Vanished (17 page)

44.

M
y father ran a hand over his forehead, his eyes, flecking off some snowflakes of dead skin. “What does this mean, no one’s been able to find him? They haven’t found a—?”

“No body, Dad. Maybe he’s alive. Maybe he’s just fine. Then again . . .” I returned to the plastic chair and sat down. “So tell me what you and Roger talked about.”

He cradled his scaly forehead in his hands. His large blunt fingers massaged the skin deeply, and I had to look away. Psoriasis often flares up at times of severe emotional stress. I imagined that being in prison might be stressful. Funny how the condition made him more repellent, more reptilian, rather than more sympathetic or vulnerable.

“He said he’d found something he wanted my input on,” Victor said, his words muffled.

“Your input.”

He looked up, sighed. He folded his hands on the counter in front of him. “Yes, Nicholas, it turns out I know a thing or two. Even though you never wanted to learn anything from me.”

“What do you mean? I learned plenty.”

“Your sarcasm doesn’t escape me. Roger told me he’d come across a phony expense from one of his subcontractors—a security firm.”

“A subcontractor?”

“They’d been providing installation security for Gifford Industries—armed guards for their power plants and construction projects and such.”

“What do you mean, a ‘phony expense’?”

“He was convinced this was a bribe, a kickback, to some Pentagon big shot, and he wanted proof. But that was a tall order, even to someone as brilliant as your brother. It’s a little like understanding algebraic combinatorics if you still don’t get long division.”

Ah, the old Victor Heller arrogance. Even talking about his revered and adored son, he had to establish his superiority. “Like a toddler trying to run the Boston Marathon, is that it?”

“Give it a rest, Nicholas. Roger knows this stuff on a fairly deep level. But not like me. I’ve done it.”

I assumed he meant that he’d set up all kinds of shell companies in offshore tax havens. I’d often wondered whether he’d squirreled money away, money the government hadn’t been able to locate and seize. How else could he have lived as a fugitive for all those years?

“So Roger wanted to prove that this security firm was making kickbacks to the Pentagon,” I said skeptically. That fit with what he’d told Lauren and what Marjorie Ogonowski had told me. “Why? So he could report it to the government? Earn a merit badge, maybe? Why does this not sound like Roger?”

My father sighed impatiently, waved a hand around as if trying to swat away a cloud of mosquitoes. “Oh, please,” he said. “Spare me. Roger was tired of being poor.”

“Poor?” I said. “Good God. He was making a six-figure salary.”

He snorted. “A six-figure salary. These days, that’s poverty.”

“What do you earn, working in the prison laundry?” I said. “Ten cents a day?”

He didn’t even bother granting me one of his famous withering glares. “He’d had it with being sidelined. He was fed up with seeing mediocrities being promoted above him while he remained stuck. One of a hundred vice presidents. He could have run Gifford Industries, and he knew it.”

“So what was he trying to do?”

“Quite simply, he wanted to make it clear what he had on them. What he knew. And how much he wanted.”

“Hush money,” I said.

He nodded.

“Extortion.”

“You always did have a way with words.”

Yes. Now that sounded like the Roger I knew. “How much did he want?”

“Ten million dollars.”

“That all?” I said as dryly as I could.

“Actually, that was quite reasonable. Quite the bargain. If you consider the public furor that would have erupted if the kickbacks became public. They’d have lost many times that in government contracts.”

“Government contracts, huh? What’s the company?”

“You might have heard of Paladin Worldwide.”

“Ah,” I said.

Paladin Worldwide was the world’s largest private military contractor. It began as a supplier of armed guards for businesses like Gifford Enterprises and eventually morphed into a full-fledged army for hire. Paladin was infamous, controversial, and generally despised. Paladin soldiers—“contractors,” they were called—were widely regarded as trigger-happy cowboys. But what really ticked off U.S. soldiers was that, while a typical sergeant might make a hundred bucks a day, the Paladin guys were making a thousand.

