The Last Trade (20 page)

2

Johannesburg

H
is house is a fortress.

To try to enter it in the middle of the night, unannounced, was a risk she didn't want to take. The alternative, sleeping in the car on a dark side street of a violent slum while being hunted by someone who wants to kill her, wasn't much better, but it's the choice Sawa Luhabe made.

She had driven straight through from Swaziland. Once she was back in the city, she considered calling a friend, or sleeping on the couch in her office, but she decided that the first choice unnecessarily endangered an innocent, and the second was too obvious.

Just after 2
A.M.
she drove past her house in Alexandra, out of curiosity, and was not surprised to see a man standing in front of a car out front, and lights on inside. She never slowed down and never turned back. Instead she continued on to the Hillbrow slum, and the home of her brother Muntukayise, better known by his gangster name, Jolly.

Luhabe hasn't seen or spoken to Jolly in seven years. Since he left home for good at sixteen to pursue the gangster life he had courted since he was twelve. Their last conversation, on the back stoop of the family house, had not gone well. She was home from university and had found two guns and a kilo of cocaine in his closet. When she confronted him, he said, “Because crime is easy, and all that I am doing is taking back what was ours.”

“
This
was ours?” she said, holding up the bag of cocaine.

“That is a means to an end. Faster and easier than what you propose.”

“It's easy until you die,” she answered. And she told him that if this was the life he had chosen he had to leave her parents' home because his guns and drugs under their roof had put them all in danger. He never said good-bye to his parents, but before he left, he kissed his sister and told her he loved her.

“I love Muntukayise,” she answered. “Jolly, I hate.”

Roosters awaken her. Then, in the distance, a gunshot.

Horizontal sunlight slants through an alley, directly into her red and swollen eyes. She sits up, rubs her cheeks and eyes, then starts the car. She's never been inside Muntukayise's house before, but she's driven by it dozens of times. And besides, everyone knows where Jolly lives. The last time she drove past it was the day after her husband was murdered. If there ever had been a time when she thought she would cave and ask him to use his influence, that would have been it. It would have been for vengeance, to ask her brother to kill the man who killed her husband. But she didn't. Couldn't. She knew it would have felt good for a moment and wrong for an eternity.

Now she doesn't want anyone to kill anyone. All that she wants is refuge. A place even an assassin would fear.

As the car warms up and daylight spreads across the ruins of Pretoria Road, she continues to wipe the sleep out of her eyes and takes civic inventory of her surroundings. More than half the commercial buildings are burned out and gutted, plate glass windows long ago shattered and bricked up. Staring at sidewalk junk refrigerators and sinks, mattresses and office chairs, she thinks how odd it is that most of the buildings are closed up and vacant while people live on the streets below among their contents.

During apartheid, this street was the home of the whites-only main shopping district of Hillbrow; now it's a predominantly black slum. Progress. She rolls down her window, shifts into drive, and begins the short journey to her brother's place on Catherine Street.

Jolly's home stands out because it is something of a compound, gated, guarded, and surrounded by concrete walls. Plus there is glass beneath the iron bars in the windows and the red brick is free of graffiti, which makes the place contrast with most of the homes in the neighborhood. There are no mattresses or refrigerators in front of her brother's place. Just two armed guards standing sentry on the lawn side of the sidewalk gate.

She stands before the gate, waiting for one of them to acknowledge her. When she determines that isn't going to happen, she speaks. “Excuse me. I am here to see Muntukayise.”

Both guards approach the gate. One already has raised his machine pistol poised up to his hip. “What you say, girl?”

“I am here to see Muntukayise.”

Together the guards shake their heads—no one here by that name.

“Jolly.”

This stops them.

“Jolly sleeping. What you want with Jolly?”

Sawa Luhabe steps closer to the gate and looks between two bars. “You call him Jolly, but to me he is Muntukayise. Wake him and tell him his sister is here.”

* * *

Muntukayise opens the door in a pair of orange boxer shorts. He is a tall and muscular man, like their father. He grimaces and then, recognizing her, confirming the best and the worst, he smiles. Like their father. He bounds down the six brick steps and opens the gate. Sawa Luhabe was determined not to hug the most infamous gangster in Hillbrow, but when her baby brother reaches out for her, she can't help it.

