Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (20 page)

 
          
But
even more devastating than just losing your possessions or property was the
loss of prestige, the loss of face. Normally talking about losing face was a
Japanese notion, but it is very true on Wall Street as well. You are only as
good as your last bad trade, the Street version of the old saying goes. No one
likes a loser, and the stigma stays with a trader for a long, long time.

 
          
Technically,
he was out of business right now, because no one would ever do deals with him
again, but now it was a matter of survival. Bankruptcy was out of the question—
it would save him from a few, but not the ones that mattered. A lot of the
people he dealt with did not allow anyone to hide behind lawyers and bankruptcy
courts.

 
          
Lake
took a deep breath, then got to his feet, straightened his shoulders, and
tightened his stomach and chest muscles until they tingled. When faced with
adversity, he was always taught, get the blood running and the brain working.
Start thinking and feeling like a warrior and you’ll start acting like a
warrior. It was time to get on the offensive: “I’m going to need a face-to-face
with George Jacox and get a report,” Lake said. Jacox was the outside tax
attorney and accountant, leading a staff of two attorneys and six CPAs who
managed Lake’s affairs. “I need to restructure that debt with McSorley first
thing.”

 
          
“George
is in Alaska on that hunting trip,” Fell reminded him. “Completely incommunicado
until Saturday. I can get in contact with his partner.”

 
          
“Scherber’s
an asshole,” Lake said. “Besides, George knows where all the bodies are buried.
Get the jet and go pick him up. Better yet, pack all his records on a portable
computer, grab a satellite transceiver, and take it all to him. Then let’s put
in a call to—”

 
          
“Boss,
I think our first move should be to sign those papers and get the loan moving,”
Fell interjected. He wasn’t about to tell Lake, at least not this minute, that
they could hardly afford to reserve a court at the YMCA right now, let alone
fly the company’s private jet from New York to Alaska and back. “We’ve only got
two hours before the last wire transfer from Europe. In an hour and a half the
phone’s going to be ringing off the hook, and we’d better have a wire receipt
to show the institutions that we’re covered or we’ll
really
be in trouble.”

 
          
“I
am not going to spend all day on the phone with a bunch of nervous
bean-counters,” Lake said. “They wanted to play, and this is part of the
game—let them sweat for a few hours while we get our shit together here. Next
time, Jacox doesn’t leave the fucking city without a cellular phone or I’m
findirig
a
new legal team.” .

 
          
“We
don’t needJacox to read a spreadsheet or make a pitch to the venture capital
types,” Fell said. “I can handle the legal side of the opening negotiations.
But let’s get solvent first before we start bending anyone’s ear.”

 
          
“You
don't
get it, do you, Ted?” Lake
snapped, turning angrily toward his longtime associate. Lake was a bit shorter
than Fell and physically smaller, with tight, wiry muscles and a lean
physique—physically, he was no match for the huskier, more solidly built
attorney. But the air of desperation that hovered around Harold Lake made him
seem all the more fearsome. The veneer of cunning control was gone—as much as
he tried, Lake was not going to get it back. He ranted, “I am not going to go
into eighteen-million-plus dollars in debt, get bombarded by jerkoffs who think
they can push me around because the market takes a header suddenly one morning,
and then try to pretend everything is going to be okay. This is a
glitch
in the market, nothing more.
We’re in the middle of a sustained bull market, for God’s sake! The market hits
new record-high territory every three months! Is it my damned fault that a
fucking terrorist drops a bomb on San Francisco International?”

 
          
“Take
it easy, boss ...” Fell tried.

 
          
The
phone on Lake’s desk rang—the onslaught of inquiries that Fell was expecting
was now beginning. “Tell whoever it is to fuck off,” Lake hissed, returning to
his desk and resuming staring blankly out the window. Fell answered the phone,
leaving instructions that Lake not be disturbed and that he would handle all
calls himself. “Get out, Ted,” he told his assistant from behind his chair.
Fell was going to stay despite his boss’s obvious anger, but when Lake appeared
to be looking over the loan papers and getting back to work, he relaxed a bit
and departed.

