Final Target (25 page)

G
age rolled out of bed at 6
A
.
M
. and called Milsberg.

“I’m really sorry about not doing what you told me,” Milsberg said, right after he recognized Gage’s voice. “My curiosity got the better of me.”

“You only have one job, Robert, and that’s helping me keep you out of federal prison.” Gage wasn’t interested in hearing another apology, so he pushed on to the subject of his call. “Did you actually check to see whether all of the components you listed on the inventory were actually there?”

“They have to be,” Milsberg insisted. “It’s right out of our resource management computer system. It shows what we ordered, what we received, what we used, and what’s left.”

“That wasn’t my question—and don’t apologize. Just go look.”

Gage’s cell phone rang as he pulled into a parking place behind his building an hour later.

“I’m in the secure storage area,” Milsberg whispered.
“Empty boxes. Lots of tiny empty boxes. We must be missing a thousand MMIC chips. A quarter-million dollars’ worth.”

“What’s MMIC stand for?”

“Monolithic microwave integrated circuits. Cutting edge. We keep them in secure storage because they’re dual use. On the military side, they amplify signals in radar systems. Any of our competitors would grab them up in a heartbeat.”

“Any left?”

“Six hundred. Grouped into batches, like someone is getting ready to ship them out.”

Gage thought for a moment, then said, “Remember Viz, the guy that appeared out of nowhere?”

“I’ll never forget.”

“He’ll call you on your cell in a few minutes. Do what he says.”

“Will it get me into trouble?”

“Robert, you already are.”

Viz materialized next to Gage’s desk twenty-four hours later.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Gage said.

“Do what?”

“You should knock or shuffle your feet or clear your throat next time. Faith will be really annoyed if you give me a heart attack.”

“I’m sure I’ll find it very upsetting, too,” Viz said, grinning. “You need an aspirin or something?”

“Not at the moment, but keep one handy.” Gage pointed at the DVD in Viz’s hand. “What have you got?”

Viz handed it to Gage, then dropped into a chair across from his desk. Gage slipped it into his computer
and the viewing software activated, beginning with an image of the secure storage room at SatTek.

“Good color.”

“I got a couple of new microvideo cameras. Well, you did. I’m not sure I mentioned it before.”

“How much did I spend?”

“Less than you imagine.” Viz pointed at the monitor. “Guess who?”

Matson was loading the batches of plastic-encased MMIC chips into a file storage box.

“He came in around 2
A
.
M
.,” Viz said. “It looks like he took about five hundred.”

After Matson disappeared from view, Gage reached to eject the DVD.

Viz held up his palm toward Gage. “Wait, boss.”

The video cut to an empty office with a large hardwood desk and matching credenza. There was a flat-screen monitor on the desk and a tiny basketball hoop above the corner wastebasket.

“Since I was there,” Viz said. “I thought I’d…”

“Good thinking.”

Matson came into view. He set down the storage box on the desk and left the office. He returned a minute later carrying three rectangular FedEx parcel boxes and air bills. He distributed the chips among the boxes, then filled out and attached the air bills.

“You want me to enhance the image to try to read the air bill numbers?”

“No, I can get them.”

Gage reached for his phone.

“How’s our project?” he asked Milsberg.

“Almost done. I’ll e-mail you a final list of missing components by the end of the day.”

“Good work. Matson sent off three FedEx boxes yesterday. Check the SatTek account and find out where they went.”

Gage turned back to Viz after he hung up.

“You want me to retrieve the video equipment?” Viz asked.

“No. Leave it there until we get the rest of the inventory. Matson may dip in again.”

At noon, Gage took a walk along the Embarcadero to the Ferry Building at the end of Market Street, where he bought Faith chocolate-covered ginger before sitting on a bench facing the bay to eat his lunch. The blustery wind chopped at the water. Small sailboats broncoed their way back toward the South Beach Marina while Leviathan-sized container ships ground toward the Port of Oakland. Gage watched their radars spinning, sweeping the bay, as if the radar would spot something the crewmembers’ home-yearning eyes missed.

The ring of his cell phone was nearly drowned out by the wind beating against his face and ears.

“Mr. Green, this is Mr. Black.”

“Good afternoon. What’s new in the Berkeley hills?”

“Our friend Mr. Scooby called, just like you said he would. Quite desperate when you didn’t return his calls, and grateful when I did. Now he wants to speak to you.”

“Of course he does. What did you tell him?”

“That you would call when you returned from Switzerland and got to a secure phone.” Blanchard chuckled. “He just loved that phrase.”

“Sounds like he’s getting into the cloak-and-dagger.”

“Not just him. Is there anything else Mr. Black can help you with?”

“No. I’m afraid it’s time for Mr. Black to retire.”

“Shoot. I was beginning to like the guy.”

“But Professor Blanchard could be useful in the next couple of days. I’ll e-mail a list of components that Matson stole from SatTek. Maybe it’ll tell you something.”

“Glad to do it.” Blanchard chuckled again. “By the way, I have some very good news.”

“What’s that?”

“I fixed the microwave.”

M
r. Green returned Matson’s calls when he arrived back from Switzerland.

