The Aspen Account (25 page)

“This is Troy,” he said in his perpetually annoyed voice. 

“Glazier, it’s Chapman. I hope you can talk.”

“Go ahead,” he replied.

“Have you seen this morning’s
Wall Street Journal
?” Michael asked.

“Not yet,” he answered, as if that were on his agenda.

“You need to. There’s a nice article about X-Tronic’s record earnings reported on the filing of their ten-K.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“X-Tronic filed its financial statements with the SEC last Friday. I was out of town. They jumped at the opportunity to issue the statements while I was gone.”

“All right. Just settle down. Even if you had been around, you wouldn’t have been able to do much to stop them.”

“Glazier, I’m still on the engagement for another two weeks. I’m doing trivial bullshit wrap-up documentation, but it gives me access to X-Tronic’s facilities. I think we still have a chance to expose this, but I’m going to need your help for it to work. Whatever you have on your plate right now, drop it—this is too important.”

“I’ll be there tonight. Someone will call you back with my flight details,” he said before a brief pause. “What do you want me to bring from the kit?”

“From the kit? Everything!” Michael paused. “I have to get back to the audit room before Falcon gets suspicious.”

“See you tonight,” Glazier said, hanging up. Afterward, his brown eyes stared at the dead receiver. He ran his thick fingers through his short-cropped hair. He couldn’t believe Chapman had made it so far. None of the others had even come close. Moving around the desk, he opened the door to a loud bull pen and waved at his administrative assistant. 

“I need you to get me an afternoon flight to Denver,” he yelled at her.

“When do you want to come back?” she asked, picking up the phone.

“I have no idea,” he replied as he walked down the hallway. “Better make it one-way.” He got to the elevator, looked at his watch, and yelled back over the row of cubicles to his assistant, “I’m going to the range for twenty minutes. Pull the files on Michael Chapman, X-Tronic, and Cooley and White’s Denver office. Transfer all information to the encrypted hard drive on my laptop. And include a copy of X-Tronic’s ten-K that was filed last Friday, along with any press releases by the company, or articles in the
Journal.
” The elevator door opened slowly, revealing his stocky reflection in the mirror. “Oh,” he yelled back one last command, “have a full surveillance kit sent up from IT!”

Glazier rode the elevator down to the basement floor and went through a security checkpoint before entering the underground firing range of the U.S. Treasury Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. He nodded at the range master, put on the muffled ear protectors, and proceeded to an open booth. Snapping a full magazine into his third-generation Glock 22, he raised his arms, steadied the gun, and fired ten quick rounds into the distant paper target’s chest.

40

MICHAEL STOOD AT the back of the crowd, leaning against the blue-carpeted wall of the concourse as an airline agent opened the arrival gate. The first passengers emerged from the Jetway. Soon people flocked out the door. A well-tanned couple with clothes too bright for Denver—visiting from Florida, he assumed. An older woman with legs as thick as Michael’s waist, laboring up the slight incline. A group of kids, excited as he had once been, jumping and laughing. Then a seven-foot giant, ducking through the tunnel in his travel warm-ups, listening to his headphones—a basketball player obviously, but whether college or professional, these days it was hard to say.

Then Michael saw him, walking through the gate in a cool gray suit, like a wolf reserving its energy for the kill. It had been a year and a half since he last saw Glazier in person, but the man hadn’t aged a day. 

Michael held back, dipping his eyes below the rim of his baseball cap, waiting until the tide of reuniting families, friends, and lovers passed. As people moved away, the lone man in the gray suit looked about for someone to greet him, but no one did. Then his eyes lit on Michael.

“It’s been a long time,” Glazier said, walking toward him and extending a hand.

“Too long,” he replied.

They moved through the airport, grabbed two heavy cases from the overcrowded baggage claim, and made it to Michael’s car in record time. After throwing the bags in the Audi’s trunk, he paid the parking attendant and headed for town.

“Tell me everything,” Glazier said. “What exactly do you have on X-Tronic?”