 
          
The
bombing of San Francisco International by some crazed lunatic gunrunner may
have been a random, completely unforeseen event, even an accident. But one
thing Harold Lake knew for sure was that it could very easily happen again.
Yes, a lunatic was behind it. . .

 
          
.
. . and Lake, like the rest of the world, knew who he was.

 
          
Options
trading was not the only kind of trading Harold Lake did. Some of the
“institutions” he worked with were not listed on Standard and Poor’s or Dun
& Bradstreet, and some of the CEOs and investors who paid him generous
commissions and maintained fat accounts with him were not in any issue of
Who’s Who
unless that publication had a
version on underworld figures. His biggest secret client was none other than
Henri Cazaux, the one responsible for the financial mess Lake was in right now.
Lake had never planned on getting involved with men of this caliber. He was far
too vain and far too much of a self-preservationist to risk dying at their
displeasure. But back in 1987, after being fired from Universal Equity and trying
to strike out on his own, Lake kept getting approached by smugglers, hoods, and
eventually bigger fish like New York-area mob bosses. They could smell a
hungry, smart manipulator of cash, but Lake did all he could to resist their
overtures. Until the market crash of 1987. It was then that Harold Lake, fully
exposed in all his investments, took a nosedive and lost millions overnight.
After that, needing quick cash in a hurry, Lake began to see the appeal of
laundering money. He made a few contacts, and before he knew it, drug money was
reinforcing his investments. Lake stayed solvent and slowly began to get
completely immersed in the science of laundering money. In 1991 Henry Cazaux
stepped in and demanded Lake handle all of his accounts. It was an offer, as
the saying goes, that Lake couldn’t refuse. Unless, of course, he wanted a
bullet in the head.

 
          
Cazaux
was different from your typical sociopath. He was power-hungry, and a
megalomaniac, and definitely psychotic, and very smart. Each of his various
identities all over the world lived in completely legal surroundings, with proper
books, properly filed tax returns, and proper documentation. True, only a small
percentage of his total net worth was ever reported, but the funds and the
persons that existed aboveground were squeaky clean, thanks to Harold Lake and
others like him in other countries. He had to track down the sonofabitch and
tell him to crawl back into his Mexico hideout, right fucking
now,
or his source of legitimate,
laundered money was going to dry up.

 
          
The
first thing Harold Lake did was pick up the phone and dial a tollfree number
that connected him to a private voice-mail system that was untraceable either
to himself or to his calling party. In case someone tried to trace the call,
they’d reach a computer with two thousand names and addresses, and if
investigators showed up to try to track down the names, they could be erased
from computer memory in seconds. In turn, the voice-mail system connected him
to a private paging service, again untraceable. Lake entered just three numbers
on the pager—911—then hung up.

 
          
He
then looked over the loan paperwork. Fell had placed Post-It Notes on several
important or critical areas of the contract that he had changed or that
required special consideration, but his final recommendation was to sign.
Reluctantly, Lake did so, adding the words “I hope you choke on it” under the
signature line. He then punched his intercom button to Fell’s office: “The loan
papers are ready, Ted. Come get the fuckers.”

 
          
Just
then he heard a faint beep coming from a desk drawer. He opened the drawer and
retrieved his Apple Newton PDA (personal digital assistant), a handheld
computer about the size of a paperback book. The PDA had a built-in wireless
network system that allowed him to receive packet digital messages anywhere in
the world, communicate directly with other computers, or send or receive faxes.
He activated the PDA and called up the messaging system, entering a password to
access the secret message area. The message read simply,
owl’s nest, right now.

 
          
Stunned,
he all but leaped to his feet, then put on a jacket, slipped the PDA computer
into his jacket pocket, and left the office via the back door as fast as he
could.