“I’d like to talk to you about something,” Matson said. “In person. It’s kinda urgent.”

“I’m tied up in LA for the next couple of days. Meet me this afternoon at the Beverly Wilshire.”

Gage hung up, then booked himself a flight from SFO to Burbank.

Gage was sitting on a couch in the lobby lounge of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel when Matson entered at 4
P
.
M
. He scanned the room until he spotted Gage and walked over. Gage directed him to sit to his right.

“I appreciate you making time for me,” Matson said. “Especially on short notice. Mr. Black told me you were…” Matson glanced around, then lowered his voice. “In Switzerland. So I’m sure you’re really busy.”

Gage adopted the tone of Mr. Green. “So let’s get to it. What do you need?”

Matson glanced around again, his eyes pausing momentarily on a swarthy man sitting fifteen feet away
whose black double-breasted suit stretched tight against a mammoth chest and massive biceps. Matson leaned over toward Gage and whispered, “I need a bank account.”

“Where?”

“Offshore.”

“Everything outside of the U.S. is offshore.”

“I don’t know where.”

“Why do you need it?”

“I need to move some money.” Matson swallowed hard. “A lot of money.”

The glint in Matson’s eyes told Gage that he was thinking about more than just a couple of hundred thousand dollars of microchip money.

“So open an account,” Gage said. “What’s stopping you?”

“I’m a little hot at the moment.” Matson’s eyes darted around the lobby as if fearing he’d be recognized. “The class action suit against SatTek is getting a lot of press.” He then bumped the side of Gage’s knee with his knuckle and tilted his head toward where the man was sitting. “I think that man is watching us.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gage said, reaching for his coffee cup on the low table. “So what you’re looking for is a bank account on an island somewhere.”

“What do you mean don’t worry about it?”

“He’s mine.” Gage took a sip and set down his cup.

“Oh, okay.” Matson took a moment to digest Gage’s idea. “Yes, that’s what I want, on an island someplace.”

“How about Nauru?”

“What’s Nauru?”

“An island out in the Pacific.”

Matson’s eyes widened, as if imagining stacks of cash in a faraway vault. “How far out?”

“You know where Samoa is?”

Matson shook his head.

“How about the Marshall Islands?”

“No.”

“New Guinea?”

Matson shrugged.

“Didn’t you study geography in school?” Gage looked at him like a disappointed teacher. “How about Australia?”

“Sure. I know where that is.”

“Nauru is a couple of thousand miles northeast of Australia.”

Matson squinted into the distance as if studying a map on a classroom wall. “You mean near Hawaii?”

Gage shook his head. “I can see geography is just not your thing.” He then looked up at a passing waiter. He didn’t ask Matson if he wanted coffee, but merely pointed at his own cup and held up two fingers. When he looked back, Matson was again staring at the imaginary map.

“You mean I’ll have to travel way out into the middle of the fucking ocean to put my money into the account?”

Gage drew back a little, adopting an incredulous expression. “You don’t get how this works, do you?”

Matson shrugged. “Somebody else used to take care of all this for me, but he, uh, retired.”

“It’s like this.” Gage settled back. “People put money in these offshore banks by…” He cast Matson a questioning look. “You know how correspondent accounts work?”

Matson shook his head.

“Say I’ve got money in Deutsche Bank in Munich and I want to put it into Credit Suisse in Geneva. Do I hand carry the money? Of course not. Each of those banks owns an account at an intermediary bank. If it’s for dollars, it’ll be in, say, the Bank of New York. Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have correspondent accounts there. So the money goes from Germany to Switzerland by way of these correspondent accounts.”

Matson brightened. “I get it. The Nauru bank has a correspondent account somewhere. I just need to put the money into that account.”

Gage nodded, smiling like a proud teacher. “You just earned yourself an A.”

“And once it’s in Nauru’s jurisdiction—”

“Nobody can touch it except you.”

The waiter appeared with Matson’s coffee and re-filled Gage’s. Gage stirred in sugar, waiting for Matson to work himself to the next step.

“Where’ll the Nauru bank have its correspondent accounts?” Matson finally asked.

“In the ones I just named, and lots of others. They set them up wherever they expect to receive money.”

“How much will it cost?”

“I don’t think cost is an issue.”

Matson smiled weakly. “I guess you’re right. It’s just habit.”

“But I’ll do you a favor.” Gage took a sip from his cup, then set it back down. “Usually I charge a hundred for this kind of thing. But since we’ve got the other deal, I’ll make it fifty thousand.” He turned toward Matson. “On one condition.”

Matson swallowed, his distressed expression saying
that he’d seen a thousand deals fall apart because of what was presented as a final detail.

“We pay you for the other thing in this account so I won’t have to handle cash.”

Matson let the suggestion sit for a moment, biting his lower lip, then nodded. “But I’ll still have to figure out how to get the money back into the States.”

Gage smiled. “Piece of cake. There are dozens of ways. Carry cash back. Buy something in Europe and sell it over here.” Gage furrowed his brows, as if searching his mind for ideas. “Say you buy a dozen classic Rolexes in Switzerland; thirty, forty thousand each. They’re worth the same here as there. Who’s to know? Maybe you take a little loss, so what? Buy rice or steel or whatever anybody needs. Find out what people want and go get it.”