When I was in the service, in Afghanistan and Bosnia, Paladin mercs fought alongside the U.S. troops. They were all recent vets, and in truth they were as well trained as anyone, but since they were legally classified as “consultants,” they weren’t subject to the laws of the country in which they were fighting—or even U.S. military law. That meant that they could fire at civilians with impunity, and some of them did. They couldn’t be prosecuted. Not one was ever charged with a crime. It was like the Wild West. In Iraq, in fact, there were more private contractors than U.S. Army troops. And Paladin Worldwide was the biggest contractor there.

“He was trying to extort ten million dollars from Paladin? Not the smartest idea. Those guys are armed and dangerous.”

“I warned him that the whole idea was reckless.”

“Did you, Dad? Or did you give him tips on how to do it?”

Another sigh, this one more peeved than impatient. “I told him he was playing a very dangerous game.”

I was silent for a long while, then I said, “Did he ever get the ten million?”

“I don’t know. I assume not.”

I recalled Roger’s e-mail, sent through that InCaseOfDeath website. “This has to be the strangest letter I’ve ever written,” he’d said. “Because if you get it, that means I’m dead.”

And: “Who knows what they’ll do? Will they try to make it look like I committed suicide?”

He talked about “the people who are trying to stop me.”

The people who were trying to stop him—from blackmailing them, from extorting them—were Paladin Worldwide, it was clear. Somehow Roger had learned about a phony expense they’d submitted to Gifford Industries, a kickback they’d tried to bill Gifford for. And Roger being Roger, he moved in for the kill. Demanded ten million dollars in hush money.

From Paladin Worldwide. The world’s largest private army.

There could scarcely be a more lethal adversary.

“So what do you think happened?” I said. “You think Paladin grabbed Roger? Or maybe Roger disappeared in order to escape them?”

He put his hands over his eyes, and a large silver flake sloughed off. “Disappeared? No, Nicholas. It’s far more likely that they . . . did away with him. That’s how they work.”

“I wonder.” I didn’t bother to explain my reasoning—the fact that Lauren had been knocked unconscious rather than being killed. “I don’t believe in corporate hit squads.”

“Then you’re either naïve or you’re not paying attention. You don’t remember that vice chairman of Enron who was just about to testify before Congress, about to name names in the biggest corporate scandal ever, but before he could get on a plane to Washington, he was found shot to death in his car? ‘Suicide,’ they called it, of course. Then a couple of months later, a consultant for Arthur Andersen whose big client was—you guessed it, Enron—was found shot in the head in a forest in Colorado? And then a banker with the Royal Bank of Scotland who was about to testify against his colleagues in guess what case—that’s right, Enron—was found dead in the woods outside London. Another apparent suicide.”

“This is grassy-knoll, tinfoil-hat stuff, Dad. Black helicopters.”

“A woman named Karen Silkwood works in a nuclear plant in Oklahoma and gets plutonium poisoning and gets in her car to meet a
New York Times
reporter to spill the beans about unsafe working conditions in the nuclear industry, only her car runs off the road. Suicide?”

“I saw the Meryl Streep movie. Good flick. What’s your point?”

His tone had become fierce. “I have no doubt they killed Roger. Probably meant to kill Lauren, too, not just give her a concussion.”

I decided to let the argument drop. It wasn’t getting me anywhere.

“I need names,” I said. “Who at Paladin he talked to. Who might have threatened him.”

Dad looked at me for a long while as if deciding how much to say. Then: “He tried to contact their founder and CEO, Allen Granger, but Granger refused to talk with him.”

I knew a bit about Allen Granger, the billionaire founder of Paladin Worldwide, but it was limited to what I’d read and heard. A former Navy SEAL from northern Michigan. Rich guy, sort of a recluse. A born-again Christian evangelist, far-right-wing conservative.

“Did he talk to anyone else at Paladin, then?”

Victor nodded. “The head of the Washington office, a man named Carl Koblenz. I think he may be the president of the company—the number two, just under Granger.”

“Carl Koblenz,” I repeated to myself. “Was Koblenz the one who directly threatened Roger?”

“Did I say anything about any direct threats?”

“No, you did not,” I replied.

