The Blood Lance (8 page)

Jane had offered to see what she could do, but Malloy told her that wasn't good enough. A cursory look, even a long steady examination, wasn't going to work. In the end Farrell was going to be too clean to prosecute. What Jane needed to do was get the SEC to pursue every violation his company had made no matter how insignificant. Once the U. S. Attorney had indicted him, Malloy said he would have a talk with Farrell. 'If he cooperates, we can give him a pass. If he plays tough, he gets to see if country club prisons are all they're cracked up to be.'

'If he's clean and I persuade the SEC to go after him, someone this prominent, I'm going to feel some pressure.'

'Trust me,' Malloy had answered. 'Jack Farrell is dirty and he
will
talk.'

'If you're wrong about this, T. K. . .
trust
me, I'll take your legs out from under you.'

As Malloy had predicted, the Securities and Exchange Commission investigators had found very few irregularities in Farrell's company practices, but there were enough dubious circumstances to persuade an especially naive grand jury to hand down a seven count sealed indictment, including two counts of perjury and three of obstruction - all arising from his claims of innocence. Immediately before his arrest was to take place Farrell had got wind of the proceedings and made a run for it. That hadn't excited anyone particularly. Farrell was well known in a small world. He had dated a number of B-list celebrities for a time, getting some tabloid attention, but he was hardly a household name. All that changed when the press got word that Farrell had run off with one of his administrative assistants
and
his corporation's most liquid assets - an amount close to half-a-billion dollars.
That
was a story.

Within two days the FBI tracked Farrell to Montreal, but he was already gone, on a flight possibly to Ireland or possibly not. By the time the administrative assistant surfaced in a Barcelona hotel, Jack Farrell was still an American story - more oddity than anything else - but after Barcelona the media converged on the story en masse. The scandal sheets began to love him even as a hardcore group of professional financial writers were beginning to question the SEC's decision to go after Farrell in the first place. The indictment stank, to put it mildly. No one had whispered the infamous letters C-I-A but people at the SEC were starting to run for cover, and it was only a matter of time.

The evening before - midnight in Hamburg - the Hamburg police had received an anonymous phone call about Farrell's location. The police converged immediately on a five star hotel in the heart of the city. They missed Farrell by a matter of minutes. The media storm in the aftermath of the raid had started on the East Coast in time for the prime time news programmes. The morning talk shows had already turned Jack Farrell into an instant American folk hero, dubbing him the Runaway Billionaire.

'They're going to get this guy,' Jane muttered, 'and he's going to come back and stand trial. When that happens the media is going to drag the agency into the middle of this, and when they do that, the Director is not going to have any trouble finding where to put the blame - and neither will I.'

'Tell me what you want me to do.'

'I want you to make Jack Farrell go away.'

Malloy let his head tip back as he took a deep, thoughtful breath. '
Away?'
he said, finally.

'Dead, gone, or locked up for good in a German prison. Take your pick. Just don't let him come back to New York - or any place that is willing to extradite.'

'I can do that, I guess.'

'Farrell left two different passports in his hotel room. He was using one. The second was presumably his backup. He won't try leaving the country without a new ID, and my source in Hamburg tells me he's looking at a minimum of three days, probably closer to a week before he can get something that can pass. We don't know if he's still in Hamburg, of course. He could have moved to Berlin, but hunkering down right now is the smartest move he can make, and so far he's been making

smart moves. Hamburg gives him a lot of cover. He takes a week, gets a new ID, and crosses the border someplace easy.'

'I'll get a flight to Hamburg tomorrow and see what I can do.'

'Your plane leaves tonight. We have to move on this thing, T. K. If the Germans get to him before you do, they'll send him back to us out of pure malice. If that happens you and I are going to suffer the consequences.' Malloy looked at his watch. A flight out that evening was pushing things a bit. 'And one more thing,' Jane told him. 'It's not out yet, but it will be for the evening news. Jack Farrell's new travelling companion is Helena Chernoff.'

Malloy blinked. He knew the name but hadn't thought to link it to someone like Jack Farrell. 'Number seven on Interpol's Most Wanted list?'

'Big fan, are you?' Jane asked.

'Some people check out the best sellers, I watch the FBI and Interpol Most Wanted lists.'

'What do you want to bet she moves up a couple of notches in the ratings next week?'

'What's an assassin doing with Jack Farrell?'

'Sleeping with him, according to the Germans.' When Malloy had nothing to say to this, Jane let one shoulder kick up in resignation. She was too old to question human nature's capacity to surprise. 'She works for money, T. K., and Jack Farrell has a lot of it. Also, she knows Hamburg.'

'So Farrell can sit it out for as long as it takes?'

'Interpol has been looking for Chernoff for close to two decades without any luck. I think she knows what she's doing.'

'Well, now she's got the FBI interested.'

'They've been interested for quite a long time, but that's another story. Here's the thing, T. K. We've got two FBI agents on the ground in Hamburg. They were in Barcelona interrogating Farrell's girlfriend and flew to Hamburg as soon as they heard about the near-miss. I'm guessing they're feeling a little over their heads at the moment, especially as neither of them speaks German. I went through a friend at State and arranged to give them some help.'

Jane passed behind him as he studied the naked breast of a Madonna placed a bit too close to the shoulder - medieval erotica.

'The best possible situation would be if the Germans keep Farrell. We raise a fuss, kick and scream, and Farrell doesn't see an American courtroom for ten-to-fifteen years. By then I'm retired and you've been shot to death by a jealous husband. Trouble is once the Germans understand how flimsy this indictment is, they're going to cooperate just to watch the show.'

The pretty girl walked into the room, and Jane said, 'We're out of time. Get with Dale Perry in Hamburg.'