“I only have evidence that exposes the fraud. They covered their tracks well, so I don’t have anything that implicates the specific people involved—that part will be difficult.”

“But you know who they are?”

“Yeah, I know.”

This seemed to satisfy Glazier. Michael had known the man for years, and for all the bold, decisive posturing, he would often fall back on the suggestions of a trusted subordinate.

“So I’ll take a look at the documents you have,” Glazier said. “I’ll show them to the director. If she’s convinced we have a case, we’ll file charges against X-Tronic and Cooley and White. We’ll get indictments, start pulling people in for questioning, put on the pressure, and watch the conspiracy unravel.”

“And destroy the company in the process, like Enron or WorldCom?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“Yeah, why not?” Michael snapped, tensing his grip on the wheel. “Look how great that turned out before. How many innocent victims were there from the Enron fallout? Twenty thousand? More? Investors, businesses, employees who were ready to retire. How many people lost their life savings?”

Glazier’s chest rose as he took a deep breath. He seemed to be preparing to face a long-anticipated challenge. Unreeling his seatbelt, he twisted in the passenger’s seat to face Michael. “Those companies imploded because their executives had created an illusion of strength on their books—a financial mirage to entice investors. And if a formal investigation against X-Tronic reveals similar findings, then they’ll implode, too, just like the others. That’s financial markets theory one-o-one. We can’t delay legal action against them just because you think you can distance the company from the conspirators.” 

Glazier turned back around to stare out the windshield. Sunlight reflected off the wet road from melted snow, creating what looked for a moment like a dazzling river of light. 

Michael wondered if his grandfather had been forced to endure a similar conversation in Bethel, Pennsylvania many decades earlier. But where his grandfather had failed, Michael was better prepared. He also knew that both his grandfather and his father would have wanted him to try.

“We have options here, Troy. We need to try to limit the damage to victims.”

“In the end, your efforts probably wouldn’t even matter. The only way to do this is by the book.” 

“Come on, Troy. Who are you trying to kid? You know what I want to do. You brought the kit, didn’t you? I’m only proposing we rewrite the book a bit. Look, you already have me as an inside person. We could keep this quiet and still bring down those responsible for the fraud without destroying the company.”

“What are you trying to do?” Glazier asked. “You know, you’re starting to scare me.”

Michael grinned. “If you think you’re scared now, just wait till you hear my idea.”

Downshifting from fifth gear to third, he punched it, rocketing the Audi forward from sixty to ninety miles an hour in under five seconds. He had felt an aggressive impulse to let Glazier know that—at this moment, anyway—Michael was in control. It was Alpha driving 101. But what he could not communicate to his case officer was his struggle with the way everything was unraveling at X-Tronic. He was struggling to hold on to the idealistic beliefs that had first lured him into becoming a Treasury agent. The things he had seen at X-Tronic and Cooley and White were the dark parts of a world that clashed with everything his father had taught him growing up in Kansas. Despite all that had happened, Michael was grasping at the hope that he might still find something good amid all the evil that had occurred—and all the new evil that he feared was still to come. His father had taught him that businesses could be good for society, as long as their leaders were not corrupted by wealth or power, and Michael wanted desperately to believe that what his father had taught him could still be possible in the world he was now immersed in.

41

“WHAT IS THIS place?” Glazier asked, glancing around the giant barroom.

Michael didn’t answer right away, because he was distracted by the pulsing energy of the cavernous two-story club. They had found refuge at a horseshoe-shaped bar that opened to a room crowded with tables and booths of noisy, mingling happy-hour patrons.

“It’s a club called B-Fifty-two’s. Used to be the loft for
The Real World
when it was in Denver years ago.”

“The real what?”

“
World
—it’s a reality show on MTV where a bunch of college-age kids live in a city loft together and do stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“I don’t know, just stuff.”

“I’ll never understand your generation,” Glazier said.

“MTV’s not my generation anymore; it’s frozen in youth. Besides, I think I’m under surveillance, so it looks better if we go out for a few drinks.”

