The Aspen Account (38 page)

“Michael?” she asked, still uncertain who it was.

“Alaska,” he repeated.

“Michael . . . Jesus! I said it was over. Just leave me alone. It was good for a while. Please! Let’s just leave it at—”

“X-Tronic?” he said, silencing her with a single word. His arms hung low, with open palms toward her, as if pleading for an explanation.

She stepped back suddenly, frightened as if the mere word had the power to harm her. She looked up at him with a guarded mysteriousness just as she had at the Church that night when they first met. “Michael, you don’t understand. My father—”

“Don’t,” he said, trying to hold back his rage. “I don’t want to know why. I just want to know
when
they first got to you.”

She was silent for a few seconds, as if looking back in time for the answer. “Before we ever met,” she replied.

“You had me marked in the club that night. You already knew I was on the X-Tronic audit. Lance and Lucas hired you to spy on my personal activities. You helped them make sure I wasn’t discovering too many of X-Tronic’s little secrets.”

“I don’t know anything about the company. They just wanted me to inform them about your personal life at first.”

“So we never had a single real moment together,” he said, anger burning in his eyes, just behind the tears.

“I don’t know, Michael,” she said, her head still lowered, unable to look at him. “It felt real.”

“Where’s Lance?”

She shook her head. “He only gave me a number to call if you contacted me. It’s not even a phone he’s using anymore. He must have disconnected it without telling me anything.”

“No, he wouldn’t have told you,” he said, trying to register her answer. “Lance would be smart enough to know not to trust
you
.” And he turned and walked away without giving her a chance to reply.

As he moved along the cold street, only fifteen blocks away from his own apartment building in Capitol Hill, he realized that Denver was too small a city for him ever to forget about her. He could barely control his anger. With any luck, he would never see Alaska again.

66

ON THURSDAY MORNING, valets at the Downtown Hilton jockeyed the cars of business journalists, securities analysts, and X-Tronic shareholders. The lobby was full of overnight guests mingling loudly with new arrivals. As they introduced themselves to one another, debates quickly sparked up over the possibilities of the new X-Tronic-Cygnus Corporation. The excitement over the merger vote had caught enough interest from Wall Street that seven of the largest brokerage houses had sent small teams of analysts to monitor the shareholders’ meeting.

As nine o’clock approached, the lobby crowd thinned, migrating up the elevators to the Mount Evans Ballroom on the fiftieth floor. The walls of windows stretching from floor to ceiling, with their panoramic view of downtown and the mountains beyond, gave one the sensation of floating above the city.

Set apart from the ranks of chairs, well-spaced microphones, and digital feed systems for the securities analysts, a long table for the board of directors sat on the elevated stage at the front of the room. At the center of the table, Don Seaton sat masked in a false smile, waiting uncomfortably for the meeting to begin. Tensions were already mounting in the room, as shareholders learned that the SEC had just halted all trading of X-Tronic shares on the New York Stock Exchange. Most assumed it was a hedge against immediate volatility during the merger vote, but some interpreted it as a sure sign of danger.

Michael stood hidden from the guests in the wings behind the stage. He watched Don Seaton waiting to begin the meeting. Then he turned his eyes to the fifth row, where John Falcon and Jerry Diamond sat together. He had never seen these two conspirators in one place before. Lance Seaton would have made it a full house, but he was still nowhere to be found.

Don Seaton seemed to be waiting until the tide of conversation in the ballroom rose higher, before he calmly leaned forward and spoke into the microphone, just seven minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin. “Ladies and gentlemen, fellow shareholders, please take your seats so that we may begin today’s meeting.”

Seaton took a few seconds to shuffle one last time through the notes Michael had prepared for him. Then he took a deep breath, his smile faded, and all signs of confidence left his face. “Fellow shareholders,” he said, “I have a lot to discuss with you today. Our meeting this morning will be instrumental in forging a new corporation, a new X-Tronic. It is my hope that this new corporation will be faithful to the core values and beliefs on which I founded this company more than thirty years ago—values and beliefs that have not been much in evidence at X-Tronic in recent years. Values and beliefs that have, unfortunately, been lost under the company’s current management.”