 
          
Beale Air Force Base,
Yuba
City
,
California
That Same Time

 
          
Colonel
Charles Gaspar, operations group commander of the 144th Fighter Wing
(California Air National Guard), asked, “You’re standing there telling me that
you’re
sticking
with this cockamamie
story, Vincenti?” The tall, slightly balding officer got to his feet, circled
his desk, and stood face to face with Lieutenant Colonel A1 Vincenti. The
veteran Vincenti defiantly followed Gaspar’s movements with his head and eyes
while remaining at attention, which angered Gaspar even more. The men were of
equal height, but Gaspar was several years younger than Vincenti, and even
though he was of higher rank, he couldn’t intimidate the older veteran fighter
pilot. Gaspar had less than half of Vincenti’s flying hours, and the adage that
Vincenti had forgotten more than Gaspar had ever known held true—and everyone
there knew it.

 
          
“Call
me on it, Chuck,” Vincenti replied hotly. “Try to refute any of it. You’ll
lose.”

 
          
“Don’t
challenge me, Al,” Gaspar said angrily. “Don’t even bother trying. They don’t
need
me
to help throw you to the
dogs—you’ve done that all by yourself. The FBI has taken over this case, and
the first head they want is
yours.
So
you better straighten out your attitude.”

 
          
Gaspar
took a deep breath. It was important for Vincenti to stick to his story—if he
couldn’t make Gaspar, his longtime friend and wingman, believe his story, no
one else was going to believe it either. “You maintain that your last order was
to pursue Cazaux, that you believed that the order to land at Beale meant land
only when your fuel condition warranted or if you could not reestablish contact
with Cazaux. Is that correct, Al?”

           
“That’s what I wrote in my report.”

 
          
“The
controller’s tape says otherwise.”

 
          
“My
gun camera tape shows that I acknowledge the order to pursue.”

 
          
“Played
side by side, the tapes don’t jive, Al,” Gaspar said. Although military
aircraft did not have cockpit voice recorders, the F-16’s heads-up display
system used a color videotape system to record gun camera video. The system,
which also recorded radio and intercom conversations and copied flight and
aircraft performance data like an airliner’s inflight data recorder “black
box,” was often used by the pilots to record significant events inflight as
well. “We hear you acknowledging orders that we never hear on the radio. It
looks like the tape’s been doctored, or that you simply fake receiving orders
to pursue.”

 
          
“So
now I’m being accused of falsifying orders?” Vincenti asked. “Looks like I’m
being set up to take the fall for this entire incident. Henri Cazaux blows up
two airports and kills hundreds of persons, and I’m to blame. Wonder how the
media would react to this?”

 
          
“You’re
prohibited from talking with the media.”

 
          
“If
the Air Force tries to court-martial me for what happened last night, Chuck,
I’m spilling my guts,” Vincenti said angrily. “I’m not bullshitting you. I’ve
got a copy of the HUD tape, and I’ll give it to every TV and radio station I
can think of.”

 
          
“What
the hell’s with you, Al?” Gaspar exclaimed, his voice serious now, searching
his friend’s face with a definite edge of concern—Vincenti usually was not
evasive or secretive at all. Claiming he had an engine malfunction, Vincenti
had landed all the way back at Fresno Air Terminal instead of at Beale Air
Force Base, as he had been directed to do. Although Fresno was closer and was
his home station, he had plenty of gas to make it to Beale as he was ordered.
As the F-16 pilots do every mission, Vincenti pulled his own mission
videotapes, and he had his videotape in his possession when he was met by a
representative of Fourth Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s office about two
hours later. The JAG officer confiscated the videotape, supervised a
blood-and-urine test, and escorted Vincenti here to Beale Air Force Base, where
the accident investigation board was going to be held. Theoretically, Vincenti
had time to work on the videotape, doctor it, and duplicate it before someone
finally ordered him to surrender it to the judge advocate. Gaspar didn’t think
he really did all those things—Vincenti had always been a team player—but there
was no doubt that Vincenti was pissed enough to do anything right about now.