When he pulls away, he looks her up and down and hugs her again. “Is that your car?”

She turns. Nods.

“I thought you were a big-time stockbroker?”

“Someone shot up my other car.”

He tenses. “Who?” The change in his facial expression is so pronounced it unnerves her.

“I'll tell you. Can we go inside?”

While she eats her first food since leaving Swaziland, she tells him her story.

He stands, paces. “What can I do?”

“I swore I would never speak to you as long as you made a living at this. I swore I wouldn't even go to your funeral.”

“Tell me.”

“But my daughter . . .”

“I will send someone to Swaziland.”

“To protect. This is not about killing.”

“Fine, to protect her. And Mama. Has she . . . has she mentioned . . .”

She shakes her head. “Not for some time, brother. It's the only way she can cope.”

“I understand. What else?”

“I need a place to stay until I figure this out. I'm sure they will come back.”

“Then you'll stay here. And we will be ready for them.”

“Do you have Wi-Fi?”

“Yes.”

“And a bed? A clean bed would be nice right now.”

Before trying to sleep, she logs onto her brother's computer. He's given her a second-floor room with a private bath in the back of the house.

The first thing she finds is the apology from the American Agent Cara Sobieski. Then she opens the follow-ups, which are filled with many of the same questions she's been asking herself.

Luhabe doesn't answer. She's too tired. She'll answer later, after she sleeps. But first, she decides to open the only other message in her inbox. From a stranger, [email protected].

 

Dear Sawa Luhabe,

 

My name is Drew Havens.

I left a message in your office yesterday that arrived too late. I hope this finds you safe and well. I am an American quant whose friend was recently killed by someone I believe is linked to the people with whom you performed the short trade, and who attempted to kill you. You need to know that they have already killed stockbrokers in Hong Kong, Dubai, and Rio. They are also trying to kill me. I absolutely believe they will kill anyone who has any knowledge of or association with them. And I believe that they have something much more catastrophic planned, and that we can potentially prevent. I would very much like to hear from you in order to learn as much as I can about your contact with them.

Luhabe closes her brother's laptop, stands, and looks out the window. A guard armed with a machine pistol patrols the small walled courtyard behind the house. A neighbor's dog begins to yelp. From down the hall she hears the voice of the man who used to be her brother, ordering someone to do something. She pulls the curtains, blocking the light of the rising sun, and lies back down on the bed.

She closes her eyes and thinks of her daughter and her mother, her dead father and husband and all the iterations of the brother she has known. Child. Rebel. Criminal. Killer. Outcast. And now protector. She thinks of how he's been each of those things in distinct stages and now he is all of them at once. We all are, she thinks; only the order and the emphasis sometimes changes.

As sleep finally comes, she is thinking of the American agent Cara Sobieski and now this man Drew Havens, both of whom claim to want to help her, to protect her as well as many others.

Her last thought, which is really a whim on the edge of a dream, is: I wonder if Drew Havens and Cara Sobieski have ever spoken to each other or, better yet, if they've ever met?

3

Newark

H
e calls Miranda from the back of a cab.

“Where are you?”

“Road trip. Where are you?”

“Out. I spoke to Deborah.”

“And?”

“She thinks he's capable of anything. But she's more interested in making sure she keeps her half of his fortune than in turning him in.”

“Anything close to a motive?”

“He's not the patriot he leads us to believe. The government screwed his father way back when, and he's still raging and cheating and acting like an animal.”

Havens thinks. This is nothing new.

“What's in Newark?”

“A piece,” he tells her. “Enough to make me sure it's him, but not enough to stop him. You all right, Mir?”

“I'm fine. It's just . . . these are bad people, Drew. We basically . . .”

“I know. It was me. Not you.”

“I've been thinking about what you said last night. I should have answered, but . . .”

“Not now, Mir. There's no need.”

“I want to see you.”

He looks out the window and takes two long breaths. One to silence the emotional response that's best for him and the other to formulate a rational answer that's best for her, and them. “I want to see you, too. I've wanted to see you every day. But I need to stay away, Mir. People are looking for me, and to be safe I think you should get out of your place for a while.”