Cocking one eyebrow, Glazier put his beer back on the red-stenciled bar top. “You’re in pretty deep, aren’t you? We fully appreciate your situation and will do anything to make your transition out easier. You know you’ve become a legend in our little circle. The director personally asked me to let you know that. No other agent has gotten as far as you have.”

“Then I envy them.”

“Oh? You regret your decision? Look, I know it hasn’t been easy, but it’s all for the greater good, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Hell, if you want to blame someone, blame me.”

“Oh, I do.”

“Attaboy,” Glazier said, picking up his beer. “You always were a quick learner.”

Michael brushed off Glazier’s comments and turned to watch the attractive bartender, laughing at something a customer had said. Her long, jet black hair reminded him of Alaska. “I gave you the number for Lance’s ski pass. Did it get you anything?”

“Yeah,” Glazier answered. “The Colorado Pass database system showed that his pass was used at Vail the day Kurt was killed. But it’s only circumstantial evidence. Vail’s a big mountain; this doesn’t prove he was ever at the exact scene of the crime.”

Michael shook his head in frustration. He knew that Glazier was right—a good defense attorney could dismiss the evidence as inconclusive.

Glazier leaned toward him. “Now, tell me why you won’t let me indict the whole bunch of them and plaster headlines of fraud allegations across the Dow Jones Newswire.”

Michael set his glass down. He understood why Glazier was so quick to turn X-Tronic into a public circus: it would speed the investigation, help justify Treasury’s covert project, and prevent the company from doing any more harm to investors. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still missing something. He turned his gaze away from the striking bartender.

“I know both John Falcon and Don Seaton will find a way to distance themselves from the conspiracy,” Michael said. “They’re too smart to risk exposing themselves. I’m sure they have a dozen contingency plans. You’ve worked in fraud investigation for almost ten years. You know that people who commit fraud spend more time working on the fraud than doing their regular jobs. And these guys are the best you’ll ever see—trust me; I’ve seen what they can do.” He watched for a reaction, but Glazier stared back at him with only stern concentration. “And I swear, if you try to go after them with only a few dozen boxes of documents, you’ll find they’ve spent the last four years picking up every stitch to cover themselves. We need confessions on tape. That’s our best chance.”

“And you think they were willing to commit
murder
to keep this a secret?” So Glazier still had doubts about Kurt’s death being linked to X-Tronic.

“Governments kill thousands in wars over political conflicts. Lovers kill out of jealousy. Street criminals kill for petty cash. Kids shoot their classmates because their peers have made them outcasts. You look at all the things that have happened in history, and do you really think, even for a second, that plenty of the world’s millionaires and billionaires wouldn’t commit murder to make sure they keep their fortunes and their freedom? Do you know what prison is like for someone with their background? White-collar criminals, by definition, have psychologically distanced themselves from the victims of their crimes to the point that they have almost convinced themselves that there
are
no victims. They lose touch with reality; they justify whatever it takes to survive. They have no conscience and are some of the most selfish criminal minds of all.”

“And what if this doesn’t work?” Glazier said, ready to consider Michael’s plan at least hypothetically. “What if they never make any phone calls to discuss the fraud after we set them up?”

“The most important thing is bringing down Don Seaton and John Falcon. If we can isolate the rumors of the corporate fraud to the key individuals responsible for it, we may be able to limit the damage this does to X-Tronic without destroying the lives of the fifty thousand people who work there and hurting the millions of people who are invested in it.”

Annoyed by Michael’s resistance to pressing charges immediately, Glazier snapped, “Look, you can’t save the company. X-Tronic will be destroyed.”

Michael flinched at the last word. “I can’t believe that. I refuse to believe there isn’t a way to take down the conspirators without punishing innocent people.”

“This is going to be tricky, and it’s not going to be black and white—it’ll be a thousand shades of gray. And it will be impossible to bring these guys down without killing X-Tronic. I’m sorry, but there’s just no other way.”