The Merchant of Secrets Read online

  We squeezed through the pried-open window and spilled onto the tile floor of the loggia. The agents quickly swarmed the house. The loggia floor was covered with a cotton rug, and straight ahead, rattan chairs with blue and cream colored cushions, surrounding a brown wicker cocktail table which was protected under a layer of glass. French doors opened to allow breezes to come in off the water filling the house with the smell of the sea. The walls of the oversized European style kitchen were covered with imported tiles.

  The interior had a subtropical style, an island look, except for the Turkish rug in the great room. The dining area and the seating area were delineated by a six foot silk screen. In the corner, placed atop a wooden game table, dice and a deck of cards were waiting for Jones. His desk was carved oak, and stood at the corner of the room. On the ceiling was a Spanish style painting. I could just imagine Sara sitting on the sofa, smiling and innocently chatting away in this lovely house while Qureshi contrived to put the moves on her.

  Jones certainly had seemed like the embodiment of success down in Florida, with a grand residence.

  For hours the agents searched the house without success and not quite sure what they were expected to find. Dispirited, they were about to abandon the effort when an IRS agent who happened to have a house on the Chesapeake Bay and was an avid weekend sailor decided to roam down to the pier across the street from the residence in the inter-coastal waterway. He called me on my phone back at the house.

  “Do you happen to know if Jones owned one of these boats?” He asked.

  “Sara! Do you know if David Jones owns any of these boats?” I shouted to her as she sat in the car.

  She got out of the car and pointed at a large white boat, “Yea, I think it’s that one.”

  “Are you sure?” shouted back the agent.

  “I think so, does it have the name “Commander” on the back of it?”

  The agent leaned over and saw the name painted on the back of the boat. “Sure does sweetheart, thanks for your help!” he shouted back, smiling at her.

  That sent Sara’s spirits soaring. She felt like she was part of our team now, and a nice-looking sailor had called her “sweetheart.”

  Climbing into the boat he saw that the door to the galley had a lock on it, but being a sailor who sometimes had locked himself out of his own boat, albeit a modest one, he knew how to defeat the lock using a crowbar. He forced the door open and rummaged through the cabin. Picking - up an orange lifejacket tucked under the seat in the boat, he noticed it was far too heavy to be just a lifejacket. He pulled a pocket knife from his pants, and tore into the orange synthetic fabric where inside the jacket he found thick stacks of one hundred dollar bills and 5 smartphones. He picked up another lifejacket, tore that one open too, and found a large envelope that contained personal information on the major defense companies’ CEO’s and their families. There were banks statements and brokerage statements, photos, addresses and downloads of credit card statements. All sealed in plastic kitchen storage bags and hidden in the lifejackets. The sailor from the I.R.S. had scored a major victory.

  I was bent over looking into the bushes for evidence when I heard the agent yell out from the boat, holding bright orange lifejackets high into the air, signaling to his fellow agents back at the house that the search had been a success.

  “I think we have our evidence!” Triumphantly announced the agent. We dropped what we were doing and rushed toward him to see what he’d found. The anticipated information on the cell phones would have the power to seal their fate. The I.R.S. would take custody of the money. Mulally took custody of the envelope and the cellphones. The documents in the envelope would have to be numbered, labeled and logged-in as evidence.

  Based on Jones possession of personal banking information of senior defense company executives and their families, the agents had enough evidence to apprehend Jones and the other two suspects. Within minutes, back in Virginia, the FBI swarmed into PFG’s headquarters and cornered Jones in his office, tossed him against his desk and slapped handcuffs on his wrists. Ever defiant, he put up resistance until he was convinced he was physically over powered. Then he told the agents that Mulally was a “high-minded hypocritical asshole” and promised to get even with him.

  Qureshi was arrested as he was backing his luxury car out of Sara’s driveway.

  Joe was picked up at a coffee shop at the Skyline Mall, coincidentally, within walking distance of the IRS office.

  All three were delivered to jail at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, and held without bail to await sentencing. A ruling against Jones would have significant implications for other contractors who might also be embroiled in illicit activity while representing the United States in a foreign country, and the Justice Department didn’t want any mistakes.

  We had completed our work; the matter was now in the hands of the federal prosecutors. We were both so exhausted. It had been a heck of a 48 hours. I asked Mike if I could have a couple of days of vacation, and he smiled and said “Take all the time you need.” “Hugo and Jose want to hang out in Florida for another day,” he added, “to soak up a little sun before heading back. So we’ll stay another night at the hotel and fly back tomorrow.” He was thoroughly satisfied with the way in which this investigation had ended.

  “I’m going back the U.K. to be with Colin,” I replied.

  “Colin?” He asked, obviously surprised.

  “Yea, it’s not going to be a problem is it?”

  “No,” he said hesitantly. His face revealed a concern I couldn’t understand.

  “Okay, see you a few days,” I said. As I was walking away I looked back to wave at Mike but he was standing still, frozen in the same spot and seemed to be unable to mutter a syllable.

