a half wave and disappeared into his house.

Garrett took a hotel room at a Best Western and spent half the night staring up at the mottled stucco ceiling. He sorted passwords in his head and thought about the last month of his life. He tried to replay the events of each day, the
phone calls and the conversations, the drugs and the cat and mouse between himself and Markov. At four in the morning he realized what he’d been missing, and at eight he sent an e-mail to General Kline asking for a favor.

When the sun rose, Garrett drove south to Triangle, Virginia, and Marine Corps Base Quantico. He checked in with the security detail at the front entrance and was given a map of the base.

He walked into a modern, two-story brick building on the south end of the complex, found Room 207, a matériel and requisitions center, and sat down at a desk, unannounced, across from marine corporal John Patmore. Patmore was tapping on a computer, a stack of documents at his elbow. A dozen other marines, men and women, were doing much the same thing at different desks across the room.

Patmore looked up and did a double take at Garrett. “Sir. Good morning. This is a surprise.”

Garrett said nothing. He just stared at Patmore. He’d thought about it for a while, but he still wasn’t sure how to start the conversation.

“Is there a problem, sir?”

“You got promoted to corporal?”

“For services rendered,” Patmore said, pleased. “Cool, huh?”

“I know it was you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m confused. What are you talking about?”

“Markov’s inside man. How he knew exactly where we were, and what we were doing. How he always stayed a step ahead of us. Our location, the credit-card name. You tipped him off. I can’t believe I didn’t see it earlier. I guess I was blind.”

Patmore laughed quietly, then made a face somewhere between disbelief and anger. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, sir. I didn’t tip anybody off.”

“The drugs were the tell. Only you knew I needed them. The others were just guessing. But somehow Markov knew as well. That’s a coincidence, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why’d you do it? Was it money? Did he transfer a chunk into some offshore account? Or did he give you a song and dance about revolution and changing the world? Look, I’m sympathetic. Honestly, I am. I considered joining him as well. I still think about it.”

“Sir, I really think you’re making a mistake. I didn’t tip off anybody, anytime. And I need to get back to work.”

Garrett watched the young marine. He was pretty good, his face sunny, his voice friendly, no matter what Garrett said. But Garrett had more. “I had General Kline pull your service record. You weren’t blown up in any Humvee. You never needed prescription meds to dull the pain. You didn’t even serve in Afghanistan. You told me that tale to get me to trust you. Social Engineering 101. So I’d take too many drugs. And it worked. You’re a fucking con man, just like Markov, only you have a uniform.”

In a flash, the genial, happy-go-lucky marine disappeared, and a dead-eyed, manipulative criminal sat in his place. Patmore’s face was full of fury, tempered only by instant calculation. A second later, it was gone. But that was all Garrett needed. That was proof enough. He pushed the chair back and stood up, satisfied.

“Don’t expect to go any further in the service, Corporal. Kline will put your record up for review. You’re done.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed it. You, betraying us, and yet . . .” Garrett’s voice softened. “You never really know people.”

Garrett walked out without another word, although he half expected to have Patmore race after him and pummel him to the ground. But that didn’t happen. He felt a little better as he drove north back toward Reagan National Airport. Not altogether better, but a bit. The betrayal hurt—he had put so much faith in Ascendant, in his new family, but at least he knew some truths now. At least he still had instincts left.

As the US Airways shuttle lifted off from Reagan National, and Washington, DC, receded into the distance, Garrett finally felt that he had put Ilya Markov—and that dark, dense onrushing chaos of Garrett’s nightmares—in the past. He closed his eyes and slept until the plane touched the ground again in New York.

L
OWER
M
ANHATTAN
, J
ULY
17, 10:56 A.M.

A
week later, at work on a Tuesday morning, Garrett got a phone call from the office of Robert Andrew Wells Jr. at Vanderbilt Frink Trust and Guaranty. They were requesting that Mr. Reilly come to their building for a job interview. Garrett laughed and hung up on them.

Five minutes later Wells himself called. “I just want to talk. Ten minutes is all. I’ll send a car for you.”

A black Mercedes sedan was waiting for Garrett on the street, and he climbed in and made it to Forty-Seventh Street and Madison in twenty minutes. The guard told him to go straight to the executive offices on the thirty-first floor. Garrett rode the elevator wondering what the hell this was all about. He had to admit he was mildly intrigued. Even flattered. But he also knew that a lot of job offers were out there for him if he wanted them. He was a known commodity on the Street, and other firms had tried to poach him from J&A many times.

Wells’s office was immense, with ceiling-to-floor windows that looked out onto midtown Manhattan. Wells was sitting behind a large, modern desk. No computer was on the desk, nor was any to be seen in the room. His assistant, Jessica Bortles, sat on a couch with an iPad in her hands. Garrett supposed that passed for a computer.

“Jess, give us a minute, please.” Wells stood and crossed the office to greet Garrett.

Bortles gave Garrett a quick smile and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Wells reached out and offered his hand to shake. “Thanks for coming.” Garrett shook his hand, even though he didn’t feel like it. “Have a seat.” Wells motioned to the dual leather couches.

“That’s okay; I’ll stand,” Garrett said.

“You don’t like me, do you?”

“You’re an arrogant prick and you make too much money.”

Wells laughed. “You’re one to talk.”

“I don’t run the world for my own amusement.”