A quiet murmur ran through the room as the shareholders tried to decipher Seaton’s words. His concerns were something no one in the room seemed to expect.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, “I regret to inform you that there will be no vote on a merger between X-Tronic and Cygnus.” The murmur exploded into an outraged roar. In the blink of an eye, everything had changed.

Michael watched as Seaton raised a hand in a vain effort to calm the uproar. “I know that most of you have reviewed the ten-K filing. You’ve seen strong performance by X-Tronic during the past year. I also know that many of you have just discovered that all trading of the company’s shares have been temporarily suspended by the SEC and the New York Stock Exchange only a few minutes ago. In a moment, I will explain why this has happened. I know that many of you have traveled far to be here today. Let me assure you that today is going to be no ordinary shareholders’ meeting.” His eyes scanned the room until they found the table of securities analysts at one side of the room. “Today we will make history.”

Michael watched as Don turned to make eye contact with him. Once the billionaire had given him the slow nod, Michael raised his left hand to his mouth and spoke quietly into the small send-receiver embedded in a black wristband. “This is Chapman. We’re ready. Send ’em in.” 

Within seconds, the rear doors burst open as a small team of federal agents, accompanied by two uniformed police officers, quickly made their way down the center aisle. A loud grumbling spread through the room, then turned to shocked silence, as the shareholders watched events unfold. The agents reached Jerry Diamond. He sat bolt upright, his big shaved head staring forward, looking like a jacklit deer, then began laughing hysterically at the agents as they read him his rights. It wasn’t until he lunged toward Seaton in a burst of rage that the officers subdued him and hauled him from the room. Falcon ignored this activity completely, staring forward as if in a trance.

The room had fallen utterly silent as the agents escorted Diamond out. Falcon remained, still untouchable. As Michael watched him, looking for any trace of a reaction, he found himself almost admiring the man’s iron self-control. 

Once the agents left the room, the spell broke, and the shareholders erupted into chaotic chatter. Seaton tapped on the microphone until the noise again subsided. 

“Fellow shareholders, you have just witnessed the arrest of one of the men currently being charged with securities fraud in a wide-ranging conspiracy to manipulate X-Tronic’s financial results.” The room exploded with shouts of dismay. Seaton continued to speak, raising his voice, determined to say his piece. “The conspirators enriched themselves through a scheme involving bonuses, the granting of stock options, and career positioning at the potential merger with Cygnus. They engaged in activities that knowingly and fraudulently misrepresented X-Tronic’s financial condition and performance.” 

The securities analysts were on their cell phones, frantically relaying the information to their investment firms in New York. The news would reach Wall Street immediately, eventually gliding across bottom tickers on the news channels, followed by immediate article postings on the ever-fluid online issues of the Western world’s financial news sources, and eventually in a wave of abrupt announcements on news channels across the country.

Someone yelled out an unrecognizable question that was lost in the commotion. Seaton seemed to struggle as he tried to regain control of the meeting. A dozen shareholders had already left the room, fumbling with the small buttons on their cell phones. A small scuffle broke out in the far corner of the room.

Noticing Seaton looking over at him, Michael realized that the old man needed help, so he pushed through the curtain and marched directly onto the stage. He grabbed the microphone and faced the room. “Everyone, listen—please!” he said in a tone that commanded attention. “My name is Michael Chapman, and I am a federal agent with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. I am the principal investigator into the alleged conspirators’ fraud. Unless you want to lose every nickel you have invested in X-Tronic shares, I suggest you listen to the plan that Mr. Seaton and I have outlined to keep the corporation from filing bankruptcy.” The room fell silent—he had their attention. As he waited to continue, his gaze fell downward and he made direct eye contact with John Falcon for the first time in over a week. The man glared stonily back at him.