Matson nodded.

Gage pointed a forefinger at Matson’s chest.

“And one more thing. The main way they catch money laundering is that funds come into an account and then go out right away.” Gage wagged the finger back and forth. “It doesn’t make any difference how much you put in your Nauru account, just don’t take out more than about one percent at any one time during the first year. And send the bank a fake contract, like for steel, so it looks like you’re really buying something. But make it odd numbers. Round numbers get attention. Nobody buys exactly a million dollars’ worth of steel. Got it?”

“Yeah.” Matson sighed. “I wish I’d understood how all this worked before.”

Gage rose from the couch. Matson hesitated, then did the same.

“I’m real busy for the next couple of days,” Gage said, “then I need to travel out of the country. I’ll give you
a phone number. When you’ve got the fifty grand, call it. My friend over there will meet you somewhere in LA. It’ll take two days to set things up after we get the money. You understand?”

“I understand. What’s his name?”

“Just call him Eddie.”

Gage wrote out a phone number on a blank scrap of paper and handed it to Matson.

“You go out first. He’ll follow. If he spots a tail on you, you’ll never see me again.” Gage looked hard into Matson’s eyes. “If he spots a tail on me, you’re in big fucking trouble.”

A
re you ready for a little work?” Gage began his call to Burch. Matson’s fifty thousand dollars was piled on Gage’s desk.

“How I’ve waited to hear those words, but the doctors won’t let me leave the bloody house. I’m not even sure I can make it down the stairs.”

“You can do it from home. Matson needs a company and an account to put money he’s got stashed, but he doesn’t have Granger and Fitzhugh to do it anymore.”

“It wasn’t just them.” The weight of the pending indictment crushed the enthusiasm out of Burch’s voice. “It was Granger, Fitzhugh, and me.”

“Hang in there, champ. They knew what was going on, you didn’t.”

Gage heard Burch take in a breath and exhale, as if recharging his resolve. “Where?”

“I sold him on Nauru.”

“What?” Burch laughed. “Let me guess. You convinced him that he’ll have actual cash piled up out in the Pacific?”

Gage felt his fear that Burch’s mind had lost its quickness and strategic sense dissolve.

“And we’ll need to use a correspondent account in Switzerland.”

The humor disappeared from Burch’s voice. “But what if something goes wrong? It’ll look exactly like what Peterson is accusing me of, helping Matson launder money.”

“Jack, you’re forgetting the Afghanistan rule. If they ever get us—”

“It’ll only be for something we didn’t do. But this time I’m doing it, and they’re probably going to find out.”

“Don’t worry. I know a prosecutor in Geneva. I’ll tell him in advance what we’re up to and give him the name of the bank and the account number.”

Gage thought for a moment. He had planned to handle the second part of the setup himself, but decided that rebuilding Burch’s confidence required bringing him along. “What do you know about Chuck Verona?”

“Just a paper shuffler. His job is just to make sure corporate fees get paid and do whatever I need to maintain companies in Nevada. And not just me, everybody in the business in San Francisco uses him. Russian immigrant. Grateful to be in the States.”

“Any Russian organized crime connections?”

“None that I ever heard of. There’s always a risk that he was unwittingly used—I know how that is.”

“Does he trust you?”

“Of course. I’m the one who passed his name around.”

“Matson sent three FedEx boxes to a company called Checker Trading in Las Vegas that Verona runs. They contain microchips he’s stealing to fund his lifestyle
until he can tap his offshore money again. Find out from Verona what he did with them—”

“I see where you’re going. Then we backtrack the money from the Swiss correspondent account—”

“And dress the little punk in prison stripes and drop him on Peterson’s doorstep.”

Gage’s cell phone rang the moment he hung up from Burch. It was Milsberg.

“He’s traveling again. To London. First-class. And we’re running out of money for office supplies. I searched his office when he went out to lunch and found the ticket in his briefcase. Same flight as last time, and—this is the good part—a book about Kiev. Brand-new.”

“Is there a ticket for Ukraine?”

“No. But he must be traveling there. Matson isn’t a reader.”

Gage got up from his desk, looked over the charts and chronologies hanging on his wall, wondering both what Peterson expected to learn as a result of allowing Matson to travel out of the country again and why Matson hadn’t booked his flight all the way through to Kiev.

Does Peterson even know he’s traveling?
Gage asked himself
. And is Kiev part of Matson’s exit strategy? Slip out of London and break the chain connecting his neck to Peterson’s hand? Maybe even make the sale to Mr. Green in the comfortable surroundings of a Ukrainian dacha?

Gage snagged an international treaty book from the shelf, checked the index, and turned to the U.S./Ukraine section.

There wasn’t an extradition agreement.

The U.S. couldn’t touch him any more than it could touch Gravilov or the other gangsters involved in the scam. Matson and Alla would live happily ever after, just out of reach.

But treaties only bound governments.

Gage flipped the volume closed and reached for his cell phone to call a man who didn’t accept the legitimacy of either.