“You think that’s what I do? I don’t, let me tell you. I run a bank that facilitates commerce around the globe. We grow businesses so everyday citizens can have jobs. And I work fucking hard every single day.”

“So do coal miners. Get over yourself.”

“You a leftist-radical bond trader now? That’s a first.”

Garrett moved to the window to get a better look. He loved high-altitude views of the city and took them in whenever he had the chance. Airplanes danced overhead. “What do you want?”

“To offer you a job.”

“Pass.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Below, Garrett could see crowds moving east and west on Forty-Seventh Street. His mind began to sort the number of people moving in each direction: 38 percent going east, 60 percent going west, 2 percent idling and blocking traffic. Why did some people always have to clog the works? he thought to himself.

“Everything you said about this bank—about the people attacking it, what they wanted, and how they were going to do it—was right. Everything. I was wrong, you were right.”

Garrett shrugged.

“What you did saved this bank. Saved my job. Saved my reputation, and my fortune. Probably saved the American economy, at least for a while. That’s a pretty amazing thing—”

“I’m not going to be a bond trader at Vandy, so don’t bother asking.”

“Don’t want you to. I want to set you up to do exactly what you did for the government, but in the private sector. Look for threats against this bank. Against me. Against the American economy. Look for patterns, look for enemies, then take them down. Destroy them.”

Garrett turned from the window and stared at Wells. Was he joking? “You have an entire IT department set up to do just that.”

“They’re worthless. I want you. You get the job done,” Wells said. “You can work out of your home, or I’ll give you an office here. Hell, I’ll give you an entire floor. Staff, pretty girls, whatever floats your boat. Work part-time, full-time, I don’t care. Just do the thing you do.”

“No.”

“I’ll pay you five million dollars a year.”

Garrett blinked in surprise. Five million dollars? Jesus Christ. He shook the number out of his brain. “Fuck you.”

“Six million.”

“You don’t understand. I hate your fucking guts.”

“No, I get that. And I don’t care. Ten million a year, two-million-dollar signing bonus, and I’ll rent you a penthouse apartment in that building right there.” Wells pointed to a shining spindle of a tower three blocks away. “That’s the limit of what I can afford.”

Garrett’s breath caught in his throat. The numbers were extraordinary. He hated himself for even considering them, but how could he not? His thoughts went immediately to Chaudry’s explanation of Ilya Markov’s financial motivations. She’d called Markov an amoral thug for hire. Did that make Garrett one as well?
Or did it just make him a whore?

“Think about it. Take as long as you’d like. But know this—I want you on the inside. Here.” Wells swept his arms across his body, motioning to the vast office. “Next to me.”

Garrett thought for a second that he might cry at those words. Why? Were they that meaningful to him? He said nothing, fleeing the office before his emotions got the better of him. He jogged out of the lobby and into the hot July morning. He loosened the tie on his shirt collar, walked west, into a warm wind, and then north, zigzagging along the city streets without thinking where he was going. He ended up at the southeast corner of Central Park and decided to walk into the park, going north again and ending up at the zoo. On a lark, he bought a ticket, then stood by the seal enclosure at the entrance. Seals swam in circles in the wide pool, breaking the water every few seconds to swallow fish being tossed to them by a zookeeper.

Garrett watched them intently, counting the number of seconds they spent
underwater, and calculating how fast they made one revolution of the pool, and what the average speed was for each individual seal and then for the entire family of seals. Garrett looked across the way and saw, sitting on a bench, an old man who looked a little like Avery Bernstein, with rounded shoulders and a sweater vest. Garrett remembered his kind voice. Immediately, Garrett wished that he’d had a chance to say good-bye to his mentor in person, but he knew that moment was gone, long gone. He waved briefly to the old man, but the man was busy reading his newspaper and didn’t see the gesture. Garrett figured that would suffice as a good-bye for the time being.

Then Garrett backed away from the seals and the old man, sat on a bench, and slowly, patiently, tried to find a pattern he could use for his own future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
he following people were invaluable to me as I researched this book. My thanks to: Richard Campbell, for his expertise on technology and banking security; Suresh Kotha of the University of Washington, for his ideas on how to bring the world of finance to its knees; Ian Toner, for his primer on debt, derivatives, and bank runs; the great Robert M. Solow, for his insight into the weakness of the global economy; Kenneth Willman, for his introductions into the banking community; Daniel Goodwin, as always, for his views from inside the finance machine; Peter Loop, for his detailed explanations of cryptocurrencies and black markets; Yevgeniya Elkus, for her careful translation of English into Russian. And finally, to my sources at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You asked not to be named, for obvious reasons, but your insights were crucial.

My deepest gratitude to: Ragna Nervik, Dan Brecher, and Markus Hoffmann, for all the advice and support; the peerless Marysue Rucci, for shaping a mass of words and ideas into a book—you are the best; and my trusted inner circle of friends who lent a hand along the way—you know who you are. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Finally, to Lisa, Augusta, and Nora: thank you for putting up with the obsessions, the long hours, and the weeks away from home. You are the reason I write anything at all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photograph by Lisa Loop

D
rew Chapman has written studio movies, directed an independent feature film, and created and written network and cable TV shows. Most recently, he wrote and co–executive produced a season of the spy thriller
Legends
for TNT. Married with two children, Chapman divides his time between Los Angeles and Seattle.
The King of Fear
is his second book.

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