“Why don't I meet you in the city?”

“It's . . . not a good idea.”

“I want to try, Drew.”

“Jesus. I do, too. More than anything. But this . . .”

“I know. We let them ruin us. I just don't want them to ruin us again.”

Minutes after he hangs up, Rourke calls.

“You okay, Drew?”

“Splendid, Tommy. Peachy.”

“The cops were here today. Talked to Rick. Talk to me.”

“What do they think?”

“They think you killed Danny Weiss because you have it in for the fund and Rick. They think you've lost your shit because of your marriage and Erin.”

“What'd you tell them?”

“I told 'em they were dead wrong. But dude . . .”

“What?”

“They have you on his phone. On surveillance vids outside his place. And of course Rick told them all about your visit. What are you gonna do? How can I . . .”

He thinks of all that Rourke did after Erin died. After Miranda left him. The long talks over dinner. Helping with his move and his guilt. “You've done enough, Tom.”

“Where are you now?”

“In a cab. Somewhere in Newark.”

“Dude, this is nuts. I'm worried about your state of mind.”

“Me, too. But the more I dig the more I know that Salvado's attached to something bad, Tom. Scary bad.”

“What? Let me help.”

“He's gaming the market. Lining up shorts only to knock 'em down with something big and bad.”

“Terrorism?”

“Call it whatever you want. It's pure evil.”

“I'll see what I can find on my end. Where you wanna meet?”

“I'll call.”

Minutes after getting off the phone with Rourke, on the outskirts of Newark, his phone rings again. An unfamiliar number with a Philly area code.

“Hello.”

No reply, then: “Thought you might want to know. Just paid a visit to Springfield. Chuckie's gone.” It's Laslow, he's sure of it.

4

Berlin

T
he young man sitting alone surrounded by stacks of slush pile manuscripts looks up. At first he seems pleased to see signs of life enter his solitary cavern of paper and unfortunate words.

Looking up and smiling, he says, “
Guten tag
.” The couple nods back, but upon seeing the woman's wire – and cable-bound hands, the young man's smile fades.

Heinrich raises a finger to his lips and shushes him.

Sobieski turns to face the door, raises her hands behind her back, and jerks her wrists toward Heinrich. Soon after Heinrich has untied her, she turns and smiles at the young man at the desk. “
Guten tag
,” she whispers. But the young man, his face frozen with terror, doesn't reply. Pressing her ear to the door, she hears soft footsteps receding down the hall toward Siren Securities.

Slowly she cracks open the door and peeks out. Two dark-haired white men stop in front of the door at the other end of the hall. One reaches into his black leather waistcoat, removes a pistol, and waits for the other to open the door. Sobieski turns to Heinrich, who is peeking over her shoulder, and whispers, “Get ready.”

She watches the man without the gun swing open the door to Siren while the other drops into a shooting stance. They remain in the hallway for several moments before the shooter straightens and they cautiously move inside.

As soon as the men disappear from view, Sobieski grabs Heinrich by the elbow and fully opens the door. She bends her head out and looks down the hall one last time before pulling Heinrich into the hall. Five steps away she quietly opens the door to the emergency fire stairway. After Heinrich is through, she gently pulls the door closed behind her and they start down the first of nine flights of stairs.

The sky above Gendarmenmarkt Square is no longer a robin's egg shade of blue. It's been transformed into the ash gray she'd expected from the city of Berlin.

They turn right as soon as they leave the building. The lunchtime sidewalks are busy. Men and women in suits briskly passing, running errands, bringing bags of takeout back to their cubes. They are all walking with a sense of urgency, Sobieski thinks, but not a sense of purpose. The urgency of a hamster on a wheel rather than a person headed toward a fixed destination.

She's walking fast, with urgency and purpose, passing even the quickest pedestrians.

“Can you slow down a bit, please, my ribs . . .”

“You want to die? Then move.”

Heinrich jogs to catch up. “Where to?”

Sobieski answers without looking. “First, away from here,” she says. “Then, I have no idea.”

“Where did you learn the kung fu?”

“It's not kung fu. It's nothing. Those men. Were they the ones who gave you the orders . . . your employers?”