  One of the detectives drove me back to the Palm Beach airport in his car . I sat in the passenger seat, silently watching the setting sun hovering on the horizon. The sky was awash in hues of yellow, lavender, and blue. It had been a perfect day, and the sky was perfect too. At the airport, I rushed to the ticket to counter to get my boarding pass. I was going to fly to Heathrow Airport in London, connecting through Dulles airport in Virginia. In the passenger lounge I looked out over the tarmac and placed a call to Colin’s to let him know that I was on my way, and to give him my flight number so he could pick me up at the airport, but his cell phone had been turned off.

  Next, I called his parents’ house. “Hello?” a woman answered.

  “Hello. I was wondering if I might be able to speak with Colin, is he there please?”

  “No, he’s gone out with his parents.”

  “Is this his sister? I asked.

  “No, it’s Sabrina. I’m his wife. Who’s this….?”

  Her words hit with the subtlety of machine-gun fire. I froze and didn’t have a clue what to say to this woman on the other end of the phone. When she said “wife,” the word affronted my ignorance with vicious clarity, and in a single instant shot down all of my hopes and dreams of a future with Colin. After the initial blow had taken effect, a raging barrage of images, one after the other, started to flash in my mind: the office, the bar, Colin’s apartment, Chicago, London; all single moments in time strung together in a single act of deceit. The word cut like a knife through my life, separating the present from a past generously endowed with ignorance. I was unwilling to surrender my self-esteem to the encroaching reality that I had tread the well-worn path of an unwitting mistress to a married man, and struggled to find meaning in our relationship.

  The call ended without me identifying myself, unsure if it would be more cruel or more kind to alert Colin’s wife to his affair. It was better to hold off until I had a chance to talk with Bailey and Keisha and got their thoughts on what I should do. There was no question that my judgment was momentarily impaired and those kind of decisions should be made only after seriously weighing the effect the news might have on the other person.

  Fragmented memories of time spent with Colin had invaded my brain and I coul
dn’t get rid of them, so I headed in the direction of the nearest bar to drown them in alcohol.

  Suddenly, movement in the corner of my eye distracted me from my torment. A handsome man with dirt all over his pants was rushing down the terminal toward me, out of breath. As he drew closer I could see that it was Mike.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked in amazement.

  “There’s something I’ve got to tell you about Colin,” he huffed.

  “I know. He’s married.”

  ‘Yes, how did you find out?”

  “I called his parents’ house and his wife picked up the phone.”

  ‘I’m so sorry,” he said with an air of guilt as if it were his fault.

  “Is that why you’re here?” I gazed into his brown eyes, astonished. “You drove all the way here to the airport just to warn me?”

  “Yea, I wanted to catch you before you flew to London and found out on your own.”

  Feeling the sorrow which must have been evident upon my face, he wrapped his arms around me pulling me into him, and it felt at that moment, just right.

  “How about dinner?” he asked.

  “Now?” I asked. “Looking like this?”

  “You look great, just as you are,” he replied. The kindly lie was a good antidote to my distress.

  We made our way back to the sheriff’s patrol car arm and arm and drove back into Palm Beach as darkness was spilling across the sky. At Mike’s direction the deputy dropped us off on Worth Avenue; a glittering road of elegant stores in the heart of Palm Beach. We wandered along the sidewalk, looking in the display windows of jewelry stores and antiques stores with prices inflated to forbidding highs, then turned down a small pathway, called a “via” and into a restaurant called Renato’s. While sitting on the moonlit patio underneath palm trees swaying softly in the ocean breezes I ordered a margarita first, then he ordered a bottle of champagne.

  “If I could, I would push a rewind button on the last 6 months of my life,” I said.

  “No,” he replied. “You’ve accomplished far too much to wish it away. Forget about Colin.”

  The candle light flickered across his blue cotton shirt that had started the day crisp and clean but now was wrinkled and dirty and my clothing too, had succumbed to the hazard of the job. I sat in the midst of elegantly attired women, wearing my jeans and blouse. The shadow of unshaven chin wrapped handsomely around Mike’s jawline as he spoke. Sitting there in the relative darkness of the patio with Mike was magical. I watched the champagne bubbles dance around in the glass while the light reflected in his brown eyes, exposing an unexpected passion stewing underneath their surface. A lock of hair had fallen onto his face so I reached over and gently lifted it back into place.

  “When we get back, where’re you going to live? I don’t think your apartment is clean,” he meant in the electronic sense.

  “I don’t know,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you move in with me ?” He asked again, with uncharacteristic self-consciousness.

  I couldn’t conceal my astonishment. “Do you think we’re ready for that?”

  “I thought we were doing pretty well,” he replied with a smile.

  “Okay,” I said “Before I agree to move in with you, please promise me that you don’t have stray wives hiding out somewhere, say Paris or London?” I teased.

  Mike broke down in laughter like I’d never seen with him before. Smile lines caused the skin around his eyes to fold and the corners of his mouth to turn upward in a wide grin. He put up his hand as if blocking the thought and said “No wives, no fiancés, no girlfriend. Just you.”