“You’re planning something,” he said. “I can tell.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t. At least learn from your brother’s mistakes. I don’t want to lose my only remaining son.”

“I’m touched. But that won’t happen.”

“Surely you know the
Thirty-Six Stratagems.
”

I shook my head.

“The ancient Chinese art of deception.”

“Oh, right. Sun Tzu. Jay Stoddard’s favorite.”

“Forget Sun Tzu’s
Art of War.
That’s so commonplace.” He held up a gnarled, age-spotted finger. “Far more interesting than Sun Tzu is Chu-ko Liang. Perhaps the most brilliant military strategist ever. One of his stratagems was to defeat your enemy from within. Infiltrate the enemy’s camp in the guise of cooperation or surrender. Then, once you’ve discovered the source of his weakness, you strike.”

Somehow the setting—the visitors’ room of the Altamont Correctional Facility—made my father’s advice a little less authoritative.

As I walked out of the visitors’ room, I savored a feeling of relief.

Because at that moment I knew that my brother was alive.

45.

P
robably meant to kill Lauren, too, not just give her a concussion,
Victor had said.

But I hadn’t said anything about a concussion.

All I’d told him was that Lauren had been attacked and had woken up in the hospital. He had another source of information, I was sure. Even though he’d pretended that this was the first he was hearing about it. And given how many times the two of them had spoken in the last month, it was likely that his source was Roger.

If so, that meant that Roger had talked to him after his disappearance.

And thus that Roger was not only still alive but able to receive phone calls. Which meant that he was not a hostage, not a kidnapping victim, not imprisoned somewhere. He was in hiding.

But he was reachable. Since Victor couldn’t receive incoming calls, that meant that he had called Roger.

And that phone number had to be on a list here at the prison. Inmates were allowed to make outgoing collect calls only, to an approved list of up to fifteen telephone numbers.

After I spent a few minutes schmoozing with my new friend, the guard who sat outside the visitors’ room, I confessed to him my concern that my father might be trying to reconnect with some of his old business colleagues. Wasn’t that against prison rules?

He was only too happy to go on the computer and pull up Victor’s approved telephone list. I gave him fifty dollars for his research assistance and thanked him for helping keep my father on the straight and narrow.

As I drove into the Albany International Airport, I called Frank the information broker.

“Didn’t I tell you to be patient?” he said before I could even give him the one number from Victor’s phone list that I didn’t recognize.

“This is about something else, Frank.”

“Yeah, well, I got the information you wanted on that cell number you gave me.”

It took me a second to remember which number he was talking about: the one that Woody, from the cargo company, had given me in Los Angeles. “Great,” I said. “What have you got?”

“It’s a corporate account. Registered to a Carl Koblenz.”

“Paladin Worldwide,” I said.

“You already knew this?”

“I know the name.”

So the president of Paladin Worldwide had hired Woody to steal almost a billion dollars from Traverse Development. That was corporate theft on a truly grand scale.

And then the pieces began to click into place. If my father was telling me the truth—which, of course, wasn’t a given—then Roger had discovered evidence that Paladin Worldwide had been paying kickbacks to the Pentagon. Once they found out what he had, they began to threaten him. He knew they planned to kidnap him, maybe even kill him.

And so he vanished before they had the chance.

But what about that billion dollars? Maybe Paladin, which did a lot of work in Iraq, had learned that Traverse Development—whoever they were—was shipping all this cash back to the U.S., and Paladin had decided to help themselves. A billion dollars was a lot of bribes.

“I sent you your brother’s phone bills,” Frank said, interrupting my reverie. “You ever get them?”

“I did, thanks,” I said. “And I have one more for you.”

46.

T
hroughout the morning, Lauren found herself checking her e-mail far too often.

She was checking for e-mails from Roger. As foolish as that was.

Give it up
, she told herself.
There won’t be any more from him.

Stop torturing yourself.

She’d gotten to work late, because she’d had to let in Nick’s friend to overhaul the home-security system. That was okay: Leland was out of the country, so things were slower than usual. Just before lunch, she looked up from her e-mail and saw a man sitting in one of the visitor chairs. She did a double take.