'I know Dale.'

'I know you do. I introduced the two of you, remember?' Malloy tipped his head. In fact Jane had sent Dale to Zürich for six months when Malloy was operating there, but in the trade he supposed that amounted to an introduction. 'If Chernoff and Farrell are still in the city, Dale has the best chance of finding them. Just keep him out of the spotlight. I can't afford to expose him - even for something this big. You'll go in on your State Department ID, by the way. With the financials the Germans have turned up that shouldn't raise any eyebrows.'

'Anything in the financials worth looking at?'

'Nada.'

The girl handed him a business card as she passed him. Checking it, Malloy saw only a number.

'Remnants of your old slush fund in Zürich I just reactivated,' Jane told him. 'For incidentals.'

'What's my limit?'

'Whatever it takes.' And then she was gone.

Malloy walked back to the main hall, where the woman in her thirties approached him carrying a site map of the Met. 'Excuse me,' she said, and extended her map, 'Do you know where I can find the Impressionists?'

Malloy palmed the airline ticket she handed him as he touched her map and then shook his head. 'Sorry,' he told her, 'I'm lost myself.'

Malloy returned to his Ninth Avenue apartment an hour later. Gwen was out and not answering her cell phone. He wrote a note, packed his bag, and then started shifting files to one of his travel laptops. As he was finishing up, he called Gil Fine. Gil had been an analyst with the agency when Malloy was overseas. After the shakeup in 2002 Gil had caught an updraft and floated into Homeland as a senior analyst. For the past several years Gil had provided Malloy with raw data which Malloy processed and summarized and filed with various intelligence agencies. The work kept his hand in the game and gave him a little bump in his income, but of course it was indescribably dull.

When Gil answered, Malloy said, 'Do you know who's sleeping with Jack Farrell?'

'Should I?'

'Hamburg police are saying he was in bed with Helena Chernoff last night.'

'The media is going to go ape on this guy, T. K.'

'What have you got on the lady, Gil?'

Malloy heard the clacking of computer keys, then, 'About six gigabytes. Pics, police reports, intelligence summaries, biometrics, video. . .'

'You have her on video?'

Malloy heard more key-tapping. 'Several, actually. You kill people in hotels and that's what happens. Got a gunfight in a parking garage. . . footage of her shooting a man when she was working for Julian Corbeau. . . a ton of stuff actually.'

'She worked for Corbeau?'

'The only one left standing as far as I can tell.'

'I'm going to need everything you have on this woman, Gil
-
not just summaries.'

'Sorry. Can't do it. Only a handful of people are authorised to access most of this stuff.'

Malloy looked at his watch. 'What's the problem?'

'Jurisdiction. There's possible activity inside U. S. borders; so we can't send that to you without formal requests and high level approval.'

'Give me the broad strokes.'

'You're on a secure line?'

'You, me and Big Brother.'

'Main case is Senator Brooks. From the 2004 election?'

Malloy didn't place the name immediately. 'What was his story?'

'Plane crash.'

'Right. Won the election anyway.'

'But the governor got to make the appointment.'

'Right. He tapped someone in the other party. Democracy at work. What's Chernoff got to do with it?'

'They were calling it a pilot error on the news, but there may have been tampering, and FBI found some footage on a security camera somewhere that might have been our girl.'

'I thought Chernoff worked mostly in the old East Bloc countries.'

'That's where she got her start. In the past ten years she has been working in the West - but
very
quietly and mostly against politicians and legitimate businessmen.'

'I've got to have this stuff, Gil. Get your supervisor to call Jane Harrison if you have to.'

'Teaming up with the Iron Maiden again, are you?'

'Catching Farrell has become a priority. Right now Chernoff is the only lead.'

'With Chernoff's track record, T. K., that's no lead at all.'

Malloy grimaced. He was working long odds on this thing and didn't care to have that fact thrown in his face.

'I'll tell you what I can do. I can send it without authorization to Dale Perry. He's probably got most of it, anyway. I assume you've arranged to contact him?'

'I'm meeting him tomorrow night. While you're moving files, can you send him everything the FBI has on Farrell's flight? I've got deep background on the guy, but since he ran I've only got what the news is telling us.'

'I've got the summaries I can send you right now. The rest I'll pack into the files I send Perry.'

'Great, but make it quick. I've got to be out the door in five minutes.'

'No problem. Hey, T. K., I just thought of something.'

'What's that?'

'You know Chernoff used to sleep with some of these Russian mobsters before she took them out?'

'What's your point?'

'With
that
lady in his bed, I'm just thinking Jack Farrell might want to think twice about going to sleep afterwards.'

Malloy shot out a couple of coded e-mails to contacts in Europe and then tapped into Jane's black ops fund. He moved ten thousand Swiss Francs into a Swiss Post account he kept under one of his aliases. This he could access as Euros via any postal machine from Germany. He checked his mail and got the FBI summaries on Farrell. That finished, he started for the door.

As he did, the elevator pulled down to the ground floor. The building renovation wasn't completed, but he had brokered the sale of two flats, each taking up an entire floor. Both individuals spent about three months a year in the city, the rest in the sunshine somewhere or other. Neither resident was in New York at the moment. So it had to be Gwen. The old freight elevator came groaning up to the top floor and opened.

Gwen had short dark hair and dusky skin, a slender frame, and large brown eyes that Malloy had simply never been able to resist. They had met shortly after Malloy had left the agency and floated along together for a few years before getting married. Marriage had happened about a year ago. The honeymoon should have been over long since, but they still flirted
and teased like a couple of kids. Malloy wasn't complaining. It was the only innocence he knew and he hoped, actually, it would never stop.