  As we ate our way through three courses; salad, roast salmon, then desert, I was slipping into a state of bliss and ready to relinquish all memories of Colin to let them fade away into the past. It was hard to imagine a more perfect night; being there with Mike over drinks and a good dinner was a complete intoxication of enchanted pleasures. Where Colin had been disarmingly charming Mike was solid in a sophisticated way; he had lived through the games that people play on one another and was beyond playing them himself. He lacked the extreme passion and furious ambition that I had found almost addicting in Colin, but after living through a hurricane I was glad to spend time in calmer waters.

  After dinner we stumbled and swayed back to the car arm-in-arm, and asked the deputy to drive us to the hotel where we planned to continue savoring our victory, believing that the investigation had come to a successful conclusion.

  Half-way to the hotel the phone rang, and Jose jolted us from our semi-hypnotic state.

  “Hey, Jose, what’d you find on the phones?” I asked, thinking he’d provide a bunch of good news.

  “Nothing,” he quipped.

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’? Are you joking with me? Is this supposed to be funny, because if you are..”

  “I’m serious,” he interjected.

  “What are you saying? You couldn’t find the stolen data? Or you couldn’t find the link?”

  “I found NOTHING.”

  “The phones were scrubbed?”

  “Not scrubbed. They were completely empty. They were unused.”

  “Shit!!”

  “What’s wrong?” Mike asked.

  “There’s nothing on the phones!”

  “How could that be? Why would Jones and Qureshi bother to hide cellphones on his boat with nothing on them?” Mike asked.

  “Okay thanks Jose. Just keep the phones locked up and we’ll deal with it in the morning,” I said.

  I pressed my speed dial for Keisha -not that I was incapable of solving it myself, I had solved many mysteries on my own- but there is something in the collaborative process which can lead to a more rapid resolution of the investigation, and mold a friendship which will endure long past the conclusion of the present case, serving us both well into the future.

  ‘Hey Boots. Walk me through something fast. Okay?

  “Okay.”

  “So the IRS agent picked up the lifejackets and there’s a bunch of money and 4 or 5 cellphones stashed inside one of the jackets.”

  “Okay,” she replied.

  “The cellphones, so we thought, had stolen information on them, or the link to the site where we’d find the stolen information. But the phones were empty.”

  “What? Why would he bother to hide phones that are empty?” Keisha asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s the big question. Mike’s here with me, and we can’t figure it out.”

  “Well if they’re on the boat, he was probably going to load the phones with downloaded stolen data and then sail with them to some location where he was going to meet his contact, and hand over the phones in exchange for money,” Keisha said.

  “Hm. But the contacts are up in Virginia.”

  “Maybe he has more contacts,” she suggested.

  “Then why would the mechanic travel all the way to Asia to deliver goods if they’re being transferred by a contact here in Florida? And why would the date of his arrival in China match the dates that money was wired to Qureshi’s brother if there weren’t an exchange of goods for money?” I countered.

  “I’m coming down there,” Keisha insisted.

  “Good. Let’s walk the property together.”

  “See you first thing tomorrow morning. We can crack this thing,” Keisha replied. We were struggling to contain our emotions, faced with the probable release of the trio in less than 24 hours.

  Then it was time to call Bailey.

  “Hey Queen, it’s me. Just got off of the phone with Boots. The cell phones were empty. Nothing on them. We don’t have the classified material that was stolen from the aerospace company, and we don’t even have the method of delivery of stolen material to Beijing. The cell phones…. ”

  “Shit!” Bailey interrupted. “The State Department won’t take the first step to help us, if we come- up empty handed. The State Department has to first persuade the authorities in the United Arab Emirates that it’s an issue vital to our
national security before the government of the U.A.E. will ask their banks in Abu Dhabi to turn over the documentation so that we can file a claim against Jones on tax evasion, and non-disclosure of foreign bank accounts. Figure this out Caroline, or Jones will get-off. Qureshi too. And the mechanic. I did all of the work on the money trail. This is your area. You’ve got to figure this out!”

  “Gee thanks, Bailey. Like I needed more pressure.”

  “I’m serious Caroline. We’ve got a lot of hours in on this project, and my boss is looking to recover some serious money. In the millions. Get going!” Bailey was clearly unhappy. She needed assurance from me that all was going to be resolved but I couldn’t provide that level of assurance just yet.

  I looked back at Mike, whose stealth demeanor bore proof that he was a veteran of more than a few mishaps like this and I appreciated him now more than ever.

  The taxi continued onward to the hotel.

  The next day, at the break of dawn, when the sun was just rising over the ocean, Keisha called from the lobby. True to her word, she had come to help. I rolled out of bed, exhausted from the day before, stepped under the shower and threw on the same clothes.

  Mike lifted his head from underneath the covers. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “Boots is downstairs,” I replied. “We’re going back to the house to look for more evidence.”