As the room quieted, he stood aside and let Seaton take over. Recalling his impassioned conversations with Glazier, he could understand how his case officer might lose hope, might forget those moments of illumination, back in college, when economic and financial theories resonated with supreme clarity in his mind. But Michael could still remember. And as he watched the crowd wait in horrified anticipation of Seaton’s final words, he found himself remembering the things his father had taught him from an early age about business and finance. He thought about how proud his father would be of him if he could see this. Watching Seaton try to calm the people, he thought now of his grandfather and the burden of pain he had carried for the last forty years of his life. He wondered what his grandfather would think if he could see him standing on this stage before panicked shareholders, trying to help a company through a crisis. And he felt, in a strange mix of emotions, that he was finally living up to the covenant that his family had failed to keep to their community in Elk County two generations ago.

Seaton had concluded the presentation. The shareholders were leaving the room, each struggling with the weight of the decisions to be made. There was nothing more to be said; it was now just a matter of waiting for the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow morning, and the few short hours when the fate of X-Tronic would be decided.

67

JOHN FALCON STEPPED out of his silver Jaguar XKR coupe on the isolated airstrip and stared at the single-engine Cessna 206H Stationair bathed in the headlights. Inside the small hangar, a gangly man jumped up off a threadbare couch patched with duct tape. “Z’at her?” the man asked, practically drooling at the Jaguar. “Lord Almighty, you sure weren’t lying, Mr. Falcon—damn if she ain’t a beauty!”

“I want to leave it in the hangar until you return,” Falcon said. “I don’t want it discovered while we’re gone—I don’t want any surprises. The title’s in the glove box, signed over, so she’s yours once you get back.”

“I can appreciate that, Mr. Falcon. Anything you say.”

“Move the plane out. I’d like to leave as soon as possible.”

With an eager nod, the man pulled the plane out of the hangar and started his preflight check. 

Getting back in the Jaguar, Falcon heard “Clear!” and then the sound of the engine starting. After stashing the car inside the hangar, Falcon slung his travel bag over his shoulder and walked back to the plane.

“Now, you
know
I can’t fly all the way into Canada,” the pilot said.

Falcon reached over and dropped the Jag keys in his lap. “Just get me as close as you can. I have people who can get me across the border and eventually out of North America. People will come looking for you once you register the car in your name. You’ve done nothing illegal, so tell them anything you want. As far as you know, I’m nothing more than an eccentric, paranoid businessman who gave you an offer you would have been a fool to refuse.”

The pilot throttled up the engine, and the plane vibrated as a roar came from the propeller. As they began rolling down the runway, Falcon tried not to think of the life he was being forced to abandon. For the moment, he needed to focus only on escaping and surviving, on helping his family start anew. But as the plane lifted off the runway and climbed into the night sky, his mind colored with fantasies of revenge against the young man who had ruined his life.

*     *     *

“Is Stuttgart already here?” Michael asked Marcus as he walked into Seaton’s Denver estate. He had seen the red Porsche near the entrance.

“Beat you by fifteen minutes.”

“The eager little prick,” Michael said, grinning. “He never liked my plan from the beginning. You know why he made sure to arrive before me?”

“Let’s see,” Marcus deadpanned. “To get a better seat?”

Michael laughed. “To try one last time to talk Mr. Seaton out of buying back X-Tronic’s shares. He’s here for the money, Marcus. He’s here to try to save his biggest client from putting all his wealth on the line.”

Michael moved through the enormous house, went down a wide staircase, and rapped lightly on the double doors of the game room.

Seaton smiled. “Michael! Good, you’re here with plenty of time. Trading begins in twenty minutes.”

Michael was pleased to hear no wavering in the old man’s voice. He looked over at Stuttgart. The financial advisor had the look of someone who had fought and lost the battle. Now he would have to stand by and watch his client risk everything. Michael knew that no matter what happened, both Stuttgart and Seaton were going to lose a lot of money this morning. Indeed, there was no way to gain financially. The only victory would be to keep X-Tronic’s stock from tumbling so low it became virtually worthless or was delisted on the NYSE. To survive the fraud scandal, the company would have to face serious challenges. But of all the things X-Tronic must do to survive the fallout of the fraud scandal, the first crucial battle would be Seaton’s attempt, this morning, to keep the stock from tanking.