“No,” answers Heinrich. “I've seen them once before, but they were not my employers.”

“When was that?”

Heinrich thinks. “Yesterday, actually. Only yesterday for the first time.”

“What about your employers?”

“Employer, actually. One man.”

“Right. Ever see him?”

“No. He's in the States. Strictly phone and text.”

“What was his name?”

“His last name, at least I think it was his last name, was Homer.”

They turn left, away from the busy square and the palatial walls of the financial institutions. They walk past a lunch shop and a pharmacy and an electronics store. As they near a
Biersalon
, she nudges Heinrich and says, “In here.”

A waiter begins to lead them to a window table, but Sobieski tells Heinrich to ask him to sit them near the back of the dining area, in a booth. Once seated, Sobieski asks for a cup of tea and Heinrich gives the waiter a lengthy order.

She shakes him off. “Tell me about Homer. How did you come in contact with him? When did he recruit you?”

“I was contacted by one of his associates. This is embarrassing, but I met him at a beer hall about, I'd say, two months ago. Not as quiet as this. It's near the Square, and after work it is filled with traders and brokers and investment bankers. I had recently gotten my trading license and had been looking for work and—”

“What was he like?”

“His name is English, or perhaps American, but he clearly isn't. My guess is that he is Russian, perhaps Croat. He claimed to be an extremely wealthy person who needed an accredited broker to work for his firm.”

“Siren?”

“Exactly. I started within a week of our meeting.”

“And when you went to work for him and saw what this extremely wealthy financier's headquarters looked like, you didn't even think of . . .”

The waiter brings their drinks. Heinrich nods thanks, then finishes Sobieski's sentence. “Questioning it?” He sips his Berliner Weisse and nods approval. “No, I did not. I needed the job. I had been unemployed for almost a year and I was broke. Did I suspect that he was a criminal?” He shrugs. “You know what the economy has been like.”

“So it's okay to work for terrorists in a bad economy. Do you think it was an accident that he found you at that bar?”

Heinrich scratches his chin, look away. He knows the answer, but isn't sure if he wants to give it to Sobieski. “I want, what's the word, immunity?”

“What do you think, I'm district attorney for planet earth? I saved your life, now you want immunity?”

They don't speak for a minute. Sobieski runs her fingers over the keypad on her phone. She knows she should check in with Michaud, who she sees has left her two messages, but she doesn't because she defied him and she doesn't know what to say. Right after this, she thinks. Looking around the restaurant, filled with young professionals, laughing, drinking in the middle of the day, she thinks of Marco Nello, who has also left her two messages in the past hour and a half, and wonders what he's doing right now.

“I don't think they found me by accident,” Heinrich says. “I think they identified me as a potential employee, talented yet desperate enough to ignore certain things, and sought me out.”

“Because you were an unemployed broker?”

“That,” he answers. “But mostly because of my skills as a hacker, which, if I must say so, are substantial.”

“What did you hack?”

“The trading accounts in the U.S., the brokerage houses and personal accounts of the traders in Hong Kong, Dubai, et cetera. The corporate sites and private accounts of the CEOs of the companies whose securities we later targeted for the trades. The shorts. Plus, the sequential thing, the multiple trades, that was my idea.”

“Were there other trades that you performed for him besides the big ones?”

“Yes. Much smaller. But yes.”

“How much longer? How many more do you think they're doing?”

“Not sure. They didn't say, but my guess, from the activity pattern since I began, is that this is their big week.”

Sobieski straightens up. “By any chance did you, did you hack into . . . Homer's account?”

Heinrich's eyes go dead. Of course he did, Sobieski thinks. Then I've got to call Michaud and find a place to take this guy to break this open. But who knows if he'll freak and clam up under more intense scrutiny? For now, she thinks, while he's talking so freely, it's best to let him go.

“Look,” Heinrich confesses. “I knew that something criminal was going on. I knew that Homer wasn't legitimate and that the nature of these transactions . . . the short positions . . . the specific instructions to spread them out over time—I knew that they were done in this manner to avoid drawing unwanted attention to all parties. But I really was broke and they were offering me a
lot
of money for a few months' work. And the murders . . . Do you really think they will kill me?”