She remembered seeing him come out of Leland’s office. The man was remarkably . . . well, homely. Ugly, not to put too fine a point on it. His face was deeply pitted with scars, obviously the victim of a terrible case of adolescent acne. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and had thinning brown hair, round shoulders, a pigeon chest.

“Hi?” she said.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” the man said. He stood up awkwardly, and a leather portfolio slipped out of his hand and hit the floor. He leaned over to retrieve it, and when he came back up his scarred face was flushed. Looking embarrassed, he approached her desk, extended his hand to shake. “Um, I’m Lloyd Kozak. I don’t know if Leland mentioned me—I’m his new financial adviser?”

Lauren looked over at Noreen, who said, “Hello there, Lloyd.”

“Oh, yes—Noreen, right?” He went over to Noreen’s desk and shook her hand, too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” He looked over at Lauren, back at Noreen, seeming trapped between the two women. “I just—did Leland leave any computer disks for me?”

Lauren shook her head. “He didn’t say anything—”

“Oh, sure, right here,” Noreen said, and she produced a manila envelope and handed it to the man.

“Thank you,” he said to her, then he went over to Lauren’s desk and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“No worries,” Lauren said.

The man hurried away.

Lauren waited until he was gone then said to Noreen, “Leland didn’t say anything to me about a financial adviser.”

“I thought I told you about him.”

“Well, yes, you did. But Leland didn’t mention it.”

“Cool your jets,” Noreen said. “Leland told me the guy was going to stop by today and asked me to give him some stuff. It’s no big deal.”

“Well, he didn’t say anything, that’s all.”

“You don’t expect him to explain everything twice, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, all right, then.”

Lauren made a mental note to ask about this financial adviser when Leland got back. She couldn’t help feeling a little hurt, though. Normally, she handled everything for him. He kept no secrets from her. It was silly, she realized, but she felt a little left out. And no doubt Noreen loved it. She was preening over a tiny piece of Leland’s personal life that she, and only she, knew something about.

Lauren really disliked the woman.

In the early afternoon, right after lunch, she checked her e-mail again and found a message from an address she didn’t recognize. Its subject line read: “For Lauren—Personal.”

She clicked on it.

Inside the message box there was no text. Just a dark gray rectangle that she could tell right away was a video player, the sort you see all over the Internet: a frame with video toolbar buttons at its bottom edge. A big pale gray circle right in the middle containing a white triangular play button. It virtually shouted to her,
Click me! Click me!

She thought for a moment. The thing looked suspicious. Possibly dangerous.

She checked the sender line and saw that it was blank. Which was strange—she was certain there’d been something there a few seconds ago.

But the sender’s name was gone.

There was only the video-player window. The big white triangular play button taunting her.

After a few seconds, she couldn’t resist any longer. She clicked on the triangle. The gray rectangle came to life: a streaming video image began to move. Black-and-white. Fuzzy and indistinct at first. Shadowy shapes. She couldn’t make anything out.

But then the video became sharper, as if the fog had cleared, and there was something eerily familiar about the scene she was watching. Something she couldn’t put her finger on, but familiar all the same. A white-shrouded figure, shifting slowly, which became a lump beneath rumpled bed sheets. Someone asleep in bed. There was a voyeuristic, quasi-porno quality to the movie she was watching. But what was it? Why was it so familiar? She clicked the full-screen button, and the video took over her entire monitor. The resolution wasn’t great; the contrast was harsh, as if it had been shot at night, using infrared light or something.

The restlessly sleeping figure turned over, and she recognized the long eyelashes, the curly hair. Her head swam, and her heart skittered as the camera zoomed in and held tight on Gabe’s face.

Her son, asleep in bed.

She gasped aloud.

Suddenly the video stopped playing, and the dark gray window shrank back to the size it had been at first, the white triangle at its center. With unsteady fingers, she fumbled for the computer mouse and tried to click the play button again, but the dark gray square was gone. It had vanished, like the Cheshire cat in
Alice in Wonderland.

Leaving not a trace.

As if it had never been there.