“When they're through with you?” Sobieski dips a spoon into her tea, twirls it counterclockwise, and arches her brow. “If they cleared out because they perceived some kind of threat yesterday . . .”

“Which I detected. I detected several actually. From Hong Kong and an IP address in New York City.”

“Then why did you go back today?”

He pauses, takes another drink of his juice beer. “Because I kept the tracking software and a backup of everything I did there on a flash I'd hidden.”

“A flash drive? That's a little crude for a hacker with substantial skills.”

“I thought about floating it into my cloud, but then someone would have been able to make the connection.”

“What software? Promis?”

He smiles. “You know Promis? I'm impressed. No, I made my own. Better than Promis. Promis on steroids. For kicks.”

“Did they know about this?”

“No.” He shakes his head. “No.”

“Did you get it?”

Another head shake. “I was distracted.”

“Where was it?”

“Stuck to the underside of a radiator with electrical tape.”

The waiter arrives with Heinrich's fried meatballs. Sobieski takes a look at the dish and pulls her chair back. Her head aches from the concussion and her stomach is fluttering with nausea. “Where . . .” she begins, “what location were you going to work out of next? You were going to continue working for them, right?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“They didn't say. But for the time being, today, I was to work out of my flat. I took one of their computers with me last night.”

“Can we go there?”

“It's in Prenzlauer Berg, near Mitte. Sure. But don't you imagine they'll be looking for me?”

Sobieski doesn't answer. As she stares at him, she sips the tea for the first time but lets it trickle back into the cup because it has a coffee aftertaste. What else? “Did they give you orders to initiate any transactions today?”

As soon as he begins to nod, she sits up and leans closer, despite the smell of the meatballs.

“Where?”

“Ireland.”

She tilts her head.

“Dublin,” he continues. “They didn't tell me the name of the security yet, or the type of transaction.”

“How would they contact you?”

“Coded messages. Cryptic. Greek stuff. I was to hear from them at two o'clock.”

“If we get on your computer, it still might be there on the Siren account.”

“If I go back, isn't it likely they'll kill me?”

“Take me there and I'll go up.”

“Plus, it's not Siren anymore.”

“Okay . . .”

“They closed that down yesterday when they broke down the office. Starting at two o'clock it's Ithaka. With a K.”

“We have to go.”

He shoves a meatball into his mouth. “You sure you don't want one?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

He stands and wipes his mouth. “Okay. I'll take you there, but I'm not going in.” She waves for the check while he puts his napkin on the table and holds up a finger, excusing himself to head to the restroom in the back.

While she waits, Sobieski pushes Heinrich's plate to the far side of their table and tries to gather her thoughts. She's only been gone from her hotel for a few hours, but it feels like days. She knows she has to check to see if Sawa Luhabe has responded to her message, but first, she realizes, she has to call Michaud to tell him about Heinrich, to figure out what is going to happen in Dublin, to try, for once, to save a life.

For the first time in weeks the son of a bitch isn't there to pick up. “It's Sobieski,” she begins her message, “and I have to talk to you ASAP about the next trade, which I've just been told is gonna go down in Dublin, with a connection to Siren's replacement firm, Ithaka. With a K. But Jesus, call me, Michaud. I need a secure place to take someone for interrogation.”

She clicks off and begins drumming her fingers on the table. After two minutes, and still no sign of Heinrich, the once and former employee of Siren Securities and, briefly, Ithaka with a K, she stands up, spooked, overcome with the sense that something has gone disastrously wrong. She rushes to a waiter, grabs his sleeve, and says, “Bathroom!
Wo ist die Toilette?”

The waiter points to a narrow hall in the back of the
Biersalon
. She runs past the other diners, followed by the waiter. She pounds on the door of the men's room with her open palms, but no one answers. She tries to push it open it, but it is locked.

As she takes two steps back, the waiter, sensing what's coming, calls, “Miss!” But it's too late. She lunges with her left leg toward the locked door while her right foot swings back and already begins to swivel above her waist.

The cheap interior bolt lock gives way beneath the impact of the bottom of her foot, and the door bursts open. Sobieski doesn't have to step inside to conclude that Heinrich is gone. The wide-open window that leads onto an alleyway tells her all she needs to know.